Do We Really Need More Highways?

Interstate 94 freeway at N. 16th St. File photo by Jeramey Jannene.

Every day at The Overhead Wire we sort through over 1,500 news items about cities and share the best ones with our email list. Each week, we take some of the most popular stories and share them with Urban Milwaukee readers. They are national (or international) links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.

Do we really need more highways?: In a new book, University of Pennsylvania professor Erick Guerra makes the case that the continued expansion of highways in the United States is exacerbating the errors made when they were first constructed through neighborhoods and communities. He also argues that since we’ve overbuilt, there will be a need to decommission roads and as travel behaviors adjust new solutions will become viable. (David Zipper | Bloomberg CityLab)

No zoning in Charlottesville VA: A judge has ruled that Charlottesville’s recently adopted zoning code is invalid after a firm representing the city missed a filing deadline. Because they had to repeal the old code to enact the new one, no zoning code exists for the city at this time. The city expects to vote again soon on a code, but in the mean time they will pause rezoning requests by not issuing building permits. (Charlottesville Tomorrow)

How Salt Lake lost control of street design: During this year’s legislative session, the State of Utah took away Salt Lake City’s autonomy on designing streets for better safety. The bill, which was snuck in at the last minute and initially fooled democrats, was supported by an AI generated paper from two professors at the University of Utah working on their own time. Even though the paper was riddled with factual errors about traffic safety and street design, city opponents used it to pass a preemptive bill. (Taylor Anderson | Building Salt Lake)

Transit important to the justice system: A survey of jurors in Philadelphia found that 40% of them showed up to the courthouse by transit over a five day period in May. The findings point to the importance of transportation access to the courts and another reason for Pennsylvania to fund SEPTA. And access importance doesn’t just apply to actions at the courthouse, it’s also related to court mandated duties including diversion programs and community service. (Katayun I. Jaffari | City & State Pennsylvania)

Human impacts on animal evolution: New research shows that human culture including politics, religion, and war have influenced the evolution of wildlife in cities. The genetic structures of wildlife populations are ultimately changed because our social worlds are intertwined with surrounding ecologies. They found that zoning codes and policing for example impact animal territories and their behaviors. (Marcos Magaña | Los Angeles Times)

Quote of the Week

The reason for the Franklin corridor was essentially to speed traffic through downtown. Rather than leaving an urban world down there, they wanted to put an interstate through SoBro — suburban logic applied to an urban context. We used to laugh at the fact that the fastest way to get from East Nashville to Vanderbilt was to cut right through the center of downtown because there was less traffic than the interstates.

-Former Nashville Scene writer Christine Kreyling discussing the project that sparked the creation of the Nashville Design Center.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Bill Schultheiss of Toole Design to talk about bike facility design guides. We look at the benefits of both AASHTO and NACTO guides and discuss the importance of history, political will, and the stress of being an expert witness in a trial.

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