Maybe someday?

12/27/07
It was drastically late and ridiculously overbudget, but one of America’s great cities this week finally finished maybe the most important public works project of the last 50 years. Boston’s Big Dig essentially freed that city from decades of noise, pollution and shadows by putting the city’s overhead arterial highway system underground and away from view.
Unfortunately, nothing like that is even on the drawing boards around here, but a city can dream, right? Imagining Bridgeport without the open wound of Interstate 95 running through its midsection, one can almost picture what the city must have looked like all those years ago.
Around the middle of the last century, cities around the country committed maybe the biggest urban planning blunder in history — carving up downtowns and neighborhoods in the name of the almighty automobile. From New York to San Francisco and most places in between, the highway took precedence, and neighborhoods were left with hulking masses that scarred the landscape and destroyed any semblance of community in their vicinity.
Nothing but dark underpasses and homeless encampments fill the underside of many expressways these days, but try to imagine a walk from Bridgeport City Hall to Seaside Park without that monstrosity of a freeway in the path. Imagine the façade of the Arena at Harbor Yard that people could read, rather than one facing the cement barrier of the roadway.
No, it’s not going to happen; there are a million projects Bridgeport needs right now before something so grandiose could even enter a public official’s thoughts. But it’s nice to dream sometimes.