This week's Throwback Thursday takes us to La belle province, or Quebec to the lay person. Heading east from Montreal through the Eastern Townships to Sherbrooke is Autoroute 10. At one time, Quebec had blue road signs instead of green road signs along their autoroutes. By the time I visited this part of Quebec in May 2008, the blue signs had been phased out, but there were a few signs that could still be found scattered around the province. So it was a real treat to find this blue Autoroute 10 sign with another blast from the past, an Autoroute des Cantons l'Est shield on QC 112 eastbound near Magog, Quebec.
There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population. The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t
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