Road to nowhere

Is it time to let go of our love of city freeways?

Each new freeway that’s been built, or a new laneway added, promises to ease traffic congestion but that never seems to happen.

Maybe it’s time to radically rethink our road policy.

In the US, cities including San Francisco have called in the bulldozers on their freeways and are rebuilding streets, parks and other infrastructure destroyed by highway construction.

US transport expert Benjamin Crowther, told website thefifthestate.com.au the big objection to removing freeways is the fear of ‘carmageddon’ or traffic choking smaller roads.

“There’s been studies that have been done, over 100, I believe, on different road capacity reduction projects across the world, including removing highways, and in each of those cases, traffic decreases by about 25 per cent,” he says.

“Some people use alternate routes, a smaller percentage switched to public transit, but about 20 per cent of the respondents just said they skipped unnecessary trips.” 

Could you function without a city freeway in your life?

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