Please, no more freeways

[MessiahAndrw]

Whenever I a thread like:
"Is Adelaide ever going to have Highway or Tunnel?"
"Southern Expressway Stage 3"
"U/C: Southern Expressway Duplication | $445m | 22km"

I'm just want to shout NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!

And here's why:

Currently, Adelaide, like many cities across the New World is automobile-centric and sprawled. Particularly in the middle and outer suburbs there is A LOT of undeveloped land, areas with large amounts of parking, abandoned parcels in prime locations, etc.

Land is a commodity. The problem is, when the supply of a commodity is above demand, it's often utilized wastefully. When a commodity is scarce, we utilize it more wisely.

The supply of land is based on two things:
- Regulation
- Accessibility

Regulation is an easy one to tackle. You can utilize green belts, urban growth boundaries, etc to limit the supply of land.

The bigger issue is accessibility. In the pre-transit era (before 1850s trains were beginning the be introduced) the supply of 'accessible land' was limited to walking distance, and for most of history, 'reasonable distance' usually meant around a mile or 1000 paces. This is why many historical cores are naturally contained within a square mile. That was effectively defined the town's 'supply' of accessible land.

Every time a new and faster form of transportation is introduced, be it bicycles, commuter rail, trams, then eventually the automobile, we continue to add the the supply of land. Unfortunately, the rate at which we've added to the supply of land has outpaced population growth, so as a result, land is not seen as a valuable commodity as it once was, and there are many instances of it being wastefully discarded - fast food chains floating in a sea of car parks and drive throughs, abandoned land near rail corridors that should be high priority, but instead have been sitting there undeveloped.

Lately, we've been building these new 'super-free-express-high-everything-ways' without considering the long term effect it will have on the form of our city. Every time we widen a road, build a new highway, or do something to make it easier for traffic to travel farther and faster, we are adding to the supply of accessible land. Often, we don't realise this.

Look at Houston: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=houston& ... s&t=h&z=13
For a large city that has no zoning, you would think you would be a mecca of dense, mixed-used, walkable development. But it's not. The streets are abandoned, there's space wasted everywhere for parking, patches of undeveloped land close to the centre of the city, etc. The problem is, they've built the entire city around their freeway system. On a good day, 20 minutes via the interstate highway in any direction gets you from the centre of Houston, 25 kilometres to the very outskirts, with no intersections. That virtually places a 25 kilometre radius around the city of 'accessible land' within 20 minutes, that it's wastefully consumed with very little thought.

Now, Adelaide's nowhere near that stage yet year, and I'm extremely grateful for that. I'm currently living in the U.S. and I'm proud to have been born and raised in Adelaide. We have decent publish transportation, we have vibrant neighbourhoods, we aren't all freeways and strip malls, as is so common with cities built around freeways. And honestly, I don't want it that to change. It differentiates us from all the monstrosities out there.

If anything, we need to invest in traffic calming. We need to make it more difficult to travel. We need to reduce the supply of accessible land, so that we can place a greater emphasis on neighbourhood culture and being 'local'.

Adelaide, as a city, is great, and it has the potential to be greater! But freeways will just suck the soul out of our city's very essence. DO. NOT. BUILD. ANY!!!!!!!

I have seen what happens if we do, and I don't like the result.

I want to be proud of my city when I return, I do not want it turned into another crapsprawlsville.

[rev]

So you want, I presume, the focus to be public transport. That's all well and good, but how do you propose freight vehicles move around? Hitch onto the back of a tram?

Freeways and motorways, and "non stop corridors" not only serve us regular commuters in getting around quicker, they also play a big role in reducing costs for freight and making transportation of goods more efficient. That is a big plus for the economy.

Your mentality, of no more freeways, not that we have a real freeway network in Adelaide, is part of the reason we have the problems we do with South Road now.

There's no reason why public transport and motorways/freeways can't complement each other.

Unfortunately, the rate at which we've added to the supply of land has outpaced population growth, so as a result, land is not seen as a valuable commodity as it once was,

Land is more expensive now then ever before. 420sqm in St Clair will set you back about $400k.

[[Shuz]]

There's no reason why public transport and motorways/freeways can't complement each other.

Hear, hear.

With that said, this thread can go die now.

[PeFe]

Freeways and public transport don't compliment each other, they compete with each other. I am trying to think of one city in the world that has a huge freeway system and good public transport....I can think of lots of cities that do one or the other.
I can see the southern suburbs really expanding in the next 20 years due to their proximity to the coast and the duplication of the Southern Expressway. Sprawl will win down there, even though the electrification of the train line will generate more patronage, but will not change the nature of the area, low density car dependent suburbia.
Freeways.....induce sprawl...induce Buckland Parks....the USA has showed us exactly what you are going to get.
Density.....induces a more active cityscape/street life.....induces better public transport....
One option that I think is fair, is that all freeways be toll roads so people who want to benefit from the road pay money towards the build /maintenance and some revenue can be redirected into public transport. Tollways also make people consider the alternative of public transport.
Another problem with the freeway debate in Adelaide..is Adelaide people themselves. By this I mean the people who talk about 3 storey apartment blocks as "high rise" and Unley as a "high density "area. Adelaide is blessed with exceptional planning since settlement giving the city huge wide main roads and a almost "country town" feel where you drive down the main street and park in front of the shops.....well those days are truly gone. You now have to share the roads with lots of other motorists, maybe pay for parking or even use public transport (and you're not unemployed, under-18 or a pensioner!)
And final comments are : not NO MORE FREEWAYS, but maybe think very carefully about what freeways will ultimately do to the urban fabric of areas. Remember the USA experience, freeways are not panaceas for traffic congestion (LA and Houston are gridlocked at rush hour despite their huge freeway systems and ironically both are spending lots of money on public transport now, especially LA)

[Aidan]

Freeways and public transport don't compliment each other, they compete with each other. I am trying to think of one city in the world that has a huge freeway system and good public transport....I can think of lots of cities that do one or the other.

Quite a lot of cities in continental Europe have both.

I can see the southern suburbs really expanding in the next 20 years due to their proximity to the coast and the duplication of the Southern Expressway. Sprawl will win down there, even though the electrification of the train line will generate more patronage, but will not change the nature of the area, low density car dependent suburbia.

Not all low density suburbia is car dependent, so the railway line could well prevent it from being car dependent - though electrification (and extension to Seaford) alone will not be sufficient to prevent it being car dependent.

Freeways.....induce sprawl...induce Buckland Parks....the USA has showed us exactly what you are going to get.
Density.....induces a more active cityscape/street life.....induces better public transport....

Density doesn't induce better public transport. It does tend to make provisio nof good public transport more cost effective, but that's not enough.

[rev]

Freeways and public transport don't compliment each other, they compete with each other. I am trying to think of one city in the world that has a huge freeway system and good public transport....I can think of lots of cities that do one or the other.
I can see the southern suburbs really expanding in the next 20 years due to their proximity to the coast and the duplication of the Southern Expressway. Sprawl will win down there, even though the electrification of the train line will generate more patronage, but will not change the nature of the area, low density car dependent suburbia.
Freeways.....induce sprawl...induce Buckland Parks....the USA has showed us exactly what you are going to get.
Density.....induces a more active cityscape/street life.....induces better public transport....
One option that I think is fair, is that all freeways be toll roads so people who want to benefit from the road pay money towards the build /maintenance and some revenue can be redirected into public transport. Tollways also make people consider the alternative of public transport.
Another problem with the freeway debate in Adelaide..is Adelaide people themselves. By this I mean the people who talk about 3 storey apartment blocks as "high rise" and Unley as a "high density "area. Adelaide is blessed with exceptional planning since settlement giving the city huge wide main roads and a almost "country town" feel where you drive down the main street and park in front of the shops.....well those days are truly gone. You now have to share the roads with lots of other motorists, maybe pay for parking or even use public transport (and you're not unemployed, under-18 or a pensioner!)
And final comments are : not NO MORE FREEWAYS, but maybe think very carefully about what freeways will ultimately do to the urban fabric of areas. Remember the USA experience, freeways are not panaceas for traffic congestion (LA and Houston are gridlocked at rush hour despite their huge freeway systems and ironically both are spending lots of money on public transport now, especially LA)

No, the USA experience is irrelevant. It was irrelevant when MATS was released, it is irrelevant now.
Your scare tactics wont work here.

Maybe you should take a closer look at your surroundings in Adelaide. We have no suburban freeway network, like Melbourne has built up for example, yet urban sprawl still happened here too!!
And it's continuing. There is no end to the sprawl. You see all that empty land between Grand Junction Road and Virginia/Gawler? It the not too distant future, in our life time, it will be developed into housing mostly.

Melbournes freeways haven't turned large swathes of it's suburbs into ghettos to rival south central LA or Inglewood.

Exactly. They are spending money on public transport, because they already have a freeway network. The public transport system will complement the freeway network.
It's as simple as that.

How about Melbourne anyway on that topic? They have trains, trams, and bus services..and a freeway network.
They weren't as short sighted as South Australia to rip up the majority of their tram network though were they?
They weren't as short sighted to shelve their equivalent of the MATS plan, and sell off the majority of the land set aside for their freeways.
Then again they aren't stuck with the conservative bug up their asses like most South Australian's are.
It's funny, everyone complains about traffic now, especially south road....well, numb nut fellow south aussies, we had a plan decades ago....now you can complain about how many more billions it's going to cost to fix the mess we have with our roads.

There is no reason why Adelaide can't have freeways/motorways to alleviate pressure on major arterial roads and take the majority of freight traffic off those and other roads, while having a reliable and extensive public transport network.

[monotonehell]

Rev you're equating MATS/LA kinds of freeways with the contemporary freeway paradigm. Those old school freeways are the kind that cause the 'ghetoification', isolation and other negatives that come with that implementation. More recent implementations of freeways are sympathetic with suburban needs instead of just thinking about getting cars from A to B. We need to remember that it isn't a black and white freeways or not argument. It's about what will work and what induction a plan may cause. The idea of doing it a step at a time

The US experience is not irrelevant - it has informed contemporary planning. We can learn from history.

[PeFe]

Aidan wrote

PeFe wrote:
Freeways and public transport don't compliment each other, they compete with each other. I am trying to think of one city in the world that has a huge freeway system and good public transport....I can think of lots of cities that do one or the other.

Quite a lot of cities in continental Europe have both.

Which cities? Not the European cities I have visited.

Aidan wrote
Not all low density suburbia is car dependent

All low density suburbia I have seen in Australia and North America is car dependent....where is this not the norm?

Rev wrote
No, the USA experience is irrelevant. It was irrelevant when MATS was released, it is irrelevant now.
Your scare tactics wont work here.
Rev you bring up some interesting points about Melbourne...I think it is the exception to the rule. They kept their trams when 99% of the western world were getting rid of them. My experience of Melbourne has been PT based, I have never driven there. The Melbourne freeways seem to all end somewhere near the CBD...do they actually connect? I have noticed though that there is extremely heavy traffic on Punt Rd/Hoddle St, this must be all the cars coming off the freeways, after all they have got to go somewhere.
Reading the Melbourne PT section of SSC it seems even the Victorian Liberal Government has decided that money is better invested in public transport upgrades ( a north-south metro tunnel) rather than further freeway expansion, a better outcome for the money invested.
As for Adelaide sprawling without freeways, yes you are right..because Adelaide has huge main roads Port Rd, Anzac Highway,Greenhill Rd etc a legacy of earlier planning for the motor vehicle. Public transport of course never received the same level of funding.
I would have preferred the SA government to firstly electrify the Seaford/Tonsley lines with appropriate bus connections before expanding the Southern Expressway (may be an embarrassment but it does seem to work) to hopefully cut some of the traffic along the north-south corridor.


Maybe you should take a closer look at your surroundings in Adelaide. We have no suburban freeway network, like Melbourne has built up for example, yet urban sprawl still happened here too!!
And it's continuing. There is no end to the sprawl. You see all that empty land between Grand Junction Road and Virginia/Gawler? It the not too distant future, in our life time, it will be developed into housing mostly.

Melbournes freeways haven't turned large swathes of it's suburbs into ghettos to rival south central LA or Inglewood.

Exactly. They are spending money on public transport, because they already have a freeway network. The public transport system will complement the freeway network.
It's as simple as that.

How about Melbourne anyway on that topic? They have trains, trams, and bus services..and a freeway network.
They weren't as short sighted as South Australia to rip up the majority of their tram network though were they?
They weren't as short sighted to shelve their equivalent of the MATS plan, and sell off the majority of the land set aside for their freeways.
Then again they aren't stuck with the conservative bug up their asses like most South Australian's are.
It's funny, everyone complains about traffic now, especially south road....well, numb nut fellow south aussies, we had a plan decades ago....now you can complain about how many more billions it's going to cost to fix the mess we have with our roads.

There is no reason why Adelaide can't have freeways/motorways to alleviate pressure on major arterial roads and take the majority of freight traffic off those and other roads, while having a reliable and extensive public transport network.

Rev you make some interesting points about Melbourne. I think Melbourne is unique in some ways-they retained their trams when 99% of the western world were getting rid of them. I have never driven in Melbourne so my experience has been PT based. The freeway system seems to be limited to the outer suburbs, with the freeway exits dumping a lot of traffic into the inner-city (this probably explains all that traffic on roads like Punt/Hoddle/Dandenong/St Kilda) Interestingly the Victorian Liberal government is now favoring a north-south metro tunnel over any more freeway extensions (I believe this is their no 1 priority in funding applications to Infrastructure Australia)
Rev how would you deal with the induce demand that freeways create? ( more people believe driving is a better option and public transport usage decreases)
I was disappointed that the SA government went ahead with the Southern Expressway duplication before finishing the Seaford/Tonsley electrification. With appropriate bus connections and increased train services this could have taken some of the heat off the north-south corridor.
And yes Adelaide has sprawled without freeways, you can thank earlier town planners that wanted HUGE main roads that enabled the military to use them if needed. Adelaide has seriously big roads for a city of its size (I am comparing to Sydney and Brisbane)

[Aidan]

Aidan wrote

PeFe wrote:
Freeways and public transport don't compliment each other, they compete with each other. I am trying to think of one city in the world that has a huge freeway system and good public transport....I can think of lots of cities that do one or the other.

Quite a lot of cities in continental Europe have both.

Which cities? Not the European cities I have visited.

Amsterdam is one that immediately springs to mind.

[claybro]

We cannot compare European cities with Australian cities freeways or not. Australians in large number choose to live in separate housing with gardens in the suburbs. Europeans do not. This is a fact of history. The metropolitan area of Adelaide is 90 kilometres long, no European city has a similar footprint. A European city with the population of Adelaide would fit in less than a quarter of the geographical area, making the option of public transport more accessible. Like it or not, freeways have become a requirement in Australian cities, moving variable goods, services and people, with competing requirements over large distances, usually in a confined timeframe. the challenge is, not to create the monstrosities that have choked American cities and ignore public transport. What is being proposed here in Adelaide, seems very benign to its surroundings, more attractive and less disruptive than the current set up,(South Road) and is not competing with commuter public transport ie does not deliver commuters right to the CBD doorstep. Freeways have not destroyed the character of Melbourne or Perth. The less desirable areas of these cities are generally not adjacent to the freeways. As for Melbourne, it is consistently voted one of the worlds best cities. As for European cities with suburban freeways...try Berlin. Some perspective please.

[MessiahAndrw]

I think our wide roads are a significant factor that contributed to our sprawl. I'm not talking about the CBD roads planned 150 years ago,, I mean the average residential road is extremely wide, and I have noticied a corelation between street width and the preferred mode of travel. Narrow streets tend to promot walking because the narrowness does two things: it slows down traffic because it forces motorists to drive more carefully, and it gives an illusion of the environment being human scale, thus walkable.

[rev]

Rev you make some interesting points about Melbourne. I think Melbourne is unique in some ways-they retained their trams when 99% of the western world were getting rid of them. I have never driven in Melbourne so my experience has been PT based. The freeway system seems to be limited to the outer suburbs, with the freeway exits dumping a lot of traffic into the inner-city (this probably explains all that traffic on roads like Punt/Hoddle/Dandenong/St Kilda) Interestingly the Victorian Liberal government is now favoring a north-south metro tunnel over any more freeway extensions (I believe this is their no 1 priority in funding applications to Infrastructure Australia)
Rev how would you deal with the induce demand that freeways create? ( more people believe driving is a better option and public transport usage decreases)
I was disappointed that the SA government went ahead with the Southern Expressway duplication before finishing the Seaford/Tonsley electrification. With appropriate bus connections and increased train services this could have taken some of the heat off the north-south corridor.
And yes Adelaide has sprawled without freeways, you can thank earlier town planners that wanted HUGE main roads that enabled the military to use them if needed. Adelaide has seriously big roads for a city of its size (I am comparing to Sydney and Brisbane)

Melbourne kept theirs, we are trying to rebuild a network, and other cities are trying to start one up.

How would I deal with the induced demand created?
I'd ensure there is adequate and a variety of public transport options that service all areas, that are frequent and on time to make it worth while for people to use public transport.
If we build some sort of freeway network that is all linked up in Adelaide, then ensure there are bus lanes, or provisions for trains.
Make the freeways tolled roads. If you are using a commercial vehicle, like a truck, van, ute, etc, then the toll is minimal during peak hours.
If you are a regular motorist, then the toll for use during daylight hours is heavier.

You cant make people want to use public transport, but you can make it more enticing to use. That doesn't mean motorways etc shouldn't be built. They are necessary for freight and other goods and services.
Make public transport options more reliable and more efficient, make them run on time, or ahead of time, more frequent, cleaner, newer, nicer look buses, trains, trams. And advertise the hell out of these transport options so people KNOW they exist, and it's in the back of their mind. Keep hammering the advertising.

If you aren't a delivery vehicle, or some other sort of service vehicle that has businesses in the CBD, but rather a private motorist, then any freeway leading into the CBD or near it, as soon as you get off, you are hit with a congestion tax in the form of an electronic toll.
If it's going to cost $20 to park your car for the 3 hours you're going to be in the CBD, then the toll should be equal to that. You want to pay $40 just to park your car? Or you want to pay a couple dollars to get on public transport and go into the CBD...

Athens expanded their rail network/subway, or "metro", and now has 56 stations.
There are plans to expand it further to cover over 3/4 of the wider region Athens is located in. The aim of further expansion is to get more vehicles off the roads and more people on the metro.
There is also a tram network, some 48 stations, with nearly 70,000 using it daily.
Then there is the commuter rail network(or heavy rail like our soon to be electrified trains).
But while they upgraded and expanded their public transport networks, they also upgraded/built motorways and other roads in Athens. Which are tolled.
The metro and suburban rail and the new motorway, all link up directly to the new airport on the outskirts of Athens.
Over a million people use public transport in Athens everyday. And when Greece comes out of the economic shit house it is in at the moment and they start building the new lines for the metro that are planned, even more will be using it.

I've never heard anyone complain especially about the metro.

There's no reason we cant have motorways/freeways/expressways throughout Adelaide, and a decent up to scratch modern public transport network.
The state bank disaster is behind us now, all we need is a leader with vision and balls to push us past the barrier of conservatism that plagues Adelaide.

[claybro]

I think our wide roads are a significant factor that contributed to our sprawl. I'm not talking about the CBD roads planned 150 years ago,, I mean the average residential road is extremely wide, and I have noticied a corelation between street width and the preferred mode of travel. Narrow streets tend to promot walking because the narrowness does two things: it slows down traffic because it forces motorists to drive more carefully, and it gives an illusion of the environment being human scale, thus walkable.

So you want me to walk to drop the kids to school (3km), then walk to a train station (1km), catch a train to the city then wait for a connecting train, then a train to Mawson Lakes, then walk to work (2km) and be at my office by my start time of 7:30? I already live in a fairly densely populated area, and there are many PT options and walking options WITHIN my area and to the CBD, but creating a walking and PT environment considering that approximately 40% of Adelaide population of 1.2 million in an area covering 90km/20km goes through the same daily routine as me? No walking or PT systems will ever cope with this. Maybe, when CBD apartments are 3 bedrooms, within the average price range and I can convince my ex wife and her husband and his ex wife and their children all to reside in the CBD....then I can use walking and PT. But getting 1.2 million people to do the same will be a challenge, and narrowing the streets will not solve these issues.

[MessiahAndrw]

claybro: I honestly understand your concerns, because you're trying to adapt what I describe into the context of your current suburban lifestyle. Doable, yes, but trying to adapt your lifestyle in an environment built for the automobile, without an automobile, is honestly miserable. So I agree.

I really lack the time right now to keep writing, otherwise I could go on forever. I'm a traditional citieist and have a blog about it.

[Norman]

Interestingly the Victorian Liberal government is now favoring a north-south metro tunnel over any more freeway extensions (I believe this is their no 1 priority in funding applications to Infrastructure Australia)

Negative, they are funding the East-West Road Link above the Melbourne Metro now.

I was disappointed that the SA government went ahead with the Southern Expressway duplication before finishing the Seaford/Tonsley electrification. With appropriate bus connections and increased train services this could have taken some of the heat off the north-south corridor.

What do you mean? Both will be finished around the same time (early 2014).