Better Late Than Ever Dept.

“New infrastructure projects still threaten communities today, critics say”

An occasional hiccup in canvassing neighborhoods near the interstate is having political software direct volunteers to street numbers that don’t exist. The list says to knock at 372 on a block that dead ends at 310. That’s because when planners put through the interstate decades ago, they cut the neighborhood in two. The street numbers pick up on the other side of the interstate. It’s most likely a Black neighborhood.

It seems there are plans to “remedy” some of that, Axios reports:

In an attempt to reverse the socioeconomic harm of planning decisions made decades ago, the federal government is doling out $1 billion over five years to remove highways that divide communities.

Yes, but: That’s a modest sum compared to the billions the government is pumping into new highway expansion projects that critics fear will repeat the same mistakes.

Why it matters: Highways and rail lines are supposed to help people get to where they want to go. Yet infrastructure can also be a barrier that divides neighborhoods and cuts residents off from economic opportunity.

President Joe Biden’s “Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program” funded in his 2021 infrastructure law has “has awarded $185 million in grants for projects in 45 cities.” The Department of Transportation has received $2 billion in requests.

Details: Buffalo, New York, is getting the largest award: a $55.6 million grant to build a cap and tunnel over a 1960s-era six-lane expressway, which segregated Black residents from the rest of the city.

• • Some 600 homes were demolished to make way for the highway, which cut off residents’ access to necessities like banks and grocery stores.
  • It also led to high unemployment and increased health problems, per DOT.

While in high school, I was asked to join a community advisory panel involving a proposed interstate loop around downtown. One proposal for the northern arc involved razing homes in a very poor Black neighborhood and relocating residents. What likely killed it was the route’s proximity to streets in a historic white neighborhood west of it. The loop was never built.

That approach was no accident.

Backstory: The U.S. Interstate System, created under President Eisenhower in 1956, was touted as “the greatest public works project in history.”

• • Routes were chosen where land costs were the lowest, or political resistance weakest — which usually meant cutting through low-income and minority neighborhoods.
  • An estimated 1 million people and businesses were displaced to make room for the highways, according to DOT.
  • Some neighborhoods were completely razed. Those left behind were often isolated — physically, socially, and economically.

Rectifying past damage will likely inflict more elsewhere, the report notes. Proposed projects from Jersey City to Salt Lake City will demolish “residential homes, businesses, and even churches to make room for the expanded highways.” It comes down to whose ox is gored.

It’s not that removing highways cannot improve neighborhoods (below). The problem is that our cities “are still being built around cars, not people.”

Don’t get me started on public-private partnerships on related highway deals.