UNDOING THE DAMAGE IKE DID:

Hey Hey, Ho Ho, I-95 Has Got to Go: Goodbye, ugly elevated highway. Hello, pedestrian-friendly boulevard? (Brian Howard   11/21/2011, The Philly Post)

 If there's one thing that everyone in the Philadelphia area can agree on (along with the fact that Andy Reid still can't play-call his way out of a paper bag), it's that the stretch of I-95 that runs through the city really, really blows.

If you live and work in Philly, it's the enduring urban-planning screw-up that's cut the city off from one of its two source rivers and that has thwarted development on Penn's Landing--the great white whale of Philadelphia politics--since not long after Penn landed. And if you're unlucky enough to commute to or from the 'burbs in the elevated perpetual traffic jam, it's the kick in the teeth that starts your workday and/or kick in the 'nads that ends it.

There's no way (yet!) to go back in time and right this cosmic wrong. But is it just crazy to imagine a future without the monolithic, immovable, angry-making behemoth?

There's at least one woman in Philly who's not only undaunted by the prospect, she's rounding up a posse. Her vision: to end Philly's I-95 misery once and for all--even if ending that misery takes decades.

The Big Dig has re-humanized Boston so radically it's natural for other cities to aspire towards similar improvement.

Posted by oj at November 22, 2011 6:04 AM
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