Highway Expansion
Basics
Highway Boondoggles: Iowa’s U.S. 20 Widening
In a new report, Highway Boondoggles 2, U.S. PIRG and the Frontier Group profile the most wasteful highway projects that state DOTs are building. Today we highlight the proposed 40-mile widening of U.S. 20 in Iowa, which will cost many times as much as fixing all the state's structurally deficient highway bridges.
February 2, 2016
Highway Boondoggles: California’s 710 Tunnel
A proposal to drill a pair of highway tunnels is the most expensive, most polluting, least effective option for solving the San Gabriel Valley’s transportation problems.
January 22, 2016
Caption Contest: TxDOT’s Shiny Happy People Sucking in Highway Exhaust
This rendering of State Highway 45 Southwest in Austin -- one of 12 highway boondoggles singled out by U.S. PIRG and the Frontier Group this year -- inspired some mockery on Twitter:
January 22, 2016
Highway Boondoggles: Texas State Highway 45 Southwest
In a new report, Highway Boondoggles 2 (the original came out in 2014), U.S. PIRG and the Frontier Group teamed up to profile the most wasteful highway projects that state DOTs are building. Streetsblog will be serializing the case studies in the report. Today, we focus on a road project that risks contaminating the water supply in and around Austin, Texas.
January 21, 2016
Highway Boondoggles: Widening I-95 Across Connecticut
Last year Congress passed a multi-year transportation bill. Like previous bills, it gives tens of billions of dollars to states every year to spend with almost no strings attached. How much of this federal funding will state DOTs devote to expensive, traffic-inducing highway projects that further entrench car dependence and sprawl?
January 19, 2016
Lobbyist Holds Up Spectacular Example of the Futility of Widening Highways
Crossposted from City Observatory.
December 16, 2015
The High Price of Cheap Gas
At least on the surface, the big declines in gas prices we’ve seen over the past year seem like an unalloyed good. We save money at the pump, and we have more to spend on other things, But the cheap gas has serious hidden costs—more pollution, more energy consumption, more crashes and greater traffic congestion. There’s an important lesson here, if we pay attention.
November 19, 2015
Community Pushing Back Against Plan to Widen Interstate Through Asheville
Will the state of North Carolina and the Federal Highway Administration insist on widening an interstate highway through west Asheville to eight lanes? Right now, it looks like there's a very good chance of that -- and that's what frightens a lot of locals.
November 13, 2015
Arkansas Wants to Widen Highway, Eliminate Streetcar for “Safety”
Where to even begin with this?
October 26, 2015
Dallas Council Member: Texas Poised to “Compound Errors of the Past”
The entire Texas highway machine -- suburban real estate moguls, the construction industry, the governor, and the legislature -- is pushing voters to approve Prop 7, a constitutional amendment that would mandate spending $2.5 billion in state sales tax revenue on un-tolled roads. The highway interests are telling Texas voters in unison that this measure, if approved in November, will fix congestion and not cost them any extra money -- claims that don't stand up to the slightest scrutiny.
October 21, 2015