Highway Expansion

They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. But the people who shape the future of greater Detroit -- despite all the urban flight, sprawl, and decline they've seen -- just can't seem to acknowledge that they have an addiction to big highway projects. On the agenda Thursday for the regional planning commission, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, are two highway expansion plans that will cost an astounding $4 billion combined.

It truly is a testament to the collective power of denial that Rust Belt city leaders still think highways are going to improve their economies. Decades of experience with sprawl and center city decline apparently haven't put an end to the notion that prosperity is just one road widening away. In Cleveland, business leaders are clamoring for a new $350 million roadway they insist will revive manufacturing in some very poor, nearly-abandoned neighborhoods. Meanwhile, a bit further east on the Lake Erie coast, there's a great example of how cities' seemingly bottomless optimism about road and highway projects can end up putting them in a very bad position.

A new transportation plan put forward by North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory will make it "almost impossible to find money for passenger trains, sidewalks, bicycles and regional transit," according to the Raleigh News Observer.

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.

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.

The driving boom is over.

If you value principles like social and fiscal responsibility, the Wisconsin transportation budget is an unmitigated disaster. Not only does Wisconsin DOT's spending plan gut funds to transit and local streets, it lavishes $900 million in borrowed money to pay for extravagant highway projects of dubious value to the public.

The majority of the roads and highways built in America are simply bad investments. Continuing this pattern will only ensure that wasteful projects consume larger chunks of our federal, state, and local budgets, without addressing the real need for transportation options.

From the beginning of today’s hearing, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee made it clear they weren’t going to let Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s last appearance before them be an easy one. While the hearing's purpose was to examine the department's budget request, the tough questions LaHood fielded on the budget were nothing compared to the fight one lawmaker picked about the Columbia River Crossing.