Highway Expansion
Basics
Ghost Parcels Show How Urban Highways Squandered Valuable Land
Here’s a great illustration of how incredibly destructive and wasteful it is to run elevated highways through cities. New York City-based artist and planning consultant Neil Freeman, who grew up in Chicago, put together these haunting images of Cook County land parcel maps superimposed over aerials of expressway interchanges in the West Loop, River West, Bridgeport and Chinatown.
October 7, 2015
3 White Elephants That Help Explain America’s Infrastructure Crisis
A new report by the Center for American Progress zeros in on an under-appreciated culprit in America's much ballyhooed infrastructure crisis: All the money we waste on useless roads.
September 30, 2015
Two Highway Lanes Won’t Fix Baton Rouge’s Traffic Problem
Everyone agrees there's a traffic problem in Baton Rouge, but not everyone is sold on the state's plan to address it.
September 4, 2015
Louisiana Raids Its Maintenance Fund to Pay for Road Expansions
This year, Louisiana will raid $21.6 million from its road maintenance fund to pay for road projects, including some expansions, that have been on the books since 1989. The state will have to keep stealing from the fund for the next 27 years to pay for them.
August 7, 2015
HUD Tells Cleveland: Don’t Let Opportunity Corridor Go “Horribly Wrong”
It was a sad day in Washington, DC, last year when Harriet Tregoning left the DC Office of Planning. But it’s becoming clear that she's a great addition at HUD.
July 7, 2015
Scott Walker’s Own Party Rejects His Milwaukee Highway Boondoggle
Governor Scott Walker might be too busy campaigning for president to care, but the Wisconsin legislature handed him a rebuke last week, rejecting his plans for debt-fueled highway expansion.
July 6, 2015
The Pendulum Swings Away From Highways on the Dallas City Council
A runoff election Saturday has solidified who's in and who's out of the Dallas City Council. At stake were the future of two highway projects: the construction of the Trinity Toll Road and the removal of I-345 to make way for walkable development. Highway opponents gained ground, though not enough for a majority.
June 17, 2015
Ohio DOT Cedes Ground in Its Sneaky Highway Expansion Campaign
Opponents of a $1.4 billion highway expansion project outside Cincinnati have won some important concessions from Ohio DOT, but the agency's stealth campaign to build an "interstate to the sea" isn't over yet.
June 8, 2015
Putting TIGER Spending in Perspective
The House's current transportation spending bill calls for reducing the share of federal spending that goes to TIGER, a grant program for sustainable transportation projects in cities, from $500 to $100 million. The budget, meanwhile, holds highway funding steady.
May 1, 2015
Is the Lord For or Against a Texas County Road Bond? Opinions Mixed
Things are really getting heated in Montgomery County, Texas, just outside Houston, over a proposal to issue $350 million in bonds to maintain and expand roads. Like fire-and-brimstone heated.
April 9, 2015