Criticism
The Cahill Expressway was controversial from day one. Its elevated nature, proximity to the city and utilitarian appearance meant that when the design of the elevated section was first unveiled to the public, it was described as ridiculous, ugly, unsightly and a monstrosity. This was an early example of freeway revolt.
Sydney Morning Herald writer Elizabeth Farrelly describes the freeway as 'doggedly symmetrical, profoundly deadpan, severing the city from the water on a permanent basis'. The sunken section of the expressway runs between the Royal Botanical Gardens and The Domain, key green spaces in Sydney. The Botanic Gardens Trust describes the expressway as destroying the spatial relationship between the two.
Demolition of the expressway has been proposed in the past, most prominently by former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, who in 1994 offered federal funds in the amount of A$150 million toward such a project. The then NSW Premier, John Fahey, rejected the proposal because of the cost and the resultant traffic problems. In 2005, the cost of demolition was estimated at more than A$1 billion, and the traffic problems resulting from the removal of the link would be severe, given the lack of alternate routes.
However, there are precedents; for example, in San Francisco in 1985, the Board of Supervisors voted to demolish the elevated Embarcadero Freeway which similarly divided the city from its waterfront. It was subsequently demolished after being damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake. However, the Embarcardero Freeway was not a major route and could be easily replaced with a boulevard/expressway. The city of Boston also demolished a number of elevated expressways (feeding into and crossing the city) after building a 10-lane underground expressway in a project dubbed The Big Dig. The project, at the time the largest single civil engineering project in US history, took more than a decade to complete at a cost of USD14.6 billion.
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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“A friend of mine spoke of books that are dedicated like this: “To my wife, by whose helpful criticism ...” and so on. He said the dedication should really read: “To my wife. If it had not been for her continual criticism and persistent nagging doubt as to my ability, this book would have appeared in Harper’s instead of The Hardware Age.””
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Parents sometimes feel that if they don’t criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn’t make people want to change; it makes them defensive.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)