I grew up by Syracuse.
Yes, the raised I-81 section is seriously ugly.
BUT...that’s how you get to places in Syracuse.
Eliminate it, and all that traffic has to exit on the perimeter and drive much longer/slower to get anywhere. That will destroy already suffering downtown activity. Further development will be far more induced to build outside the city.
Go underground, and costs incurred will devastate city finances - for a city already suffering long-term decline.
Just removing the viaduct will be horribly expensive.
Knowing how the city works, they’ll talk about it forever, cheaply patch the bridgework as long as they can, a section will collapse, removal will commence, the 481 bypass will be renamed New I-81, and downtown will degrade as all that traffic finds better places to go outside the city.
For context: a couple years ago a building partially collapsed onto I-81 within the city, shutting the freeway down for MONTHS. Seriously, they didn’t have the money/resources/motivation to just clean the bricks off the road and demolish the remaining near-collapse building. Removing the viaduct completely would take years.
Pointless anecdote: upon my achieving Eagle Scout, the 481 construction manager took me on a personal tour of the under-construction bypass before it was opened. That was neat for a 17-year-old.
New York itself is a wreck and should be demolished.
I liked the boulevard option, personally. Replace the viaduct with a wide, ground level boulevard and designate that street plus the remaining freeway as Business I-81 (with the green and white shields instead of red, white and blue). Re-designate I-481 as I-81 and add another lane in each direction, since most of the through traffic will likely wish to go around.
Yes, this will be more expensive than the community grid, but so be it.
I grew up there too and yes there is a serious problem with the raised section from Adams Street to I-690.
I agree it’s ugly and a maintenance nightmare. However, the elevated railroad bed that is now I-690 from DeWitt out to Solvay is not much better.
The Thruway going through the city when it was built was not an option as that was not part of the Thruway charter. Yet ththe city wanted some sort of interstate from the city center to the suburbs in the north and access to the south.
They really only had a few options.
1) What they did.
2) direct I-81 easterly at Tully and bring it up through Jamesville where I-481 is now.
3) direct it through the Onondaga Indian Reservation and go up the west side of Onondaga Lake.
As it is they drew as straight a line as possible from Cortland to Watertown and followed the natural topography to minimize construction costs.
They elevated it to not destroy the city with a distinct no-cross line like there is with East/West railroad line.