Dan Thomas wrote:
You obviously don't commute across the Kennedy Bridge on a daily basis do you!
Take a little jaunt across the Ohio to do anything and then sit in the traffic going southbound and come back to me with your high and mighty ideal of tearing down some thing that has worked for 35 + years
Dan, if it had and still did work, we wouldn't be having a bridges/8664 conversation at all.
64's presence downtown doesn't relieve southbound congestion. It contributes to it. Why? Because it's the third interstate to converge in one poorly designed exchange in a downtown area. Since Spaghetti Junction's construction, traffic engineers have learned two things: That merging three interstates in one place, especially in or near busy downtowns is a bad idea as it creates a bottleneck and that the Figure 8 style weaving required to negotiate SJ is dangerous. As a result, they no longer design exchanges that way. As Walter Kulash noted, first year engineering students are taught to never do those things.
The weaving currently required by SJ is actually against modern federal safety regulations. That's why the SJ redesign in the Bridges Project proposal had to have 23 lanes - to avoid weaving that wouldn't meet regs.
There is only one other modern project similar in size and complexity to the proposed new SJ in the country- in the LA metro area. Downtown waterfront interstate removal is becoming quite common, though, with good results. When Mayor Jerry said the FHA would never allow such a removal, he was wrong. It's the Bridges Project proposal that's radical, not 8664.
By removing 64 from the equation, the process of fixing SJ becomes much simpler with only two interstates merging, requiring far fewer lanes and much less construction. The bottleneck that creates the southbound congestion you mention can be corrected just as efficiently for less money and with a smaller environmental footprint.
And, as Steve mentioned, access to downtown will not be restricted.
