MoDOT Is Proud of Their Highways. Missourians, Not So Much.
The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) is one of the nation’s most incoherent. I’ve not kept up with the most recent numbers, but a few years ago, they had one of the most expansive highway systems in the nation, with 239 feet of highway per Missouri resident.
Back in 2015, we reported on how MoDOT was throwing a tantrum, telling taxpayers their highways would fall apart without additional funding. They even prepared a nifty apocalypse video titled “Tough Choices Ahead” to go along with a public relations campaign that included a staged scene of a piece of concrete falling from a failing bridge onto a school bus (not joking).
Of all the state DOTs, I find MoDOT to be particularly loathsome. Institutionally, they embody the mindset put forth by Bill Schnell who, in 2015, was the assistant district engineer at the Missouri Department of Transportation.
“It’s MoDOT’s job to figure out what the transportation needs are and how much those cost. It’s really up to the legislature and the people to figure out how to pay for it.” In other words, according to Schnell and MoDOT, you work for us.
It’s in full recognition of this spirit of aloof myopia that I read this absurd tweet from MoDOT celebrating the highway projects that gutted downtown Kansas City and led to an era of intense wealth destruction.
The downtown loop in Kansas City — four miles of highway arteries that form a boundary around Kansas City, Missouri's, central business district – turns 50 this month with its completion on Oct. 26, 1972. 🎂 pic.twitter.com/8lsDQV83Rb
— MoDOT Kansas City (@MoDOT_KC) October 26, 2022
Congratulations, downtown Kansas City. Hope you like parking lots.
At Strong Towns, we’ve written about the enormous levels of wealth destruction in downtown Kansas City, sharing data prepared by our partners at Urban3, showing how the downtown loop cost the community billions of dollars in investment. In fact, where wealth still persists in any productive capacity, it’s largely a legacy of the streetcar era, enduring in neighborhoods despite the destruction of Kansas City’s freeway construction.
Parking lots are the story of downtown Kansas City, post downtown loop construction. It’s difficult to overstate the amount of wealth destruction the loop induced in pursuit of more and more parking. Kansas City has 18.8 square miles of buildings but 41.4 square miles of roads and parking, a fact dramatically illustrated by a post from Hayden Clarkin, aka @the_transit_guy.
As the downtown loop in Kansas City turns 50 this year, let's not forget how it turned a vibrant neighborhood into a parking lot. Yellow shows surface parking lots, while green are garages. pic.twitter.com/zK4rLaHIjr
— Hayden Clarkin (@the_transit_guy) October 27, 2022
Hayden isn’t the only one reacting to MoDOT’s cluelessness. Jacob Shepherd (@jnspep4) pointed out the negative impact this “improvement” had on the population of downtown Kansas City.
What an achievement https://t.co/EOTA37Sj5D pic.twitter.com/pZxMQQ0sF2
— Jacob Shepherd (@jnshep4) October 28, 2022
Still others were willing to state the obvious to the emperor with no clothes:
When I say "terminal civil engineer brain", it's this.
— ryan (@rday2k) October 28, 2022
Celebrating a road cause "look how cool and complicated it is! we're so smart that we knew how to build this!"
These quacks don't care that they literally bulldozed neighborhoods and destroyed their city in the process https://t.co/8IcUD6XA9N pic.twitter.com/XGgG10GWLQ
After WWII, our own DOTs destroyed cities more completely and permanently than carpet bombing. They demolished vibrant neighborhoods to install a transportation system which became a public health disaster: the #1 source of child death, GHG emissions, air and noise pollution. https://t.co/5ylgD3yRFc pic.twitter.com/RlAqNEQO7Y
— Bella Chu (@bellachu10) October 28, 2022
Our friend, Jason Slaughter from Not Just Bikes, also weighed in:
You people are sociopaths. Are you incapable of learning from the past? This highway loop literally destroyed the fabric of the city.
— Not Just Bikes 🇳🇱 (@notjustbikes) October 28, 2022
This is not to be celebrated. It should be taught to every incoming traffic engineering student as an example of the hubris of traffic engineers.
The modern cadre of American traffic engineers do seem incapable of learning from their mistakes, if not individually than certainly as a collective institution. That is why it is so important that we have a broad, bottom-up resistance to further highway expansions and the ongoing destruction of local streets in the name of traffic flow.
They won’t stop until we make them. We can’t do that as individuals, but as a movement of people demanding this change, we can make it happen—in Kansas City and where you live.
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.