The Most Freeway-Heavy Downtowns in the US: 10 Cities With Huge Downtown Freeways and Interchanges

Today's video looks at the downtowns in the US that have the most land devoted to freeways. These aren't necessarily the cities with the most traffic in the US, or the most congested cities in the world -- some of them are smaller cities whose inclusion in the top ten may surprise you!

We'll also investigate the question of whether or why freeways are bad, or whether they're indispensable to economically high-performing cities.

Stops on our journey today -- not all of which show up in the top 10 -- include Dayton, Vancouver, Birmingham, Orlando, Cincinnati, Nashville, Youngstown, Houston, Kansas City, Dallas, Mexico City, Tulsa, Atlanta, Portland, Providence, Winnipeg, Austin, Richmond, San Antonio, Charlotte, and Hartford. We'll explore the transportation decisions that led to calamitous urban form outcomes, so prepare to be profoundly depressed by these cities' infrastructure choices.

Note that the biggest freeway in the US (the Houston metro area's Katy freeway) does not make an appearance here. Not just because it isn't a downtown freeway, but because the worst performing cities on this list (or is it top performing?) also have some of the biggest freeway interchanges in the US (downtowns only), and are usually encircled by a central city ring road.

Enough explanation -- all is made sickeningly clear in the video!

Other CityNerd vides referenced in this video:

Resources:
Wikipedia on the Tulsa massacre:

Photo Credits:
Downtown Atlanta freeway traffic Video by citi-flix from Pixabay
Downtown ATL Thumbnail Image by David Mark from Pixabay Subscribe/like graphic Video by Michael Yakimelin from Pexels

Music:
CityNerd background: Caipirinha in Hawaii by Carmen María and Edu Espinal (YouTube music library)

Twitter: @nerd4cities
Instagram: @nerd4cities

[knutthompson]

Just imagine going back 50, 60, or 70 years when the decision was made to plow through now forgotten living central city neighborhoods with dead, bleak cement rivers. How could you convince them it was a bad idea? At the time these were seen as hugely positive development. And BTW, I can confirm Dallas and Fort Worth are both enormous stretches of nonstop highway interchanges.

[guspolly]

Youngstown might be the hardest-hit Rust-Belt city. It had 166, 000 people in 1960. The city was almost entirely dependent on steel production. Then everything went overseas. The day in 1977 when the last big plant closed and laid off 5000 workers is still called Black Monday in the area.

[ACGreyhound]

I work in Boston, and the best thing that city ever did in recent times was to put its freeways underground. The “Big Dig” opened up a ton of very valuable land for new development. There’s also all the newly valuable land that used to be taken up by endless, mostly empty parking lots, which are now being replaced by valuable office towers and residential apartments.

[timothytao]

Do a surface parking downtown list! It would be amazing to see you shame cities that are awful.

[misuvva]

Maybe you could do a video about the most walkable neighborhoods in otherwise unwalkable cities? I live in Long beach, CA, and as an extension of LA it's about as car infested as it gets, but around downtown there are lots of mixed use and mixed density neighborhoods where living without a car is possible. Since a lot of us live in NA it might be nice to see what little glimmers of hope exist in otherwise typically north american cities.

[edipires]

The urban freeways around US cities remind me of the old fortifications European cities used to have, but now those fortifications have become urban parks, let's hope that someday some of these freeways follow the same fate

[socope]

I lived in Dallas area for 8 years and can confirm their highway system is insane, especially when you include the Arlington, Fort Worth highways that connect to it. Nowhere in the US will you see such high concentration of highways and hwy interchanges. It’s truly a never-ending maze.

[squirlez]

Gotta say, I'm proud of LA for avoiding this list. If we were looking at the entire metro area, I wonder if that would change.

[Tolya]

Ohio prioritises highways over public transit, because, traditionally, Ohio has been an "automotive state", with deep ties to the automotive industry.

[pjkerrigan]

My grandparents’ first house (in the US at least) was on Hartford’s north side, but was demolished to make way for I-91! From what I gather, there was a fairly important Italian-American neighborhood there before the highway was built. The city is small, but it’s so chopped up by the highways. I’ve spent some time living in New England’s best kept secret of Worcester, MA as well and it’s got a similar problem. Highways wreak havoc on all cities, but some of those small, compact northeastern cities are hit pretty hard, since they’re small enough to be really broken up by only one or two highways.

[doublebasshq]

Just found your channel—I love this deep-dive! Can’t wait to dig into more city stuff from you! 😀

[standardannonymousguy]

You are a wordsmith City Nerd. Digging this video as usual!

[Droidman]

Atlanta has three Interstate going through downtown, I-75 and I-85 merge in Midtown and run concurrent through the center of the city (Downtown Connector). The freeways are pretty bad though, I used to cross it every day to get to class and it is massive and always full of traffic. I find it interesting we end up on this list but also the list for good Airport transit.

[fictionaliza]

This is the most underrated channel on YouTube for sure. You're hilarious and do so much research per video! Thanks for the fresh unique content.

[mysteryman]

As someone who spent *way* too long looking at Google Maps cities, my guess is that Google looks at a few categories and picks one of them:
1. Center of the road network (where address numbering starts and where directions in names change)
2. Geographic center of the city
3. Population center of the city (this is helpful in places like New York which are more concentrated on one side)

[kellenw]

To be fair to dallas, they are doing their best to build deck parks over as many freeways as possible. Klyde Warren Park did a fantastic job of reuniting downtown and uptown while adding a lot of much needed green space. If you aren’t aware of it you should check it out.

[davidgreen]

One thing to keep in mind about Youngstown is the city was built for a quarter million people, and the metro area for a million. We’ve had major population losses, so everything seems overbuilt. Also, Youngstown was historically a stopping point as it serves as a midpoint between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, as well as (roughly) New York and Chicago. A lot of cargo trains are in the area, so there is a ton of truck traffic as well.

[w.s.soapcompany]

As an Atlanta resident I have to correct your mistake..that is not an interstate running through the city it's a twelve lane parking lot.

[symphwind]

Great video! A related metric that I started looking at awhile back (but have yet to finish) was measuring the areas enclosed within the freeway rings in cities that have them. It seems that high-density development outside of the Northeast is often boxed in by this barrier, and that this area can be absurdly small (like in Kansas City, Charlotte, or Houston).

[jmchristoph]

Topic idea that follows on from this video: what are the best potential urban highway removal projects in the US? Either removals under consideration already, or removals not yet planned but which would be justified by some empirical criteria.