PUTTING BACK PLEASURE IN THE DRIVE:
RECLAIMING URBAN PARKWAYS FOR THE 21st
CENTURY
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris
UCLA Department of Urban Planning
Robert Gottlieb
Urban and Environmental Policy Institute, Occidental College
A REPORT TO THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA TRANSPORTATION CENTER
March 2003
Now I know how a package feels when it gets an unobstructed
ride through a chute to the shipping department. I've just made a run out
to Pasadena on the completed Arroyo Seco Parkway … From the relatively narrow
Figueroa tunnels you immediately find yourself launched like a speedboat in
a calm, spacious, divided channel. Channel is the word, too, for it's in the
arroyo, below the level of traffic-tormented streets. No brazen pedestrians
nor kids riding bikes with their arms folded. No cross streets with too-bold
or too-timid drivers jutting their radiators into your path. And no wonder
I made it from Elysian Park to Broadway and Glenarm Street in Pasadena in
10 minutes without edging over a conservative 45 miles an hour (John Cornwell,
in Westways, January 1941).
If the
engineers wish to rhapsodize over the quaint historic qualities of the Arroyo
Seco Parkway, they should scrape up the whole miserable concrete mess and
put it in the freeway museum. That highway has been obsolete for 25 years:
It's dangerous and inadequate. The transition from the 110 north to the I-5
north is one of the worst freeway bottlenecks in the state (William
Leidenthal, in Los Angeles Times,
July 31, 1999).
These two
statements about the Arroyo Seco Parkway (now known as the Pasadena Freeway),
are separated by half a century in time and a sea of difference in the authors'
perception of the same roadway. Nevertheless, they epitomize eloquently the
rise and fall of urban parkways. A predecessor of the modern freeway and a
celebrated transportation model of the early 20th century, the
urban parkway has fallen on difficult times. Designed for uninterrupted and
pleasurable driving through park-like surroundings and a visual connection
to the communities the driver passed through, parkways were once hailed as
marvels of transportation innovation and design, and as safe and efficient
alternatives to non-limited access arterials and boulevards. By the 1950s,
however, the goals of pleasurable driving and visual connection had progressively
faded in favor of engineering efficiency and higher capacity use. In the meantime,
existing parkways became tangled in a web of problems. Originally designed
for fewer cars at lower speeds, parkways like the Arroyo Seco Parkway, had
to accommodate significant increases in vehicles at much higher speeds. This
led to traffic congestion (the ten minute trip of 1941 along the Arroyo Seco
might take as long as 40 minutes today), bottlenecks, and a major increase
in traffic accidents.
Today,
the Arroyo Seco Parkway stands as a representative example of an urban parkway
still in use but fraught with problems due to its disjuncture between its
original conception and ultimate evolution. These changes also symbolize some
of the problems and challenges in a freeway-centered transportation system.
The question that follows then is whether today’s urban parkways can be revamped
and reclaimed as successful models of transportation infrastructure and as
part of a more comprehensive, multi-modal approach to transportation planning.
The Early Days: Genesis and Evolution of Urban Parkways
The term
parkway connoted a strip of land of varying width, depending on immediately
topographical conditions, which contained a roadway passing through park-like
or landscaped surroundings. The roadway
was meant for a comfortable and pleasurable ride; thus, the alignment was
one of gentle curves, designed for speeds in keeping with the times that also
allowed a visual connection to the surrounding landscape. An important provision
was that abutting property owners had no right of access over the parkway
strip.
The first
use of the word parkway in the American context was made before the advent
of the automobile. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in a report to the
Board of Commissioners of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York in 1866 recommended
the addition of a parkway to the
plans for the park. Inspired by the celebrated landscaped boulevards of Paris
and Berlin, Olmsted and Vaux viewed parkways as carriageways, surrounded and
contained by the park and designed for pleasure riding.
Pleasure
parkways designed by Olmsted and Vaux were built in Boston and in New York’s
Central Park. Other landscaped boulevards called parkways were also built
in eastern cities, and, with the advent of the automobile, the parkway concept
as a specialized roadway was revived. The first parkway for automobiles was
the Bronx River Parkway in Westchester County New York, completed in 1923,
and designed to provide leisure driving and recreational opportunities. The
Bronx River Parkway’s great success in combination with a growing number of
motorists led to the development of more of these roadways, most notably in
New York City where Robert Moses oversaw the construction of several parkways.
In the 1930s the modern parkway movement began to expand out of New York with
the construction of several federal parkways, such as the Skyline Drive in
Virginia, Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina and Tennessee, Merritt Parkway
in Connecticut, and others. During the same decade Los Angeles planners, aware
of the parkway construction in eastern cities, started to envision the creation
of ‘greenbelts across the city’ –parkways that would address the region’s
increasing traffic while at the same time encourage “highway recreation” and
“outdoor sightseeing.” These ideas were elaborated in Frederick Olmsted Jr.
and Harlan Bartholomew’s 1930 report for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce,
linking parkway development with opportunities to create open spaces and parklands,
including along the Arroyo Seco and Los Angeles River watershed from Pasadena
to downtown Los Angeles. After a series of debates regarding feasibility,
finances, and transportation and land use goals, the celebrated Arroyo Seco
Parkway, was commissioned and broke ground in 1938. Dubbed the “first freeway
of the West” by then Governor Culbert Olson, the parkway was formally dedicated
two years later in 1940.
Parkway goals.
Parkway
concepts had incorporated the goals of pleasure driving, visual connection,
and efficiency (moving large numbers of cars at a continuous speed). Pleasure
driving was achieved through the visual qualities of the parkway that was
designed as a serpentine roadway of variable width, well adjusted to topography
and offering views and vistas of the immediate and more distant landscape.
In urban areas considerable grading and planting was undertaken to achieve
a park effect. Landscaping was utilized to frame views and restore natural
appearances. Essential to the success and excellence of the parkway was the
skillful and land sensitive location of the route that included the opportunity
to develop and visually connect with adjacent parklands. The goal was nothing
less than the display of the physical and historic landscape of the region
through the windshield, including the protection, if not enhancement of adjacent
landscapes and parklands. For example, the city of South Pasadena insisted
that in laying out the parkway, the road needed to curve around Arroyo Seco
Park in order to prevent as little damage to the park site as possible.
Safety,
utility, and efficiency were additional goals of modern parkway design. To
ensure an uninterrupted flow of traffic the parkway introduced the design
concept of limited access to the road. Access from abutting properties was
denied, traffic lights were eliminated, and crossings and left turns were
prevented. Grade separation was provided when the parkway crossed other major
arteries. Parkways were to be divided by wide median strips and their pavements
had generous widths. But parkways were designed for passenger cars and for
speeds ranging from 25 to 45 miles per hour.
As mentioned in the dedication ceremonies of the Arroyo Seco Parkway
“saving in time to motorists is based, not upon traffic flowing unduly at
high speeds, but on its ability to flow continuously at reasonable speeds
without delays caused by cross-traffic and left hand-turns.”
Transportation
efficiency and aesthetic delight were considered inseparable goals
of parkway design, which in the early 20th century was described
as bioengineering—a marriage of architecture, landscaping and civil engineering
in a three dimensional design. But times were changing fast. The goal of efficiency
quickly overshadowed that of aesthetic delight as multi-lane freeway systems
that could move people and goods at higher speeds were superimposed over the
land with little or no attention to aesthetics, scenic pleasure, community
values, or environmental impacts. Parkways, considered products of a bygone
era, quickly lost favor among traffic engineers. The adjustment of parkways
to the freeway era has been problematic at best, as they were designed for
different capacities (much less cars), different speeds (slower vehicles),
and different objectives (visual connection and recreational driving).
The Arroyo Seco Parkway
The Arroyo Seco Parkway was the first
grade-separated, limited access, high-speed divided road in the west. Built
in three major stages from 1938 to 1953, the 8.2-mile parkway connected downtown
Los Angeles to Pasadena (Figure 1), and combined the best traditions of parkway
design with engineering inventiveness and technological innovation. Designed
as a roadway where the ingress and egress from abutting property was prohibited,
where all crossings were separated, and all left turns were prevented, the
parkway allowed for uninterrupted movement of vehicles and transportation
efficiency.
The first segment of the Arroyo Seco
Parkway, completed in 1939, cost less than $1,000,000 per mile. This included
the building of the Arroyo Seco flood control channel, as well as all the
bridge structures, railroad relocations, utility reconstruction, and landscaping.
For the construction of the parkway embankments, engineers utilized hundreds
of thousands of cubic yards of material excavated from the Arroyo Seco Channel
by the WPA and from the Los Angeles River by the US District Engineers. This
cut down considerably the cost of the parkway that was found to be "exceptionally
low for a freeway of its character. " Furthermore, the Automobile Club
of Southern California hailed the new parkway as saving each motorist 6 cents
per trip from Pasadena to downtown.
In the construction of the Arroyo
Seco Parkway traffic safety was of paramount importance. To reduce the possibility of head-on collisions
a 6-foot median strip was designed. The shrubbery planted in the median was
intended to shield drivers from the headlight glare of oncoming traffic. Fences
were erected to separate traffic (children or animals) from nearby properties.
The lanes were 11-feet wide, and a shoulder of 10-feet was originally
planned for each side of the roadway. Different-colored types of concrete
were used for different lanes to encourage drivers to stay in their lane.
Other safety features included special safety lighting at all inlets and outlets
of the parkway, warning and directional signals, and red reflectors and amber-colored
flashers installed in curbs. A 1945 study pointed to these safety features
as an explanation of the remarkably low ratio of traffic accidents that the
parkway enjoyed in comparison to other major highways with similar traffic
volumes.
Consistent with the dictums of parkway
planning the Arroyo Seco Parkway offered driving pleasure to motorists by
exposing them to the scenic beauty of the surrounding landscape. Existing
parklands were enhanced by the planting of approximately 4,000 plants of various
varieties, which were selected and placed so that "a brilliant showing
of color would be maintained throughout the year." A major program of roadside beautification
eliminated billboards, advertisements and other objects of commercial blight.
To enhance the pleasure of the ride engineers adjusted the road's contours
to fit the landscape, installed "rustic" rails on rubble parapet
walls and wooden railings along on- and off-ramps.
From Parkway to Freeway
Already by 1940, at the time of its dedication, the
Arroyo Seco Parkway, with its crucial goal of aesthetic appeal and connection
to a physical landscape, began to be identified as that first freeway of the
West, with its more concentrated focus on speed, traffic volume, uninterrupted
travel, and efficiency. The program prepared for the dedication ceremony emphasized
that the parkway would become “the first completed unit of the proposed system
of modern express highways which is absolutely essential in this, the fastest
growing and most congested metropolitan area in the West, to provide for the
safe and expeditious handling of traffic.”
What
had changed? How had the Olmsted/Bartolomew vision of greenbelts and pleasure
drives become transformed into the high speed freeway system that would ultimately
define contemporary transportation design and planning. During the early 1940s,
other roadways in southern California, notably the Cahuenga Freeway connecting
Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley (now known as the Hollywood Freeway),
were still seen as hybrids, part parkway based on their design as a more scenic,
independent motorway, but also part high-speed freeway. The change to the
freeway system that emerged during the mid and late 1940s was partly a change
that elevated the automobile as the dominant mode of transportation and therefore
identified the need for a comprehensive and interconnected system of freeways.
This shift had two major
consequences. On the one hand, it thoroughly undermined proposals made by
various public transportation advocates during the 1930s and 1940s to establish
a linked transportation system that included parkways, rail (including a rail
system along the median strip of a parkway), bus, and even bike commute systems
(such as the idea of a Pasadena to Los Angeles bikeway that had been pursued
at the turn of the 20th century by Pasadena’s mayor). At the same
time, as the parkway gave way to the freeway, the goals of the “pleasure drive”
and connection to place became even more problematic. New freeways were straightened
in order to maximize speed and efficiency. Their locations were determined
in relation to an interconnected grid system that paralleled the old interurban
routes and the emerging real estate speculation and growth patterns of the
region while paying little if any attention to the surrounding landscape and
even existing built environments.
By the 1950s,
with the parkway concept having become an historical curiosity, Los Angeles
(as well as other metropolitan areas) embarked on a highway construction frenzy,
financed by the Federal Interstate Highway Act that divided neighborhoods,
reconfigured cities, and promoted suburban sprawl. L.A. already led the country
in its myriad manifestations of car-centered growth, culture, architecture,
politics, and residential development. Even its first major transportation
system, the fabled interurban Red Cars and Yellow Cars that provided Los Angeles
with the most extensive rail system in the country up through the 1930s, had
established a sprawling land use pattern that preceded and later became synonymous
with the car commute. By the late 1940s, the interurban system was in deep
trouble, abandoned by the Pacific Electric Company that had shifted towards
bus operations. The dominant auto-based system not only encouraged new suburban
residential development at the urban edge, but also led to a shift of supermarkets
away from the urban core to the suburbs, the rise of gated communities, and
the making of a built environment of strip malls, drive-thrus, and fast food
outlets. The car and the freeway became the very symbols of L.A., with the
region’s patterns of long-distance commutes, daily episodes of air pollution,
traffic congestion, carved up neighborhoods, and endless, monochrome suburban
vistas and sprawling development.
Contemporary Issues and Problems
While the Arroyo Seco Parkway had
been viewed in the 1940s as a model for roadway design, sixty years later
it has become plagued by a number of problems. Originally built to carry 27,000
automobiles per day at 45mph, the parkway carries today an average daily traffic
of over 130,000 cars (at its southern end) at speeds often exceeding the official
limit of 55mph (when not congested). The average daily traffic has increased consistently since the parkway
opened (Figures 2 and 3). Congestion in fact can be found on the parkway during
many times of the day and evening. Traffic builds continuously heading south,
with a peak of 8,000 cars per hour in the middle of the parkway and about
14,000 cars per hour where it intersects with Interstate 5 (Figure 4). Originally
built for a leisurely drive, the parkway has only three (and at segments two)
rather narrow lanes on each bound. Given the greater volume of vehicles, higher
speeds, and, as discussed below, high accident rates, bottlenecks are a daily
occurrence for what has become the main thoroughfare connecting Pasadena to
downtown Los Angeles.
Today the parkway can be considered
the unsafest route in the region based on accident rates (Figure 5). The parkway
was not designed for today's high-speeds. As a result, fast driving along
its tight curves and narrow lanes often results in traffic collisions. A serious
safety issue concerns the on- and off ramps (Figure 6) where motorists need
to brake or accelerate quickly due to the lack of merge lanes. The percentage
of total accidents on the parkway increases as the distance from an on- or
off-ramp decreases (Figure 7). The majority of the accidents on the parkway
happen because of speeding (61.8%) or because of an improper turn (17.2%).
An experiential analysis of driving
along the parkway found that visual delight is certainly greater along this
parkway than along the drive on other freeways in the region. The elements
of parkway design, such as graceful turns following the natural topography,
generous vistas, decorative bridges, and greenery, make for a distinct driving
experience. Yet some of the initial intentions have been compromised or abandoned.
Some of the original aesthetic features of the parkway have been removed or
damaged, and concrete median barriers have replaced the historic guardrail.
Overgrown and untrimmed planting areas and misplaced bushes and trees
have hidden some of the important views of the hillsides. Along the sides
of the parkway, chain link fences, barbed wire, and metal guardrails have
often replaced the rustic wooden fencing. At certain segments, sound walls
are hindering views of the parkway surroundings.
By 2003, the drive along the Arroyo
Seco Parkway had become as unsafe and unpleasurable in bumper-to-bumper congested
traffic as any freeway in southern California, a far cry from the pleasure
ride it was originally designed for. The question then becomes: what, if anything,
can be done.
Strategies and Efforts for Change
By the early 1990s, community concerns
about congestion, high accident rates, lack of maintenance, and the deteriorating
visual quality of the drive had peaked. In response, under pressure from State
Senator Richard Polanco, a community task force (the Arroyo Seco Task Force)
was established. Working with officials from the California Department of
Transportation, the Task Force was charged with exploring strategies to reduce
accident rates and enhance the visual quality of the roadway. Caltrans officials
had previously explored re-engineering the roadway and its on-and-off ramps
to make the original parkway function more like a high-speed freeway, only
to find those approaches blocked by a number of factors, including legislation
that had protected adjacent parklands and the historic nature of the roadway.
The community task force sought to focus the attention of the highway planners
on two core strategies: 1) achieving historic parkway status that could lead
to landscape changes consistent with the original parkway concept; and 2)
traffic calming approaches (including a reduction of the speed limit to its
original 45 mph) to help reduce accidents and ultimately relieve congestion.
The response by Caltrans focused
on three possible options to address the concerns raised by the Task Force:
create new signage that identified the freeway as an historic scenic parkway;
emphasize that the facility was not built for modern freeway conditions (e.g.,
through warning signs); or physically re-engineer the freeway to function
more as a freeway and thereby address some of its more protracted accident
problems. Although some preliminary studies were undertaken to explore the
option of redesign, Caltrans engineers, planners, and legal staff ultimately
decided that any effort along these lines would impact parkland and undermined
the historic nature of the parkway which in turn would have triggered legislative
obstacles. And while Caltrans explored
briefly the options of lowering speed limits or pursuing other traffic calming
strategies, agency staff decided these options were also limited by administrative
code regulations that limited the capacity of the agency to lower rather
than raise a speed limit.
Nevertheless,
the efforts of the task force did lead to some important changes. Its work
helped to bring about the designation of the Arroyo Seco Parkway as an American
Civil Engineering Landmark, and establish National Scenic Byway status. At
the same time, community advocates and resident groups began to refocus attention
on the traffic, accident, speed limit and other freeway/parkway issues. An
Arroyo Seco Collaborative of community organizations was formed in 2000 and
plans were made to host an unprecedented event called ArroyoFest involving
a walk and bike ride ON the Pasadena Freeway, scheduled for June 2003, that
could bring renewed attention to those parkway/freeway issues. The ArroyoFest
collaborators reintroduced the concept of traffic calming, including reduced
speed limits in the context of a broader approach to transportation in the
Arroyo Seco corridor that would take advantage of a multi-modal transportation
system that included light rail, expanded bus service, commuter bikeways,
and pedestrian walkways. At the same time, the ArroyoFest event promised to
bring attention to the historical role and significance of the parkway concept
and its potential role in 21st century transportation and land
use planning. In ways reminiscent of the debates of the 1920s and 1930s, this
new visibility regarding the historic parkway established a dialogue about
transportation planning that included re-envisioning the role of its primary
transportation corridors.
Prospects for Urban Parkways
The rising
community interest around the use of the Arroyo Seco Parkway prompts us to
reconsider the relevance of parkways today. In the mid-20th century
the emphasis on aesthetics and pleasurable driving embodied in parkway design
was sacrificed for the promise of efficiency and speed that the freeways seemed
to offer. But fifty years later the cherished freeway system is clogged and
congested. Communities do not want the intrusion of new freeways in their
neighborhoods, and in certain cases have effectively stopped their expansion.
At the same time debates over parkways and freeways have now come full circle.
From an emphasis on efficiency, volume, and speed, with the predominance
of single driver automobiles defining the parameters of transportation planning,
there is an increasing interest in such concepts as multi-modal transportation,
traffic calming, and a broader set of community, aesthetic, historical, and
environmental goals associated with the drive.
Existing urban parkways such as the
Arroyo Seco in Los Angeles or Route 163 in San Diego can be seen as assets
rather than liabilities if they are considered as one piece of an integrated
transportation network that may include parallel road alignments, light rail,
busways, and bikeways. The additional transportation modes bring the possibility
of easing traffic along the parkways. To reduce the large number of speeding
accidents speed limits should be reduced to their original 45 miles per hour—a
change that will only add less than 2 extra minutes to the ride from Pasadena
to the I-5 intersection. The lower speed limit is more appropriate for the
narrow and curvy lanes of parkways, and also allows entering cars to ease
better into parkway traffic.
Parkways would be seen as assets
by motorists if their compromised aesthetics were to be restored and emphasis
again placed on making the drive pleasurable. The restoration of the design
and landscaping features of the roadway, the bridges and overpasses, the guardrails,
signs, light fixtures, and trees would give back the roadway its “human scale”
that could be appreciated by motorists at lower speeds.
Community activism and interest in
the re-envisioning of the Arroyo Seco Parkway show that parkways can be valued
by their adjacent communities if they are perceived as connectors rather than
separators of neighborhoods. Modern freeways have typically excluded and negated
the surrounding urban context, arrogantly soaring over the city, or diving
below it. In the process they carved and separated neighborhoods, and made
them invisible by utilizing miles of concrete walls to make the separation
more effective. In contrast, the border between the parkway and the city was
often soft, consisting of trees, vegetation, and parkland, allowing the motorist
wide vistas and an appreciation of the surrounding historic and cultural context.
This more sympathetic approach to the urban surroundings with its inherent
connection to place makes today’s parkways – even those that have seen some
of their original design aspects compromised -- more palatable to communities
than freeways.
Ultimately, we see a future for urban parkways if transportation planners stop treating them as something they are not—freeways—and look closer to restoring their original values. Parkways were built for specific traffic capacities and speeds. Transportation planning should seek to relieve traffic volumes by offering additional modal choices. By re-orienting transportation planning to the value of the parkway, the lessons from the Arroyo Seco can ultimately help turn a “dangerous and inadequate” relic into a more supple and appealing transportation experience; they can indeed put back more of the pleasure in the drive and connect rather than separate the communities they pass through.
Further Reading
