10 feet of width. In Detroit the property acquired to permit the widening of 3 miles of Woodward Avenue cost more than $9,800,000 of a total cost approximating $11,000,000, and the resulting functional improvement was very slight. In this case it has been estimated that the same total expenditure would have paid for 11 miles of limited-access highway constructed on a less expensive right-of-way, with far greater results in the improvement of transportation service.
In each of these cited cases the additional width acquired at each side of the street to be improved was less than the full depth of abutting property lots. It is probable that the costs in these cases would not have been materially higher if the entire depth of abutting lots had been taken; for, as a general rule, it is found that the acquisition of whole parcels of city property is seldom more expensive than the taking of a portion, because of the heavy payment usually required in consequential damages to the untaken remainder.
Left in private hands, the untaken portions of lots, called remnants, especially where they are very shallow or of other than rectangular shape, can often be used only for the erection of billboards, shanties, or other unsightly structures. In many cases they remain as ill-kept vacant lots, valueless to their owners, but nevertheless preventing access to adjacent property which otherwise would enjoy useful street frontage.
The minimum width of right-of-way required for urban sections of the interregional system will generally be at least as great as the depth of city property lots. Where such a width is to be taken it will be preferable, both for the avoidance of remnants and from the standpoint of cost, to take the whole depth of a tier of lots on one side of an existing street rather than half portions of the lots of opposite frontage.
In most instances, however, the Committee believes that a fully adequate provision for city sections of the system will require the acquisition of a block-wide strip. As previously suggested this will permit the retention of streets flanking the acquired block as the essential local service ways of the express artery. It will avoid exposure of the rear of properties, will reduce by as much as possible the effect of depression upon city underground facilities by leaving those in the beds of the flanking streets undisturbed, and will at the same time afford a sufficient width for adequate landscaping.
Land for marginal protection and future road widening.—On rural sections of the system, expecially those sections which will be constructed initially as two-lane highways, the width of right-of-way acquired should be sufficient to provide for any surface widening that may be reasonably anticipated. Nothing is more completely demonstrated by past experience than the costliness of successive acquisitions of property frontage to make room for repeated unanticipated road widenings.
The width acquired should also be sufficient to accommodate, at each side of the roadway in its eventual anticipated width, marginal strips of land to serve as a protection against the unsafe and unsightly development of closely crowding roadside stands, filling stations, and signboards.
Unfortunately, the expropriation of width additional to that required for the physical improvements immediately planned is
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