SF Embarcadero Freeway
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8605917/highways-interstate-cities-history
http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Freeway_Revolt
The now defunct San Francisco Embarcadero Freeway has a history that relates to many concepts discussed in class. In the 1950s, the state of California proposed the idea of building highways into cities to raise gas tax revenue. The rest of the United States followed the trend and started building these highways that brought suburban commuters into the city. The San Franciscans went into revolt––they feared that these highways would not only destroy their beautiful cities but also their culture. Cutting neighborhoods with huge slabs of concrete no doubt destroys its beauty, but it also hurts them in a more subtle way. It was widely feared that building these highways would bring wealthier people into the city, risking jobs of those who already live there. These proposed freeways are examples of local bridges as discussed in class. By connecting the two worlds, suburbia and city, the dynamics of the worlds were threatened to shift. In each respective world, the connectedness of the people within it are strong in that shared information, ideas, values, and goals are likely to be similar. The local bridge of the highway was a scary concept for those who lived in the city because their world would be influenced by foreign ideas of people that they did not understand.
The city of San Francisco, despite the protests, went ahead with the Embarcadero Freeway plan and opened it in 1958. The freeway saw more than 100,000 cars per day, and seemed to be quite successful. However, in 1989, the Loma Prieta Earthquake tore down the highway. Though there was much anticipation that this tragedy would cause “thrombotic traffic”, the opposite occurred: traffic cleared. This is a prime example of Braess’s paradox, in which adding another path does not necessarily benefit performance at equilibrium. In our case, destroying a path did not hurt traffic but improved it, similar to how the closing of crowded 42nd street in New York City cleared traffic in 1990. Why do such counterintuitive events like these occur? My guess in this case is that the Embarcadero Freeway was replaced by different forms of transportation such as streetcars and ferries. People are also now more likely to walk in the area. I believe that these alternate routes and means of transportation, in a way, rationed out travel times amongst these different routes, forming a better equilibrium.