Highway Expansion
Basics
Scandalous Video: Obama Talks Sense About Road Building
You all excited to watch the presidential debate tonight? Here's a glimpse back to 2007, when the old Barack Obama was getting us all hyped up on a sugar rush of hope and change. Check out this video, care of the conservative Daily Caller, which is making a lot of hay about some racially-charged remarks Obama made on the campaign trail back then.
October 3, 2012
Louisville Doubles Down on Disruptive Downtown Highway
Louisville, Kentucky, is, by all accounts, a city with a lot of potential. An old river city, it has a wealth of beautiful, historic architecture. It's mid-sized, but large enough to have some good urban amenities. It's affordable, with a downtown waterfront and some unique cultural charms. As the New York Times said in its article about the city earlier this week, "Louisville has good bones."
September 27, 2012
NRDC Poll: Americans Support New Transit Twice as Much as New Roads
When asked what would solve traffic problems in their community, 42 percent of Americans say more transit. Only 20 percent say more roads. And 21 percent would like to see communities developed that don’t require so much driving. Two-thirds support local planning that guides new development into existing cities and near public transportation.
September 12, 2012
How Highway Spending Could Become as Transparent as Bike/Ped Spending
“There’s an inverse proportion of the size of a transportation program to the amount of transparency,” says Deron Lovaas of the Natural Resources Defense Council. While anyone can easily find in granular detail anything they would ever want to know about where bike/ped money goes, and they can get a pretty good idea of what's going on with transit capital investments, highway spending is a black box -- and that's 80 percent of U.S. transportation dollars.
September 11, 2012
Tennessee DOT Moves Past Road-Widening as a Congestion Reduction Strategy
In the late eighties and nineties, every traffic issue the Tennessee Department of Transportation faced was assigned the same solution: a bypass. But over the years, the department has come around to a new way of doing things, according to 40-year TDOT veteran Ralph Comer. Comer says the current commissioner, John Schroer, wants to become known as the “no-bypass commissioner.” He simply believes there are usually more cost-effective ways of solving transportation problems.
August 30, 2012
Highway Builders to Party Leaders: The Future Is “More Than Just Roadways”
Over the past two weeks, the American Road & Transportation Builders Association has sent letters to the Republican National Committee [PDF] and the Democratic National Committee [PDF], asking them to consider inserting a plank in their platforms about transportation. And they were clear in their letter that, despite being major cheerleaders for road-building, the future they see is multi-modal.
July 26, 2012
Smart Growth America: States May Pave Over Their Own Good Intentions
Last week, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign revealed how states prioritize spending: 20 percent for transit, 2 percent for bike/ped, 38.5 percent for maintenance, and about 22.5 percent for highway expansion. Looking just at those last two numbers, that breaks down to 71 percent more spending on repair than sprawl-inducing new lanes.
July 23, 2012
Atlanta’s Big Moment
There's a lot at stake for metro Atlanta on July 31. That day, voters will go to the polls to decide the fate of a proposed one percent sales tax that promises some $8 billion in transportation funding, to be split relatively evenly between transit and road projects over 10 counties. If it fails, experts warn, the only fundable transportation project going forward could be toll roads.
July 16, 2012
Report: Traffic Studies Systematically Overstate Benefits of Road Projects
Nearly every time a new road is built, traffic volume increases beyond the predictions of the traffic studies. And nearly every time, transportation planners are surprised.
July 6, 2012