[at-l] The Other MacKaye Vision

[texas12step at nym.hush.com (texas12step@nym.hush.com)]

Stop me if you've heard this one.

While in the reading room this afternoon, idly flipping 
through one of the two dozen-odd old civil engineering 
textbooks I have on hand, I came across the following 
amusing passage:

From: Laurence Ilsley Hewes [1942], "American Highway 
Practice" (volume one), John Wiley & Sons, New York, 
pp 204-205.

[begin except]

For certain outstanding scenic areas, recreational 
highways including "parkways" or "freeways" are 
developing increasing interest. [1] Where timber is 
dense and heavy, such highways or parkways should have 
at least 400 or 500 feet of right of way, and possibly 
even more, to preserve bordering trees against 
destruction by high wind or to provide beauty of 
landscape. There may be built-up areas through which 
increased widths of right of way seem prohibitive in 
cost or physically impossible. Such areas temporarily 
may be "zoned" as exceptions. Conversely, certain very 
much wider areas on metropolitan approaches may be 
acquired to provide this excellent "corridor" park 
effect. All of certain lands lying between sections of 
the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway and the Potomac River
were acquired partly for the purpose of keeping open 
distant views. The Westchester park authority acquired 
strips of land varying in width from 200 feet to more 
than a mile. Similarly, the smaller areas between old 
and new rights of way often should be retained in the 
new land takings. Center or traffic-separation strips 
also are becoming more and more desirable as safety 
devices as well as for landscape effect.

It should be observed that it is essential to acquire 
adequate rights of way *before* the highway is constructed.
Otherwise greater expense is certain. The cost of rights
of way will vary greatly according to the character of
the cultural and physical development and to the widths
obtained.

[...]

The *parkway* is coming to be a distinct type of highway. 
It is defined perhaps as a sightly development of the 
highway for exclusive passenger-car use, on a right of 
way much wider than usual in order to provide an 
insulating strip of park land between the improved 
roadway and private property. This strip thus eliminates 
frontage and on freeways access rights and creates an 
elongated park -- preferably passing through undeveloped 
areas and making scenery accessible. It is not 
necessarily the shortest or most direct route, for it 
must eliminate intersections of highways and railroads 
and must provide distantly spaced entrances and, 
frequently, secondary parallel roads to carry local 
traffic to these entrances. Regulations of the National 
Park Service, approved by the Secretary of the Interior 
Feb. 8, 1935, provide for acquisition by several states 
of rights of way and scenic easements for national 
parkways. Scenic easements are to be introduced for 
maximum protection without increasing the areas of land 
actually acquired. A right of way of 100 acres or more 
per mile shall be provided. This 100-acre right of way 
would itself be equivalent to a strip of constant width 
of 800 feet but need not be uniform. Thus the acreage 
may be balanced to meet conditions, but at no point 
should it be less than 200 feet wide. Its variation in 
width will depend on topography and other natural 
conditions and on the requirements of the parkway design. 
Similarly, an additional requirement of 50 acres per 
mile for scenic easement is a device to control future 
use of adjoining private land in order to maintain its 
values for the parkway.

[1] The idea of "townless highways" has been advanced 
for residence towns with side access only to main 
highways. See "Townless Highways for the Motorist," by 
Benton MacKaye and Lewis Mumford, Harper's Magazine, 
August, 1931.

[end excerpt]

Scenic drives through undeveloped areas along controlled-
access divided highways: the *other* MacKaye vision.

TXIIS