Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Highway Expansion

Detroit’s Regional Planners Need to Kick the Highway Habit

By Angie Schmitt | Jun 19, 2013 | 7 Comments

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 […]

Buffalo Dug Itself Into a Deep Infrastructure Hole. Can It Escape?

By Angie Schmitt | Jun 12, 2013 | 2 Comments

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 […]

NC Gov. McCrory Sets Out to Let Highway Money Flow While Blocking Transit

By Angie Schmitt | Jun 12, 2013 | 5 Comments

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. McCrory’s Strategic Mobility Formula will clear the way for more spending on the state’s highway system, designating about 40 percent of […]

Cleveland Revisits 1960s With Urban Renewal-Style “Opportunity Corridor”

By Angie Schmitt | Jun 5, 2013 | 33 Comments

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 […]

Wisconsin Using Inflated Traffic Projections to Justify Highway Projects

By Angie Schmitt | May 28, 2013 | 12 Comments

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 11-mile highway opened in 2010. But traffic never lived up to the projections WisDOT […]

U.S. PIRG: The Driving Boom Is Over But the Road-Building Binge Continues

By Tanya Snyder | May 14, 2013 | 14 Comments

The driving boom is over. After decades of steady growth, U.S. driving rates have stagnated and even fallen. Per capita driving is as low as it was in 1996. And yet, federal and state government estimates continue to predict inexorable growth, relentlessly building expensive new highways for drivers who might not materialize. A groundbreaking new […]

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