Is it 2021 or 1961 at America's DOTs?
Image via Unsplash.
As a society, we often can't see ourselves in the villains of our history books. Back then was a less enlightened era, we tell ourselves: a more prejudiced one, a more shortsighted or naïve one. The things they did we would surely never do today, because we've learned. Right?
Maybe in some cases, but not in the case of the freeway builders.
During the 1950s and 1960s, equipped with seemingly limitless federal dollars from the newly-approved Interstate Highway Program, planners in city after city condemned homes and ripped communities apart in order to ram freeways through urban neighborhoods. The targeted areas were almost always poor and very often majority Black. Many have suffered years of decline, abandonment, and poverty as a result.
The part state highway officials don't like to talk about is that that era hasn't come to an end yet. To be sure, the worst excesses of full-scale neighborhood bulldozing aren't coming back. There's less of the open, vicious racism and classism that you would have heard in the 1960s. And planners do more community engagement than they used to—though often with a preordained conclusion.
But far too many of America's DOTs believe, every bit as much now as they did in the 1960s, that closer-in neighborhoods ought to sacrifice their quality of life to make room for the cars of people who live farther out. And sometimes sacrifice their physical homes and businesses.
As a result of this zombie ideology, there are highway boondoggles underway right now in the U.S. that stand to condemn thousands of properties, widen freeways that isolate poor and/or non-white neighborhoods, increase pollution and carbon emissions, and recharge the vicious cycle of outward expansion of our insolvent suburban development pattern. We've written about some of these, and we've shared good articles by friends of ours, but here's a roundup of five of the worst offenders. Think of it as a hall of shame.
One other thing: There's been a good deal of hype and press this year around the prospect of federal money for the removal of destructive urban freeways. But when push came to shove, the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in August shrank this program’s budget from $20 billion to only $1 billion, while allocating $110 billion for new spending on roads and bridges.
Is it 2021 or 1961?
Here are a few appalling projects on the table this year, not 60 years ago. The good news is that none of them are proceeding without fierce opposition. The bad news is some or all may still get built.
Image from Thomas Hawk via Flickr.
Shreveport: The I-49 Inner-City Connector
We've been chronicling this one for years. To prevent through trucks and other traffic from having to detour a few minutes around Shreveport, Louisiana, the state DOT and some local officials are pushing a freeway that would destroy much of the historic Black neighborhood of Allendale. A segment of the local business elite seems hell-bent on seeing this project to fruition, even though the benefits are almost comically puny. The projected number of trips on the connector is only 3,609 per day. That is somehow not a typo.
Read our Shreveport coverage here, including Charles Marohn’s 2017 demolition of the math used to justify the project.
This July, we hosted a webcast with opponents of the Inner-City Connector. You can view it here.
Portland: The Rose Quarter
The Oregon DOT deserves some sort of award for chutzpah. It's not just that they want to widen Interstate 5 where it passes through the city's historically Black neighborhood of Albina—the same neighborhood that was gravely wounded by the construction of I-5. It's not just that they have repeatedly lied to the public about their plans, it's not just that they want to take part of an elementary school's property, it's not even that they've cynically spun a project which expands a highway and increases vehicle emissions as a safety and environmental win.
The PR wizards at ODOT have also co-opted the language of racial equity and reconciliation for a project that literally doubles down on the racist decisions of the past, while lamenting those decisions in a series of tweets that has all the energy of the Spiderman-pointing-at-Spiderman meme.
The coalition No More Freeways has mobilized powerful citizen resistance to this disaster of a project and is worth a follow.
Portland-based think tank City Observatory has been covering this project and dismantling ODOT’s spin for a long time. You can read more of their coverage here.
Local historian Damon Fordham standing at the former entrance of the Highland Terrace neighborhood. Image via Washington Post.
Charleston: Interstate 26
Road-widening is declassé, so sometimes today's engineers like to euphemize it as an "improvement" or "traffic flow enhancement." Not in South Carolina, where Governor Henry McMaster recently posed with state officials in front of a "WIDEN I-26" podium to propose using $360 million in COVID aid—yes, you read that right—to expand the freeway between Charleston and Columbia.
In North Charleston, highway widening around the interchange of I-26 and I-526 will displace hundreds of people in an almost entirely Black and brown neighborhood. A recent exposé by the Washington Post draws a through line between the original devastation when the freeway was built and the consequences of the new proposal for area residents, some of whom are old enough to have been there for Round 1.
With more people advocating for change, we can put an end to harmful freeway widening projects.
Learn how to improve transportation in your place through our Academy course, “Aligning Transportation with a Strong Towns Approach.”
Houston: The I-45 Expansion
This one might end up being a bright spot, but it's too soon to say. The $7 billion plan to widen Interstate 45 in Houston, Texas, is, in a few words, terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad. It would displace hundreds of homes, two public housing complexes, churches, schools, and local businesses, and further divide historically segregated neighborhoods. You can learn more about the I-45 project in this Houston Chronicle article from 2020.
Why a bright spot? Because the project is so egregious that Harris County (which contains Houston) sued TxDOT in federal court in March to halt it. In addition, the U.S. Department of Transportation sent TxDOT a letter requesting that planning for the project put on hold pending a federal civil rights investigation. I wrote about that here.
The latest is that the Texas Transportation Commission has voted to continue with the project regardless. The feds have until November 30 to complete their civil rights investigation, and depending on the findings, they may refuse to lift the hold (which would deny some categories of funding) and force TxDOT to shelve the expansion for good.
Rendering of I-35 Expansion by TxDOT.
Austin: The I-35 Expansion
When Interstate 35 was built through the center of Austin, Texas, it soon became the de facto boundary between largely white and nonwhite areas, a rich west and a poor east. The highway is a formidable moat, and recent explosive population growth in the Austin region has made it frequently congested. Civic leaders in Austin have looked for solutions that would reduce traffic, create transit alternatives, and also stitch up the gash in the community by building a cap over part of I-35.
TxDOT, however, doesn't want to play ball. Despite protestations from Austin officials, the state agency disregarded the community-proposed alternatives that didn't involve road widening. And they've essentially told Austin, "If you want a freeway cap, we're not paying for that part of it.”
We’ve followed this one through the years. Most recently, we hosted a webcast with local advocates and planners in Austin discussing their battle with TxDOT over I-35. You can watch that video here.
Additionally, here is some of our other past content that touches on the I-35 problem:
In this piece from 2016, Austin urban planner Heyden Walker shared with us her efforts to cut and cap I-35.
In 2020, we followed up on the I-35 story and TxDOT’s doubling-down on freeway widening.
Earlier this year, Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn discussed the “cut and cap” proposal for I-35 in this CNN piece.
We have to end highway expansion and focus on projects that actually build wealth in our cities. If you’re not convinced, then read on.