The economics of highway removal

Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

Happy Friday readers! A story this week by my friend and colleague Dan Vock detailed how some places are dialing down their approach to highway removal in their application for federal funds that (among other things) encourages moving them. It got me thinking about the economic realities of undoing the multi-generational damages caused by urban renewal and systemic racism. Below, I’ll look at what’s at stake and dig into a couple successful examples.

No such thing as affordably tearing down a highway

Over the past year-and-a-half, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) have allocated more than $4 billion over five years to mitigate historical injustices created by freeway construction. The IRA’s $3 billion program hasn’t opened yet but the IIJA’s $1 billion Reconnecting Communities grant program accepted first-round applications earlier this year. 

Dan’s story talks about a distinct divide in approach—even within the same region:

• Residents and officials in Tulsa, Oklahoma, applied for funding to study the possibility of taking down a highway that split Tulsa’s Black Wall Street in two and ultimately spelled the end for that neighborhood’s prosperity. 

• Oklahoma Department of Transportation submitted a separate application that outlined aesthetic improvements it could make near that same interstate as a way of mitigating the divide.

“The dueling applications present a fraught question for the Biden administration: whether Reconnecting Communities should focus on ambitious highway removals or on lessening the harm of existing highways or, even, in a few cases, making highway expansions more palatable to neighbors,” Dan wrote. “The answer could determine the fate of Black neighborhoods across the country, from Tremé in New Orleans to the Rose Quarter in Portland, Oregon.”

Blaming the feds: Louisiana’s transportation secretary, who was previously the first Black president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, offered up an explanation to Route Fifty for why removing an expressway through New Orleans isn’t financially feasible. He pointed out that the Reconnecting Communities program was cut from $20 billion in Biden’s original proposal to $1 billion, or $195 million a year. So, the state and city decided on a $95 million enhancement project and are asking the feds to cover $58 million.

OK, but the real barrier isn’t money

While it seems like cost is the main issue here, that’s more like a symptom of the overall problem which is really about a risk-averse mindset.

You can either spend a lot of your own money (and political will) doing something hard that will take a long time—and knowing that things will probably get worse before they get better. Or you can spend less money, try to dress up a giant trash can and say at least you did something. Trash cans aside, it’s easy to see why the latter is more appealing, especially for people who want to be re-elected or for the scores of risk-averse folks who work in government.

Removing or undergrounding a highway is at least a billion-dollar proposition and probably more these days with inflation. So even if there were $20 billion in grants available, it wouldn’t be enough to cover the needs nationwide.

Designing a highway mitigation project so that the feds foot most of the bill will lead to short-sighted goals that do nothing to mitigate air pollution, physical barriers and other environmental, social and economic harms. Cities lose out on reclaiming a neighborhood that could ultimately increase its tax base while sending residents the message that they’ll just have have to live with this permanent reminder of structural racism.

How to disappear a freeway