Multiway Boulevards

[mattaudio]

There was recently a post about these on streets.mn, considering such treatment for Hiawatha Ave. My main concern was that there's not much room between the southbound lanes and the LRT, meaning it would be hard to develop.
A potential solution could be to eventually move Hiawatha east with redevelopment of the industrial uses, so there would be space for development between the LRT and Hiawatha.

[mplser]

YES! Hiawatha, Hennepin/Lyndale (where they mash together), Olson memorial, Lake st where it goes past the lake all could possibly benefit from this.

[mattaudio]

Any chance Multi-Way Boulevards could be used for redevelopment of aging 1950s-1980s suburban strips? It seems like many cities have spent major cash to redevelop small areas (Excelsior Blvd, Penn/American, 77th Street etc come to mind). Yet we'll likely have less cash for this intensive type of redevelopment down the line.

Since multi-way boulevards can be implemented incrementally, any chance they could be used to bring new life to some aging corridors in inner-ring suburbs?

A few of these ideas are here: http://goo.gl/maps/vc9Zl (but mixed in with many other un-vetted ideas for MWBs)

[PhilmerPhil]

I am skeptical of the use and benefits of multi-way boulevards. I feel that wider sidewalks, with legitimate curb separated cycle tracks make more sense. Does anyone have any examples of them being implemented in other American cities in recent history? Street view links would help.

[woofner]

The Esplanade in Chico CA is the classic (one of the only?) US examples. I can't access Google Maps right now but here is a text description from the Chico Wiki:

http://chicowiki.org/The_Esplanade

[Nathan]

Aren't certain parts of Summit Avenue Multiway Boulevards?

[mulad]

I think they were referring to recent examples, within the last few decades. But another local example might be Midway Parkway between the State Fairgrounds and Como Park.

For some reason, I think of Paris and the Haussmann Plan whenever multiway boulevards get brought up, though perhaps I shouldn't. Pointing Google Maps at the city reveals that there actually aren't all that many multi-way segments along the wide avenues there -- at least not nearly as many as I expected. Still, I'm always reminded of a college course I took where the instructor said that one reason for making broad avenues was to permanently quell revolutionary actions by making it very hard to blockade streets (as was apparently common in the narrow medieval streets and alleys in earlier revolts), yet easy for military troops to get around. Honestly I think similar thinking must have been a driver behind a lot of suburban development in the U.S. -- keep buildings far apart from each other so that when your neighbor's house gets blown up, yours remains relatively intact...

Anyway, I do think that there are a lot of suburban arterials that could be converted to multi-ways -- some suburban arterials either actually or effectively have frontage roads as it is (either with regular public roads or with quasi-public service roads of some sort), so multiways could help to rationalize the huge numbers of driveways that pop up in some areas.

Personally, I think I lean more toward the idea of converting the wide suburban streets to have public transit (LRT or BRT) running down the middle, or allocating space toward cycletracks along the side. There's also a problem that a lot of the roads that have room for this aren't very densely packed with businesses or housing along the edges, and a lot of the stuff that is there is often facing away from the arterial. The big arterials are also often lined with huge parking lots as it is, and adding parking is one of the major reasons to go the multiway route, so it's hard to say if changing the street would really help anything on that front. These things are fixable over time, but I think if you want to do multiways properly, they really need to be part of broader redevelopment plans that include zoning changes -- probably something along the lines of form-based codes.

All that said, I'm definitely willing to look at these things on a case-by-case basis -- there are probably a few places out there where this would work pretty well and solve some existing problems.

[Anondson]

This might be a short thread, I don't know...

Are there any recent (in the past forty years of so) conversions of any route in North America to a multilane boulevard that was stroad/highway/freeway before? And are there any great articles that cover and explain them?

[Tcmetro]

Octavia Bl in SF.

[MNdible]

[tosses red meat, runs away]

[web]

Mandela Parkway in oakland......nimitz freeway gone.
Embarcadero in SF. Embarcadero Freeway gone also.

even in sacramento they converted a freeway into left turns and signals.(sorry west sacramento).

Thats off the top of my head.

[froggie]

Pick up "The Boulevard Book", if you haven't already.

[mattaudio]

I have a copy, if anyone wants to borrow it. I also have Sam Newberg's copy (Sam, I'll return it to you I swear!). It's a great book.

Other great MWB resources...
twitter.com/multiwayboulevard (of course)
http://stroadtoboulevard.tumblr.com/ (Neil Salmond's excellent blog from Vancouver)
http://nacto.org/usdg/streets/boulevard/ (I also have a copy of the NACTO USDG if anyone wants to borrow it... Christmas gift from the wife!)
http://nacto.org/usdg/streets/residential-boulevard/

Many prime examples in of great boulevards in the U.S. predate the stroad/freeway era. The Esplanade in Chico, California comes to mind. I've actually been trying to find a reason to visit Chico in person just to see it, but now developer John Anderson moved from Chico to Albuquerque.... less boulevards there, John!

The awesome thing about these is that they are really a framework for a street. The core inner section needs to be relatively consistent, but the outer part of the street profile can be flexible on a per-block basis, depending on ROW constraints, adjoining land uses, development intensity, etc. It's also very compatible with slow staging of development... it doesn't have to happen all at once.

Last but not least, here's an excellent animated GIF from Victor Dover (co-author of the new, and too expensive to buy, book
STREET DESIGN: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns)



If that doesn't give you hope for humanity, I don't know what does.