City leaders pondering trenching Gateway Boulevard right through the heart of Old Strathcona should learn from history. Edmonton would be a much different place today had the city councils of 40 years ago pushed ahead with a grandiose scheme to run multi-lane roadways into the heart of the city from every which way.

They also might want to look at what other cities around the world are doing. Many of them are tearing down freeways, restricting vehicular access to their downtowns and reclaiming communities for people-friendly activities.

The cities have discovered the hard way that, instead of reducing congestion, freeways encourage people to move to remote suburbs and drive long distances to work and shop, increasing traffic dramatically. Freeways have blighted the core of many cities, leaving decaying and abandoned neighbourhoods.

The tug-of-war between the needs of the automobile and people-friendly, human scale communities has shaped our urban environments for much of the last 100 years. Those cities smitten with the automobile and its intoxicating speedy, independent mobility are places where public transit has been forsaken for urban sprawl, suburban strip malls, big box stores and a lifestyle that is simply unsustainable.

Edmonton has become one of those cities, and now even its greatest urban and heritage revitalization success story is on the chopping block. When the city’s transportation and public works committee rolled out plans to build what some are calling “Gateway Gulch,” it signalled that shaving a few minutes off a commute is a greater priority than the integrity of the city’s most beloved and richly historic district.

The scheme would widen Gateway Boulevard and trench it from a point just north of 84th Avenue under Saskatchewan Drive and through Queen Elizabeth Park, speeding the flow into downtown and accommodating more truck traffic. Pedestrians would traverse the trench by an overhead crossing.

The plan would cut the Old Strathcona arts district in half, marooning the Yardbird Suite and Catalyst Theatre from the Arts Barns, the Cosmopolitan Music Society, the Walterdale Theatre and the Varscona. It would strand the historic Ritchie Mill and the Strathcona Community League on the other side of the road.

Shirley Lowe, executive director of the Old Strathcona Business Association, is aghast at the scheme, and wonders how much more of our communities we are willing to sacrifice at the altar of the automobile. “This proposal is ill-considered on so many levels, but what is particularly galling is that it was completed without any community consultation,” she says.

“This ridiculous idea of a trench would destroy the connections so vital to Old Strathcona, and it would cut the Fringe Festival in half, cripple the Arts Barns and perhaps even spell the end of the Old Strathcona Farmer’s Market,” Lowe says. “It would make far more sense to move traffic volumes away from Old Strathcona.”

But sadly, as history shows, common sense is none too common.

Over the last 30 years, Old Strathcona has been resuscitated from a dying community with worn down old buildings into a vibrant, alive pedestrian-friendly shopping and tourist magnet. It took the passion and commitment of citizens who believed in the value of heritage, the advantage of owner-operator small business and the excitement that street-level, human scale interaction could bring.

They learned from the lesson of Jasper Avenue, which was ruined in virtually one decade – the 1970s – by bulldozing its old building stock, obliterating street-level businesses and making the automobile king. It’s no small irony that the very beginnings of the Old Strathcona Foundation came in 1974, out of the threat posed by destructive freeway proposals.

Those proposals, part of the “Downtown Freeway Loop” included a new bridge just east of the existing Walterdale Bridge, and expressways through Mill Creek Ravine, Cloverdale and the lap of Rossdale. Further west, the route was to continue up Mackinnon Ravine into west Edmonton.

The roadways would have destroyed Old Strathcona, and paved over much of the river valley and its adjoining ravines. Only a huge outcry from citizens stopped the fanciful farce. Fast forward to 2008, and it is deja vu all over again. The city is now proposing, piecemeal, expanded roadways into the river valley, and cutting into parks including Queen Elizabeth. Old Strathcona is once again on the chopping block.

What those advocating for wider, free-flowing roads into downtown won’t acknowledge is that adding capacity doesn’t alleviate congestion. Adding more lanes merely attracts more traffic, and congestion returns, usually sooner rather than later. Dump all that traffic into downtown, and gridlock will result.

Carving more roads into green space impairs the value of the habitat, adds to the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, obliterates the cleansing benefit of trees and shrubs and diminishes quality of life. The increased traffic flow brings more air pollution, more noise and more hazards for those on foot or bicycle.

Nothing depresses property values quicker than freeways. Living next to a multi-lane roadway, with its associated noise and air pollution, isn’t exactly a prime selling feature.

There’s no one solution to the tug-of-war, of course. But the city could start by immediately installing clear signage on the routes into downtown.

It could push forward with a multi-modal approach that would spread the commuter volumes across the river over several feeder routes – 109th Street and 99th Streets particularly – and increase investment in public transit. That’s where senior levels of government have a role to play, and the province must provide the dollars so urgently needed to improve public transit.

The city could say “no” to downtown developments, like an arena, that pull commuters from far-flung suburbs through core communities for quick-as-you-please in-and-out journeys. It could mandate any new developments that will draw large numbers of people be situated next to public transit corridors, particularly LRT.

Edmonton could learn from the experience of cities like Seoul, South Korea, which ripped down its elevated Cheonggye Freeway in 2003. The freeway has been replaced by a 14.5-kilometre Bus Rapid Transit line, designed to accommodate the drivers of the 120,000 cars that used the road every day. It is a stunning success story.

At the individual level, we’ve got to make choices to work and play closer to where we live, and reduce or eliminate commuting by car. We must lobby councillors, and elect those who understand the deep values of smart urban choices and the destruction automobile-centered planning brings.

Smarter urban planning has a role to play, too, and we urgently need communities that bring together in closer proximity the services we use in our day-to-day lives. Only by getting people out of their automobiles will Old Strathcona and the river valley survive the pressures of growth and the seemingly insatiable public thirst to get where they’re going quicker and more efficiently.

Otherwise, that spiderweb of freeways from 1969 will become the Edmonton of the 21st century.