Finding a Creative Way Around a Bad Highway
Since the 1960s, an elevated stretch of Interstate 787 has blocked Albany’s Hudson River waterfront. To reconnect the city and the river, some offbeat workarounds are in order.
Interstate 787 and its arterials have allowed easy access to Albany’s Empire Plaza state office complex. But the highway also blocked access to the city’s riverfront.
Photographer: Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group EditorialFrom almost the moment it was built, people in Albany have dreamed of getting rid of the city’s waterfront highway.
The concrete spaghetti known as Interstate 787 barrels down the shore of the Hudson River in New York’s capital city, allowing lawmakers and workers in the towering state office complex known as Empire State Plaza to make a swift exit to outlying suburbs or points downstate. By that metric, the highway — built in the early 1960s amid a ruinous spate of urban renewal that transformed the city — has been a great success: Even at rush hour, you would be hard-pressed to see traffic building up along its six lanes.