Originally Posted by
B. Carfree
I've seen pictures from a German city where they enclosed a freeway and built a park on top of it. You can't even tell there is a freeway there. My city chooses to elevate the freeways and put parks underneath them. Not surprisingly, the only users of such parks are homeless people who are trying to stay out of the rain. They are currently spending a couple million dollars putting a skate park under a freeway. I wonder how many homeless people own skateboards.
My first thought when I read that was that they are doing it wrong. An elevated walkway/MUP with a scattering of benches and flower beds would be cheaper to build/maintain due to the fact people on bikes/blades/boards/foot don't have the sheer mass as vehicular traffic does.
But then I thought that maybe the roadway was elevated to prevent pranksters from dropping stuff onto passing cars. Then I remembered that you are in the PNW and I recall that you tend to have less sunshine and more people suffer from S.A.D. (and I may be wrong on this) but doesn't the number of suicides climb during the worst of the S.A.D. 'season'? Perhaps they didn't elevate the "parks" in the hopes of less people jumping? Imagine what kind of chaos that would cause to the traffic below if someone fell from above.