Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Highway Expansion

Opinion: To Halt Wasteful Highways, America Needs a ‘Road Review’

By Tony Dutzik | May 24, 2023 | No Comments

n February, the government of Wales announced that it was scrapping all major road-building projects. The move came after a year-long “roads review” in which a government-appointed panel systematically reviewed the nation’s road-building program in light of its climate and environmental goals. To an American steeped in our highway-happy, boondoggle-building transportation policy system, the summary of the roads review reads like something out of a particularly good fantasy novel. But could it happen here, too, if the people lead the way?

A Teen Activist’s Message to Transportation Leaders That Everyone Needs To Hear

By Kea Wilson | May 3, 2023 | No Comments

Teenage climate organizers in Oregon are standing up against a freeway expansion that will threaten their generation's very future — and sending a message to adult policymakers that the connection between car dependency and the climate crisis can no longer be ignored.

The city of Baltimore recently received federal grant money to study removing a stretch of I-40 known as the "Highway to Nowhere." Photo: FA Martin, CC

These 10 Urban Freeways Deserve To Be Demolished — But Will They?

By Kea Wilson | Apr 19, 2023 | No Comments

America is at a watershed moment in the fight to heal the harms of urban freeways that tore apart predominantly BIPOC and low-income communities, a new report argues — but what that healing will look like, exactly, is still an open question.

STREETSBLOG CHICAGO

Chicago Highway Expansion Transformed into Greenway Project

By John Greenfield | Mar 16, 2023 | No Comments

While it may be a few years until the greenway project gets off the ground, it's certainly a fantastic outcome that instead of being filled by cars, trucks, and pollution, the corridor will be used by pedestrians, bike riders, and wildlife.

Inset photo: I-45 Expansion Impacts, via LINK Houston with support from Stop TxDOT I-45

‘Secretary Pete Can’t Save You’: FHWA OKs Houston Highway Expansion After Pause

By Kea Wilson | Mar 15, 2023 | No Comments

"The lesson here is, Secretary Pete is not going to come in and save the day," said one highway opponent. "And he probably isn’t capable of saving the day."

Houston's I-45 and I-10. Photo: Dhanix, CC

Are Texas Transportation Commissioners’ Investments in Auto and Oil Fueling Highway Addiction?

By Amal Ahmed | Mar 10, 2023 | No Comments

“They’d discuss budgets, billions and billions of dollars — and it’s obvious who their interests are,” she says. “I was there every month and never once did I hear them say, ‘People who are living in their grandma’s home, that’s their inheritance — [we want to make sure they] are being paid equally as all the big businesses downtown.’”

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