What's the most important road in your state/province/department/oblast/etc.?
>Oregon, US >Interstate 5 (north-south highway)
Interstate 5 (I-5) in Oregon is about 500km long. It runs from the state's southern border with California to the Columbia River/border with the state of Washington in the north. It connects the state's 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 7th-biggest urban areas. It's part of the larger I-5 corridor which connects the Canadian and Mexican borders, running basically from Vancouver to Tijuana.
This is Sweden's north-south highway. It runs along the eastern coast from the Finnish border down through Stockholm, where it starts going inland past our 2nd largest lake Vättern and further down to Helsingborg where you can take the ferry to Denmark. On the way it passes or runs close to many of our biggest and most important cities.
It's not only the most important road in my region, but the most important road in Sweden by far.
Why do Americans run mega highways right through their cities and destroy them? Why don't they just build around the city?
Brody Reed
Like most of the East Coast I-95
Lincoln Thompson
how does it destroy them?
Matthew Williams
You need to lacerate those black neighborhoods
Connor Price
That was the prevailing theory of "urban planning" in the 1950's, when most of these routes were originally built. Widespread revolts mostly ended this type of freeway design by the 1970's, but by then it was far too late for most US cities. In Portland, the freeway was actually relocated across a river to create space for a park next to the city's downtown.
For example, these were the original plans for a lower Manhattan freeway that was later canceled. But then again, cities like Tokyo and Shanghai have freeways right in their central cores without much difficulty.
Makes their downtowns emptier, divides cities into separate pieces, makes travel more complicated if your not driving somewhere, etc. That sort of single route inflow of traffic doesn't work all that well either. There's pretty much no reason for them to have to go right through cities.
Pretty sure that's in Japan, where they actually build their cities logically instead of smashing things together like in the U.S.
Asher Johnson
I was talking in a North American context. Tokyo is not super relevant either. It's highway system is only 300km in lenght. Los Angeles county has 830km for only 9.7 million people
Zachary Lopez
Except that parts of the Gardiner expressway were taken down and other parts might be soon too.
Aaron King
Boulevard Monseñor Romero formerly Diego de Holguin
Toronto isn't the only Canadian city with a highway in its downtown. By that logic, you can't critize Americans either since many of those highways will get teared down or digged underground in the coming years. Boston already did it over a decade ago
The 401 in Ontario. It stretches from Montreal to Detroit and passes through Toronto. I live near a rural stretch of the highway and use it to get to London frequently.
Ian Rogers
Very informative
Landon Allen
The E4 runs trough Stockholm.
Andrew Campbell
Interstate 5 in particular was supposed to be part of a larger network of freeways around Portland, most of which were never built. It was a mistake to put it directly next to downtown, though. That stretch of freeway usually makes the top 10 or 15 worst in the entire country for traffic jams and delays.
There is another city further south called Corvallis where the freeway DOESN'T pass through downtown, because it was too expensive in the 50's to put the route through a nearby floodplain. So it was moved to the east, and downtown Corvallis is generally considered a nicer place as a result. It would have been an ugly mess with a freeway passing through.
