[PLEASE NOTE: This was an April Fools posting. Joke’s over.]
RochesterSubway.com has just learned of preliminary plans for what’s being called the Rochester Southern Communities Active Transportation (R-SCAT) project. By building on Monroe County’s original 1947 highway plan, Rochester, Brighton, and Henrietta have agreed to the construction of a new, multimodal connection from downtown Rochester to the New York State Thruway…
I’m probably going to take a lot of heat from people for the comparison I’m about to draw, but hear me out first. Then you can tell me that I’m being overly dramatic. Here it goes…
The photo above was taken last week in Xiazhangyang, China. This is the home of Luo Baogen and his wife. When the Chinese government offered them 260,000 yuan ($41,573 U.S.) to vacate their home so a new highway could be built, the elderly couple refused the offer…
It’s no secret that I am wholeheartedly in favor of removing Rochester’s Inner Loop roadway which encircles downtown and chokes it off from the surrounding neighborhoods like an ever tightening noose. What we didn’t know until today was that City Council and Mayor Tom Richards feel the same…
A recent story in the City Newspaper, “Glamming Rochester’s Gateways” touched on the idea that filling in part of the Inner Loop would help reconnect certain neighborhoods with downtown and improve Rochester’s eastern gateways. Then came the raging comments from readers who blindly defended the inner loop and its many blessings.
One letter sent in from James R. Boehler went like this… (more…)
In Oregon, a battle raged for nearly twenty years over the construction of a highway project, proposed by the once acclaimed city planner Robert Moses. If approved, the Freeway would have removed more than 1% of all housing stock in Portland. In the mid 1970s, after the proposal’s defeat, the city opted to build a mass transit infrastructure instead. The result can be seen today in the form of a more pedestrian-friendly and livable city.
Similar to how the Interstates reshaped America 50 years ago, the Chinese landscape is now being reshaped by historic levels of infrastructure spending. While the U.S. government seeks to revive it’s struggling economy in part by spending billions on shovel-ready, band-aid projects (i.e. re-surfacing roads), it seems Beijing’s goal is to put 26 million Chinese to work building new high-speed rail connections between its cities.
Today was an historic day for America in many ways. Whether you voted for President Obama or not, most Americans agree on one thing — our infrastructure could use a few upgrades. During his campaign, Obama expressed that one of his priorities would be to rebuild America’s aging schools, roads, and power grid. Today, in his first address as President, he restated this intention.
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After the Erie Canal was rerouted south of downtown Rochester, the Rochester
Industrial & Rapid Transit Railway (the “subway”) was built in
its place as a link between the five different railroads and interurban trolley
lines that served the Rochester area. As the industrial landscape of Rochester
changed, and highways replaced the railroads, the Rochester subway gradually
became a relic of a bygone era. In 1956 the subway was abandoned and much of
its route was converted into Interstate 490 — built to connect Rochester
with the New York State Thruway (I-90). Read more about the history of the Rochester Subway.
RochesterSubway.com exists to help spark
public dialogue around how we can better connect the neighborhoods of Rochester
NY, surrounding communities, and their cultural offerings. Rochester’s
future is written in her past. Let's rediscover it.
![A car stops beside a house in the middle of a newly built road in Wenling, Zhejiang province, November 22, 2012. [PHOTO: REUTERS/China Daily]](https://www.rochestersubway.com/images/photos/china-highway-built-around-house-1.jpg)
![An aerial view of Rochester on April 25, 1963. On the right is the cleared right-of-way for the final segment of the Inner Loop. [PHOTO: Local History Division, Central Library of Rochester.]](https://www.rochestersubway.com/images/photos/rochester-inner-loop-construction-01.jpg)
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