Recent Streetsblog USA posts about U.S. PIRG

The North Houston Highway Improvement Project will expand already vast swaths of highway
through the middle of Houston, displacing homes and businesses and dividing communities.
Image: Texas Dept. of Transportation

Boondoggle: A Texas-Sized Mess of a Highway Plan

By Gideon Weissman and Matthew Casale | Jun 19, 2019 | 11 Comments

Deadly and sprawling Houston does not need this $7-billion widening and rebuilding highway project.

Boondoggles: Nine Projects That Should Not Happen

By Gideon Weissman and Matthew Casale | Jun 18, 2019 | 9 Comments

Here's the thing with highway expansion projects: They're big. They're expensive. And they have limited benefit. Our friends at US PIRG present their annual report.

Spending $2 trillion on infrastructure need not result in more of these. Photo: Ohio River Bridges Flickr Page

There’s a Right Way to Spend Trillions on Infrastructure

By Aaron Short | May 14, 2019 | 3 Comments

A new report seeks to upend the debate over infrastructure to investments that boost mass transit while saving the planet.

Highway Boondoggles: Widening I-70 in Denver

By Jeff Inglis and John Olivieri | Jan 25, 2016

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 look at the widening of I-70 in Denver, a project with a […]

Highway Boondoggles: Tampa Bay Express Lanes

By Jeff Inglis and John Olivieri | Jan 20, 2016 | 1 Comment

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. Yesterday, we looked at Connecticut’s $11.5 billion I-95 widening. Today, we focus on a proposed $3.3 billion […]

Planning for Less Driving, Not More, Would Lead to Big Savings

By Angie Schmitt | Nov 23, 2015 | 10 Comments

What if, instead of basing policy around the presumption that people will drive more every year, transportation agencies started making decisions to reduce the volume of driving? And what if they succeed? A new report from the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group quantifies what would happen in that state if driving rates come in one percentage point lower than the state […]

Show More Stories