Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Highway Removal

U.S. DOT Wants to Show America How to Heal Divides Left By Urban Highways

By Angie Schmitt | May 5, 2016 | 35 Comments

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx opened up earlier this spring in a refreshingly personal speech about how highway construction in American cities isolated many neighborhoods — especially black neighborhoods — and cut people off from economic opportunity. Now U.S. DOT is following up with an effort to demonstrate how those wrongs can be righted. Yesterday the agency announced the Every Place […]

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 […]

Toronto City Council Blows Its Chance to Transform Downtown

By Tanya Snyder | Jun 12, 2015 | 23 Comments

Tearing down Toronto’s Gardiner East Expressway would remove a hulking blight from downtown, improve access to the waterfront, open up land for walkable development, and save hundreds of millions of dollars compared to rebuilding the highway. But that didn’t convince the City Council. In a 24-21 vote yesterday, the Council opted to rebuild the aging Gardiner with some […]

Decision Time for Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway

By Angie Schmitt | Jun 3, 2015 | 7 Comments

Toronto is facing a critical decision about the aging elevated Gardiner East Expressway. Will Canada’s largest city go ahead with the plan to replace the one-mile-long concrete relic with a surface boulevard and walkable development? Or will it cling to yesterday’s infrastructure? The debate has been heating up ahead of a key City Council meeting next week. A poll released […]

Boston Says So Long to the Casey Overpass, a 1950s Highway Relic

By Angie Schmitt | May 20, 2015 | 5 Comments

This month, Boston is demolishing a monument to 1950s-era car infrastructure: The Casey Overpass, a short elevated road built in 1955 to whisk drivers over the Forest Hills MBTA station in Jamaica Plain without encountering any pesky things like intersections or pedestrians. The last car drove over the decrepit 1,600-foot-long structure just a few days ago, and construction […]

Dallas Highway Teardown PAC Snags Two Council Seats. Next Up: Runoff

By Angie Schmitt | May 14, 2015 | 2 Comments

A coalition of Dallas residents trying to build a more walkable, people-friendly city gained some momentum in Tuesday’s election, picking up at least two City Council seats. At stake is the potential replacement of a downtown highway segment with mixed-use development and parks. The balance of power in the council now comes down to a June runoff. There were six […]

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