Environment | Ten Across | Data Viz
Highway removal: Reconnecting neighborhoods and the natural environment
Credit: Max for Unsplash.
As the country continues funneling billions of dollars into highway infrastructure, removal projects are becoming more common
Editor’s note: This article is part of a collaboration between APM Research Lab and the Ten Across initiative, housed at Arizona State University.
by RITHWIK KALALE | May 23, 2024
In 2003 the City of Milwaukee completed removal of the Park East Freeway. Originally developed as a part of a 1960s-era plan to improve traffic flow around the downtown, the underutilized freeway spur was eventually seen as a contributor to neighborhood decay and stunted urban development.
According to Bloomberg’s reporting, a $25 million federal investment in the Park East removal freed up 24 acres of land in Milwaukee’s urban center, and yielded $1 billion in new private investment.
Fifty-two billion in federal funding was allocated to the nation’s roads in 2022. The vast majority of this funding went to maintaining and expanding roadways.
Highway removal projects, however, are gaining recognition as legitimate use of federal funds, often touted for environmental and social reason. For example, on a recent campaign stop President Biden touted his administration’s efforts in this area, remarking: “We’re reconnecting Black neighborhoods cut off by old highways and decades of disinvestment, including here in Detroit.”
How our highways affect the environment
Across the country, highways cut through communities, forests and cities, often putting surrounding populations, both humans and wildlife, in dangerous situations.
“I noticed that roads were at the heart of so many (issues)-- right before you can illegally log the Amazon, you need roads to get the machinery in and the logs out, before you can poach an elephant you have to drive to the elephant. So, roads facilitate all these disparate environmental crises,” said Ben Goldfarb, an environmental journalist and author.
While roadkill is the most obvious effect of roads on surrounding wildlife, Goldfarb says the effects of highways in natural environments extend further than that.
“We also have this barrier effect that highways create-- this constant wall of traffic that's cruising along so many of our major interstates and that prevents animals from crossing roads altogether. They don't even try because they can't find a gap in the traffic. And when that happens, they can lose access to thousands of acres of habitat,” he said.
Noise pollution, along with road salt and maintenance chemicals that drain into streams and rivers, are factors that affect both surrounding human populations and local wildlife.
Highway removal projects gaining momentum
New Orleans’ Claiborne Expressway has been controversial for years. Around 500 homes and 326 Black-owned businesses were displaced for the roadway’s construction in the 1960s. The resulting space underneath the elevated highway is unsafe and noisy.
According to a 2019 study conducted by the Louisiana State University New Orleans School of Public Health, “residents within the Claiborne Corridor are in the top 95th to 100th percentiles in the state terms of traffic proximity,” making those populations more susceptible to respiratory disease and various cancers.
In 2021, the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act identified the Claiborne Expressway as a project that divides a community. The act allocated $550 billion nationwide to develop "America’s roads and bridges, water infrastructure, resilience, internet, and more.” Last year, another $3.2 billion was allocated for the same purpose.
In January of 2023, $185 million was awarded through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s newly established Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Grant Program (RCP). The program, funded by the Infrastructure and Jobs Act as well as the Inflation Reduction Act, is described as “a first-of-its-kind initiative to reconnect communities that are cut off from opportunity and burdened by past transportation infrastructure decisions.”
“Reconnecting Claiborne” is but one of the projects across the country to receive planning or capital funds through the program’s initial round of funding. Another example is Tucson, Arizona’s award of $900,000 toward construction of a bike and pedestrian bridge over Interstate-19. The city’s large Hispanic community has been severed and isolated since the 1960s due to the construction of I-19, and the bridge is one attempt to reconnect the neighborhood.
The initial round of RCP funding included 45 planning or capital project awards throughout the country, including seven to communities on or near the nation’s southern Interstate-10 corridor.
Funding remains a barrier
Although highway removal projects received a big boost in funding through the RCP, funding remains a large barrier to projects like these.
“Removing a highway or making a highway less of an unpleasant presence in a city is very, very, very expensive,” said Jessie Grogan, director of equity and opportunity for the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy.
“While 3 billion is nothing to be sneezed at, there is some concern that that's not as much money as it will take to really remove these highways from being big unpleasant parts of people's neighborhoods. Mostly what we're seeing is that in places like Buffalo (New York), they're just putting a cap over the top of a sunken highway. So, air quality challenges remain even if you do have more of the ability to cross back and forth between the two sides of the highway than you have before.”
Highway removal proposals also often face political barriers beyond funding, according to Grogan.
“Many of the neighborhoods that have been impacted by these highways are historically underserved communities with deep and, I would say, earned histories of mistrust with government actions and actors,” said Grogan. “...there's not necessarily guaranteed buy-in from the communities. ...there's no surefire constituency that says, ‘Yes, this is my priority.’ I would say second to cost, the politics of making this happen can be really complex.”
Moving forward
After over more than 70 years of creating a complex and interdependent web of highways that has led to much economic development and often offers great efficiency, shifting to a mindset of reducing the presence of roads is easier said than done.
“I think we are trapped in a vicious cycle where our society is set up for cars,” said Grogan. “And as long as our society is set up for cars, people are going to be resistant to anything that makes cars less convenient. I hope that the transition towards a cleaner economy and society will continue to happen, and I think with that will come shifting priorities.”
Rather than do away with highways altogether, Goldfarb suggests more investment in things like public transit, walkable communities and highway construction that does not cut through already existing infrastructure and populations.
“These freeways are still having enormous impacts on communities of color who disproportionately suffer from air pollution, noise pollution and have higher rates of asthma, cancer and all of these problems associated with living alongside these freeways,” he said.
“Ultimately, we're trying to create connectivity— both for the landscape for wildlife, rural places and for human beings and urban places. All species, humans included, need to be able to move around the places they live on their own. That's the (goal) of remaking our infrastructure.”