Ten Changes for a Creative Highway Overpass

Highway engineers have a tough job to do as is, especially when traffic flow and geography don't mix well. Many of us have marveled as we visited bigger cities at the mix of concrete and spaghetti bowl that is used to channel traffic in, out, and through an urban area (if you don't know your cloverleaf from your "spooey," check out this "field guide" to the interstate). In Winston-Salem, Business 40 and US 52 frame our downtown in ways that are not as demanding on creative engineering necessities as in our most crowded cities, but they can give rise to other creative opportunities for highway designers over the next ten to twenty years. Are there ideas others have tried elsewhere that might help us as we creatively re-design our major roadways, to make them stand out in the driving experience of our guests and residents? What follows is my list of ten things you can do with a highway overpass - in addition to its traffic engineering necessities - to help it give our town a distinct sense of place. Please click on any one picture for a larger view.

Color
Albuquerque, New Mexico uses two simple colors in its major overpasses, salmon pink and turquoise. The "Big I" interchange - where I-40 and I-25 meet - is pictured above. The colors become a branding of the area, as they mimic both earth and sky in the desert Southwest and are prominent in local Native American art. The colors are applied as paint in some locations and are integrated into the concrete of these overpasses. Color change does have some practical limits - as Albuquerque efforts to change street signage are showing. But color change can do more than just brand. Designers of the Lynn Cove Viaduct here in North Carolina used pigmented concrete with another goal in mind - to blend their highway bridge into the granite landscape in which it sits.


Texture
This Route 28 bridge over the Little Delaware in Bovina, NY was a Federal Highway Administration Excellence in Highway Design merit winner in 2002 because it used the same kind of stone in its construction as did a church next to the bridge. Rather than having the roadway intrude into the traditional architecture of the neighborhood, the designers sought to integrate it into the landscape with the use of textured stone.


In North Carolina, we are most familiar with this technique along our mountain parkways. In the picture here, an overpass on the Tennessee side of the Smoky Mountain Parkway is built of the same stone as its surroundings and overgrown by plantings as if it were an outcropping of the mountain on which it sits. Currently Business 40's corridor has several outcroppings of rock visible near the three bridges near Cherry Street. What would bridges styled off of that natural rock look like? How about a brick bridge mirroring the old-fashioned brick styling of the new downtown ballpark at the Peters Creek overpass?


Landscaping
Business 40's rebuild will have to follow roughly the same corridor in which it currently inhabits - no widening. So where are there opportunities for creative landscaping? At the underpass near Corpening Plaza, perhaps? Berkeley professor and former North Carolina resident Walter Hood created Oakland, CA's Splash Pad Park alongside and under the I-580 freeway. Sidewalks crossing the park play off the freeway's pylons, and arching benches and grassy mounds and plantings segment the space into a multi-purpose urban oasis with even a lively farmer's market. It's part of a body of work that has just won Hood the 2009 National Design Award in Landscape Design from the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Business 40 itself covers old Bellews Creek Street, and a number of side streets mask water features. Plans for the Piedmont Triad Research Park at US 52 and Business 40 include a rainwater catchment basin that will afford us a significant roadside aesthetic opportunity.


Lighting
Plans for an I-95 redesign through Pawtucket, RI include serene blue-and-white LED lighting alongside and under a bridge that serves as both a highway overpass and a river crossing. Many bridges are illuminated in colorful ways over water around the world, playing off the reflections below.


Noted highway aesthetic designer Vicki Scuri placed ethereal metal willow lights along the Douglas Avenue bridge in Wichita, KS, inviting you to feel the wind rushing through a town noted for its aviation history. But fewer highway overpasses take advantage of distinctive lighting either of the overpass itself or of the street it carries.


The street lightings above greet users at the light rail station in the midst of Portland, OR's high-tech "Silicon Forest" business district - artist Brian Borello likewise calls these illuminated whimsies "The Silicon Forest." These "trees" generate their own electricity through solar panels which branch out at their tops. Imagine a comparable iconographic and green-friendly lighting on the bridges framing our downtown biotech research park.


Regional Iconography
No surprise that the Lone Star state likes to use the Lone Star symbol on its highway bridges, is it? Texas highways make the regional brand an often-integrated part of their overpasses. Buck Scott's Scott Systems firm used elastomeric-urethane formliners to cast the gold star above into the overpass support. And Lone Stars augment with distinctive color banding the pillars of the "everything-is-bigger-in-Texas" experience that is the I-635/US 75 "High Five" interchange north of Dallas.



Many smaller highway overpasses in the state serve as de facto city signage, embossed with a state outline and a distinct artist's illustration for the locality hosting the bridge. Winston-Salem has two distinct city symbols, I'd argue - a Moravian multi-pointed star and that tin coffee pot of hospitality. Either could find its way around our highways more often and be seen by more than passersby of Baptist Hospital or an Old Salem traffic island.



Landmarking
Although they're on a pedestrian overpass bridge on Interstate 705 in Tacoma, WA, there's no mistaking once you see those large Dave Chihuly glass sculptures foisted skyward that the city's Museum of Glass is at hand.


Yes, you can simply slap a logo on an overpass, as here at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ; but why not creatively show folks "this" is the exit, "this" is the spot you drove to see. Old Salem is not located next to the highway - could sculpted images of frilled Moravian candles bookend the proper exit overpass instead?


Storytelling
The highway overpasses of New Mexico and Arizona are among the most celebrated in the country (yes, hard to believe that's true, for those of us used to concrete slabs). Why? you might ask. Because they tell you something about the place you're traveling through, vistas which might otherwise be sparse. Be it in the symbolism of the Native American designs in this New Mexico bridge above, or the stairstep geometry of its bridge abutment mimicking adobe housing, they fix a place in your memory.


Along a six-mile stretch of Pima Freeway in Scottsdale, AZ, a section known as "The Path Most Traveled," artist Carolyn Braaksma cast concrete reliefs and textures to place symbols of the desert landscape on otherwise unsightly overpass and sound barrier walls. Plantings and pathways along other stretches of the highway soften the disconnect between the land and the inhabitants of motorized vehicles. In 2003 Braaksma completed a commission ("The Green") for a park fountain in Charlotte, NC.


In Seattle, WA architect and "art practitioner" Alex Young placed a salmon run over a highway, jumping painted bronze fish along the walls of an I-90 HOV access ramp and leaping them occasionally even over the guardrails of the overpass. Did salmon once traverse the highway? No (though there are some in a nearby creek). But it is part of the distinct story of the Great Northwest that visitors expect. Everyone knows of Winston-Salem's tobacco heritage, one that has been tough to discuss but which is a distinct part of who we are. Could a Peters Creek bridge by the ballpark, nearly straddling the dividing line between old Winston and old Salem, artistically celebrate the blending of tobacco and textiles in the two towns with its new anchors in the arts and innovation? Could a bridge over US 52, a historic dividing line between our black and white citizens, celebrate struggle and triumph and hope with an imprint of Winston-Salem resident Maya Angelou's words, "Still I Rise"?


Multipurpose Design
This photo of the wilds along the Trans-Canada Highway shows an overpass whose primary function is not auto transport but animal transport. The edges of the overpass are fencing hidden by landscape trees and bushes, coupled with barriers to otherwise crossing the highway, corralling area wildlife to flow from one side of the highway to the other with minimal interruption. I use it as a reminder that highway bridges often break up urban space unnaturally. A bridge that crosses a natural barrier like a river is often praised as a blessing for development and livablity on both sides of the divide. A highway overpass, however, too often cuts off previous human traffic flow between areas except by vehicle. Making overpasses accomodate happily motorized and pedestrian (and bicycle) traffic is a goal our city transportation officials are already examining, including the possibility of a greenspace park as a potential part of any 3rd-4th-5th Street overpass rebuild on US 52.


Pattern
When in town last fall, bridge architect Fred Gottemoeller (whose design for Greenvile, SC's Reedy River footbridge made it a city icon) pointed to an interesting model for the replacement of multiple bridges with a shared vista, an opportunity we have for the bridges of Business 40. Look at the series of arched overpass bridges on eastbound US 59 entering Houston, TX.


As I've looked at the photos of the place, the nesting effect of the arches in a driver's sight line serve to announce the coming of downtown, something special. Announcement by pattern is nothing new: ancient Babylon announced the Ishtar Gate with an avenue adorned with a gold-on-blue repetitive lion motif.


One need not go archaeological to confirm the practice. Almada, Portugal also marks its city's presence with a pattern of distinctive design in the overpass bridges that serve its citizens. I'm not sure if the elevated central support shown above is an allusion to an arrow or symbol of the city or simply a whim of the bridge designer.


Instead of a repeating and building pattern in the distinct shape of the city's bridges, you might create a repeating and building pattern of symbols or structures along the roadway as you near the city center. Visitors to Los Angeles Airport are greeted by Paul Tzanetopoulos's series of glass pylons along their roadway approach, illuminated in LED colors from Angstrom Lighting at night. If you saw the changing LED light display at the Millennium Center here last fall, you know the enchanting potential for such devices. Here, one might build in intensity a forest of double helix or something as you approached a new 52 and 40 interchange, or repeat some "arts and innovation" symbol around innovation gateways throughout town, from Baptist's research hospital to the Arts District to our local universities.


Architectural Showpiece
A step beyond a pattern dictated primarily by aesthetics, not engineering, is what I'm calling the architectural showpiece - a roadway that funnels you into and through such a distinct design that it would create a detour-inducing "I'd like to drive through that" experience. Frank Gehry designed the amphitheater at Chicago's Millennium Park only after officials agreed also to let him build this over-the-highway connector. The serpentine BP Bridge is, for pedestrians and those driving underneath, a "full-metal Gehry" experience, not just a simple way to cross the road.


Imagine the driving experience going through the Clyde Arc, the Glasgow, Scotland landmark known to locals as "the Squinty Bridge" because of the tilted angle of its asymmetric tied arch. Here's a daytime view. Yes, this is a bridge going over a river, not a highway overpass. But you could create the same kind of driving experience going over the extended elevated highway section of Business 40 in front of Corpening Plaza. It takes advantage of the intimate view of Winston-Salem's living room that is afforded in that stretch of road, and "Squinty" isn't too different from an arch span design proffered by one team of local designers for that spot in last October's Creative Bridge Design exhibition. Likewise, the same driver's vista would be appealing alongside the Piedmont Triad Research Park - not that different from the Santiago Calatrava bridge I Photoshopped into downtown a few years ago.


Authenticity, and "the Gambler" rule
In designing a creative highway overpass, it is possible to use any combination of these creative attributes here listed or others, limited only by an artist's, engineer's, or architect's imagination. I would only add two aesthetic caveats of my own to their use - I'm sure the money folks and others will find more. It seems to me the best regarded works shown here are authentic both to their place and to their purpose. The creative additions in design are celebrations of real things in the location or its spirit. For example, to me, the Hakim Expressway Overpass above in Teheran, Iran has many interesting things in it: but as an outside visual visitor, it also strikes me as being less authentic to its place and more a zealous banquet of stylistic tweaks. Then again, I freely admit that, having seen Babylonian blue bricks from the Ishtar Gate, I feel incongruence when I see Williamsburg brick in the land of ancient Persia.
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Lastly, given the number of overpass bridges we will be replacing in a short stretch in Winston-Salem, there probably should be either a measured restraint in the variety from any one overpass experience to the next or at least hints at stylistic consistency throughout. To that end, the Arts Council's working group committee has these last few months already noted that some of the bridges to be replaced lend themselves to extra design opportunities more than others. To me, it brings to mind the judiciousness called for in the old Kenny Rogers' song, "The Gambler" - "you've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em." Just because you can make every bridge a work of art, a light show, and a fountain - and, yes, Nanhu Bridge above is a nice bridge in Nanning, China - it doesn't mean you have to or ought to.

Many of these images of bridges were posted by Flickr users in public topic forums. Since clicking on an image here in Blogger will only lead to a larger image hosted on this site, I have listed the source link and poster of the original image in the "title" tag visible when you hover your mouse over an image. I have not seen a cataloging done of transportation designs by the kind of aesthetic category I have tried to do here (let me know if you know of one). Yet an inspiration for me and the PA&DC remains Dian Magie's book On the Road Again: Creative Transportation Design, which catalogs examples by function of project rather than by the aesthetic element creatively altered. -JEE

Bridges - and Public Art - Update

A few years back, before a redo of Business 40 was in the conversation, I wrote a piece about how Winston-Salem needed a signature structure to help brand itself and make it a place so distinctive that people would want to come and see. This was a result of a brainstorming session held by the Winston-Salem Visitor Center - a group which needs community support now more than ever. I suggested a national contest for a signature bridge design and Photoshopped a Sergio Calatrava bridge right in front of an artist's rendering of the planned downtown research park as a way to say "new," "cool," "groovy," or whatever positive you wanted to say. Mainly you just would want to see the thing (click on the small image for a bigger one to better see the "harp string" cables).

This summer, I stepped away from a few meetings of the Arts Council's Public Art and Design committee and this blog - a family member's illness and an unexpected denouement to my role on the local elections board kept me away from monitoring their conversations and, frankly, lessened my enthusiasm for community involvement. In the process I did learn, however, that wordle.net does give you an artistic way to deal with news you'd rather not use.

But interesting things have been happening, and I thought I'd let you know. Over the summer several members of the PA&DC began discussions with members of the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership, the Community Appearance Commission, the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce, NCDOT, and a few other individuals about the issues raised and opportunities presented in creative highway design enhancement - i.e., better architectural design of highways and bridges, and more aesthetic attention to the same (through public art, materials, lighting, etc.). The group has even looked at potential for LEED-type efficiencies in highway design (including recycled and local-produced materials and rainwater catchment issues), even though there is no LEED certification program for highway construction - yet. Most all of the tweaks involve a change to current NCDOT practice but it is change that other states have modeled can be done, and done cost efficiently (see several posts on the blog you are reading). Anyway, many of these ideas local DOT leadership is open to exploring. These "working group" meetings could be the beginning of concrete steps to go from fifteen minutes worth of Photoshopping to true creative destination placemaking in our major transportion corridors. The deadlines for serious involvement in design changes are probably no later than 2011, though competing state priorities with scarce DOT funds could push local projects farther out than that. But I wish them well as they seek to build better, and more beautifully.

The Arts Council's PA&DC having split off its ideas on the Business 40 bridge design redo to a separate group, the committee has returned to its primary work promoting and assisting public art installations in the city. Several of the committee members aided the Arts Council in selecting the artists whose work will be displayed in public areas of the new Sawtooth Center. I missed SECCA's public art event during the National Black Theatre Festival (Kianga Ford's oral and aural interpretation of Winston-Salem's history - "34 x 52 x 40" is still accessible here). But I did hear SECCA-sponsored Mark Jenkins talk about his work at Reynolda House the last full week of September. That week, indeed, was probably as big a week as public art has had in the city this year. On Monday, Jenkins' first public work was taken down within hours of its placement in a kerfuffle over the failure to give a heads-up to officials over its location and purpose; Tuesday saw Jenkins speak on his evolving philosophy of public art at Reynolda House before a packed audience of art students and the public. On Wednesday the Arts Council board met to decide its public art contest winners, and on Friday the Enrichment Center opened its loving new public art sculpture garden. On that Saturday the 26th, West End hosted its ARTSfest, where, among a variety of media represented, you could buy sculpture for your own public art.

All the while that week, construction was resuming on the city's biggest investment in its skyline, the baseball stadium. Let's hope that in all the cash invested and to be spent in this project that the city and owners will abide by their commitment to have the developer spend $10,000 for public art installation. If Charlotte can do one percent for city buildings on public art, and Greensboro can have a community public art foundation lead in assembling monies for art, surely the City of the Arts can abide by a 0.0212765957 percent investment in art in this important public work.

Would you sign on?

"I/We, ___________, advocate the use of distinctive architectural design and public art in the renovation of our major downtown transportation corridors as a way of branding and communicating the city of Winston-Salem as a place of creative commerce."

How many institutions, civic groups, neighborhood associations, business groups and individual citizens could we get to sign on to such a simple declarative statement as a way of telling political and transportation leadership that this issue and opportunity is important?

Fill in your name. Get groups you belong to to agree to this modest proposal as well. Share the signed statement with area elected officials, city transporation and planning departments, and the state DOT. Share a blank one with friends and neighbors. Moneys will be set aside to be spent on our thoroughfares. This is about how, not how much. Add your support before old habits are in place.

Our Fermata Cantata

I am often asked "where are we on the Business 40 bridges project?" "what's going on with public art?" "what we can we do to help get it going?" And I must say, big-picture wise, regarding public art in Winston-Salem, the image that flashes in my mind, and catches responding words in my throat when asked such questions, is the symbol above.

For the musically challenged among us - and yes, I once pronounced the phrase "treble and bass" as if I were describing fishing adjectives for "hook and boat" - here's a nuanced description from the site www.bach-cantatas.com. "A fermata is the musical symbol of a semicircle (facing downward) with a dot inside it. In some music, it means we should hold a note longer than we would normally. In other music, it simply marks the end of a phrase (e.g. in a Bach chorale) suggesting a lift or a breath, with or without extra time; or in some other situations it merely marks the end of a whole piece, meaning 'don't bother turning the page, you've reached the last note.' Some people automatically assume that it means the first thing; others take it situation by situation. It's important to think about, anyway."

I think giving birth to a sustained public art effort in Winston-Salem is a bit like listening to a "fermata cantata." There are many beautiful voices - artists, institutions, politicians, administrators, advocates. I hear some intriguing melody lines - new bridges defined by creative art and design, a centennial to be celebrated with art placed joyfully around town. Efforts at a basso continuo - a city-sponsored public art commission, maybe, eventually, with common folk involved in the claiming and proclaiming. There are performing stages (though to date they change with each movement of the work) - Arts Council, SECCA, NCDOT, private developers. But there's just a lot of fits and starts that are hard for people to follow. Even for someone as dedicated as I am to the promise of public art, it takes a lot of effort to believe there is a unity to all these staccato bursts, a product that will sound as sweet as I believe it will when we look back on what we've done here.

The fact is, in music, you have to have a conductor, a leader, to tell you how long the fermatas are. The conductor tells you when to stop, but when to get going again. The conductor has to have a baton everyone can see and acknowledge from their point of view, not just a soapbox to stand on. For our public art effort, that baton-wielding conductor could be a political leader, a sustaining benefactor, or both.

I'd like to tell you when this "fermata cantata" piece will be set, when everyone will heed their cues, when unity of purpose will make a beautiful public art music we can all see with our eyes. I can promise you, though, that the more who advocate for public art from the city, who say they want "a ticket," the sooner the performance will be underway again. And at the end of that day, I'll say "Bravo!"

Proof Everything Ends Up on the Web Eventually

For those who want to imagine a different driving experience on Business 40, I offer a palpable reminder of what it currently is like. An unknown YouTube poster, "linesinthesand," has posted an extended video from his dashboard as he cruises from the west side of Forsyth County, first on US 421, and then to the east along Business 40. The real-time driving experience of the bridges in the planned Business 40 reconstruction begins at 5:19 into the clip at Fourth Street, and ends at 6:28 of the clip at Church Street. Good music here, too, though I personally prefer ZZ Top's "La Grange" as a soundtrack when motoring for pleasure. The groove in this video takes me back to days patrolling Gaston County in the late '70s in a mellow cream-yellow-and-tan Cutlass Supreme. "Opera windows:" now that was public art!

Bridges to Somewhere

In a guest editorial published over the weekend in the Winston-Salem Journal, Russell DuBois, a staff architect in facilities planning for the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, argues that NCDOT replacement of the Business 40 bridges will provide downtown with architectural possibilities.

DuBois notes: "With the price of gas rising and the economy hurting, some may scoff that the last thing we need is to drive up the cost of the bridge replacement by incorporating a bunch of design frills. But it is a hallmark of great architectural design that it is often no more expensive than the run-of-the-mill alternative. And remember, this is an opportunity that won't happen again for decades. Surely we as a community can agree that any nominal extra costs would be more than made up for by the added value these designs would provide to our built environment and how it is perceived by visitors as they drive through."

Words well said.

Photos above are of the Juscelino Kubitschek Bridge, Brasilia, Brazil, as seen on the website Nine Amazingly Unique Bridges, recommended to this blogger by Katie Gunter.

Creative Bridge Design Exhibit Opens Today, Through October 3

The art exhibit "Creative Bridge Design" will take place Tuesday, September 16th and run now until October 3 at the DADA Center at 526 N. Liberty St. in the Downtown Art District in Winston-Salem.

The art exhibit is to inspire and motivate both the Winston-Salem Community and funders of the Business 40 Project to incorporate public art and creative design into the Business 40 Bridges. The presenting of local artists’ works and examples of innovative bridge design will be among the first visual models presented to the public and NCDOT for the Business 40 Bridges. It will be part of a dialogue in which the community, the Arts, and the State can work side by side on a large scale project that will heighten the city’s development and identity as the “City of the Arts”.

For further information on Creative Bridge Design art exhibition contact Katie Gunter at gunterk7@gmail.com

Where to Lobby for Better Business 40 Design

If you've been to the Business 40 project website, you'll see that the feedback form provided is limited to polling the public on the six-year versus the two-year closure plan. You can leave more general comments online at the Communications Office of NCDOT, or write these transportation officials directly with your thoughts.

Mr. John F. Sullivan, III, PE
Division Administrator
Federal Highway Administration
310 New Bern Avenue, Suite 410
Raleigh, NC 27601

Mr. Lyndo Tippett
Secretary of Transportation
North Carolina Department of Transportation
1 South Wilmington Street
Raleigh, North Carolina 27611-1501

Ms Nancy W. Dunn
District 9 Board Member
North Carolina Department of Transportation
Aladdin Travel
485 Shepherd Street
Winston-Salem, NC 27103

Mr. S. Patrick Ivey, PE
District 9 Engineer
North Carolina Department of Transportation
375 Silas Creek Parkway
Winston-Salem, NC 27127

Mr. Ed Lewis
Public Involvement and Community Studies Supervisor
North Carolina Department of Transportation
1583 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-1583

You may also contact city and county officials to lobby federal and state highway officials on this issue. And, as turnabout is fair play, if anyone has any comments about this effort, feel free to contact this blogger at this email or the snail mail below.

J. Eric Elliott
1219 Forsyth St.
Winston-Salem, NC 27101-2403

"I'll have what they're having": Here's my ask for NCDOT and the Community

Arriving in today's email is this news from the city of Seattle: 4Culture and the King County Department of Transportation Road Services Division are seeking a United States artist as design team member on the South Park Bridge Replacement Project. The qualified applicant will have experience working in design team collaborations for large, transportation infrastructure projects and or specifically bridge projects, with additional experience working with Landmark structures. The selected artist will be asked to realize innovative solutions respectful of local historic context within a culturally and economically diverse community. The selected artist shall receive a Design Contract for $60,000. Upon proposal review and approval the artist shall be awarded a contract for Commissioned Artwork for $240,000 plus applicable construction credits. King County is considering a replacement bridge that would cost in the range of $74-$90 million.

Folks ask me what should we ask for, aesthetically, on this Business 40 project. It would be nice if the City of the Arts had the trifecta in place for all its public art opportunities: a steady funding stream (filled in many arts-conscious communities by a percent-for-art program); a professional process for the hiring of public art and design talent and the strategic siting of their work (filled in many arts-conscious communities by a paid public arts administrator or public design commission); and a governmental process for airing community hopes and concerns for the public art and design projects that share their space. The City-County Planning Department has just started such a citizen committee to review public arts gifts after my neighborhood, West End, offered a sculpture to the town at the conclusion of the city's last ARTSfest celebration jointly with the event's other co-sponsors. But, the truth is, we just do not have all the parts of a long-term process for public art and design in place in Winston-Salem; and they may not be in place before Business 40 plans need to be set.

The Business 40 project, however, affords a way to meet all three of those public art process needs itself, and can serve as a catalyst for finishing local long-term process considerations. A dedicated portion of federal highway monies (1-2% of an estimated $100 million) must be spent on beautification of the route, and hiring design and artist advice at the beginning of the roadway process can be a more effective way of creating beauty than adding shrubs, doo-dads, and light fixtures at the end of the process. Secondly, NCDOT already has experience working with outside consultants on other transportation projects around the state to improve their aesthetics, if not yet in Winston-Salem. And finally, NCDOT already has scheduled the forming of community bridge design teams to gather input on the layout and appearance of the roadway bridges from citizens. The current Business 40 project is already setting a high bar for effort in gathering community concerns; adding community aspirations shouldn't be that difficult. The process elements are here, folks, if we will just ask for them. I'm asking NCDOT that they make a national search for an artist to be an integral part of the design team of this roadway from the start. By adding an experienced transportation corridor artist/designer to the Business 40 team, NCDOT can offer the community some aesthetic choices for the new roadway, not just alternative bypass routes. I want our place to give itself the chance to see some of what's possible within a budget. And what's more possible if we as a city find ideas worthy of extra funds.

What might come of the effort? A postcard-view bridge opportunity at Peters Creek, with stadium and skyline in the background. A chance for a fun pedestrian bridge at Green Street. A way to knit back neighborhoods torn apart by the initial build of the road nearly sixty years ago. Symbolic reminders of things found in our place shown right along the roadway. Showing travelers that they are driving on a dash that separates old Winston from old Salem. Or a corridor driving experience that in its styling and details will feel different in such a way as to mark our place special.

I'm no artist. The choices in my brain only mimic other places in the way ideas for interior design at Home Depot and Lowe's always fall in certain style baskets. But if I want my house to reflect me, my priorities, and sense of style, I'll hire a professional designer, and not just order from the catalog.

Even in the City of the Arts, which so values design and creativity in many ways, we do not live in a perfect public art world. Let's not make the perfect the enemy of the better. Let's ask for more than interchangeable interstate concrete. Let's support transportation engineers doing their work with design and art professionals adding their talents as well. Ask for more from our transportation and community leaders - not more money, but more design and artist input. I confidently expect that NCDOT will deliver us a good roadway. But I want us to ask for something better, something more. I'll have what they're having.

Carpe Viam

Probably the most famous bridge in the state of North Carolina is the Linn Cove Viaduct, a serpentine embrace of the slope of Grandfather Mountain installed along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the early 1980s. Although the technical challenges of traversing the site could have been made easier with road cuts and strategic mountain blasts, the bridge designers, Figg Engineering Group, seized the opportunity to make an aesthetic statement with the highway and to work with the landscape rather than simply conquer it. Blending iron oxides into the concrete, the team even "painted" its building materials to more closely resemble the granite of the rock face on which the bridge rests.

The city of Asheville sits in a high valley surrounded by mountain crests. When the I-240 thoroughfare into the city was completed a few years back, engineers sacrificially blasted through one wall of mountain encircling the city. But the highway awkwardly merged with the town's main east-west local street. The subsequent completion of north-south Interstate 26 offered the city a chance to connect the two interstates near the French Broad River running through town, relieving pressure on downtown traffic. The initial drawings from transportation officials for the I-26 connector offered several options to the city. But to many in the local design community, the plans were unnecessarily complex and wasteful in their use of city space, as well as being visually unappealing.

A local group of architects and design friends, aided by a grant from the American Institute of Architects 150th Anniversary Celebration, pooled their talents and formed the Asheville Design Center. They rented a downtown storefront, offered volunteer hours, canvassed community concerns, created a three-dimensional model where citizens could visualize alternate routes, and came up with their own set of technical concerns and aesthetic opportunities they wanted the project to address. The biggest concern was to reduce the amount of scarce lands lost to exit and entrance ramps in the official plans. When locals suggested a double-decker roadway in strategic points and a single bridge instead of two, area friend Figg Engineering Group (of Linn Cove fame) offered up a design for a two-story bridge that will solve the technical needs of the I-26 Connector and give the city a beautiful new postcard view, uniting river, mountains, and city skyline with a stylistic statement that will say that place does things differently and more beautifully.

Asheville's experience on the I-26 Connector has changed the way dialog about transportation projects and potentials is approached in that community. Both transportation officials and community leaders have new insights on the benefits of working together. NCDOT is already making great efforts in Winston-Salem to collect community concerns in the upcoming Business 40 project, and our strong local transportation and planning agencies are anxious to put their good talents to the technical challenges ahead. But Winston-Salem has yet to pull together its creative design resources, its priorities for beauty and self-statement, in addition to those technical requirements that a new urban roadway must meet. The picture below shows the new downtown baseball park just to the west of Winston-Salem's skyline, alongside the Business 40 corridor (at photo right) that will soon be re-designed. We have an opportunity to add beauty as well as improve the function of this roadway. Will we as a community "seize the day" of this opportunity? Will we, in essence, "seize the roadway," and make it uniquely our own?

Corridor-Wide: Next Round of Business 40 Meetings to be Held

The first set of corridor-wide meetings for the Business 40 project has been scheduled. Corridor-wide meetings will be conducted at major project milestones or for specific topics and provide opportunities for the community to interact with the project team and discuss project issues and recommendations.

The dates, times and locations are as follows:
Tuesday, June 10; 5-8 p.m.; Anderson Center at Winston Salem State University; Reynolds Park Drive, off MLK Jr. Drive.
Wednesday, June 11; 11 a.m.-2 p.m.; Sawtooth Building Amphitheater in Winston Square Park*; 226 N. Marshall Street. *If inclement weather, the meeting will be moved to the Ballroom of the Sawtooth Building adjacent to the park.
Thursday, June 12; 5-8 p.m.; R J Reynolds High School Cafeteria; 301 N. Hawthorne Road.

Attending a Business 40 Project Public Meeting

The second set of public meetings sharing results of neighbor surveys on the upcoming Business 40 reconstruction proceeds this week. Please attend one of these sessions if you can and show your support for the project and the design possibilities it affords our city. Here's a report on the Business 40 Improvements Neighborhood Meeting held February 19, 2008 at Reynolds High Cafeteria for the West Highlands and Buena Vista neighborhoods.

The first impression one had was of forty smiling people decked out in orange welcoming you to the event: at four check-in stations, at easel displays around the room with color graphics of survey results in each neighborhood, and at a delicious buffet spread, the latter (for this event provided by the Arts Council of W-S/FC) included chicken pie, cake and salad, as well as beverages. I felt like I was a guest at a restaurant or an art gallery rather than an attendee at a public meeting. As first impressions of hospitality go, this one was impressive.

The room was organized for a PowerPoint presentation by DOT and survey group officials, with two microphones for use by the public in a Q&A session, a court reporter transcribing the session, and a gentleman summarizing points made by the audience on a flip chart. The first 15 minutes of the presentation by Jumetta Posey were about process steps, including a review of the household survey and various stages for public input thereafter (neighborhood meetings being the first public meetings). Then DOT's David Spainhour reviewed the engineering challenge of the project. First, to bring Business 40 up to today's standards for pavement and bridges. It was built in 1955 before interstate standards were set as a crosstown parkway (like Silas Creek and Peters Creek would later be) and was never meant to be an interstate. In fact the eleven bridges that have to come down (eight overpasses, three underpasses, not all overpasses may be rebuilt) were built by different contractors and represent eleven different bridge designs!

The second goal of the project is to improve safety and roadway conditions, primarily through improvement of ramps and shoulders. Interestingly, DOT does not have room to expand the highway much beyond its current width, and so at the end it will not look like Bypass 40 interstate - but just a newer narrow Business 40. Were it not for the extra prestige (and some highway dollars) that some attach to the business interstate designation, Spainhour said it would be a better road as a limited access parkway as initially designed. [Ed. Perhaps here's an opportunity to call the thing the "Wachovia Parkway" (whether we keep the Business 40 designation or just leave it as US421), reclaiming the Wachovia name which publicly left town displays with the bank, and bringing it back as the land identifier for here that it once was.]

Ms. Posey reviewed the results of neighbor surveys as posted around the room. The showcase statistic was that most people favored closing the road completely for two years rather than leaving it partially opened for six. But that statistic was shown somewhat hollow in the Q&A period. Neighbors wanted to know which roads would be alternate routes, and the one helpful survey question on this point (which other routes would you use were 40 closed) was not summarized and graphed. Ms. Posey said they would try to have that up at future meetings. Neighbors expressed concern about a complete shutdown of Business 40 absent details which of their traveled streets might be impacted. DOT's Spainhour said the normal construction time for a bridge reconstruction project like this would be 4 years, so 2 years would already be an ambitious cycle, requiring 24 hr construction schedules [Ed. No survey questions asked how neighbors would feel about construction noise in the middle of the night for two years.]

Before any shutdown happened, several years worth of improvements to alternate routes would be done first - including possible extension of MLK across 8th/NW Blvd to hookup with Reynolda as an alternate around downtown route. Several people expressed their disappointment that the public meeting was not a chance to hear more details from DOT on alternate routes and actual inconvenience costs of the project. Posey and Spainhour said those details would be forthcoming after all neighborhood review meetings were held, and there would be a chance after that time for more public meetings on specific issues: bridge design, alternates, etc.

Several people spoke up requesting that DOT include considerations, in addition to the safety and standards upgrades, about the design and aesthetics of the roadway project. First brought up by Eric Elliott of the Arts Council's Public Art and Design Committee, Katie Gunter at Salem College said she is doing a senior project on possible bridge designs as part of her Arts Management degree. Another Salem Arts Management student, Sandy Romanac, spoke of her excitement about the potentials for the area. Neighbor David Wallace mentioned the ARTS Council email he received about the meeting and asked DOT to please consider the aesthetic and design opportunities. Afterwards, Cuban artist Raul Montero was introduced to Eric Elliott by Que Pasa Carolina's Adolfo Briceño, and seemed excited about the community building aspect of the project.

The meeting was unique in its hospitality, daunting in its challenges for the city, but optimistic in that folks seem ready to pull together for a project that can help our town tremendously. - Eric Elliott, West End Association Past President, Arts Council Public Art and Design Committee member. Photos courtesy of www.business40nc.com

Business 40: Our Workhorse, also Our Canvas?

Business 40 has been the workhorse thoroughfare of commuters and visitors to Winston-Salem since being built as our "downtown expressway" in the 1950s. The planned rebuilding of eight overpass bridges at the heart of this roadway gives us a unique opportunity to design not just a functioning roadway but also a new series of vistas and impressions about our place and its sense of self. Community meetings about the rebuilding will be held starting in 2008, as neighbors along the route share their hopes and concerns for the project. You can find updates on the public meeting schedule at this website.

We hope that neighbors and other community members will ask transportation and political decision-makers that the project be designed both for engineering traffic needs and for its artistic impression-making potentials. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."