State DOTs
Basics
Cleveland Revisits 1960s With Urban Renewal-Style “Opportunity Corridor”
Cleveland's business leaders want you to know that "The Opportunity Corridor" -- a new road they want to jam through the city's southeast side -- definitely isn't a highway. From the beginning, project proponents have been careful to refer to this $350 million, three-mile traffic-mover as a "boulevard." And they also want you to faithfully accept that this is really all about "opportunity" for the neighborhoods the road will bisect -- some of the poorest in the region -- not the benefit of suburban car commuters.
June 5, 2013
Wisconsin Using Inflated Traffic Projections to Justify Highway Projects
In the 1990s, Wisconsin proposed a bypass for the town of Burlington (population 10,000). The $118 million project was sold as a way to reduce traffic in the center of the city, which includes the junction of four state highways.
May 28, 2013
New Threat: States Robbing From Education to Pay for Highway Expansions
Last week, protesters gathered on the statehouse steps in Little Rock, Arkansas, to oppose a bill that would transfer money from the state's general fund into its highway fund.
March 19, 2013
Pedestrian Safety, as Brought to You By Florida DOT and NASCAR
You wouldn't necessarily expect NASCAR, the very embodiment of the macho fast-car fetish in America, to go to bat for pedestrians. But in preparation for yesterday's "Super Bowl of stock car racing," the Daytona 500, NASCAR teamed up with the Florida Department of Transportation to help promote pedestrian safety around the event.
February 25, 2013
McClatchy Muckrakers Expose Seedy Underbelly of the Highway Bonanza
The work of a sustainable transportation reporter can be a lonely lot. But it’s a lot less lonely now that two McClatchy reporters, Curtis Tate and Greg Gordon, have taken up the mantle of exposing wasteful road expansion.
February 12, 2013
The Revolving Door: TxDOT’s Phil Wilson, “Revolver in Chief”
This is the final installment in our three-part “Revolving Door” series about how cronyism in state DOTs leads to wasteful highway building. The first part profiled Ohio DOT chief Jerry Wray and the second part looked at Oklahoma DOT boss Gary Ridley. Both Wray and Ridley left the DOTs to work as asphalt industry lobbyists, only to return to the public sector later on.
February 1, 2013
The Revolving Door: Oklahoma’s Gary Ridley – Asphalt Lobbyist, DOT Chief
This is the second installment in our three-part "Revolving Door" series about how cronyism in state DOTs leads to wasteful highway building. The first part profiled Ohio DOT chief Jerry Wray, who has switched back and forth between working directly for the asphalt industry and shoveling money to the asphalt industry as a public official.
January 30, 2013
Ohio’s “Jobs and Transportation Plan”: A Blueprint for Robbing Young People
The other day I stumbled upon a document from the Ohio Department of Transportation called Ohio's Job's and Transportation Plan [PDF]. As I read it, I couldn't help but feel pessimistic about the direction of the state.
January 30, 2013
The State DOT Revolving Door: Meet Jerry Wray, Ohio’s “Asphalt Sheriff”
One of the top goals of the national transportation reform movement is to get state DOTs to spend their money more wisely. The feds distribute tens of billions of dollars to state DOTs each year with very few strings attached. But for every state like Massachusetts or Tennessee that's decided to shift toward building walkable streets and away from highway construction, there are plenty of state DOTs that continue to build very expensive, sprawl-inducing roads, even though they can't afford to maintain what they already have.
January 29, 2013
Does Detroit Need Another $1.8 Billion of Freeway? MDOT Thinks So
If there's a city that could serve as a cautionary tale for overbuilding highways, that city is Detroit. So it's fascinating -- and encouraging -- to see this city going through an internal tussle over the wisdom of building a highway.
January 17, 2013