Kea Wilson wrote:

Urban highways are a fixture of city life in the U.S. — but much of the time cities don’t control them. They are the creatures of higher levels of government. The downtowns of many major cities, from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, are bisected by large overpasses that were built using state and federal funds. They remain subject to state or federal engineering standards. And they have been designed, above all, for automotive speed.

Recently this has grown controversial, as urban advocates push for re-knitting city fabrics and reducing pollution. Once unthinkable, the idea of taming urban highways has become mainstream, with Democrats in the U.S. Senate announcing a proposal to remove or downgrade these roads. Other proposals call for reform of the design standards — which originate with the federal government and are enforced by states — that lead to over-engineering.

The conflict is playing out in one of the bellwethers of urban America’s future: National Landing. This is the Northern Virginia neighborhood where Amazon put its HQ2, and it is drawing lots of other public and private investment. The local business improvement district (BID) wants to convert U.S. Route 1, an elevated highway that divides National Landing’s downtown, into a walkable boulevard with narrower lanes and slower car speeds. To achieve this, the BID is funding a “People Before Cars” campaign, which cites statistics showing that the road is less crucial to the local economy than officials may think. Some “75 percent of trips from National Landing residents are car-free,” the BID website claims, while Amazon has noted that many of its employees will live within walking distance of HQ2.

But the state of Virginia wants to maintain the status quo. As the Washingtonian reported in May, Virginia transportation officials proposed an alternative that would keep the road at about the current width. The agency’s concern is that narrowing Route 1 would divert too much traffic to local roads.