Can building freeway caps be made economically feasible? Can they be made to pay for themselves or at least defray a significant part of the cost through public private partnerships or selling development rights? What is a freeway cap?
Like Boston’s “Big Dig,” which is credited both with massive costs and problems and with enormous revitalization, freeway caps cover freeways with usable land. However unlike the Big Dig, they take advantage of freeways which are already lowered via a canyon or excavation that occurred when the freeway was built. Thus, the most expensive component of the “Big Dig” is removed.
Los Angeles was well along the way to building two freeway caps over Highway 101 and creating parks on top – one downtown and one in Hollywood – before California’s redevelopment law was repealed. Some people in San Diego envisage a freeway cap that would reconnect its downtown to its famous Balboa Park but there are no real plans for building one, as is discussed
in this YouTube Video, Freeway Caps- Pleasant But Pricey.
Do these projects need to be parks in order to benefit the community? Is private development on top politically, legally, or economically feasible? A panel discussion was held a few months ago to brainstorm strategies for keeping the Los Angeles freeway cap projects alive, including selling development rights, reported the California Planning & Development Report. Among the information divulged: CalTrans owns and jealously guards the air rights over freeways and in the present economy there is not enough development demand to build the density or height to significantly offset freeway cap construction costs.
Freeway caps can go along way to repairing the damage to communities from 3/4 of a century of making automobile mobility the top priority; and to make better use of valuable downtown acreages. Hopefully, continued focus and discussion can find ways to make them economically feasible.
Image Credits:
Freeway Caps- Pleasant But Pricey – YouTube, KPBS
About Bill Adams
Freeway caps are a wonderful way to maximize land-use area, as CalTrans has done above I-15 at Orange Avenue. Much better examples than Boston’s disasterous/controversial “Big Dig” would be Seattle, Wa. which has both a convention center AND a park built over I-5, and New York City’s Cross Bronx Expressway approach to the George Washington Bridge, which is topped by high-rise residential structures.
The caps linking downtown to Balboa PArk might be revisited when our economy improves.
@mlcred True, and while parks are wonderful, just about anything is better than an exposed freeway. That creates a lot potential flexibility for the type of use that might be acceptable to go on top – a stadium, a convention center, a light industrial, or a combination of park and profit.
Freeway caps are a wonderful way to maximize land-use area, as CalTrans has done above I-15 at Orange Avenue. Much better examples than Boston’s disasterous/controversial “Big Dig” would be Seattle, Wa. which has both a convention center AND a park built over I-5, and New York City’s Cross Bronx Expressway approach to the George Washington Bridge, which is topped by high-rise residential structures.
The caps linking downtown to Balboa PArk might be revisited when our economy improves.
Interesting article! I worked on a briefing paper on cap parks back in late 2010. Check it out if you’re interested: http://sites.google.com/site/lasustainability/hot-news-1/newreportfreeway-capparkpolicybriefing
@clemusc Thank you for that fantastic reference Clement. Including that link has really leveraged the value of this post!
Don’t you think its peculiar that when they sliced up downtown for the I-5 “S” curve, they put in all kinds of north-south bridges for cars but did not include a link from one of San Diego’s oldest neighborhoods, Cortez Hill, to the park? Just on Pedestrian Bridge? That tells you where our collective minds were at in 1961. GM, Good Year Tire and Standard Oil had our best interests at heart no doubt…
We also have a freeway cap here in Columbus (built a few years ago), only with shops instead of greenspace. It seems like part of the reason why it’s been successful is the location – it’s located just South of a vibrant neighborhood, with shops, art galleries, restaurants, and bars, and just North of downtown Columbus. It has blended seamlessly with the both the artsy Short North and downtown. It seems to be a good example of how a freeway cap can heal the divide that a freeway creates, and other cities have studied it when considering their own project.
For more information on the I-670 cap in Columbus:
The Urban land Institute did a case study of the cap: http://casestudies.uli.org/Profile.aspx?j=7696&p=1&c=2 and http://casestudies.uli.org/casestudies/C035010.htm
There’s also a short article on it in the National Transportation Enhancements Clearinghouse Newsletter (from Spring 2005): http://www.enhancements.org/download/connections/Vol8no2.pdf
A quick google search will point you to a number of other blogs, websites, and similar sources that mention it, such as this one: http://sites.google.com/site/freewaycaps/what-portland-cn-learn-from-florence-italy-and-columbus-ohio