All the freeways bisecting central LA make for a hellish pedestrian environment. Let's beautify our city and reconnect our neighborhoods by capping the 101 from Bronson to Santa Monica and from Grand to Alameda with urban parks.

Similar freeway cap parks could be built along the 10 through Santa Monica and the 110 near USC, with air filtration to clean the auto-pollution before it's released into the atmosphere.

Lets also cap the 110 downtown from 3rd to 7th and sell the land to developers to bridge the gap between the skyscrapers flanking both sides of the freeway with infill development.

These projects would no doubt be expensive -- but if done right, they would be a boon to tourism, property values and overall quality of life by reducing air pollution and creating green space in areas that are notoriously lacking it -- all without affecting the regional flow of traffic.

Being stuck in rush hour gridlock inside a freeway tunnel could be a tough sell for some entitled motorists, but if these freeway caps are built with adequate lighting, video monitoring and modern reinforcement to sustain earthquakes, they should be just as safe as any other stretch of highway.