The mini-freeways of Phoenix, Arizona


Something that has always amazed me about Phoenix is what I call the "mini-freeways". That is, the incredibly-wide streets that go all of the way back to the founding of the city, in territorial times. And it's just one of those things that makes me wonder what in the heck they were thinking, what did they expect? They must have been unrealistically optimistic about how much Phoenix would grow. And it's worked out wonderfully.

Take a look at Washington Street in territorial times. Now look at those tiny things there on the streets - horses and buggies. And even when cars started using these streets there was room for multiple lanes, along with the street cars. And the width of this street, along with other ones, was set it 1870.

And as the population of Phoenix grew, the wide streets accomodated traffic, lots of it. And those "mini-freeways" kept traffic away from the neighborhood streets, the same way that freeways do in places like Los Angeles.

I've lived in the Phoenix area for a LONG time (more than I care to admit, in fact) and it never ceases to amaze me that traffic can be heavy on a main street while the neighborhood streets are so quiet. Just like using a freeway, most people drive on the main streets. It just makes sense - they're wide and straight. You may not be able to go 70 miles an hour on them (although I've seen people try), but they usually flow at what I call "freeway speeds". There are even long exit ramps with turn arrows on them, so you can slow down a bit before you stop at a gas station.

This situation must have created something of a "golden era" for drivers in the 1950s and '60s. The traffic hadn't really caught up with the space allowed for it, on those wide streets, and even by the time I got to Phoenix, in the late 1970s, it moved well. By the 1980s more actual freeways were built, and nowadays Phoenix traffic has started to jam - nothing like in LA, but it doesn't flow as smoothly as it always had.

Image at the top of this post: Looking west on Washington at 2nd Street in 1908, Phoenix, Arizona. The blurry white building in the distance is the Capitol Building, which is still there.

If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more