One of the cities that's led the growing trend in urban freeway removal is considering another tear down, report Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross.
After the successful removal of the Embarcadero and Central freeways, and their replacement with attractive street-level boulevards, "Mayor Ed Lee is floating the idea of tearing down the stub end of Interstate 280 in San Francisco in hopes of creating a new neighborhood and speeding up the arrival of high-speed rail service downtown," report Matier and Ross.
"The idea, laid out by the mayor's chief transit planner, Gillian Gillett, in a memo to the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission, would be to knock down I-280 before 16th Street - eliminating the ramps both at Sixth and Brannan streets and at Fourth and King streets."
"The plan also calls for clearing out the adjacent rail yard to make way for a high-speed rail line," they add. However, "some transit insiders worry that a potential fight over a freeway pull-down could actually slow the high-speed rail planning process."
FULL STORY: Ed Lee talks of tearing down end of I-280
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Planners in the city of San Francisco have a proposed a $1.4 million study to examine the possibility of removing part of Interstate 280 in the city and convert a rail yard would yield 37 acres of prime urban real estate.
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City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research