The Highline project has taken New York by storm. If you're not in New York, you might have never heard of it - it's a plan to turn an abandoned elevated railway into a linear park of sorts, and it was the dream project of practically every architect and urban planner in existence last summer. Here's a very cool flash demonstration of what it might ultimately look like.

It's also gained incredible amounts of local support and enthusiasm - I went to the unveiling of the 4 finalist designs last summer at the AIA and there were so many people there you couldn't get in the door - I've never seen anything like it. To me, this alone is confirmation that the project is a really good idea. Still, critics have pointed out that linear parks can be problematic (Galbraith) and in the case of the highline, there is the added dark and potentially dreary underside of the rail line to come to grips with.

But New York is such a unique city that it's almost impossible to predict what will "work" and what "wont". Given the fast adapting nature of Manhattan these days, I find it hard to belive the project will fail, or fall into obscurity.

I've been driving a lot more than usual lately and find myself stuck in traffic on the 101 Freeway in San Francisco, often at a dead stop. Amazingly, when you're stuck at a standstill on that eleveated roadway, you actually keep moving quite actively because the entire freeway shakes and bounces like crazy. It feels as if someone's standing outside the car and having it back and forth, especially when a large truck goes by...

My guess is this is a deliberate design feature to absorb vibration, but it's rather frightening. I can only imagine what happens in an earthquake.

This may be an utterly boring topic to most, but typically interstate highways in the US are required to adhere to a very strict set of rules concerning lane width, curves, slope, exits; everything you can think of is supposed to be standard. I find it amusing to see such standards stretched and even broken. There are very few places where this happens, but two interesting ones are pictured below. 1) The Washington Dulles toll road is actually is an interstate within an interstate where the traffic on one highway never mingles with the other for many miles. It ensures a hassel free ride to the airport. 2) Even more radical is interstate 93 in New Hampshire's Franconia Notch where for quite some distance the interstate narrows to one lane in each direction, an almost unheard of compromise which minimizes the impact that a wide highway causes in a narrow and otherwise pristine gorge.