Urban Freeway Removal: Building a Case for the Re-Purposing of I-5 through Downtown Seattle

Abstract

The construction of the U.S. interstate system during the 1950s and 1960s was harmful for American urban environments. That ultimately left behind a concrete jungle of elevated and depressed structures that transformed traditional dense walking cities into auto-oriented ones, dedicating vast amounts of space to the movement and storage of cars. Today we struggle with the consequences of these design decisions, felt in growing traffic congestion, harmful environmental conditions, and dysfunctional urban districts. With many urban freeways reaching the end of their design lives urbanists, planners, and officials have started to reevaluate past transportation policy and even discuss eliminating sections of freeways within the urban fabric as a means of saving money, removing barriers and freeing up desirable and scarce urban land for what they deem more pressing uses. The purpose of this thesis is to consider re-purposing of a section of I-5’s corridor through downtown Seattle, and the research seeks to understand why it could be a viable option for improving the quality of life in the city, avoiding a budget-crippling rebuild, and help facilitate further investment in mass transit to provide more mobility options. Embarking on a project like this would be challenging for Seattle due to jurisdictional issues, varying priorities, high traffic volumes, lack of available case studies and regional economic concerns, however, with I-5 occupying valuable urban land and with traffic congestion worsening, and understanding that expanding the highway is neither fruitful in terms of congestion relief or feasible due to a lack of space and budget constraints, it is time to examine bold interventions, such as freeway removal, that seek to remove cars from the road, that can meet many planning objectives like housing development and multi-modal transit while also confronting past planning mistakes and establishing a new paradigm for urban living.