Talking Headways Podcast: Highways and Partisanship

By Jeff Wood
Jul 5, 2018

This week we’re joined by Clayton Nall, a professor of political science at Stanford University, to discuss his new book about the interstate highway system and political partisanship — The Road to Inequality: How the Federal Highway Program Polarized America and Undermined Cities. Professor Nall discusses how partisanship affects the way people think about transportation projects, and historical shifts in the politics of transportation policy.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Talking Headways Podcast: How Partisanship Influences Transportation Reform

By Jeff Wood | Oct 21, 2021

This week we're joined by Kelcie Ralph, Nick Klein, and Calvin Thigpen, who talk about their recent paper "Political Partisanship and Transportation Reform." We chat about why they wrote the paper, what they found out about partisanship and transportation policy, and why actors across the political spectrum have little understanding of induced demand.

The Moment the U.S. DOT Abandoned U.S. Walkers

By Angie Schmitt | Aug 20, 2020

Federal transportation officials have never done much to center the needs of pedestrians in their policies or funding decisions. But in 2012, things took a turn for the even worse.

Brookings Institution's Adie Tomer argues that Congress must fund transportation infrastructure in a completely different way than it has in the past to ensure that transit is prioritized.

Think Tank Offers Road Map to Break the Car Culture

By Aaron Short | Dec 10, 2019

Congress should stop splurging on new highways and instead expand transit to help Americans break their century-long addiction to a device that is killing us, the car, a D.C. institute says.

Building Cloverleafs Won’t Inspire Americans to Pay More for Transportation

By Ben Ross | Jul 23, 2014

This post by Ben Ross was originally posted at Dissent. The federal transportation fund is running out of money, threatening the country with potholes, stopped construction, and economic downturn. Congress, which has kept the program solvent with short-term patches for years, now finds itself unable to do more than buy a few months’ time. Mainstream opinion pins […]

Seeking the Next Interstate System, This Time Without Asphalt

By Sarah Goodyear | May 19, 2010

Blast from the past. (Photo: Payton Chung via Flickr) The construction of the interstate highway system defined the landscape of late-20th-century America. What will be the transformative infrastructure of the 21st century? As Noah Kazis wrote on Streetsblog NYC a couple of days ago, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) would […]

The Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans is the nation's top candidate for a highway teardown, says the Congress for New Urbanism. Photo: The Advocate via CNU

Nominee Buttigieg Vows To Dismantle ‘Racist’ Freeways

By Aaron Short | Dec 22, 2020

“It’s disproportionately Black and brown neighborhoods that were divided by highway projects because they didn’t have the political capital to resist,” Buttigieg said on Sunday. "We have a chance to get that right.”