Widening Highways To Combat Traffic Is Like Swallowing a Spider To Eat a Fly
(Source: Unsplash/zibik.)
Community leaders in Toledo, Ohio, are questioning the rationale for the widening of Interstate 475, and have been actively campaigning against it. I also question the rationale for a project that will result in the taking and demolition of the various properties the freeway is reported to assist.
Let me outline the project in really simple terms:
According to the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT), I-475 needs to be widened from four to six lanes.
The widening will provide more capacity for interstate truck traffic delayed due to local car trips.
The widening requires several of the on–off ramps to be widened to make room for more lanes.
The ramps need to be widened to make it easier and safer for cars to enter and exit the freeway.
These public investments will improve the development opportunities at each ramp.
This reminds me of one of my favorite stories I read to my boys: The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. In this story, there was an old lady who swallowed a fly, but we don’t know why. She begins to have a problem with the fly wiggling around inside her, so she resorts to swallowing a spider to eat the fly. The problem gets worse, so she continues to swallow bigger and bigger creatures to eat the preceding creature. This story resonates with me when we are talking about highway expansions, especially this one.
Why would the state suggest swallowing a spider to eat a fly?
This problem began when a highway was inserted into the city’s downtown, without really questioning why. This part of Toledo was already a successful and productive place, but, somehow, ODOT thought removing a couple of blocks for a highway would make this community better. Over time, problems emerged and the response was to add something bigger, such as more lanes or a bigger on–off ramp. But the problem just keeps compounding over time, so we add something even bigger each time to address it, such as another highway or even more lanes.
As with the old lady, we don’t know why we are doing this. When I read this story to my boys, I can hardly get through each page. They jump up and down and interrupt saying, “Don’t eat that!” My young boys can see the obvious, and they raise the question on every page: Why did the old lady swallow a fly, in the first place?
The state of Ohio has identified a need to widen I-475, and yet in order to accomplish this, the state must acquire additional property and demolish structures in order to create enough room for the highway.
The fact that the state would need to relocate people and move businesses in order to serve the same people and businesses is contradictory.
I have learned that there are actually three types of traffic: regional, destination, and local. The regional trips include things like trucks that are passing through Toledo or people just trying to get through the city. Regional trips only have the option of using a highway like I-475. Destination trips are the ones that start or end outside the neighborhood. This would include trips from across town visiting a mall, or traveling to a hospital or museum. Destination trips may use the freeway as part of their journey, but they will also use local streets. Local trips are those daily trips taken from your house to the grocery store, or driving children to soccer practice. Local trips start and end in the neighborhood. As a local, you are more familiar with the community and you know and will use all the neighborhood streets.
One opportunity to increase capacity on I-475 is to peel off the local trips. There are multiple parallel local streets to the freeway, and a healthy network of streets. A simple way to curb these trips is not to make the access to I-475 easier, but to actually make it harder.
For instance, what if you remove the ramps at Carey Road, Talmadge Road, Monroe Street, and Douglas Road? These ramps currently provide limited access to the neighborhoods and create congestion points on both the residential streets and the highway. Through the removal of these conflict points, ODOT could actually gain capacity on I-475 without the need to add more lanes or take private property. In the short term, the closure of these ramps could be as simple as adding temporary barricades on these ramps and turning off the traffic lights.
This diagram shows all the trips on I-475. All three trip types are combined.
This diagram illustrates the local trips in orange. Local trips are added to I-475.
This diagram illustrates the separation of local access to I-475 if the ramps were removed.
We have to think about these problems differently. We cannot continue to throw more money at projects that gobble up productive land and people’s homes. Swallowing the spider did not solve the old lady’s issue with the fly; it simply made it worse.
Edward Erfurt is the Director of Community Action at Strong Towns. He is a trained architect and passionate urban designer with over 20 years of public- and private-sector experience focused on the management, design, and successful implementation of development and placemaking projects that enrich the tapestry of place. He believes in community-focused processes that are founded on diverse viewpoints, a concern for equity, and guided through time-tested, traditional town-planning principles and development patterns that result in sustainable growth with the community character embraced by the communities which he serves.