This isn't status quo bias at all. Give people better options! Change can be good.
So the only way to change is to add new stuff, never take away old stuff? There's a word for people who live like that - they are called hoarders. Sometimes things that may have made sense in the past or just fit the zeitgeist of a bygone era need to be revisited and relegated to the dust bin of history.
But just eliminating existing options that people use because, basically, "they'll deal with it" is good for nobody.
You're looking at the costs of removal while pretending that the benefits don't exist. Removing a horrendous, narrow, high speed freeway that was rammed through Robert Moses-style on top of parkland in the 1950s, in spite of significant opposition, even in a day when highway opposition was not in vogue - that sits right on top of the river leaving a meager 20 feet (or less!) of the riverfront for people, is pretty unambiguously a benefit. Does it come with commensurate costs in terms of reduced automotive mobility? Yes. Do the costs and benefits accrue differently to different sets people? Also yes. Do the benefits of removing the highway necessarily outweigh the costs? I think probably so. Other people are can certainly welcome to different opinions. But clearly there is some ambiguity here that you're not owning up to.
This project might be an option to actually explore the other possibilities. See how it works out. While you're rebuilding the Pike, go ahead and put in the footings for the SFR viaduct. And if living without SFR for a while doesn't work out, go ahead and build the blessed viaduct. At least you could say you tried.
I get that even trying it for a year is going to affect real people's real lives in real ways. But I also have spent enough time on this earth to learn that people are way, way, way more afraid of change than they should be. Some people will literally go to their grave defending a status quo that is doing them no favors whatsoever. I also get that regardless of this, these people should have an equal voice in our political system to more progressively minded folk. But if there were a way to try some change on for size, and then roll it back if need be, potentially when the gains might be so great, I'm rather less sympathetic.
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