Seoul removes urban highway, life goes on

[Slick Vik]

http://grist.org/infrastructure/2011-04-04-seoul-korea-tears-down-an-urban-highway-life-goes-on/

[ricco67]

This is quite fascinating.

However, I do wonder where the traffic "went".

Were the freeways rerouted, or did they simply "end?"

Looking at the map as it currently stands, is quite interesting.

I haven't been able to find a map off hand that shows what the infrastructure (Bus, Subway, freeways) looked like before the deconstruction.

Perhaps it would be interesting to have a discussion on how this CAN be implemented.

Let's not start off by simply saying, "It can't be done", when we know it has been done in a larger city.

There are quite a few things that have to fall in place before it can be done, improving transit options and routes. All that would have to be done to coincide with such a project.

[Slick Vik]

This has been done in San Francisco, Oklahoma City, and Milwaukee as well.

[mfastx]

The way Houston is set up, I'm not sure if removing a major freeway would have similar positive effects on mobility. I would however like to see a freeway downtown buried or something along those lines to minimize impact.

[ricco67]

The way Houston is set up,...

What makes Houston so different from Seoul?\

Here there are at the same scale. There isn't much of a difference that I can see.

The general distances are somewhat the same from their version of 610 to ours. I'm not familiar with the topography, but from what I can see, they have mountains to the north and south of the city about where 610 north and south would be.

The only difference I can really see is that the subway system is more developed there, and have a substantially larger population (10mil vs 2mil).

Edited November 12, 2012 by ricco67

[Slick Vik]

It could and should be done here

[mfastx]

What makes Houston so different from Seoul?

Soul has a much more efficient, higher capacity public transportation system.

Perhaps removing a major freeway in Houston wouldn't be too bad, I haven't really studied it. But there is really no other reliable alternative to driving in Houston unfortunately. Traffic is already bad enough on surface streets. Throwing another 400,000 cars or so onto surface streets might cause problems.

Maybe I'm wrong, who knows.

[jgriff]

I've been to Seoul. I didn't see much traffic on the highways. The ones I was on are much more modern than what we have here. Their surface streets are almost unusable though. There is so much traffic that it takes forever to get anywhere. My driver took me down a street that I swore was a sidewalk. People were having to yank others out of the way of our car to keep us from running them over. Seoul from the air looks more like a hive than a human city. The high rise condos seem to go on forever. It seemed like a good place to live if you have money, not so good if you're poor.

[kylejack]

Major freeways are used to carry traffic cross-country, or long distances. I could see the logic in having the major freeways miss major cities by a bit, and use smaller freeways for getting around the city.

[Purdueenginerd]

As much as I approve of Seoul doing this... we are comparing apples to oranges on removing Houston's freeway system...Seoul is a 2000 year old city with a population density of 45,000 people per sq mile. Houston is basically 100 years old, with a population density of just over 3,000 people per sq mile.