waterfront freeways

I've read a number of articles lately about certain groups in DC leading the charge to dismantle the Whitehurst Freeway, which is the elevated roadway (US-29) over K Street in Georgetown that connects the Key Bridge with K Street, NW (at 27th St). The opposition to the existence of a waterfront freeway seems to be the trend nowadays, but with reasonable cause as waterfront freeways disconnect the waterfront from the rest of the city. There's not much happening in terms of culture or commerce on K Street, the city's waterfront street, because there's the incessant clacking of cars on the freeway overhead as well the waterfront always being in the shadows, literally. There is some new development along K Street though: a movie theatre, condos built at eye-level with the freeway, and a new hotel. However, the new development is quite limited compared to the buzz that is M Street, just two blocks in from the water.

In recent decades, waterfront freeways in other major cities have been met with campaigns and projects to tear them down. Boston has the Big Dig, meant to replace the Central Artery that cut off the North End and Waterfront from the rest of downtown. San Francisco recently tore down the Embarcadero Freeway, an elevated freeway (I-480) running along the waterfront, originally intended to connect the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. A group in Seattle is pushing to tear down the Alaskan Way Viaduct, an elevated freeway that carries State Route 99 along the waterfront, also disconnecting the waterfront from downtown. Coincidentally, both the Embarcadero Freeway and the Alaskan Way Viaduct were damaged by earthquakes. The dismantling of the Embarcadero Freeway was precipitated by damage from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Recent action on the Alaskan Way Viaduct is in response to damage from the 2001 Nisqually earthquake.

In all of these cities I've mentioned, the waterfronts were (some still) dilapidated, despite the amazing views of the water. I think this is from two major, but dependent causes: the decline of heavy industry along the waterfronts and the subsequent disconnection of the waterfront from the post-industrial growth in the downtown districts. When the freeways were built in the 1950s, waterfronts were still very industrial. For instance, the Embarcadero in SF was still a major shipping port. (It seems like all the shipping ports have since moved to Oakland.) Even here in DC, the area around the Whitehurst Freeway consisted of a trash incinerator, meat packing companies, a lumber yard, and a cement plant. Needless to say, heavy industry isn't pretty, so putting a freeway above it all seemed pretty inconsequential at the time. As the country moved out of the industrial age, most urban downtown areas experienced a rebirth and revitalization, starting in the mid-1970s and booming in the 1980s and afterwards. However, on the waterfronts, heavy industry declined, but the growth downtown didn't transfer over to the waterfronts now that there was a freeway blocking new buildings, not to mention anything under the freeway just looked dingy in the shadows.

Nowadays, we're realizing that the value of the waterfronts are not for industry anymore, but rather the view. Developing a waterfront combines the elements that city goverments (and their citizens for the most part) dream of: mixed use commercial, residential, retail, and a little park too, just for good measure. (Personally, I'd enjoy it better if the entire waterfront were a park, but I know that the power of money won't let that happen.) Hence, with all this potential value on neglected, undeveloped waterfronts, the only thing standing in the way is the freeway overhead. You figure the hard part is building the freeway, not dismantling it, right?

The remaining question is where will all the traffic go? Boston spent decided to spend several billion dollars to move the traffic into underground tunnels, while San Francisco went with a cheaper option: just take the freeway down and let the drivers deal with it. Although people predicted pure gridlock on the SF's surface streets, the drivers, surprisingly, found a way around, and traffic on the surface streets is not much worse than it was before. My question to the transportation engineers who are reading -- are there good models that can show how current and predicted traffic flows work? Like the voices in SF that predicted pure gridlock, there are voices in DC that are predicting the same.