In other words, tear em' down.
I was reading various blogs today, and found Freeway Revolts of the Future over on Transbay Blog. It got me thinking about how much more land Portland would have if we rid ourselves of some of the downtown Interstates. It would also drastically resolve one of our other major issues, the I-5 Vancouver bridge issue. So here are some ideas for resolving our Interstate Blight, fixing Vancouver's connectivity issue (without any light rail even! :o -how dare I!) and even increasing throughput for truck freight heading through Portland. All this and we might even be able to save some lives from the benzene we have so much of in this area of the country.
Step 1: Just get rid of I-5 as a major thoroughfare north of downtown.
Between point A and point B cease all Interstate Traffic. I won't go into all the things that we could turn these blocks into, but it is easy to see with about 40 or so blocks freed up, we're looking at billions of prospective development. All the traffic from Lombard could still use the I-5 bridge that exists. With this decrease in congestion for the bridge the I-5 connection to Vancouver would cease to be a problem. As for how people using I-5 would get to downtown, I'd suggest a large park and ride at Expo Center for now, or at Delta Park Vanport MAX stop as a stop gap. Of course that might overload the trips to downtown and the Steel Bridge, but it would be a huge economic boom for north Portland.
Step 2: Get rid of of the south east Interstate.
Again, I won't go into all the uses this new space could be utilized for, but just quickly cover what we could easily knock out. From point A to point B, complete removal of the connector ramps, the off ramps, and the southern bridge. The southern bridge could prospectively be used for something, but when it comes time to replace, at the rate the country is financially falling apart, we won't have a red cent to replace it with. So we might as well go ahead and take it down and create wealth by opening up extremely valuable land. Let the city make a landfall profit on the land by selling back to developers, especially those that will put money into transit oriented development or other useful and valuable development for the city, and let the city pay off some of those debts it is sitting in.
Step 3: Get rid of the I-84 that destroyed the neighborhoods and let them reconnect.
At all three points, with the Interstate gone, I can rest assured the crime would drop because the communities could become actively involved in these MAX stops. In addition put some little commercial mixed zone areas around the MAX stops and you have dozens of square blocks of small community centers based around transit oriented development. Everything from reducing crime, bettering the neighborhoods, to creating friendlier MAX stops would be accomplished by doing this.
In my next entry I'll write up what and how we could accomplish getting rid of these Interstates without wrecking the local economy from lack of traffic. Of course some of the above routes, wouldn't wreck anything, they just wouldn't be used anymore. But I'll offer up some ideas and thoughts. It might just offer some Transit Beer discussion points.