I wouldn't be surprised at anything. I-40 through Memphis was completely eliminated - miles of it! And the north loop around that city became the new I-40.
And West Memphis I-40 has finally ALMOST finished!!! After just a little bit over 40 years to do about a 10 mile stretch of road! (It was being worked on the first time I drove through there in 1980, since the 60's!. And had the look of being in process for at least a little while. Last year on our 4 trips through there, you could actually see the progress being made and it was mostly usable by August. Even the hard left turn to go around town! Our latest trip thru there 2 weeks ago, W Memphis was still ok, but there is something going on with the exit onto fake I-40...lane markings have changed and what was a 2 lane turn now necks back down to 1.)
Not exactly, it was never completed per the original plan.
During the 1960s alternatives were proposed, including routing I-40 north of the park, but this proved costly and redundant since the northerly route brought the highway within a couple miles of the I-240 bypass. Tensions within Memphis reached a new high on April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while standing outside at the city’s Lorraine Motel. Interestingly enough on that same day, the city council voted and gave the green light to allow the construction of I-40 through Overton Park. In 1969 CPOP lost a lawsuit filed against the city to halt construction. In 1970 an appeal was made to the 6th Circuit Court, where CPOP lost again. Finally, in 1971, CPOP won the right to have their case heard at the U.S. Supreme Court.
With CPOP bringing their case to the highest court in the country, John Volpe, who at the time was Secretary of Transportation under President Richard Nixon, represented the respondent in the case. CPOP’s main argument to the court was summarized thus:
“Under § 4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act of 1966 and § 138 of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968, the Secretary of Transportation may not authorize use of federal funds to finance construction of highways through public parks if a ‘feasible and prudent’ alternative route exists. If no such route is available, he may approve construction only if there has been ‘all possible planning to minimize harm’ to the park. Petitioners contend that the Secretary has violated these statutes by authorizing a six-lane interstate highway through a Memphis public park. In April 1968 the Secretary announced that he agreed with the local officials that the highway go through the park; in September 1969 the State acquired the right-of-way inside the park; and in November 1969 the Secretary announced final approval, including the design, of the road. Neither announcement of the Secretary was accompanied by factual findings.”
For their part, Volpe and his allies made the following counter-arguments:
“[T]he requirement that there be no other ‘prudent’ route requires the Secretary to engage in a wide-ranging balancing of competing interests. They contend that the Secretary should weigh the detriment resulting from the destruction of parkland against the cost of other routes, safety considerations, and other factors, and determine on the basis of the importance that he attaches to these other factors whether, on balance, alternative feasible routes would be ‘prudent.’
But no such wide-ranging endeavor was intended. It is obvious that in most cases considerations of cost, directness of route, and community disruption will indicate that parkland should be used for highway construction whenever possible. Although it may be necessary to transfer funds from one jurisdiction to another, 25 there will always be a smaller outlay required from the public purse 26 when parkland is used since the public already owns the land and there will be no need to pay for right-of-way. And since people do not live or work in parks, if a highway is built on parkland no one will have to leave his home or give up his business. Such factors are common to substantially all highway construction.”
The Supreme Court decided in favor of CPOP, but that didn’t end the saga. Throughout the 1970s, plans were discussed to route I-40 underground through the park, but again, cost considerations prevented this idea from gaining traction. Finally, in 1981, the Department of Transportation removed the I-40 designation from the “orphaned” section of I-40 that had already been completed inside the I-240 beltway. This part was re-named as Sam Cooper Boulevard.
https://americascanceledhighways.com/2018/06/13/see-you-in-court-memphis-and-the-fight-over-interstate-40/Just like the Embarcadero freeway through SF, it was never finished and was torn down after the Loma Prieta earthquake. The double decker highway that collapsed during that earthquake was I-880, the Cypress Viaduct freeway, in Oakland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Street_Viaduct#:~:text=At%20approximately%205%3A04%20p.m.,subsequent%20demolition%20of%20the%20structure.State Route 480 (SR 480) was a state highway in San Francisco, California, United States, consisting of the elevated double-decker Embarcadero Freeway (also known as the Embarcadero Skyway), the partly elevated Doyle Drive approach to the Golden Gate Bridge and the proposed and unbuilt section in between. The unbuilt section from Doyle Drive to Van Ness Avenue was to have been called the Golden Gate Freeway and the Embarcadero Freeway as originally planned would have extended from Van Ness along the north side of Bay Street and then along the Embarcadero to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_480
