Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Highway Expansion

Anthony Foxx Wants to Repair the Damage Done By Urban Highways

By Angie Schmitt | Mar 30, 2016 | 96 Comments

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx is offering a surprisingly honest appraisal of America’s history of road construction this week, with a high-profile speaking tour that focuses on the damage that highways caused in black urban neighborhoods. Growing up in Charlotte, Foxx’s own street was walled in by highways, he recalled in a speech today at the Center for American Progress. Building big, grade-separated roads through […]

Denver Residents Sue to Stop John Hickenlooper’s Highway Boondoggle

By David Sachs | Mar 16, 2016 | No Comments

North Denver neighborhood organizations and the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit in federal court today to stop Colorado DOT’s I-70 boondoggle, which will increase traffic and create more air pollution for generations to come if it’s built. The communities around the highway are exposed to elevated levels of particulate pollution, which leads to higher rates of chronic cardiovascular diseases. Widening […]

The Complete Case Against Highway Widening in Detroit

By Angie Schmitt | Mar 1, 2016 | 3 Comments

Michigan DOT wants to spend $1 billion rebuilding and widening I-75 to Detroit’s sprawling northern suburbs, at the expense of the city and close-in suburbs. Royal Oak, a walkable suburb that borders the city, is not having it. The City Council passed a resolution unanimously this week officially opposing the widening of I-75 as well as […]

Sober Non-Partisan Analysis: America Wastes a Ton of Money on Highways

By Angie Schmitt | Feb 23, 2016 | 26 Comments

A good deal of the $46 billion the federal government pours into highway spending each year is going to waste, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report [PDF]. The conclusion won’t surprise regular Streetsblog readers, but it’s the source that’s interesting. The CBO is not an advocacy group or an ideologically-minded think tank. It’s a non-partisan budget watchdog charged […]

Highway Boondoggles: Iowa’s U.S. 20 Widening

By John Olivieri and Jeff Inglis | Feb 2, 2016 | 1 Comment

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. In June 2015, the […]

Highway Boondoggles: California’s 710 Tunnel

By Jeff Inglis and John Olivieri | Jan 22, 2016 | No Comments

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. A highway linking I-710 from Alhambra to I-210/ SR-710 in Pasadena was first proposed in the late 1950s. Ever since, efforts to build the highway have run into obstacles including […]

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