The End of Elevated Highways?

It would be difficult to find an Atlantan in the present day who could imagine Edgewood Avenue, Pryor Street next to the jail, or Cheshire Bridge Road without an Interstate looming overhead. Frenetic federal highway expansion in the latter half of the 20th century gashed, dulled and permanently changed the city's appearance and layout. Neighborhoods were torn apart, pumped with car exhaust and given grey concrete walls, which in time have decayed and thus sullied the immediate visual environment. Still, most of us have accepted the change without question.

São Paulo is, evidently, a very different place. An elevated highway that has stood in the center of the city since 1969, officially named after President Artur da Costa e Silva but unofficially named the Giant Worm, is set to eventually be demolished. Already, it is closed to motor traffic on Sunday; it is clear that neighbors of the highway appreciate the break from noise and pollution. Provisions are being made to absorb some of the worm's traffic flow: according to this Portugese-language article, a private contracter is being solicited to bury four above-ground lines of São Paulo's commuter rail system, and build a 7.5-mile boulevard with new public housing, all near the current highway.

Of course, this project, and the very demolition of the highway, would be monumentally expensive, and many experts are opposed on both that basis and one of congestion mitigation. Some demolition opponents propose simply beautifying the highway (again, in Portuguese). It is nonetheless obvious that a stronger opposition to elevated highways in central cities exists in São Paulo than here; indeed, it has been occasionally proposed to double-deck our own Downtown Connector, itself hardly a cheap venture. Various proposals to either bury or beautify the Connector have also been developed, but of course, the recession is no fertile ground for such a project, and it is unsurprisingly absent from the funding list for the transportation tax that is to be voted on next year.

As accustomed as Atlantans are to enormous, intrusive and frequently impassable urban highways, it is well worthwhile to imagine a city without them, or at least with highways more pleasant to the eye and ear than what we have now. Treed medians, colorfully painted patterns, and pleasantly designed street-level support surfaces, though not priorities of the Georgia DOT, would mitigate the damage wrought on our city by its Interstates. Hopefully, one day, the Connector will truly be out of sight, and Downtown will no longer be implicitly separated at street level from its surrounding neighborhoods. After all, every urban project of extreme scope, including the Connector itself, started with an equally extreme vision.