The ghost interchanges were built for future residential development at the same time the interstate was built-that much is true. But it wasn’t the oil busts of the 70s and 80s that did it in-it was the new environmental regulations. Until the 70s, the federal government would subsidize reclamation of wetlands as they were considered waste land which could be made useful if drained and filled. The 1970 National Environmental Policy Act and the 1972 Clean Water Act ended that. NEPA requires assessments of environmental impacts and the Clean Water Act regulates intentional discharges into the waters of the United States-including sand, soil, and other fill material . Also, by that time, it had been learned in other reclaimed marshlands that soil subsidence was a tremendous problem. This is easily shown by the rough conditions of the roads-particularly concrete roads-with the irregular and unpredictable subsidence of road sections.
Michoud Blvd and the other 3 interchanges are dumping grounds not just for tires, but also for dead bodies. In the 70s, the Michoud area was a good, middle-class community. Slidell (SLY-dell) is more what what NO East was supposed to become; many of the residents of St. Tammany fled NO East for the northshore.
There’s a lot of ghost interchanges in California that would be cool to talk about. The I-80/Auburn Bl in Sacramento, I-238 in the Bay Area and SO many in LA.
I can't think of any real ghost interchanges like these in greater Los Angeles. There's some weirdness where projects didn't get built and ended up as stubs, like the 710 in Pasadena, where there are 50 year old construction trailers in an oversized median for a freeway that will never exist beyond a mile or two, or the tiny 90 freeway north of LAX, but no abandoned overpasses or freeway exits that I can think of.
@@Geotpf I think it probably depends a lot on how much space there is and how important it is to give people the opportunity to turn around safely. The closest thing we had like that around here were off ramps to nowhere that were over a swampy area preventing them from being turned into one of these ghost interchanges and being prevented by a community group from being connected to an intended major thoroughfare. I suspect that there were a lot of those failed offramps all over the country in areas where they thought they were going to have more population, but for one reason or not that didn't happen. And, it was easier just to block the entrance than to either remove them completely or build out an entire interchange.
Michoud Boulevard is very weird. I've driven on it once. There is NO REASON whatsoever to use the exit on I-10, especially if you're driving eastbound. And it's full of potholes and it goes to nothing. Maybe if you were going to the Vietnamese part of town you might use it, but even then the I-510 is easier and probably faster too. I think the city just keeps it open because the road is already fully built.
@@isocarboxazid That area is notoriously unsafe, except for Little Vietnam. There's a neighborhood called Little Woods that is considered to be the most dangerous in the city.
@@504ever4 The Vietnamese neighborhoods are a treasure. Fantastic people, fantastic food. But yeah... aside from that, I lived in NOLA until my early/mid-20s and had zero reason to ever go thru that part of the city unless I was on I-10 going to the Northshore.
New Orleans East is My Home! I was born and raised there. Still live there today. I guess my parents are part of the “AA middle class that moved there in droves”. My dad told me that the East was a new, man made suburb where white people lived until we started moving in. As far as I remember, it was always a 99% black community. I was born in 97 for context. Most of New Orleans is below sea level which is why another Hurricane like Katrina will take us out. It floods in many places with a few hours of rain and our pumps are always malfunctioning. The part of the East that you’re referring to with the interchanges is only used as a straight shot commute between New Orleans and Slidell. The East side of that area is known as Michoud, there’s a small Asian community there but most of it is a rural swampy area where people never go. The place would’ve developed more, if it wasn’t for Hurricane Katrina. Since then, the place has been left to die, or neglected, hence the abandoned six flags, just as the rest of the East that was already developed. No large business came back after the storm. It took us a while to get Walmart back. The East is now basically “the hood”. The last thing I heard about the Michoud area was that they were planning to build a $500M complex with sports fields, water parks, hotels, restaurants, and shops at the old six flags site.
I don't think anything huge like that should be built in New Orleans, especially in that swampy area. Like I said earlier, New Orleans is another Katrina away from being wiped off the map. The city is fighting against mother nature as sea level rises, which is one reason I'm planning on moving from New Orleans to a place where I wont have to worry about hurricanes and flooding, but It will be interesting to watch the fight form afar. I've heard the story, more than once, about how when the Europeans settled in New Orleans, the natives told them not to build on the land because of flooding. The Europeans didn't listen and the natives peaked over the levees watching them build. We should start developing on the North Shore, west enough from the red river and north enough from Lake Pontchartrain above I12 to avoid the same flooding problem, between Lacomb and Slidell. Areas like Mandeville and Covington, west of Lacomb are developing. We can develop the whole region westward, all the way to Baton Rouge and north toward Mississippi.
@@tyronewilson7890 The area turned majority AA in 2005 officially but it was mostly white suburbanites through the 70’s and 80’s. And today with a Vietnamese enclave from the war. And you’re right, I think that’s why they gave up on the six flags. There’s a lot of cool videos on here of people brave enough to explore what’s left. I’d be too scared of gators 🐊
As a rule of thumb, I wouldn't move anywhere where my house has a statistically higher chance of being destroyed by nature. That means no New Orleans, Florida, California, Hawaii, or tornado alley states. But hey, home is where you make it, right?
Very much appreciate the LA videos. Hits home and would love to see more! Everytime I'd visit NO and North Shore in general, I always wondered what these abandoned interchanges were for. Failed suburban development makes sense and/or possibly turnarounds since the swampy area makes it difficult to turn around.
There are two other weird interchanges in New Orleans where future highways were supposed to go but they never got built. First is the I-10 at Elysian Fields Avenue where there is a partial interchange fed by long slip ramps both on and off, and the highway looks like an elevated ramp or two could be slipped under it without messing with the surface road. Originally a highway called Interstate 910 was supposed to begin here and travel along Elysian Fields down to the riverfront, then run alingside the river as a single or double deck viaduct like the old Central Artery or I-93 North in Boston except to dive into a tunnel under Canal Street, then become elevated again until it met the Mississippi River Bridge (US-90 BUS) in a gigantic interchange like "Scheme Z" in Boston. This highway would have severed the French Quarter, the C.B.D. and the Warehouse District from the Mississippi, making it useless as an amenity. And the state actually built the tunnel! It's now used as storage for Harrah's Casino and the public found out when it's roof collapsed several years ago. The second is closer to New Orleans East (you pronounced that correctly) on the I-10 at Louisa Street and Almonaster Avenue. Here too are long ramps that look like they could accommodate a highway, including a quarter cloverleaf to connect to Louisa Street going north to the Lake. Here there was supposed to be a connecting highway or at least fast road that would jog over to and run over the Industrial Canal along Florida Avenue and Florida Walk down to Paris Road (LA-47) in Saint Bernard Parish. This connector has been in the works for decades and suffice to say it probably will never get built.
The first one you mentioned was called I-310. I do recall the Florida Avenue corridor that the TIMED program was supposed to have built, but I don't know what taking so long...like it took forever to get LA. 3241 built on the Northshore.
@@archivalfootage1 The Earhart Expressway was supposed to be an alternative route to the airport, but I heard that the city of Harahan didn't want an expressway running through their town. That's why it ends where it is now.
Speaking of ghost interchanges... have you thought about doing a video on the proposed inner loop around Boston that never happened (695)? There's still a ghost ramp north of the city on the central artery that hasn't been removed from the bridge
They have some shit similar to that in downtown St Louis. I think that bitch was supposed to be called I-755, and there are ghost interchanges to where that motherfucker was supposed to be. It would have taken traffic away from the portion of freeway right along the arch.
Most likely it would be extremely costly to remove those stub ramps, since they are part of the steel supporting structure for that elevated highway and some of the utility conduits extend onto part of them. For those not familiar, two of the four ramps were used for a connecting road built as part of the Big Dig, and that road blocks off the other two ramps so those can never be used.
The new orleans metro area extends all the way around the "lake." Circling through slidell and back west to covington and mandeville on the other side.
Fun fact, the middle interchange (aside from being planned to be used for the proposed neighborhoods and airport) may have had a planned connection to Michoud Blvd had it been extended further east, obviously that never ended up happening, but looking at old satellite imagery from the 1970s, you can see a road stub coming off the south end of the interchange and turning west for about 50 feet. I think that had Michoud Blvd been extended to connect to the other I-10 interchanges, the middle interchange and maybe even the far eastern one may have been kept open until today. But it just never happened…
I always assumed it was for the oil companies. There’s a lot of weird exits like that in Louisiana. I’m glad they didn’t develop it and built the Great Wall of Louisiana instead (the big flood wall)
After hurricane Betsy in ‘65, LBJ came to city with promises and money, and a very flawed plan ( surprise!!) His team lan was to drain the entire eastern swamp, build a levee around it, and open it up for both residential and commercial development. And they did. But the levees were not built as designed, and doomed to fail. Slab on grade construction was allowed instead of requiring elevated structures. Add it together along with a few economic downturns , mix in a Katrina, and you get a flood to the rooftops, with no way to drain the water other than pump it out over levees. And that took months. What is now left is an area best described as “Little Haiti.”……. Shoddy, I’ll constructed buildings, sparsely placed, no real job base, and poverty. I’m talking third world poverty. And crime. Never go to this area of town. Do not pull off exits to get gas. It is truly shocking to see the condition of this place and know it’s in America. Needs to be bull dozed and returned to nature.
The Phoenix area freeway had loads of ghost interchges. Now those areas are all developed and some of those interchanges have had to be redone to handle at the traffic there now. I-17 & Happy Valley Road comes to mind.
@danieldaniels7571 I live off that exit towards 51st Ave. Watched as the diamond intersection replaced the two round-abouts. Traffic flows much better now there.
@@mclaybry I grew up South of there near Cactus & 35th. I remember before the roundabouts when to either side of I-17 that was a dirt road and the exit’s existence seems to make no sense.
Funnily enough I drove through these this morning on my way back to Florida. The Michoud Blvd interchange appeared to be open, the other twos' ramps are almost completely overgrown, even more so than when I went that way in 2021.
@@johnmanale3105 Very true. I was referring to how it appears the exit was closed sometime in 2022 for road work/construction. There were still cones on the side of the off-ramps when I drove by it this weekend but they weren't blocking the exit.
The interstate is falling apart after 80+ years, the Chinese roadways are falling apart after less than 10 😂😂 that tofudreg construction is catching up to them
I never comment on these videos but this was a really good one! I’m from NOLA and always wondered as a kid why these interchanges existed. Never knew about the east airport idea. Also, very impressed with your correct pronunciation of Michoud. You always make interesting videos about the interstates, keep it up!
Didn't Disney plan a park there back in time and the city then did those interchanges as preliminary work? I thought about having heard of that. But perhaps that was a fake article (-:
I live at the end of I-310 off to the west of New Orleans, and 310 ends with some ramps down to Highway 90, however there is some ramp stubs, they will most likely be used when I-49 bypasses to the south, if it happens. But those ramp stubs we’re supposed to be used in a beltway all the way around New Orleans more than likely linking up with I-510 in the west. But that never happened
@@jrbaytown well we did get a decent subway system backbone, the beltline is turning out to be an amazing amenity and we've got the busiest airport. i live in the city so i don't really give two fucks about the traffic outside 285 - if you want to live in sprawl, so be it, enjoy your traffic. now if you want to talk pro sports on the other hand...
Man i am so happy to see you finally did a video on the city care aways forgets but seems to be a magnet for bad news. Im in Seattle now and there were talks of building the Disney complex in New Orleans East.
On my road trip I made a point to get lost in the deserts of California, Utah, and New Mexico, but aside from downtown Nola I was terrified to stray from the Interstate in that whole region of the country. Watching ‘True Detective’ might’ve saved my life
Do not confuse racist whining with our lovely city. True Detective is a potboiler set around Baton Rouge - whole different city! - and has nothing to do with reality. New Orleans is a city where we have 3 million (literally) drunks in a few square miles for a five day grueling party marathon and everything is cool. You missed out…
So… I grew up in a subdivision right off Michoud just on the other side of the six flags entrance. It’s a middle class black neighborhood where we would play games in the street, people had impeccably groomed lawns, and huge - though poorly made- homes. There are families that have been there since the late 1980s, when it first opened. It’s not as bad as it’s portrayed in the video. There’s always going to be issues and yes, New Orleans east is not as “cultured” as the city on the other side of the industrial canal. But it is FINE. Also, man I miss that coffee smell going over the high rise every day on my drive uptown. I miss my home all the time.
Nice that these abandoned exits are at ground level. My dad in the early 1970s drove up on to an exit on the I5 in Seattle, but his one ended way up in the air, and he had to back-up onto the freeway. It looks like all these ghost exits have been connected to off / on ramps now. But it was great planning. :)
That sounds more like the ones that were intended to connect 520 to a never completed stretch of road along Lake Washington. AFAIK, all the overpasses and exits for I-5 were completed by then. At least all the bridges that I've seen sport completion dates of sometime in the early '60s. Originally, those were intended for a straighter arterial to offer another North-South route for vehicles wanting to bypass both I-5 and 99 through downtown Seattle. As it stands, there's essentially just those two options, or a bunch of regular surface streets. But, by the time that the crews completed the work necessary to finish that section, there were community groups that were able to successfully block it. Those off ramps no longer exist, as they were removed when the previous bridge was demolished and replaced with a new one. The main bridge was finished a few years ago, but I can't remember when the rest of the work on the west end of the bridge is going to be completed. They had been right about : 47.644903, -122.287981 , but at night, it can look like a very long off ramp and if you miss the exit, then you're stuck going over the bridge.
There is; like everywhere else in southern Louisiana. That piece of land where a new airport and then a new Disney theme park was supposed to go? That's all wetlands now.
A lot of them are barely drivable. The East, Lakeview and the Tulane/Loyola areas are really bad. There's some spots on State St that could bottom your car if his at the speed limit.
I camped in my car off of the third one you talked about and someone drove by to tell me its a super dangerous spot where people get murdered... I stayed there.
My family has lived in the East since the 70s. Although I knew this info, it was a nice watch. I think it'll be. cool to see how these ghost initerchanges develop since the city just approved plans to redevelop the Six Flags site.
LaDOTD actually closed the EB Exit 248 in late 2022 for "demolition" and brought in heavy equipment for a while but then this fall inexplicably reopened the useless intersection.
The only people you’ll see on that stretch of Michoud Blvd are security guards who are hired to prevent people from trespassing on the Six Flags property. Since the City now owns it, they don’t want to be liable for anyone hurting themselves trying to climb a roller coaster, so you’ll get thrown in jail if caught trespassing.
I'd be interested to see you do a video on a somewhat similar story in Lancaster County PA. The Route 23 bypass that was nearly finished before running out of funds and local support. The bridges were all built and are still in service, but the road bed and ramps were covered with dirt and grass seeded. The abandoned highway is known locally as The Goat Path.
We were in new Orleans a few years back and got off at the six flags exit, and in deed,lots of trash, the old six flags park is derelict but had a security guard at the main entrance, we spoke with him, asked about plans for the old park he said it looked pretty bleak, sad.
Interesting. I've seen these interchanges and figured the state just ran out of money and never finished them. Seems like there's more to it than that. I grew in Jefferson Parish, left, went back, then left again and intend to stay gone for good. Every place has it's good and bad, but I don't want the bad of NOLA anymore.
Similar but different but could make for an interesting video. Along I-5 in CA Central Valley, there are a bunch of overpasses without roads attached. Apparently when they were building I-5, if the free😢bisected a single parcel, they would build an overpass to minimize the financial impact on the owner. This might be the case on other parts of the interstate highway system, but there’s a lot of examples on I-5.
There are several large neighborhoods along Muchoud Blvd, I wouldn't exactly call it dystopian. There a lot of places in the US that feel a lot more dystopian.
In the Seventies a lot of people moved to the East, it was the future. Then they all moved back into NOLA proper. It’s a long commute and I-10 is the only choice for a lot of routes. The traffic is horrific. Nobody wanted to live that way. The commute from the Northshore was far easier so people went there. The closer part of the East is fine, the roads have been widened and it works for people but the ghost area was in trouble before the 1982 depression.
Unfortunately, the word "unique" has been so consistently misused that its real meaning is now lost in time. It means "one of a kind", and is therefore a binary word. Either something IS unique, or it isn't. Gradations like "most unique", and "very unique" are totally meaningless. People now use it as a generic positive term and we have no ability to understand what they're really trying to say.
In ‘98 I visited New Orleans. I climbed the steps on the back of the levee in the heart of the tourist area. At the top of the levee the river was about 5-feet below me. The city was about 30-feet below. Shocking.
Looking at Google Maps, Dwyer Rd/Blvd is an interesting one. It's currently in 3 disconnected pieces. Between those pieces and some empty right-of-way, it looks like the original idea was for it to be an extension of Filmore Ave in Gentilly that would have run all the way to the Six Flags Pkwy.
I'm down in New Orleans all the time and it's horrible with the traffic but there's nothing they can do bc they've built everything up around the interstate and the same goes for Baton Rouge
@@kaymillerfromTX Yes, of course. Those were two separate corrections: one to the pronunciation of Slidell; and the other to the stated elevations of New Orleans. I'm sorry for the ambiguity.
The ghost interchanges were built for future residential development at the same time the interstate was built-that much is true. But it wasn’t the oil busts of the 70s and 80s that did it in-it was the new environmental regulations.
Until the 70s, the federal government would subsidize reclamation of wetlands as they were considered waste land which could be made useful if drained and filled.
The 1970 National Environmental Policy Act and the 1972 Clean Water Act ended that. NEPA requires assessments of environmental impacts and the Clean Water Act regulates intentional discharges into the waters of the United States-including sand, soil, and other fill material . Also, by that time, it had been learned in other reclaimed marshlands that soil subsidence was a tremendous problem. This is easily shown by the rough conditions of the roads-particularly concrete roads-with the irregular and unpredictable subsidence of road sections.
Michoud Blvd and the other 3 interchanges are dumping grounds not just for tires, but also for dead bodies. In the 70s, the Michoud area was a good, middle-class community. Slidell (SLY-dell) is more what what NO East was supposed to become; many of the residents of St. Tammany fled NO East for the northshore.
It's a very niggardly community
Same with the I-10 service road where it turns down alongside the 510 (Paris rd). There are burn marks all down it where ditched cars were torched.
I never thought of it, but you're right: Slidell is what NO East was supposed to be.
That New Orleans east property was ghost purchased by Walt Disney as a proposed site for Disney World.
Purchased by Disney’s ghost? That explains the ghost interchanges 😜
There goes the neighborhood . . .
No way! How did you hear about this?
New orleans, Mobile said No.becaise politics wanted money..
Then he went to Orlando.
There’s a lot of ghost interchanges in California that would be cool to talk about. The I-80/Auburn Bl in Sacramento, I-238 in the Bay Area and SO many in LA.
I would expect nothing less from Los Angeles.
I can't think of any real ghost interchanges like these in greater Los Angeles. There's some weirdness where projects didn't get built and ended up as stubs, like the 710 in Pasadena, where there are 50 year old construction trailers in an oversized median for a freeway that will never exist beyond a mile or two, or the tiny 90 freeway north of LAX, but no abandoned overpasses or freeway exits that I can think of.
@@Geotpf I think it probably depends a lot on how much space there is and how important it is to give people the opportunity to turn around safely. The closest thing we had like that around here were off ramps to nowhere that were over a swampy area preventing them from being turned into one of these ghost interchanges and being prevented by a community group from being connected to an intended major thoroughfare.
I suspect that there were a lot of those failed offramps all over the country in areas where they thought they were going to have more population, but for one reason or not that didn't happen. And, it was easier just to block the entrance than to either remove them completely or build out an entire interchange.
Michoud Boulevard is very weird. I've driven on it once. There is NO REASON whatsoever to use the exit on I-10, especially if you're driving eastbound. And it's full of potholes and it goes to nothing. Maybe if you were going to the Vietnamese part of town you might use it, but even then the I-510 is easier and probably faster too. I think the city just keeps it open because the road is already fully built.
More than just a few dumped bodies have been found out there
If I am ever in New Orleans, I am going to drive on that road just to do some exploring.
@@dannypipewrench533The exit and road itself is currently closed entirely. Google says till 2026 so they might be getting rid of it
@@isocarboxazid That area is notoriously unsafe, except for Little Vietnam. There's a neighborhood called Little Woods that is considered to be the most dangerous in the city.
@@504ever4 The Vietnamese neighborhoods are a treasure. Fantastic people, fantastic food. But yeah... aside from that, I lived in NOLA until my early/mid-20s and had zero reason to ever go thru that part of the city unless I was on I-10 going to the Northshore.
My grandma lives over there, and it’s literally desolate until you get to the neighborhoods in “Little Woods”
In the last week, since I left my last comment about how I knew you from EMC, I've been watching your vids, and they are really good quality. Subbed
New Orleans East is My Home! I was born and raised there. Still live there today. I guess my parents are part of the “AA middle class that moved there in droves”. My dad told me that the East was a new, man made suburb where white people lived until we started moving in. As far as I remember, it was always a 99% black community. I was born in 97 for context.
Most of New Orleans is below sea level which is why another Hurricane like Katrina will take us out. It floods in many places with a few hours of rain and our pumps are always malfunctioning.
The part of the East that you’re referring to with the interchanges is only used as a straight shot commute between New Orleans and Slidell. The East side of that area is known as Michoud, there’s a small Asian community there but most of it is a rural swampy area where people never go. The place would’ve developed more, if it wasn’t for Hurricane Katrina. Since then, the place has been left to die, or neglected, hence the abandoned six flags, just as the rest of the East that was already developed. No large business came back after the storm. It took us a while to get Walmart back. The East is now basically “the hood”.
The last thing I heard about the Michoud area was that they were planning to build a $500M complex with sports fields, water parks, hotels, restaurants, and shops at the old six flags site.
I don't think anything huge like that should be built in New Orleans, especially in that swampy area. Like I said earlier, New Orleans is another Katrina away from being wiped off the map. The city is fighting against mother nature as sea level rises, which is one reason I'm planning on moving from New Orleans to a place where I wont have to worry about hurricanes and flooding, but It will be interesting to watch the fight form afar.
I've heard the story, more than once, about how when the Europeans settled in New Orleans, the natives told them not to build on the land because of flooding. The Europeans didn't listen and the natives peaked over the levees watching them build.
We should start developing on the North Shore, west enough from the red river and north enough from Lake Pontchartrain above I12 to avoid the same flooding problem, between Lacomb and Slidell. Areas like Mandeville and Covington, west of Lacomb are developing. We can develop the whole region westward, all the way to Baton Rouge and north toward Mississippi.
@@tyronewilson7890 The area turned majority AA in 2005 officially but it was mostly white suburbanites through the 70’s and 80’s. And today with a Vietnamese enclave from the war. And you’re right, I think that’s why they gave up on the six flags. There’s a lot of cool videos on here of people brave enough to explore what’s left. I’d be too scared of gators 🐊
@@kaymillerfromTX yes, definitely heard that there’s alligators there.
As a rule of thumb, I wouldn't move anywhere where my house has a statistically higher chance of being destroyed by nature. That means no New Orleans, Florida, California, Hawaii, or tornado alley states. But hey, home is where you make it, right?
Congrats! You are the first non-New Orleans youtuber that I have seen who pronounced Michoud Blvd correctly!
Very much appreciate the LA videos. Hits home and would love to see more!
Everytime I'd visit NO and North Shore in general, I always wondered what these abandoned interchanges were for. Failed suburban development makes sense and/or possibly turnarounds since the swampy area makes it difficult to turn around.
There are two other weird interchanges in New Orleans where future highways were supposed to go but they never got built.
First is the I-10 at Elysian Fields Avenue where there is a partial interchange fed by long slip ramps both on and off, and the highway looks like an elevated ramp or two could be slipped under it without messing with the surface road. Originally a highway called Interstate 910 was supposed to begin here and travel along Elysian Fields down to the riverfront, then run alingside the river as a single or double deck viaduct like the old Central Artery or I-93 North in Boston except to dive into a tunnel under Canal Street, then become elevated again until it met the Mississippi River Bridge (US-90 BUS) in a gigantic interchange like "Scheme Z" in Boston. This highway would have severed the French Quarter, the C.B.D. and the Warehouse District from the Mississippi, making it useless as an amenity. And the state actually built the tunnel! It's now used as storage for Harrah's Casino and the public found out when it's roof collapsed several years ago.
The second is closer to New Orleans East (you pronounced that correctly) on the I-10 at Louisa Street and Almonaster Avenue. Here too are long ramps that look like they could accommodate a highway, including a quarter cloverleaf to connect to Louisa Street going north to the Lake. Here there was supposed to be a connecting highway or at least fast road that would jog over to and run over the Industrial Canal along Florida Avenue and Florida Walk down to Paris Road (LA-47) in Saint Bernard Parish. This connector has been in the works for decades and suffice to say it probably will never get built.
How very interesting, thanks for sharing your knowledge
The first one you mentioned was called I-310. I do recall the Florida Avenue corridor that the TIMED program was supposed to have built, but I don't know what taking so long...like it took forever to get LA. 3241 built on the Northshore.
Also the Earhart Expressway itself dead’s in in Harahan. And there is a weird ghost exit before Airline Highway interchange on the expressway.
@@archivalfootage1 The Earhart Expressway was supposed to be an alternative route to the airport, but I heard that the city of Harahan didn't want an expressway running through their town. That's why it ends where it is now.
Hey man, recently found your channel and really enjoying it, keep it up
Speaking of ghost interchanges... have you thought about doing a video on the proposed inner loop around Boston that never happened (695)? There's still a ghost ramp north of the city on the central artery that hasn't been removed from the bridge
They have some shit similar to that in downtown St Louis. I think that bitch was supposed to be called I-755, and there are ghost interchanges to where that motherfucker was supposed to be. It would have taken traffic away from the portion of freeway right along the arch.
Most likely it would be extremely costly to remove those stub ramps, since they are part of the steel supporting structure for that elevated highway and some of the utility conduits extend onto part of them. For those not familiar, two of the four ramps were used for a connecting road built as part of the Big Dig, and that road blocks off the other two ramps so those can never be used.
The new orleans metro area extends all the way around the "lake." Circling through slidell and back west to covington and mandeville on the other side.
Fun fact, the middle interchange (aside from being planned to be used for the proposed neighborhoods and airport) may have had a planned connection to Michoud Blvd had it been extended further east, obviously that never ended up happening, but looking at old satellite imagery from the 1970s, you can see a road stub coming off the south end of the interchange and turning west for about 50 feet.
I think that had Michoud Blvd been extended to connect to the other I-10 interchanges, the middle interchange and maybe even the far eastern one may have been kept open until today. But it just never happened…
I always assumed it was for the oil companies. There’s a lot of weird exits like that in Louisiana. I’m glad they didn’t develop it and built the Great Wall of Louisiana instead (the big flood wall)
This is my favorite way to distract myself from engineering homework
good to see you back!
You should talk about the Ruddock exit on I-55.
After hurricane Betsy in ‘65, LBJ came to city with promises and money, and a very flawed plan ( surprise!!) His team lan was to drain the entire eastern swamp, build a levee around it, and open it up for both residential and commercial development. And they did. But the levees were not built as designed, and doomed to fail. Slab on grade construction was allowed instead of requiring elevated structures. Add it together along with a few economic downturns , mix in a Katrina, and you get a flood to the rooftops, with no way to drain the water other than pump it out over levees. And that took months. What is now left is an area best described as “Little Haiti.”……. Shoddy, I’ll constructed buildings, sparsely placed, no real job base, and poverty. I’m talking third world poverty. And crime. Never go to this area of town. Do not pull off exits to get gas. It is truly shocking to see the condition of this place and know it’s in America. Needs to be bull dozed and returned to nature.
The Phoenix area freeway had loads of ghost interchges. Now those areas are all developed and some of those interchanges have had to be redone to handle at the traffic there now. I-17 & Happy Valley Road comes to mind.
@danieldaniels7571 I live off that exit towards 51st Ave. Watched as the diamond intersection replaced the two round-abouts. Traffic flows much better now there.
@@mclaybry I grew up South of there near Cactus & 35th. I remember before the roundabouts when to either side of I-17 that was a dirt road and the exit’s existence seems to make no sense.
Finally someone did a video on this
For sure dead body dumping grounds on Michoud, that road is scary af even in the day.
It's like me poorly planning my Simcity building.
A video on the history of the Big Dig/interstate 93 in Boston would be cool 😊
WGBH did a multi part podcast on it. It’s really good
Love New Orleans, but 8 seconds in, I could tell that street was in Galena IL. Another beautiful town I love. The sign in the background confirmed it.
Funnily enough I drove through these this morning on my way back to Florida. The Michoud Blvd interchange appeared to be open, the other twos' ramps are almost completely overgrown, even more so than when I went that way in 2021.
The Michoud exit is open because the Southern end of Michoud is developed. It's the Vietnamese neighborhood.
@@johnmanale3105 Very true. I was referring to how it appears the exit was closed sometime in 2022 for road work/construction. There were still cones on the side of the off-ramps when I drove by it this weekend but they weren't blocking the exit.
You ought to do a comparison between our Interstate Highways and China's new belt-and-road highways.
The interstate is falling apart after 80+ years, the Chinese roadways are falling apart after less than 10 😂😂 that tofudreg construction is catching up to them
I never comment on these videos but this was a really good one! I’m from NOLA and always wondered as a kid why these interchanges existed. Never knew about the east airport idea. Also, very impressed with your correct pronunciation of Michoud. You always make interesting videos about the interstates, keep it up!
Dwyer Blvd appears to be abandoned as well. On street view 5 years ago there are a bunch of tires on the road
Didn't Disney plan a park there back in time and the city then did those interchanges as preliminary work? I thought about having heard of that. But perhaps that was a fake article (-:
Yes, the City got too greedy, so Disney went to Orlando instead. But that was before I was born.
I live at the end of I-310 off to the west of New Orleans, and 310 ends with some ramps down to Highway 90, however there is some ramp stubs, they will most likely be used when I-49 bypasses to the south, if it happens. But those ramp stubs we’re supposed to be used in a beltway all the way around New Orleans more than likely linking up with I-510 in the west. But that never happened
A history of Atlanta's failed outer perimeter would be awesome!
Could also talk about the Atlanta freeway revolts in the same video
That one is easy, too much development happened before the loop was built so now it would be astronomically expensive to construct
The latest video from Mileage Mike actually briefly goes over this failed Outerloop
Too much failures in Atlanta to discuss in a lifetime.
@@jrbaytown well we did get a decent subway system backbone, the beltline is turning out to be an amazing amenity and we've got the busiest airport. i live in the city so i don't really give two fucks about the traffic outside 285 - if you want to live in sprawl, so be it, enjoy your traffic.
now if you want to talk pro sports on the other hand...
Man i am so happy to see you finally did a video on the city care aways forgets but seems to be a magnet for bad news. Im in Seattle now and there were talks of building the Disney complex in New Orleans East.
I’ve heard Walt Disney went to Louisiana in the ‘60s to build a park, but corruption and the land itself made him pick Florida instead.
@@5roundsrapid263 I herd that too and that was another use of those ghost ramps in NOEast
ooh ooh do Missouri Route 755 next!
On my road trip I made a point to get lost in the deserts of California, Utah, and New Mexico, but aside from downtown Nola I was terrified to stray from the Interstate in that whole region of the country. Watching ‘True Detective’ might’ve saved my life
Do not confuse racist whining with our lovely city. True Detective is a potboiler set around Baton Rouge - whole different city! - and has nothing to do with reality.
New Orleans is a city where we have 3 million (literally) drunks in a few square miles for a five day grueling party marathon and everything is cool. You missed out…
I know it’s not any people or anyone’s home, but I still feel sad about the death of Six Flags New Orleans.
Same thing with the I-10 west of buckeye in Arizona. Random interchanges that have no roads coming off of them.
So… I grew up in a subdivision right off Michoud just on the other side of the six flags entrance. It’s a middle class black neighborhood where we would play games in the street, people had impeccably groomed lawns, and huge - though poorly made- homes. There are families that have been there since the late 1980s, when it first opened. It’s not as bad as it’s portrayed in the video. There’s always going to be issues and yes, New Orleans east is not as “cultured” as the city on the other side of the industrial canal. But it is FINE. Also, man I miss that coffee smell going over the high rise every day on my drive uptown. I miss my home all the time.
Nice that these abandoned exits are at ground level. My dad in the early 1970s drove up on to an exit on the I5 in Seattle, but his one ended way up in the air, and he had to back-up onto the freeway. It looks like all these ghost exits have been connected to off / on ramps now. But it was great planning. :)
That sounds more like the ones that were intended to connect 520 to a never completed stretch of road along Lake Washington. AFAIK, all the overpasses and exits for I-5 were completed by then. At least all the bridges that I've seen sport completion dates of sometime in the early '60s.
Originally, those were intended for a straighter arterial to offer another North-South route for vehicles wanting to bypass both I-5 and 99 through downtown Seattle. As it stands, there's essentially just those two options, or a bunch of regular surface streets. But, by the time that the crews completed the work necessary to finish that section, there were community groups that were able to successfully block it.
Those off ramps no longer exist, as they were removed when the previous bridge was demolished and replaced with a new one. The main bridge was finished a few years ago, but I can't remember when the rest of the work on the west end of the bridge is going to be completed.
They had been right about : 47.644903, -122.287981 , but at night, it can look like a very long off ramp and if you miss the exit, then you're stuck going over the bridge.
Nawlins has a problem that can’t be addressed….. So? People just leave
I thought the main problem was ground subsidence there.
That's the main problem with most of southeastern Louisiana.
There is; like everywhere else in southern Louisiana. That piece of land where a new airport and then a new Disney theme park was supposed to go? That's all wetlands now.
New Orleans is actually building a new beach front and theme park in New Orleans East.
Is it going to be at the old Lincoln Beach location ? @@rackss1661
As mismanaged as that city has been for the last 50 years, it's a wonder that any of the roads are still drivable.
A lot of them are barely drivable. The East, Lakeview and the Tulane/Loyola areas are really bad. There's some spots on State St that could bottom your car if his at the speed limit.
I mean, they really aren’t… lol. There’s a reason I park and walk or use the streetcar when I’m there
Florida Avenue east of the Industrial canal too.
I just looked at Dwyer Dr east of 510 and there’s a huge pile of tires
The last time I drove through that it was so clogged I almost couldn't get through. though it's been years.
I camped in my car off of the third one you talked about and someone drove by to tell me its a super dangerous spot where people get murdered...
I stayed there.
At appears that the third one was closed off earlier this year, but people just moved the barriers out of the way.
My family has lived in the East since the 70s. Although I knew this info, it was a nice watch. I think it'll be. cool to see how these ghost initerchanges develop since the city just approved plans to redevelop the Six Flags site.
The East was the best part of the city to live in during the 70's and 80's. It went downhill fast after that.
@@johnmanale3105I remember the East was the place to be back in the 80s and early 90s.
LaDOTD actually closed the EB Exit 248 in late 2022 for "demolition" and brought in heavy equipment for a while but then this fall inexplicably reopened the useless intersection.
Thanks!
Thank you so much! Always appreciated
The only people you’ll see on that stretch of Michoud Blvd are security guards who are hired to prevent people from trespassing on the Six Flags property. Since the City now owns it, they don’t want to be liable for anyone hurting themselves trying to climb a roller coaster, so you’ll get thrown in jail if caught trespassing.
I'd be interested to see you do a video on a somewhat similar story in Lancaster County PA. The Route 23 bypass that was nearly finished before running out of funds and local support. The bridges were all built and are still in service, but the road bed and ramps were covered with dirt and grass seeded. The abandoned highway is known locally as The Goat Path.
We were in new Orleans a few years back and got off at the six flags exit, and in deed,lots of trash, the old six flags park is derelict but had a security guard at the main entrance, we spoke with him, asked about plans for the old park he said it looked pretty bleak, sad.
Going there IRL later this year. Might check it out.
I've always thought of it as the Detroit of the south. When I was a much younger man, I'd go to NoLa for Mardi Gras. Katrina happened and I got old.
tires are not the only thing been dumped
Interesting. I've seen these interchanges and figured the state just ran out of money and never finished them. Seems like there's more to it than that. I grew in Jefferson Parish, left, went back, then left again and intend to stay gone for good. Every place has it's good and bad, but I don't want the bad of NOLA anymore.
Similar but different but could make for an interesting video. Along I-5 in CA Central Valley, there are a bunch of overpasses without roads attached. Apparently when they were building I-5, if the free😢bisected a single parcel, they would build an overpass to minimize the financial impact on the owner. This might be the case on other parts of the interstate highway system, but there’s a lot of examples on I-5.
Those abandoned freeways would be awesome as a post apocalypse movie/series set.
😂
There are several large neighborhoods along Muchoud Blvd, I wouldn't exactly call it dystopian. There a lot of places in the US that feel a lot more dystopian.
As roms become easier and all these handhelds come out, companies are going to start seeing huge loses I think
Google maps is showing the exit ramps on the third one closed until April 2024.
In a nutshell, they're only built for all the scenic views of the city during school field trips.
In the Seventies a lot of people moved to the East, it was the future. Then they all moved back into NOLA proper. It’s a long commute and I-10 is the only choice for a lot of routes. The traffic is horrific. Nobody wanted to live that way. The commute from the Northshore was far easier so people went there. The closer part of the East is fine, the roads have been widened and it works for people but the ghost area was in trouble before the 1982 depression.
if you go to 2007 google maps footage the old ramps were connected to the roadway
I watched this hoping to find stories about interchanges haunted by ghosts. That's someone you would expect in New Orleans.
hey beaver
hey whats up
There's a ghost interchange in Memphis on I40.
The title of this makes it sound like a down-south ghost story and I'm all for it.
This is where Walt Disney was going to put Disney world. Now Street Outlaws race there
It's MEE-shoe (accent on the MEE), and sly-DELL (accent on the DELL).
"extremely unique"? Is that opposed to "just kinda unique"?
Unfortunately, the word "unique" has been so consistently misused that its real meaning is now lost in time. It means "one of a kind", and is therefore a binary word. Either something IS unique, or it isn't. Gradations like "most unique", and "very unique" are totally meaningless. People now use it as a generic positive term and we have no ability to understand what they're really trying to say.
I94 between Osseo wi to tomah wi has a lot of ghost rest areas.
1:28, without human intervention, the area would still be above sea level. Just no city either.
In ‘98 I visited New Orleans. I climbed the steps on the back of the levee in the heart of the tourist area. At the top of the levee the river was about 5-feet below me. The city was about 30-feet below. Shocking.
do west next now, please
I gotchu
Looking at Google Maps, Dwyer Rd/Blvd is an interesting one. It's currently in 3 disconnected pieces. Between those pieces and some empty right-of-way, it looks like the original idea was for it to be an extension of Filmore Ave in Gentilly that would have run all the way to the Six Flags Pkwy.
I'm down in New Orleans all the time and it's horrible with the traffic but there's nothing they can do bc they've built everything up around the interstate and the same goes for Baton Rouge
That’s not even close to true. It’s just a really dense city unlike the rest of the south. Baton Rouge is more accurate and sprawling down I10
Slidell is pronounced Sly-dale
Saint Denis 😂
Pronounce Slidell after me: sly-DELL. The elevation doesn't measure "from 10' to 3' above sea level." That should read "from 10' BELOW sea level..."
Slidell isn’t below sea level….
@@kaymillerfromTX Yes, of course. Those were two separate corrections: one to the pronunciation of Slidell; and the other to the stated elevations of New Orleans. I'm sorry for the ambiguity.
same citay dat claimed claiborne expressway as *Racist*
isn't there some Steve Scalise Fan Club you should be attending?
@@yossarian6799
da same guy who was *$H0+* U xenofobe?
Fun fact.
The levee once broke from a storm surge caused by this dude in the video, spitting while talking
Im calling the police
Good. Fewer highways are always better
The one thing that you forgot to emphasize is that New Orleans is the rotten rectal cavity of the US.
With more culture and character than your half a brain cell that's still somehow functioning.
Beaver, can you just delete this hateful comment?
ב''ה, no, that's out west. NO still has some life to it, vaguely.
That’s Detroit.
Thanks!