Road with a view: a taste of Paris, NYC in Boston

What if they spent $14.6 billion to replace the Central Artery and then left it standing?

An urban design consultant and lecturer at Boston University wants to turn about five blocks of the elevated roadway into a pedestrian and photographer's promenade, roughly between Faneuil Hall Marketplace and Rowes Wharf.

One reason: He likes the view from atop the old abandoned artery.

"You see things it was impossible to see -- the building details by [architect Charles] Bulfinch, the view up State Street, the sheets of water by Long Wharf and the Chart House, and further out, the Harbor Islands," said Romin Koebel, 66, who has climbed up to the structure with a photographer friend to check out the vista. "You could have plaques, like on the top of Mount Washington, pointing out the topographical and architectural features."

To say the least, the officials at Big Dig and City Hall are not impressed with the idea.

"If he's serious about it, he better send it overnight mail because that thing is coming down fast," said Big Dig spokesman Doug Hanchett.

Turning an elevated transportation structure into a promenade and park has precedent.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York supports the conversion of the abandoned High Line freight tracks through Manhattan's West Side into a raised linear park. An abandoned rail viaduct in Paris has also been turned into a pedestrian path and park called the Promenade Plantee.

Koebel, who has studied urban planning at Harvard and MIT, said plans for the surface of the submerged Central Artery are uncoordinated and bland, and risk creating a "broad swath" effect similar to rebuilt German cities after World War II.

Instead, he said the Big Dig should maintain part of the artery. He said the Central Artery would become an instant international tourist attraction, save money otherwise spent on demolition, and provide people great views of downtown Boston and the harbor that could never be appreciated while driving.

He proposes stairs and an elevator at either end of the stretch of preserved elevated roadway, he said, plus access via the High Street and Haymarket exit and entrance ramps, which would also be preserved.

The mile-long Central Artery, built from 1950 to 1956 as a "highway in the sky" to energize economically sagging Boston, is being dismantled at a cost of $60 million. Consultants, designers, neighborhood groups, and city and state officials, meanwhile, are making plans for transforming the 30-acre ribbon of open space that will be left when the artery is gone.

But none of them envision leaving the artery standing.

The new artery corridor is being called the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

It is supposed "to re-knit the city with the neighborhoods split apart by the elevated highway, connecting communities back to each and to the waterfront," said Susan Elsbree, spokeswoman for the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

Elsbree said the design concepts under consideration for the area where Koebel wants to keep the roadway, known as the Wharf District parcels, not only provide views but invite people to move across to the water's edge.

Anthony Flint can be reached at flint@globe.com.