[StBernard] Claiborne Avenue study looks at removing ramps but leaving elevated expressway

[Westley Annis]

Claiborne Avenue study looks at removing ramps but leaving elevated
expressway

Print By Bruce Eggler, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune 
on April 04, 2013 at 4:45 PM, updated April 04, 2013 at 7:30 PM

It began in 2010 with a proposal to tear down the elevated Interstate 10
expressway over North Claiborne Avenue. It then expanded into a much broader
study looking at everything from economic development to neighborhood
revitalization along the 3.9-mile-long South and North Claiborne corridor
from Napoleon Avenue to Elysian Fields Avenue.

Now, as the $2.7 million Livable Claiborne Communities study moves toward
its scheduled August completion, planners have narrowed down their
recommendations on the issue of the expressway to three proposals, including
two that would leave the elevated roadway in place but remove some or all of
the on- and off-ramps between Tulane Avenue and St. Bernard Avenue.

The original 2010 report said eliminating the expressway would have numerous
benefits, such as removing an eyesore, reducing noise and air pollution,
increasing opportunities for public transit and promoting investment in the
Treme and 7th Ward neighborhoods. That 60-page document was done for the
local group Claiborne Corridor Improvement Coalition and the Congress for
the New Urbanism, a national organization that advocates "walkable,
human-scaled neighborhoods."

Planners now working on the broader study -- financed mainly with federal
grants and managed by the Mayor's Office of Place-Based Planning -- suggest
there could be large gains from more modest changes.


The oak trees on the neutral ground on North Claiborne Avenue in New
Orleans, February, 1966. The trees were dug up to make way for the elevated
leg of the I-10 extension.
 
Under what they call Scenario 1, the ramps at St. Philip Street and
Esplanade Avenue and the lakeside ramps at Orleans Avenue would be removed
and local street connections restored across Claiborne between Orleans and
Esplanade. These changes would "go a long way in reconnecting Treme ... and
opening up new redevelopment sites," according to documents distributed at
recent community meetings.

Scenario 2 would go further, also removing the ramps at Canal Street and
Tulane Avenue and the flyover ramps near St. Bernard Avenue. New ramps would
connect the expressway with the surface-level Claiborne Avenue at Tulane
Avenue and St. Bernard Avenue. The planners suggest that a streetcar line
could be added along North Claiborne.

Scenario 3 would go all the way, removing the entire elevated roadway from
Tulane Avenue to St. Bernard Avenue.

The various scenarios were presented at two public meetings in March at
Craig Elementary School and the Ashe Cultural Arts Center.

"This is a study, not a plan," said David Dixon, the Boston-based urban
planner who was the chief architect of New Orleans' master plan. As such,
the final product won't be a recommendation for a specific plan of action on
what to do with the expressway. 


Instead, the planners will lay out various options for action in the fields
of transportation, economic development, community revitalization, jobs,
housing and cultural preservation. The alternatives are then supposed to be
evaluated further under the National Environmental Policy Act and a
preferred alternative identified. However, the city has yet to obtain
funding for that stage of the process.


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Despite the wide range of the study, it's clear that the fate of the
elevated roadway is the most controversial and attention-grabbing focus of
inquiry. It's hard to find residents who would disagree with many of the
study's other stated goals, such as to "ensure equitable access to economic
prosperity" or "find sustainable solutions for our flood-prone environment."

Ideas such as restoring the tree canopy along streets, helping residents
find jobs at the city's new hospitals, maximizing public-transit access to
jobs, preserving neighborhood culture and increasing the number of
affordable housing units find little resistance. But the idea of tearing
down an expressway traveled by more than 60,000 vehicles a day has produced
loud objections since it was first put forward. 

The elevated Claiborne expressway, built in the 1960s, has long been the
object of criticism, especially since the construction of Interstate 610
reduced the need for an inner-city freeway. Both the Unified New Orleans
Plan, created to guide the city's post-Katrina recovery, and the city's new
master plan called for studying the possibility of removing it.

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Hoping to give further momentum to the idea, a group of local civic
activists and planners in July 2010 released a detailed report, titled
"Restoring Claiborne Avenue," that advocated the removal of the elevated
expressway. The report suggested turning the 2.2-mile stretch of expressway
between Elysian Fields Avenue and the Pontchartrain Expressway near the
Superdome into a surface-level boulevard tied into the city's regular street
grid. 

Although travel times for motorists who now use the expressway would be
longer, the increases would be only a few minutes, the report said, and
accessibility to the French Quarter and other destinations along the
expressway route would "improve substantially with a better-connected street
network."

The 2010 report also argued for the financial feasibility of demolition,
saying the choice was not between spending millions on demolition and doing
nothing. "The Claiborne expressway is an aging interstate that ... is
nearing the end of its useful life and beginning to deteriorate," the report
said. It "will require more frequent maintenance, and possibly
reconstruction, to carry traffic safely." In fact, it said, the Federal
Highway Administration had found that several interchange ramps on the
highway were deteriorating and needed more than $50 million in repairs or
replacement.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at the time that he was open to the idea of
demolition. "It could be a game-changer," he said. "I'm not saying I'm for
it. I'm just saying it's worth thinking about."

The report said removing the elevated expressway would increase travel times
for motorists who use it by 3 to 6 minutes in peak travel times and by 2 to
4 minutes at other times of day. The biggest effect, it said, would be on
large trucks that now use the expressway to travel between eastern New
Orleans and the city's east bank wharves or the West Bank. On the other
hand, traffic that is passing through New Orleans would simply use I-610,
which would probably be redesignated as I-10.

Despite the report's findings, some of the motorists who regularly travel
the expressway howled at the idea of having to use a surface street and deal
with numerous traffic lights to get to and from jobs or other destinations
in the inner city. 

And even though it had been an article of faith among many New Orleanians
for decades that construction of the expressway had destroyed a thriving
African-American business corridor along North Claiborne, as well as
visually blighting the Treme and 7th Ward neighborhoods, it turned out that
some residents of those neighborhoods had developed something like an
affection for the roadway, or at least for the spaces under it, which the
residents have found ways to decorate and to use for recreation and
community events. 

At a first round of public meetings in December, many participants said they
feared that removing the expressway would destroy the economy and life of
the neighborhoods all over again, though others saw it as an opportunity for
revitalization and renewal. Most were concerned about how traffic would be
accommodated within or outside of their neighborhoods if I-10 were removed.

In short, expressway opponents discovered they had to deal with criticism,
or at least questioning, from some of those nearby residents they probably
had assumed would be natural allies.

The city's application for the $2 million federal grant to study ways to
revitalize the Claiborne Avenue corridor, awarded jointly by the Department
of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation, had
made clear where its authors' sympathies lay on the issue of the elevated
expressway. It described the highway's history as "a tale of environmental
and social injustice ... tied to the overall decline of many of New Orleans'
most historically and culturally significant communities."
The application noted that the 2010 report had "found that removing the
expressway would not cause significant traffic impacts. However, the topic
... is a highly sensitive, polarizing issue that elicits emotional reactions
from residents throughout the region, and therefore demands a thoughtful and
thorough study."

With the second round of public meetings concluded, the planners doing the
study will continue modeling scenarios and analyzing alternatives leading up
to more public meetings in June and release of a final report in August.