Highway Engineering Madness: 10 Waterfront Freeways That Need to Go (North America Edition)

As a Chicagoan, I've progressively come to identify LSD as a horrendous sore. When I owned a car, I was initially enamored by how beautiful of a drive it was, especially on the north side, but I quickly got annoyed with slow travel times and traffic. There's a bizarre stoplight on the north side almost immediately after a near 90-degree turn (even despite the drive lacking the infamous 's-bend' for decades now), and every single time I've driven that segment I've felt like I've narrowly missed a wreck. It doesn't help that people drive 70 mph even though the posted speed limit is like 45mph. Outside of a car, all the glorious green space along the lake is marred by noise and air pollution, and frequently you have to walk a half a mile to get to the nearest bridge or tunnel. After rush hour, residents are kept up all night by drag racing cars. I've tried to go on walks with friends on the lovely paths by the lake, and often we have to shout at each other due to the noise. On multiple occasions I've seen cars that have flown off the road over concrete barriers. If there must be a road, make it a two-lane tunnel underground with a new L line, please. So sick of our cities designed for cars instead of people.

I think one thing you forgot to mention: waterfronts were actually not desirable places to be/live in the past because they were full of existing shipping activity and ports, which weren't pleasant to be around. That's why you also see railroads along them (like the Tacoma one at 1:50) as that was often the cheapest place to build railroads and then highways. Now, they are desirable places to be as cities don't really have individual ports, or if they do they're further up/downstream so they are more pleasant places to be.

You should do "build a city" series whenever you pick a smaller city with the potential to be a great place to live and how you would build it out

Chicagoan here: About the only thing I'd keep with Lake Shore Drive is the numerous express buses that use it. I think it would be way better if it was narrowed and turned into an exclusive bus way for express routes that oftentimes (when traffic is low) get you to the loop faster than taking the L.

The second worst thing about lake shore drive is talking to people who are convinced that the city will crumble without it.

Here's the lowdown on Toronto's Gardiner Expressway. In the 1950s when it was started, during Toronto's short lived urban highway boom, The urban portion of the Gardiner was 100% industrial due to the Port of Toronto and the neighbouring CN rail corridor and massive yard. The construction of the Gardiner coincided with CN moving it's mainline just north of the city (eventually the old ROW was purchased by GO Transit). Fast forward to recent years and the Gardiner is crumbling and requires massive investment to repair, and the waterfront is now prime real estate. In 2015 city council voted 24-21 against tearing the least used eastern portion. Surprise surprise, 100% of the urban councillors voted to tear it down and 100% of the suburban ones voted to reinvest in it. This political imbalance has been forced and reinforced on urban Toronto for decades by Conservative Premiers of Ontario. Cities don't have any constitutional power in Canada, only what provinces delegate to them, so they are free to mess with city politics. A small eastern portion of the Gardiner was removed this summer because it was the least used and necessary for the reconstruction of a bridge as part of the re-naturalization of the Don River (an amazing project worth checking out).

I lived in France 25 years ago, and visited Paris multiple times back then. When my wife and I went there this past September, I was delighted to see that they had made the streets along the Seine much less accommodating to vehicular traffic, and there was a noticeable increase in bicycle and pedestrian activity. :)

You should look at Glasgow as an example of a European city that adopts American urban planning, it’s been featured in so many films as a stand in for NYC or Philly. We’ve got a waterfront freeway of our own - the Clydeside Expressway - and it’s a complete carbuncle that deserves to go!

I live in Chicago. When I first moved here I lived in Rogers Park (North of the beginning of LSD) right by the lake and it was amazing. I walked the dog right up to the lake every day and spent time enjoying the lakefront nearly every day. After moving further south, it's been a real bummer having a highway between me and the lake and I don't think most people here realize what a barrier it is. Now I nearly never visit the lakefront and nobody else I know goes there outside of trips to the beach in the summer. Most people here have never lived North of LSD and simply don't know what they're missing. After living a couple of years deeper in the city and spending time in different neighborhoods, it's clear that LSD is really a huge barrier to the lakefront, especially on the South side. It's incredible the amount of pavement near the lakefront south of the loop. Even by Jackson Park, the main lakefront rec area on the south side, there are amazingly few places to cross LSD and the one by Promentory Point is a particularly dilapidated tunnel underneath the drive. A side note: Lots of people will say that the transit is bad towards the lakefront but there are a lot of buses that go that way and many that even use LSD to run an express to the loop. The capacity on all the lakefront transit is always under a lot of stress, but that's because of the population density along the transit lines and is an issue of its own that is arguably being partially addressed by the CTA already.

You ever read a title and just know you're going to be in it? #Chicago checking in.

NC is fascinating. We originally never built densely close to waterfronts because our coast is constantly changing and hard to tame. It’s also important to note that while we don’t have any big and impressive bodies of water like the Great Lakes or the Mississippi, we have many smaller rivers that flow from the mountains that are of high water quality. We have tons of groundwater here no matter where you are in the state. Well water was commonly used, especially in the piedmont and the mountains because we have high mineral content and fine clay soil that naturally filters water. As cities (Raleigh, Greensboro, etc.) started to grow in population along freight rail lines, reservoirs became more common, but the reason we have so many reservoirs and lakes today actually has to do with when our state started building infrastructure for electricity. None of our lakes are naturally occurring. Most, like Lake James or Lake Norman, were engineered by Duke Power as hydroelectric projects over a century ago. So none of our major cities are built on our prominent bodies of water because the bodies of water were man-made after the cities were established. Now you just have a lot of suburban developments on Lake Norman, Jordan Lake, etc. because people have figured out living by water can be very nice!

The one great thing from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco was the eventual demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway. It was a horrible event and we will always remember those we lost, but losing that great hulking cement monstrosity and allowing sunshine into the lower part of the city was a gift.

Technically, Storrow Drive is there for out-of-town parents of college students to embarrass themselves on September 1st by opening the top of a u-haul like a can of catfood on a low overpass. Outside of that, it's just where people park unwillingly, honk, and yell obscenities at each other.

North Carolinas cities are surrounded by reservoirs, meaning that any water which could be making a river is just force into a man made lake. There is one semi major river going through Fayetteville but there is not much development around it. Also there isn't a single major river which gathers most of the water in comparison with other areas. Its actually quite an interesting phenomenon. :)

Halifax, NS, where I am from, almost put a freeway along the waterfront in the 1960s. It was stopped and now we have an incredibly vibrant waterfront and boardwalk. All that was built of the freeway was a single interchange, which is currently being demolished and redeveloped into mixed-use and green space.

Chicagoan here! I spent pretty much the whole video wondering if you were going to bring up Lakeshore Drive. 😅 My take: the tunnels under LSD do make it relatively easy to access the lakefront on foot, though using them is decidedly less pleasant than just strolling on foot at grade would be. The real issue with Lakeshore Drive is the noise--it generates constant noise that seriously hampers one's ability to really enjoy the city's otherwise incredible stretch of lakefront parks. There are a few express buses (most notably the 156) that make good use of LSD for fast public transit, though in all honesty the 156 is largely duplicative of red line trains for all but the richest of lakefront property owners, so I'm not sure how many points that should really award it. If I had to guess, I'd say that demolishing Lakeshore Drive will be a hard sell politically, as many Chicagoans rely on it for daily commuting. We should still totally do it, though, then pump whatever funds that frees up into expanding the L system and running more frequent trains.

Chicagoan chiming in. Lake Shore Drive certainly bothers my urbanist sensibilities, but I also feel like it has a weird romantic appeal to a good number of people. If you're forced into a car-centric lifestyle (which many Chicagoans are, sadly), it is a really cool stretch of road to drive down. But as someone who has been car-free in Chicago for a decent number of years, I lament how much worse the lakefront experience is due to LSD.

Most inland North Carolina cities were built along railway lines. This is actually true of much of the southeast, which has only a few major rivers. So they may look random if you are expecting waterfronts, but there were reasons.

12:50 The location of many of these cities is determined by the "Fall Line". The Fall Line is the border between the costal plain along the East Coast and the "Piedmont" foothills further inland. At these locations, rivers had rapids and they were the harbours for river shipping in the past. These inland harbours grew into a string of cities in the modern US that stretches for thousands of miles.

Wow! Finally someone mentioning North Carolina’s weirdo absence of city waterfronts! I live in Charlotte, NC since 2007 and I have always wondered about this. And there’s the pretty sizable Catawba River right next to the city!