The Highway Teardown Tour

Ian Coss: Um, could you just tell me your name?

Margaret: Margaret

Ian Coss: How long have you lived here?

Margaret: My whole life

Ian Coss: Do you remember what used to be right here in front of us?

Margaret: Yeah, the Inner Loop

NARRATION: Margaret lives in a mid-sized American city that has taken the bold step of removing part of its downtown highway: the Inner Loop. Now the city is thinking of removing the rest of the highway. So I came here to see the results for myself. There's a boulevard lined with young trees, bright green crosswalks, a bike path, and this apartment building that Margaret just stepped out of for a smoke. All where there used to be a highway. 

Margaret: Literally. Where we're standing. So you would be on the highway.

NARRATION: At first, I would say this conversation with Margaret went more or less how I expected it to go

Margaret: As a matter of fact, as a child, we used to go sledding down there while they were digging it out. Yeah.

Ian Coss: And how do you feel about what's here now?

Margaret: Oh, it's nice. They fixed it up nice. There's, you know, new apartment buildings and everything.

NARRATION: But then…

Ian Coss: Is it worth it?

Margaret: Yeah, I think it's worth it as long as they leave the rest of the Inner Loop where it is.

Ian Coss: You don't want 'em to take the rest of the road?

Margaret: No

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NARRATION: That surprised me.

Margaret: I liked the Inner Loop. I don't want 'em to take the rest of it out, no.

NARRATION: I shouldn't be surprised, really, I've talked to enough people about highways I should never be surprised. But still, the person living in the building where the highway used to be, who has housing because the highway is gone, does not want to remove the highway.

Ian Coss: What'd you like about it?

Margaret: It was easy to get to downtown.

NARRATION: Because it was easy to get downtown.

MUSIC: Post

NARRATION: About seventy-five years ago, this country made an incredible and history-altering bet that cars are the key to making our cities work. 

ARCHIVAL: Six lanes, three in each direction, a highway miracle…

NARRATION: We built highways for them: beltways, parkways, viaducts, trenches, on ramps, off ramps, frontage roads, interchanges -- a sprawling network of lanes woven in and around every American city.

And I'll tip my hand here right away and say personally, I think that was a bad bet -- not exactly a hot take these days. But here's the interesting thing. Those highways were built to last about seventy-five years, about seventy-five years ago, which means that right now is the time to revisit that decision and make a new bet on our future. Truly every city in America is facing some version of that riddle Margaret described to me on her cigarette break. She likes the neighborhood without the highway in it...but she also likes the highway. So what to do?

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NARRATION: A few years ago I made a podcast about my own city's effort to reckon with that choice. That story is of course the first season of this podcast, The Big Dig. If you haven't listened yet, it's right there in the same feed. But after that series came out, I would get emails from listeners in other cities saying:

Hey have you heard about this highway in Toronto?

Or...Have you considered doing something about this highway in Baltimore?

What about this highway in Toledo?

I still get those emails years later, and they have reinforced for me just how universal this question is. Every American city is divided by crumbling old highways. Every American city is trying to figure out what to do with them. And I had no way to respond to those listeners...until now.

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AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: Hey, um, can we confirm we are rolling back there on the recording? Alright.

NARRATION: My name is Ian Coss and from GBH News this is The Big Dig: Highway Teardown Tour.

AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: So excited to be here in Seattle

NARRATION: For the last year I have been traveling the country.

AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: Very excited to be here in Portland

NARRATION: East to West, North to South, coast and interior, red states and blue states, studying this question of what to do with our urban highways.

AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: You really wanna go back to the trauma, right?

NARRATION: Because even if the basic challenge is the same everywhere, the solutions are not the same.

AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: My wife can testify that's what wakes me up at 3:00 AM most nights.

NARRATION: The solutions are all over the map. And they are often contentious.

AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: This highway is important to me. It's my livelihood.

The mayor actually approached me, saying how stupid of an idea it is.

NARRATION: These solutions involve tough trade-offs

AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: To me that feels fraudulent.

NARRATION: Odd alliances

AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: Have any of you even walked in the neighborhood?

NARRATION: Uncertain gambles

AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: And again, we didn't vote on this

NARRATION: I've been trying to capture that complexity by holding live conversations with residents, policy makers, activists, and journalists.

AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: I didn't have an opinion 'cause I couldn't understand it. This, this is a confession.

NARRATION: And holding them right there in the places where these stories are playing out. 

AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: For the public good. That's what it says on the documents that displaced us.

NARRATION: Right where the damage was done

AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: We sat there in the library and cried.

NARRATION: Where neighborhoods and communities were changed forever

AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: How many folks in here have a respiratory issue, have asthma? Everyone's hand would go up

NARRATION: And right where people today are trying to imagine a different future.

AUDIO FROM LIVE TAPING: I'd like to be a little more optimistic here.

All right. I appreciate that.

NARRATION: There are eleven episodes total, taped live on stage in eleven different cities. Seattle, Portland, Austin, Louisville, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Rochester, Syracuse, Providence, Boston and New York.

It’s a lot, I know. And you should feel totally free to skip around in the series – you don't need to listen in order, or even listen to every episode -- but if you do come along for this whole journey, what you'll get is a personal tour of what cities all across this country are struggling, grappling, and experimenting with when it comes to their urban highways. And therefore, a tour of what might be possible for the place where you live.

Our first stop is in the biggest city of all, looking at one of the thorniest highways of all. It’s New York City and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. That is in the feed now, so I’ll see you in New York.

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