{"id":10421,"date":"2015-02-13T11:22:55","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T16:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=10421"},"modified":"2015-02-13T11:22:55","modified_gmt":"2015-02-13T16:22:55","slug":"back-to-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/back-to-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

February\/March 2015 | view this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

The Franklin Arterial, reconsidered.<\/h3>\n

\"Back-to-the-Future\"<\/a>Just who did we think we were when we created the Franklin Arterial, marooning Munjoy Hill? And who do we think we are now, redefining it?<\/p>\n

By Patrick Venne<\/p>\n

Exactly how do we hit the brakes on the Franklin Arterial? Step one, give it back its old name, Franklin Street. Check. The word \u2018Arterial\u2019 was officially dropped in 2013. Patrick Venne, of Portland, is an attorney and urban planner employed in the real estate development industry.<\/p>\n

Arterial roads were all the rage as renewal strategies in the latter half of the 20th century. Now, as a demographic shift leads to a craving for intimacy in our public spaces, prior assumptions about the defining role of automobile traffic in the urban context are being questioned. Franklin Street sharply divides the peninsula from Interstate 295 to the waterfront\u2013neither efficiently nor with Old Port shoppers in mind. Acres of Class A retail and business opportunity in one of the toniest real estate markets in Maine sits unused between wide travel lanes promoting fast and inhospitable traffic, while pedestrians are marginalized: Cross at your own risk. Not only that, our great divide obliterated an historic neighborhood and sectioned off the East End from its bustling downtown\u2013the haves from the have-nots. To give it its due, Franklin Street enables lots of cars to access downtown directly, if slowly. The road has both pros and cons, but as the emphasis on sustainability from within replaces reliance on traffic from away, the street\u2019s present design appears\u2013like rush hour traffic\u2013to be on its way out.<\/p>\n

East Bayside\u2019s Jed Rathband, a developer and former candidate for mayor, insists it\u2019s time for a change. \u201cThe street is universally recognized as a failure.\u201d City councilor Kevin Donoghue, representing the East End, agrees: \u201cIt fails to fit into its urban context. The low-quality urban design serves only to repel people.\u201d Culturally, the area is still licking its wounds. The arterial \u201cdestroyed everything in its path,\u201d says Christian MilNeil, chair of the Portland Housing Authority Board. \u201cThey bulldozed\u2026houses that today would go for a half million dollars. The city\u2019s most acute problem is a housing shortage, and Franklin Arterial destroyed hundreds of units in the most walkable part of the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a destination city on dozens of national Top-10 lists, Franklin Street seems sorely out of place, but we\u2019re not the only victim of car-centric thinking. \u201cI remember living in the North End of Boston when the Central Artery (Interstate 93) came down,\u201d says Portland Planning Board chairman Stuart \u201cTuck\u201d O\u2019Brien. \u201cThe community was transformed in so many ways I didn\u2019t even think were possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take a crystal ball to see that Portland is in for a big makeover. But before we launch into it, we should remember\u2013the future will judge us by the assumptions we make in changing it.<\/p>\n

Activists and city staff, among others, have been working on plans that will alter Franklin Street in a way that could redefine the neighborhood. Markos Miller, chair of the study process underlying this work, says he envisions Franklin Street becoming more like other downtown Portland streets, with lanes close together, better sidewalks, and lined by human-scaled buildings. The intent, he says, is not to advocate for any particular design but rather to lead \u201ca process of inclusive discovery based on data analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Formed in 2006, just as a peninsula traffic study was unfolding, the Franklin Reclamation Authority grew out of a community workshop involving the Munjoy Hill and Bayside Neighborhood organizations in an effort to articulate a more holistic description of what\u2019s wrong with the street. Somewhat ironically, Markos Miller says, then-city manager Joe Gray\u2013who began his tenure with the city in part by working on the creation of Franklin Arterial\u2013was enthusiastic about the process and helped secure funding to support it.<\/p>\n

City support continues for the work today. Portland Mayor Michael Brennan says, \u201cMy hope is that with a redesigned Franklin Street we can re-knit the neighborhoods with a pedestrian-friendly streetscape and end up with some parcels of land for housing development\u2013while not adversely impacting vehicle access.\u201d The challenge facing the Authority now lies in funding the infrastructural surgery necessary to implement the desired changes. And that could take time. The first leg of the study, which looked at alternative designs, was funded largely by a federal earmark; but after final recommendations regarding feasibility are forwarded for approval to the city council, Miller notes, the project will likely become one element of a larger capital investment plan.<\/p>\n

Budgeting for projects like this always involves real \u201cstrategic trade-offs,\u201d according to Donoghue. He envisions a \u201cflexible implementation schedule whereby [the City] can make incremental improvements according to [its] means.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February\/March 2015
\nThe Franklin Arterial, reconsidered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10425,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[90],"class_list":["post-10421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-februarymarch-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10421"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10431,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421\/revisions\/10431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}