By Arrol Gellner
Seen much during your freeway commute lately? You wouldn't if you lived in California, whose state transportation department CalTrans is busily erecting so-called "sound walls"--blank, twelve-foot-high concrete block barriers--along many of the state's freeways.
While their effectiveness at reducing traffic noise remains open to question, one thing is certain: their mushrooming presence is helping excise any last vestiges of visual interest from the Golden State's freeway system.
A CalTrans fact sheet proudly boasts that California already has more than 150 miles of sound walls, completed at a cost of $120 million, "compared to 210 miles for the other 49 states combined." Apparently, the rest of the country knows something California doesn't know.
Despite their questionable efficacy, the state's taxpayers are routinely being soaked for these boondoggles, which "benefit" a relative handful of freeway-fronting property owners at a cost of about $30,000 per typical back yard. Nor do Californians have any meaningful input as to where sound walls are built, how they'll look, or even whether they're wanted at all. As long as freeway noise levels exceed 67 decibels and funding is available, state law allows the folks at CalTrans to essentially erect sound walls how and where they please.
And have they ever. The missionary zeal has resulted in vast stretches of once-panoramic roadway being pointlessly hemmed in on both sides by monstrous barriers, whose complete visual boredom is only feebly relieved by the occasional use of colored or patterned block. For hapless commuters, humane vistas of trees, countryside, and--God forbid--even messy backyards, are being replaced by mile after mile concrete block walls that serve mainly to give delighted graffiti artists a near-infinite canvas.
Like many state highway departments, CalTrans saw its heyday in the 1950s and 60s, when its engineers routinely turned out monumentally-scaled highway projects throughout the state. We should remember that these structures were considered engineering marvels in their time, and generally had widespread public support. But these same "marvels" callously ravaged low-income neighborhoods, blighted large swaths of our cities, and in San Francisco's case, single-handedly destroyed one of the world's most beautiful waterfronts.
Despite years of public protest, only a destructive earthquake proved powerful enough to excise the frightful double-deck Embarcadero Freeway, which choked off the city from its historic link to San Francisco Bay.
Enlightened city planners have since recognized that the old juggernaut approach to highway building, which blithely ignored both social and aesthetic consequences, was a recipe for urban disaster. Yet CalTrans and many other state transportation departments still seem firmly entrenched in the superhighway-building mentality of the '60s. The public, for its part, helps perpetuate the problem by being remarkably uncritical of the often heavy-handed plans these agencies put forth.
Sound walls are tomorrow's environmental embarrassments. As we stand at the supposed threshold of the New Urbanism, they insult the landscape on a massive scale, refuting everything we thought we'd learned about humane design. Which begs the question: Should the public in any state support sound wall building programs that, while surely enriching concrete block manufacturers, provide only marginal benefitss for a handful of landowners and at the same time blight freeways used by millions of commuters? Think about it, because the nation's sound wall building programs are just getting underway. California has another 126 miles worth of them just waiting for funding--and who knows what other highway department are up to.
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