Welcome to the Roadscapes Wednesday segment! Each week here on Geek Alabama, Roadscapes Wednesday will feature roads and infrastructure related topics. Geek Alabama Editor / Publisher Nathan Young is often called the “road geek” for a good reason, Nathan loves roads and loves talking about roads!
Another one for all you Cities Skylines players! From a highway engineering perspective, siting freeways along waterfronts and riverfronts just makes sense: shorelines are typically flat, requiring no structures or tunnels, and the natural barriers of a river, lake or ocean means fewer intersecting conflicts. It’s a highway engineer’s dream.
But traffic engineering doesn’t always (or usually) take account of competing objectives we might have for waterfronts, like active and recreational uses or dense mixed-use development.
So today we’re going to look at the ten most egregious examples of misguided freeway siting and waterfront dereliction in North America, with MANY dishonorable mentions along the way. ANd, if you’re like me, you’re going to want to rinse your eyes out with bleach after this one. I apologize/you’re welcome.
