Last week, Spacing‘s Dale Duncan wrote an article in Eye Magazine about five great public space ideas from other cities. She cited an initiative in Seoul, South Korea, where the city demolished a huge expressway and uncovered a river, transforming it into a heavily-used linear park. The Guardian recently published a detailed article about this initiative.
The article discusses the most fascinating aspect of the Seoul project, to a Torontonian who has mixed feelings about the recent proposal to tear down part of the Gardiner but replace it with ten lanes of road to handle the same volume of traffic: the ‘Braess paradox’, in which traffic volumes actually go down, and circulation improves, when you remove a large road. This is what happened in Seoul, where people simply used their cars less, and the city improved transit in order to compensate. Since the Gardiner is already over capacity anyway, perhaps we don’t need to build all those lanes if we take it down, as long as we provide a transit alternative (maybe we can make more use of the existing east-west rail corridors).
Here are some other interesting recent stories and web sites from other cities:
Montreal Residents’ Association hosts symposium to try to make city streets safer for pedestrians
Transit for Livable Communities, Minnesota (transit, pedestrian and cycling initiatives and research)
Promotion of cycling in Canada petition (asking the Canadian Federal Government to promote cycling as a preferred means of transportation. The petition discusses the environmental and health benefits of cycling, and offers suggestions as to how the government could entice Canadians to become bicycle commuters. Former Olympic cyclist Curt Harnett has signed. The organizers are contacting other cycling figures to sign as well, and are hoping to have the petition read in the House in the winter.)
2 comments
Funny how the Seoul situation is a full 180 from the pro-urban-expressway argument advanced (and paradoxically, *also* using Asian examples as a motivator) by Kelvin Browne in the National Post this past week.
I’m also wondering whether and how West Side Manhattan–the original “elevated highway demolition” situation–fits into the equation; however many lanes of road presently exist there, it still feels plenty “aired out” relative to yore. (Unless the nature of altered Manhattan economics over the past 3 or 4 decades plays a part…)
Tear down the Gardiner and put a Express Streetcar ROW along the middle of Lakeshore (but don’t widen Lakeshore) – there’s a viable alternative for people to use instead of their cars.