A Step Forward

This chapter tell us about the problem of a major highway presents an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that natural processes can be construed as values in such a way to permit a rational response to a social value system. In the highway design, the problem is reduced to the simplest and the most commonplace terms: traffics, volume, design speed, capacity, pavements, structures, horizontal and vertical alignment. These considerations are married to a thoroughly spurious cost-benefit formula and the consequences of this institutionalized myopia are seen in the scars upon the land and in the cities.

The method that has been used traditionally by the Bureau of public Roads and State Highway Departments involves calculating the savings and costs derived from a proposed highway facility. Savings include savings in time, operating costs and reduction in accidents. The objective of an improved method should be to incorporate resource values, social values and aesthetic values in addition to the normal criteria of physiography, traffic and engineering considerations. In short, the method should reveal the highway alignment having the maximum social benefit and the minimum social cost.

The issue was a simple one. Should the highway select the Greenbelt for its route in order to reveal it to the public or should it serve the Greenbelt, but avoid the destruction of transaction? The character of the highway is not changed by entitling it a parkway but this title has been used to describe highways in areas of great natural beauty - the Blue Ridge and Palisades Parkways, for example. Here, where beautiful landscapes are abundant, there is little social loss and great social benefit. Where resources are as precious as the Greenbelt in Staten Island, this conception is not appropriate. Better, follows the example of the Bronx River Parkway and create new values while avoiding destruction of the few oases that remain for twelve million New Yorkers. The best criteria for interstate highway route selection is slope, surface drainage, soil drainage, bedrock foundation, soil foundation, susceptibility to erosion, land values, tidal inundation, historic values, scenic values, recreation values, water values, forest values, wildlife values, residential values and instituitional values.

We can now apply the method to the Richmond Parkway. The first group of factors included some of those orthodox criteria normally employed by engineers-slope, bedrock geology, soil foundation conditions, soil drainage and susceptibility to erosion. The degree of opportunity or limitation they afford is reflected directly in the cost of highway construction. The next category concerns danger to life and property and includes area vulnerable to flood inundation from hurricanes. The remaining categories are evaluations of natural and social processes including historic values, water values, forest values, wildlife values, scenic values, recreation values, residential values, institutional values and land values. Each factor with its three grades of values is photographed as a transparent print.

The transparencies of the first group are superimposed upon one another and from this a summary map is produced that reveals the sum of physiographic factors influencing highway route alignment. Each subsequent parameter is then superimposed upon the preceding until all parameters are overlaid. The darkest tone then represents the sum of social values and physiographic obstructions to a highways corridor; the lightest tone reveals the areas of least social value representing the least direct cost for highway construction. The highway should be located in that corridor of least social value and cost, connecting points of origin and destination. Moreover, it should provide new values – not only of convenience, but also of scenic experience – as a product of public investment.