Highway Expansion
Anthony Foxx Wants to Repair the Damage Done By Urban Highways
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.
March 30, 2016
Denver Residents Sue to Stop John Hickenlooper’s Highway Boondoggle
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.
March 16, 2016
The Complete Case Against Highway Widening in Detroit
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.
March 1, 2016
Sober Non-Partisan Analysis: America Wastes a Ton of Money on Highways
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].
February 23, 2016
Highway Boondoggles: Iowa’s U.S. 20 Widening
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.
February 2, 2016
Highway Boondoggles: California’s 710 Tunnel
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.
January 22, 2016
Caption Contest: TxDOT’s Shiny Happy People Sucking in Highway Exhaust
This rendering of State Highway 45 Southwest in Austin -- one of 12 highway boondoggles singled out by U.S. PIRG and the Frontier Group this year -- inspired some mockery on Twitter:
January 22, 2016
Highway Boondoggles: Texas State Highway 45 Southwest
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 focus on a road project that risks contaminating the water supply in and around Austin, Texas.
January 21, 2016
Highway Boondoggles: Widening I-95 Across Connecticut
Last year Congress passed a multi-year transportation bill. Like previous bills, it gives tens of billions of dollars to states every year to spend with almost no strings attached. How much of this federal funding will state DOTs devote to expensive, traffic-inducing highway projects that further entrench car dependence and sprawl?
January 19, 2016
Lobbyist Holds Up Spectacular Example of the Futility of Widening Highways
Crossposted from City Observatory.
December 16, 2015