While the nation undertakes the most massive infrastructure improvements in two generations, Orlando Delogu calls for modest changes to a manifestly unsafe Interstate 295 through Portland (“Commentary: No call for draconian approach to Portland’s I-295 link,” Jan. 27).

Highway engineers tell us the tight spacing of its interchanges – seven within 2.5 miles – fails to allow drivers adequate sight-line distance, encourages excessive weaving and merging and defies modern standards of interstate design. Delogu argues for even more on- and off-ramps, synchronization of traffic lights, strict enforcement of a lower speed limit and better use of the Falmouth Connector.

One day I-295 through the city will belong to the past, and we’ll wonder how it ever happened and why it didn’t end sooner. In 2017, colleagues and I at the Muskie School, Creative Portland, Portland Society for Architecture and Portland Regional Chamber called for taking I-295 “to the ground” between Congress Street and Tukey’s Bridge, making the Congress-to-Washington corridor into a grand boulevard for local businesses, needed housing and useful public space.

Such a creative response to urban-interstate woes has been seized upon by local leaders nationally. What a gift it would be to our fair city to repair the pain inflicted upon it in the 1960s by re-creating I-295 as a lively and pleasurable boulevard. Benefits of the Back Cove Boulevard would include reclamation of some 300-plus acres of publicly owned land; restoration of local neighborhood street grids; strengthening Portland’s Emerald Necklace connecting its parks, and facilitating access along Forest and Washington avenues and to the Roux Institute.

Richard Barringer
Portland

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