Archinect - News

On the twisted development of Los Angeles' avoidable 'baked-in" freeway system

2022-06-14T11:15:00-04:00

Can you imagine a version of Los Angeles with even more highway veins pursed throughout its (formerly) Bohemian coastline, super-industrial downtown core, and crisscrossing network of foothills? The reality of what could easily have been (save for the opposition of several big-name celebrities and politicians) is being explored by the LA Times’ new editorial series called ‘‘Explaining L.A. With Patt Morrison.’

In last week’s edition, the writer took to the freeway for a delve into its post-war sources of federal funding (90% of the system here was underwritten through the Eisenhower administration’s nationwide interstate expansion effort), and potential alternatives that included multiple Parkway designs that caught on much easier in Northeast states like New Jersey, Maine, and Connecticut during the same period.

Figures like Randolph Collier and George Gordon Whitnall come into the fore to foil more practic...

'We all did': The Los Angeles Times' Patt Morrison on who authored the fate of LA's long-lost streetcars

2021-11-03T12:01:00-04:00

Red Cars didn’t just get people from Point A to Point B. They helped to create Point A and Point B. Towns like Burbank and Alhambra grew spectacularly once the Red Car reached them. Other sellers of land wised up and made sure their advertising told prospective buyers how to get there by Red Car; so did merchants and amusements. The system made even the farthest towns and neighborhoods feel connected.

The trolley system was not entirely undone in part by the nefarious hand of some elite corporate entities with decided interests in seeing an alternative to the then-burgeoning interstate highway system destroyed. Movies like Clint Eastwood's Changeling (2008) and (my favorite) Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) do a more-than-adequate job presenting the system as a great democratic uniter of Los Angeles’ proletariat, which is how many people view the defunct system correctly or incorrectly six decades after its operation was shut down.

The city is currently working on an expansion of its modern-day equivalent — the Metro — that will vastly increase access to the city’s Westside via a series of new Purple D line stations that will terminate near the campus of UCLA. The present east-to-west commute is considered to be one of the worst in Los Angeles county. The city is expecting 78,000 daily commuters on the line once construction is completed in 2027.

Researchers call for dismantling of 'racist infrastructure' to improve U.S. neighborhoods

2021-09-07T17:54:00-04:00

A group of researchers from Northeastern University and Tufts University has called for funds from President Biden’s infrastructure bill to be diverted to dismantling “racist infrastructure” which is currently disproportionally impacting minority neighborhoods in the United States. The stance is set out in a new thought piece on The Conversation written by Joan Fitzgerald, a Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, and Julian Agyeman, a Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University.

The researchers focus on the network of urban highways built across the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s, which the team posits was deliberately run through neighborhoods occupied by Black families, and other people of color, thus physically distancing the communities from jobs, opportunities, and urban connectivity. Scholars identify the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act as the beginning of a trend whereby transportation planners used highways to form...

An architect is helping cougars cross the 101 Freeway safely

2021-07-07T13:05:00-04:00

Architect Robert Rock is facing a Herculean task: Design a bridge that will allow mountain lions to cross safely over a stretch of the 101 Freeway that roars with the traffic of 300,000 vehicles each day.

A pedestrian bridge for animals in the region has been proposed for several years. Advocates will now face an uphill climb to raise an additional $27 million for the projected $65 million price tag before August after previously securing $38 million thanks to a #SaveLACougars social media campaign from the National Wildlife Foundation.

Previously on Archinect: Los Angeles is building an urban wildlife crossing

The bridge is necessary to protect gene flow between two small populations of wild cougars that live between Simi Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains. With funding, the bridge could be installed in time for 2025. The LA Times has more on Rock's project here.

What happens if we view President Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure plan through a social lens?

2021-04-02T00:49:00-04:00

On March 31st, President Biden unveiled his $2 trillion economic plan to "reimagine and rebuild a new economy." The American Jobs Plan aims to "invest in America in a way we have not invested since we built the interstate highways and won the Space Race."

During Wednesday's speech, Biden expressed the need to fix and repair the nation's crumbling roads, bridges, and water systems. While infrastructure covers a wide range, the plan also maps out an emphasis to "build a world-class transportation infrastructure." However, as news outlets quickly report and react to Biden's economic agenda, The Boston Globe's Ian Duncan brings a much-needed perspective that cuts through the repetitive news coverage.

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel from Pexels

At the forefront, Duncan's coverage brings attention to neighborhoods and roadways with racially historical pasts. He highlights Amy Stelly, an architectural designer and New Orleans resident who raised awareness of the Claiborne Expressway and t...

Heavy Rail vs Monorail: Could the recent approval of two transit proposals change LA's 'most challenging transit corridor?'

2021-04-01T13:59:00-04:00

Los Angeles freeways are notorious soul-sucking pathways that most residents face daily. The infamous 405 freeway is considered one of the most "congested stretches of highway in the United States." However, as Forbes Staff writer Alan Ohnsman reports, there may be two solutions the city's transportation authority can get behind. "Local officials are considering an audacious fix for commuters on the city's west side: a sleek, automated $6.1 billion monorail to whisk riders above soul-crushing freeway jams," writes Ohnsman. "A rival proposal for a $10.8 billion subway from a group led by construction giant Bechtel, running below the highway, also won PDA funds worth up to $69.9 million."

While many remember the "hyped" vacuum-tube hyperloop proposed by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk making headlines, the city did not make it a contender for transit funding. LA traffic is inevitable, but will the proposed LA Skyrail Express and subway project from Bechtel lead the city to an impro...

Car accidents have become commonplace in America

2019-08-13T19:30:00-04:00

Since January 2000, more Americans have died in car crashes than did in both World Wars, and the overwhelming majority of the wrecks were caused by speeding, drunk or distracted drivers, according to government data.

As the rise of deaths and injuries from automobile crashes continues unabated, the public's fascination and obsession with driving cannot be swayed. The Washington Post highlights data that points to a major cause for nearly all crashes: human error.

"In automotive circles, it's common to hear that 94-percent of car crashes are caused by human error, a fact provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and often used as a preamble when people discuss the coming era of driverless vehicles."

Cities across the U.S. have adopted initiatives to promote the use of public transportation and to regulate traffic speeds. However, despite these approaches, the number of deadly car crashes continues to grow.

According to Maureen Vogel of the National Safety Council, "Unfortunately, our public opinion research has repeatedly shown that people still believe it will happen to someone else, but not to them."

Los Angeles keeps expanding its freeway "Autopia"

2018-02-23T17:42:00-05:00

If no one in 2018 would argue, as a young writer named David Brodsly did in 1981, that the "L.A. freeway is the cathedral of its time and place," or that it's the spot where Angelenos "spend the two calmest and most rewarding hours of their daily lives," as British architectural historian Reyner Banham put it with almost laughable enthusiasm a decade earlier, there's no doubt that both the practical and metaphorical meanings of the freeway continue to preoccupy Southern Californians.

Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne reflects on Southern California's ongoing love-hate relationship with its freeways.

More details on Glendale's "freeway cap park" emerge

2016-03-08T19:11:00-05:00

Space 134, the city's $150-million plan to build 24 acres of park space atop a trenched stretch of the 134 Freeway [is] slated for a .7 mile stretch between Central and Balboa Avenues, [and] would span from the city's Downtown district to adjacent residential neighborhoods to the east. Glendale officials have trumpeted the project's potential to improve public health, reduce pollution and strengthen transit connections to the rest of [L.A.] County.

More about L.A. parks:

A critical look at Downtown L.A.'s ambitious plans for two new public parks

Take a look at these bold visions for Downtown LA's next park

Pershing Square Renew competition narrows down to four finalist teams

Largest wildlife overpass in U.S. proposed for L.A.'s 101 Freeway, could ease area's roadkill problem

America has an infrastructure problem – and it's getting critical

2016-02-10T19:54:00-05:00

It would be helpful if there were another word for “infrastructure”: it’s such an earnest and passive word for the blood vessels of this country, the crucial conveyors and connections that get us from here to there (or not) and the ports that facilitate our trade (or don’t), as well as the carriers of information, in particular broadband... The word “crisis” is also overused, applied to the unimportant as well as the crucial. But this country has an infrastructure crisis.

Elizabeth Drew considers several recent books on American infrastructure, with an eye to both the material reality and the political system producing it. She concludes that fixing our infrastructural systems "may require even more widespread paralyzed traffic, the collapse of numerous bridges, and perhaps a revolt in parts of the country that have inadequate broadband."

"In other words, we may well need to incur more chaos and ruin and even deaths before we come to our senses," she writes.

Unfortunately, in the US, while infrastructure is falling apart everywhere, certain contingencies bear the brunt of this more heavily. The ongoing crisis in Flint, Michigan brings into sharp focus the socioeconomic and racial undercurrents of infrastructural collapse.

Interested in related issues? Check out these links:

Turn the 2 into housing (or a park or a solar array): Christopher Hawthorne's pitch for one of LA's most awkward freeways

2016-01-04T13:58:00-05:00

An elevated park filling a retired stretch of freeway may sound reminiscent of the High Line, the hugely popular park built along an abandoned elevated train line in Manhattan. In symbolic and practical terms, the potential of a remade 2 spur is greater than even that project. It would take a working stretch of freeway in Los Angeles, a city still synonymous with car culture, and reinvent it as a vibrant, diverse urban landscape.

Critics rarely take advantage of their position to propose urban initiatives of their own, but when they do, it usually merits some serious consideration.

Christopher Hawthorne has issued an inventive, but well-reasoned, proposal to remake the awkward terminus of the 2 Freeway, where it "bends south and west from Interstate 5 and dips into Silver Lake and Echo Park, two miles or so from downtown Los Angeles," into a new urban space.

Noting the general feasibility of the idea – similar projects have had little to no harmful effect on traffic conditions – Hawthorne asserts that transforming the freeway could turn "noise into quiet, gray into green, dangerous into healthful, a no man's land into a destination."

Hawthorne proposes a variety of possible programs, from parkland to housing to storm water treatment (or all of the above), rather than prescribe a single idea. In the process, his call reads more as an invitation for designers than an edict.

He concludes by suggesting a glimmering ...

"Take the 10 to the 110 to the 101": Why Southern Californians say "the" before freeway numbers

2015-11-11T13:14:00-05:00

Southern Californians have a distinctive — 'Saturday Night Live's' Fred Armisen and Kristen Wiig might say funny — way of giving directions. To get from Santa Monica to Hollywood, take the 10 to the 110 to the 101. Burbank to San Diego? The 134 to the 5. And, if you can, always avoid the 405. Why the definite articles?...Most of North America, in fact, omits the 'the' before route numbers.

More about L.A. freeways on Archinect:

Christopher Hawthorne on repairing L.A.'s long-broken relationship with its freeways

Largest wildlife overpass in U.S. proposed for L.A.'s 101 Freeway, could ease area's roadkill problem

Ode to the Stack, Los Angeles's iconic infrastructure

Southern California not so sprawling after all

LA's Unbuilt Freeways

Largest wildlife overpass in U.S. proposed for L.A.'s 101 Freeway, could ease area's roadkill problem

2015-09-03T18:28:00-04:00

Mountain lions, bobcats and other wildlife would have less chance of becoming roadkill if [California] adopts a plan to build a [165-foot-wide, 200-foot-long] landscaped bridge over the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills...Urbanization has taken a toll on Southern California’s mountain lion population, spurring battles over shrinking territory and a depletion of genetic diversity because of inbreeding.

Related on Archinect:

Christopher Hawthorne on repairing L.A.'s long-broken relationship with its freeways

2015-08-07T20:27:00-04:00

The truth is that Los Angeles, once a pioneer in defining the freeway’s place in urban life, has fallen behind other cities. From Dallas to Paris to Seoul, the most innovative ideas about freeways and how they can be redesigned are coming from places far from Southern California. It’s time for L.A. to catch up...

Following his recent review of the 405 Freeway expansion through the Sepulveda Pass, Christopher Hawthorne sums up why the time is ripe for Angelenos to refresh their perspectives on the city's freeways.

$1.1 Billion and Five Years Later, the 405 Congestion Relief Project Is a Fail

2015-03-10T14:49:00-04:00

...the $1.1 billion question hangs in the air: Is the 405 any more relieved of congestion than when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Congressman Brad Sherman and County Supervisor Gloria Molina demanded in 2006 that L.A.'s "fair share" of state bond money be used to add carpool lanes to the 405? The answer is no. A traffic study by Seattle-based...Inrix has shown that auto speeds during the afternoon crawl on the northbound 405 are now the same or slightly slower...

LA's Unbuilt Freeways

2014-10-29T20:45:00-04:00

Los Angeles' vast freeway system is incomplete — at least by the standards of its architects. In the 1940s, freeways were sketched through Santa Monica Boulevard, along Melrose, Highland and La Brea avenues, and near the Griffith Observatory. Many of L.A.'s freeways were built during the 1960s, but a combination of a freeway revolt, skyrocketing costs and a failure to increase the gas tax doomed the expansion of the freeway system during the 1970s.

Whew.

Long Beach Moves Forward on Southern California’s First Freeway Removal Project

2014-07-29T15:27:00-04:00

It’s been named one of the top “Freeways Without Futures” in the nation and described as a “perfect example of obsolete infrastructure.” [...] Now, nearly half a decade later, the project to remove a large portion of the Terminal Island (TI) Freeway in West Long Beach has officially gone out to bid in an RFP with an estimated bid value of $225K. It marks a major event in Southern California’s urban design history, being the first freeway removal project [...].

The Forgotten History of L.A.'s Failed Freeway Revolt

2014-07-23T14:34:00-04:00

The story of Boyle Heights reminds us that urban highway teardowns don't always end in victory. [...] "What we don't know, however, is the story of the losers, the urban men and women who fought the freeway, unsuccessfully, on the conventional terms of political struggle, who weren't able to pack up and move on, and who channeled expressive cultural traditions to register their grievances against the presence of unwanted infrastructure."

Photos Show How Detroit Hollowed Out During the Highway Age

2014-06-25T13:20:00-04:00

While searching for images of highway interchanges in urban areas, I came across these historic aerial photos of Detroit on a message board, showing how the city fabric has slowly eroded. It’s a remarkable record of a process that has scarred many other American cities.

More roads won't ease traffic, but charging drivers more at peak hours will

2014-06-17T15:40:00-04:00

You can’t build your way out of congestion. It’s the roads themselves that cause traffic. The concept is called induced demand, which is economist-speak for when increasing the supply of something (like roads) makes people want that thing even more. [...] What [economists] Turner and Duranton (and many others who’d like to see more rational transportation policy) actually advocate is known as congestion pricing. This means raising the price of driving on a road when demand is high.

Like It or Not, Most Urban Freeways Are Here to Stay

2014-02-20T21:27:00-05:00

So it is that nearly a third of the interstate system consists of stretches through our cities, in the form of loops, spurs and freeways. So it is that American motorists drive nearly twice as many miles on urban interstates as they do the lengthier rural legs. So it is that every metropolis in the country has reorganized itself around these roads, and that they've shaped where we live and work, how we shop, what we eat, and how we pass our time.