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.

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