Highway Expansion
‘Secretary Pete Can’t Save You’: FHWA OKs Houston Highway Expansion After Pause
"The lesson here is, Secretary Pete is not going to come in and save the day," said one highway opponent. "And he probably isn’t capable of saving the day."
March 15, 2023
Are Texas Transportation Commissioners’ Investments in Auto and Oil Fueling Highway Addiction?
“They’d discuss budgets, billions and billions of dollars — and it’s obvious who their interests are,” she says. “I was there every month and never once did I hear them say, ‘People who are living in their grandma’s home, that’s their inheritance — [we want to make sure they] are being paid equally as all the big businesses downtown.’”
March 10, 2023
Rest In Pieces, ‘Fix-it-First’: Biden Caves to GOP’s Highway Expansion Obsession
The Biden administration has caved to GOP pressure and will no longer push states to repair existing highways before building new ones, a move that angered livable cities advocates.
March 7, 2023
TxDOT Chooses Highways Over Housing
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is pushing forward with an $85 billion, decade-long plan to expand the state’s highway system, despite widespread opposition and even a federal lawsuit — even if that means tearing down housing.
February 16, 2023
Opinion: It’s Time to Embrace ‘Deinfluencing’ Car Culture — and Gen Z is Leading
“There doesn’t seem to be a lot of honesty anymore [on social media], it seems like a lot of things are run through money,” one social media user said.
February 13, 2023
Congress’s Messy ‘Fix-It-First’ Fight Heats Up
A long-fought effort to get states to spend more of their federal infrastructure dollars on fixing highways rather than building new ones is in peril in the newly GOP-lead head house — and if it succeeds, it could force President Biden to take an unprecedented stand in favor of progressive road priorities.
January 23, 2023
Syracuse’s Messy I-81 Teardown Fight Shows the Challenge of ‘Reconnecting Communities’
An 11th-hour legal battle over the future of one of America's most talked-about highway teardowns is sparking a debate about what it really means to "reconnect communities" devastated by highway construction — and possibly offering a preview of similar fights on deck in other U.S. cities.
December 12, 2022
Advocates Warn ‘Reconnecting Communities’ Program Could Actually Expand Highways
A massive coalition of advocates is calling on the federal Department of Transportation to make sure a historic fund that could tear down harmful urban highways across America isn't used to expand or maintain them instead.
November 3, 2022
Opinion: Stop Expanding the Damn Roads in Michigan
The recent announcement of a $105-million grant to remove I-375 in Detroit is welcome news. But it also raises the question of whether our broader road spending is leading to a future we want.
October 28, 2022
Talking Headways Podcast: Texas Highway Tangle
Why is there no affordable housing in Austin? The Texas DOT is a big force pushing for sprawl, a journalist finds.
October 6, 2022
