Interregional Highways/Mid-city terminals of express highways

by National Interregional Highway Committee

MID-CITY TERMINALS OF EXPRESS HIGHWAYS

Curb parking of vehicles is generally recognized as a principal cause of the congestion of downtown city streets. The congestion reaches a maximum during the morning and evening hours when the daily flow and ebb of workers' cars are at their height. And the movement of arriving and departing vehicles is impeded by vehicles taking or leaving curb-side parking positions. Typical conditions are illustrated in plate II.

In most cities efforts have been made to ameliorate the greatest congestion by prohibiting rush-hour and all-day curb parking on the downtown streets, or by metering curb parking at rates considered reasonable for short periods but discouragingly high for all day.

Private initiative has contributed a further measure of relief by the provision of off-street parking places. In their simplest and earliest forms these took the form of lots, usually created by razing obsolete and run-down buildings. Located by the chance availability of such property, these lots have not always been suitably placed to meet the parking need.

They are also prepared usually at the least possible cost. Their accommodations for entrance, exit, and sorting are commonly inadequate, and so they often gain an evil reputation for fender smashing and other car damage.

Often unsightly in the extreme and irresponsible in ownership, the manifold defects of many of these places make it impossible to consider them as more than temporary expedients useful until a better and more seemly solution of the parking problem can be provided. Plate III gives views typical of the worst and the best of such parking lots.

More recently a substantial development of off-street parking facilities of a higher type has occurred. In a few instances these have been provided by the municipality. An outstanding example is the underground facility created by the city of San Francisco beneath Union Square Park opposite the St. Francis Hotel. (See plate IV.)

A greater number of the better facilities have been provided by private initiative. In their simplest form they are little more than multi-level parking lots created by the erection of a structure of two or more floors connected by ramps, and wholly without walls. One of these is illustrated in the upper view of plate V.

In their most elaborate form they consist of multistoried garage buildings equipped with elevators or ramps, and manned by a staff of attendants to receive and deliver the cars of patrons at entrance and exit points, and to place and remove them from the parking stalls provided on the several floors. A building of this type is shown in the lower view of plate V.

Between these extremes of the better types of privately provided facilities are others which possess merits warranting the belief that they suggest the prototype of the final best solution of the parking problem. As shown in plate VI these in their present stage of development differ from the simplest form illustrated in one of the views of plate V only by the addition of a grilled wall, and in some instances by the development of the ground-floor frontage for store space to increase revenue.

Functionally appropriate and capable of pleasing architectural treatment, the openwork walls of the parking stories eliminate the necessity of mechanical ventilation, which is essential in underground and closed-building facilities. Thus these self-ventilating facilities reduce the costs of vehicle accommodation.

A further development, the addition of upper stories for certain office and loft uses, might produce additional revenue which would permit the reduction of parking charges to a practicable and generally attractive minimum.

Reduction of the prevailing rates of structures of this type is necessary before these off-street facilities can offer the prospect of a solution to the general parking problem. While they are now usually operated at reasonable profit, this is possible only at parking rates which exclude all but a small percentage of the vehicle owners who must in the future be induced required to use off-street accommodations.

In a studied development and location of facilities of the type last described, the Committee sees what it regards as the most promising prospect of a completely satisfactory solution of the parking problem. A number of these parking garages, for instance, each within two or three blocks’ walking distance of the destinations of their patrons, are to be preferred to few larger facilities more distant from the travel objectives of those who must somehow and somewhere be accommodated.

In this connection, the provision of express highways which will concentrate the approach of a large volume of traffic to the business center at a few points, somewhat complicates the problem of distributing the traffic to its eventual convenient places of off-street parking.

Any attempt to discharge the free-flowing express traffic at one point into the surface streets of the downtown section, through such streets to find its way to distributed parking places, is likely to create an exit confusion and delay that will cause at the end of the express route a loss of much of the time saved by the free movement en route. Such an attempt, moreover, may cause a degree of congestion in the surface streets near the express highway terminus greater than that resulting from the present distributed approach of vehicles.

Termination of the express highway in an open square or plaza, a solution that has been suggested, is certain to encounter troublesome difficulties in channeling traffic through or around the plaza to and from the several connecting streets, and may still throw congesting volumes of traffic upon these streets at the approach to the plaza.

A wholly satisfactory termination of express highways in large cities will probably not be found short of the provision of a limited-access distribution route located circumferentially about the central business section. With traffic interchange facilities at selected streets on the fringe of the business section, such a route will so distribute the discharge and collection of express highway traffic as to (1) minimize the effects of entrance and exit delay upon the flow

Plate III.—Parking lots—good and very bad.

Photo by Gabriel Moulin Studios

Plate IV.—The Union Square Garage opposite San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel is reported to be the world’s largest underground parking garage.

Plate V.—The simplest and most elaborate forms of off-street parking structures. The structure above is little more than a parking lot in several levels. The lower structure is a multi-storied garage in which vehicles are parked and service rendered by a staff of attendants and mechanics.

Plate VI.—Examples of open-wall parking garages with grilled walls and store frontage (upper) and with upper stories devoted to office, loft, or other uses (lower). In this case the upper stories are occupied by bowling alleys. Such structures are suggested as the possible prototypes of a most desirable solution of the parking problem.

of traffic on the express route, (2) avoid excessive discharge or collection volume in any central city street, and (3) extend the advantage of free flow as close as possible to the central points of ultimate origin and destination of the traffic.

At traffic interchanges on the circumferential distributor route and at junctions of this route with each entering express road, are points favorable for the location of parking garages. Vehicles that can be conveniently parked at these locations will be kept completely out of the central street system, and the burden upon these streets accordingly reduced. For that part of the traffic that cannot be conveniently terminated at these points, other off-street parking facilities at well-chosen central points will be required, with movement to and from such points by way of the ordinary streets.