Driven Apart

Posted October 12, 2010

As The I-81 Challenge –  official decision-making process led by two entities, the New York State Department of Transportation and the Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council (SMTC), the region’s metropolitan planning organization (MPO) – gets into gear, the Rethinking I-81 blog will reopen for comments.    Driven Apart: How sprawl is lengthening our commutes and why misleading mobility measures... Read more »

“Rethinking I-81”: OCL’s Study Blog

Posted May 20, 2009

Stent (or Dagger?) in the Heart of Town: Urban Freeways in Syracuse, 1944-1967 The 1961 Decisions in Syracuse, by SU political scientists Guthrie Birkhead, Roscoe Martin, and others, explored a series of case studies of metropolitan action in Syracuse in the Post–World War II era. The study focused on public decision-making and the relative influence... Read more »

“Rethinking I-81” – OCL’s Study Blog

Posted May 7, 2009

Building Infrastructure-Building Experience This week’s Citiwire.net columns by Neal Peirce and Alex Marshall focus on the promise of high speed rail as the “New Deal” for transportation.  “My high-speed rail proposal,” President Obama is quoted as saying, “will lead to innovations that change the way we travel in America. We must start developing clean, energy-efficient... Read more »

“Rethinking I-81”: OCL’s Study Blog

Posted January 30, 2009

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF I-81 DOWNTOWN CLOSED? When we think about engineering solutions to traffic problems, it’s useful to keep in mind that human behavior is a key variable in the equation.  Drivers adjust their behavior to the situations presented to them.  When the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged San Francisco’s Central Freeway, the destroyed... Read more »

Rethinking I-81: OCL’s Study Blog

Posted December 9, 2008

SHIFTING PRIORITIES: HOW FREEWAY REMOVAL DECISIONS ARE MADE As we saw in San Francisco’s ‘Freeway Revolt’, the city’s quality of life  and economic development priorities fired opposition to freeways and influenced decisions to reject the building of expressways through the city in the 1950’s and 60’s and their rebuilding in the 1990’s.    But citizen opposition... Read more »