I'm afraid that this would wind up like Vancouver, which lacks freeways through the city and has pretty bad traffic as a result. Better maybe to tunnel it under if possible? That works well for Seattle, although we still have I5 to contend with that divides the downtown from Capitol Hill (there is talk of lidding the entire freeway through downtown).
Cars on a freeway are either headed to your city as a destination, in which case the speed at which you deliver them into the city doesn’t make much difference, they’re always going to cause traffic when they leave the freeway. Or the cars are headed through the city, in which I would assume most of them would be just as happy to go around the city as go through it.
So if you get to pick between through and around, why would any sane city choose to put the freeway through your city? You’re just bringing noise and pollution into your city, putting a huge great impassable scar through your city, and forcing the people who live to drive everywhere because the freeway slice up the city into segments that you move between in a car.
As forward-looking as much of the area is, we weren't getting away with "less car", and I don't think most places will today either.
The I5 meanwhile turns into the 99 on the Canadian side of the border, and goes right through the city. It’s a nightmare since it is officially a highway, but in reality just a surface street in the city.
Lidding it would be great, but removing it would be better. There are loads of people who live in the suburbs north and south of Seattle and expect to be able to drive 20-30 miles each way day-in-day-out to commute. If the city continues to grow, this simply isn't tenable in the long run, because you can't grow highway capacity forever; they would no longer be able to do this, which would be good. Just rip the band-aid off.
We saw what happened when the Palestine supporters blocked off I5 a few weeks ago...on a weekend without a rush hour, people were stuck in traffic for hours.
Drive around the lake if you need to get past the city.
For capacity they aren't expanding I-5 directly, but expanding i-405 and sr167 instead for people trying to go past Seattle.
For i-5 within Seattle area, there are some 2030s plans to convert the hov lanes to toll lanes and reconfiguring the reversible express lane system. * I-5 Managed Lanes: SR 16 to Pierce/ King County Line * I-5 Managed Lanes: Pierce/ King County Line to I-405 * I-5 Managed Lanes: I-405 to US 2
Invest in transit and make it easier for people to get around without cars; that's the only way to solve traffic. Building more roads (and widening existing roads) just induces more demand.
Any freeway through Vancouver would have to cut through all of east Vancouver and then the downtown core then Stanley park, and they would have to completely rebuild the lionsgate bridge since it is only three lanes total, and then tear out a huge portion of the residential neighborhood on the other side of the bridge.
Why in the world would Vancouver, which is on a much narrower strip of land want to do what Seattle did and divide their city in half so people can get to Whistler 15 minutes faster.
https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2014/03/12/metro-vancouver-str...
https://www.google.se/maps/@-33.8710314,151.1203316,3a,75y,2...
Definitely, the best case for cars is to have fast highways that bypass the city, but there isn't a lot of room with that given Vancouver's geography, so it's a lesser-of-two-evils. Beyond cars, public transit and cycling provide a better solution in my opinion anyway.
Regardless... the biggest traffic pain point in downtown Vancouver is the 3-lane (total) Lions Gate bridge.
Whenever I visit Vancouver, I find the traffic horrible compared to Seattle. It’s like…no I don’t want to drive here (to be fair, I don’t want to drive downtown Seattle either, but there is so much more going on in downtown Vancouver that it’s hard to avoid).
This is probably because train transport capacity is prodigious, and driving is expensive.
Also, driving isn't expensive in Tokyo at all, it's actually free except on the toll highways. What's expensive is parking: with few places to park, and it being expensive to rent a parking space in your apartment, it's not that affordable or practical to drive. People also aren't allowed to own cars unless they have a place to park them, so we don't have the problem of car owners fighting over scarce street parking like many other cities.
