Authors: Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Robert Gottlieb
Date: April 1, 2005
Project: A Road as a Route and Place: The Evolution and Transformation of the Arroyo Seco Parkway
These two statements about the Arroyo Seco Parkway (now known as the Pasadena Freeway) are separated by half a century in time and a sea of difference in the authors’ perception of the same roadway. Nevertheless, they epitomize eloquently the rise and fall of urban parkways. A predecessor of the modern freeway and a celebrated transportation model of the early 20th century, the urban parkway has fallen on difficult times. Designed for uninterrupted and pleasurable driving through park-like surroundings and a visual connection to the communities the driver passed through, parkways were once hailed as marvels of transportation innovation and design, and as safe and efficient alternatives to non-limited access arterials and boulevards. By the 1950s, however, the goals of pleasurable driving and visual connection had progressively faded in favor of engineering efficiency and higher capacity use. In the meantime, existing parkways became tangled in a web of problems. Originally designed for fewer cars at lower speeds, parkways like the Arroyo Seco Parkway had to accommodate significant increases in vehicles at much higher speeds. This led to traffic congestion (the ten minute trip of 1941 along the Arroyo Seco might now take as long as 40 minutes), bottlenecks, and a major increase in traffic accidents.
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