Of all the mistakes made by city planners in the postwar era, the passion for highway construction has to be one of the most foolhardy. …
This was considered progress, a necessary part of entering the modern world. But some strange things happened – the most damning being that these new roads didn’t reduce traffic at all. Instead, they induced demand, clogging up almost as quickly as they were built.
… the knockout blow was the oil crisis of the 1970s which put an end to many big plans. Looking back, we can marvel at how outrageous some of these and later schemes were, and the traces they left behind. …
This was considered progress, a necessary part of entering the modern world. But some strange things happened – the most damning being that these new roads didn’t reduce traffic at all. Instead, they induced demand, clogging up almost as quickly as they were built.
… the knockout blow was the oil crisis of the 1970s which put an end to many big plans. Looking back, we can marvel at how outrageous some of these and later schemes were, and the traces they left behind. …
Holding a claim to being perhaps the world’s shortest working highway, the most westerly portion of California State Route 90 was originally part of a giant road planned to cut right across Los Angeles, the spiritual home of the traffic jam. Again, the strength of community resistance meant that the plans were reduced until all that was constructed was a short spur a few kilometres long. It held the dubious honour of being named the Richard M Nixon Freeway for a few years in the early 1970s. …
One odd monument down by the harbour in Cape Town is a set of two concrete flyovers that spring out of the Helen Suzman Boulevard before abruptly ending, leaving their swooping sections dangling in mid air. They are the remnants of a plan for the Eastern Boulevard Highway, abandoned in the late 1970s for lack of funds and demand. A symbol both of municipal hubris but also a local landmark, it was adorned with “The World’s Largest Vuvuzela” for the World Cup in 2010. …
Part of the highly developed Dutch road system, route A4 sweeps down from Amsterdam to the Belgian border on the way to Antwerp. It passes through Rotterdam where, embarrassingly, a cloverleaf junction lacks its fourth wing. To this day a 20km stretch of the route remains unbuilt, leaving a suspiciously empty patch of land between residential neighbourhoods waiting to be unified.
Paris nearly suffered a repeat of Baron Haussmann’s boulevard gouging in the 1960s, as Georges Pompidou attempted to make the city “adapt to the automobile”. The banks of the Seine were turned into expressways, but many planned radial roads were thankfully left on the drawing board, and the right bank of the river is to be fully closed to vehicles in the future. …
One odd monument down by the harbour in Cape Town is a set of two concrete flyovers that spring out of the Helen Suzman Boulevard before abruptly ending, leaving their swooping sections dangling in mid air. They are the remnants of a plan for the Eastern Boulevard Highway, abandoned in the late 1970s for lack of funds and demand. A symbol both of municipal hubris but also a local landmark, it was adorned with “The World’s Largest Vuvuzela” for the World Cup in 2010. …
Part of the highly developed Dutch road system, route A4 sweeps down from Amsterdam to the Belgian border on the way to Antwerp. It passes through Rotterdam where, embarrassingly, a cloverleaf junction lacks its fourth wing. To this day a 20km stretch of the route remains unbuilt, leaving a suspiciously empty patch of land between residential neighbourhoods waiting to be unified.
