Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Highway Expansion

Midwest Govs Go All Out to Raise More Money for Highways

By Angie Schmitt | Feb 22, 2013 | No Comments

We’ve been watching how governors around the country are getting extra “creative” as they try to keep their transportation budgets solvent. Yesterday we witnessed an excise tax on bicycles floated in Washington State. But the award for the wildest funding scheme may go to renowned highway spender Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin, who wants to […]

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Gary Toth: TTI Congestion Scores Prove Road Expansion Isn’t the Answer

By Tanya Snyder | Feb 7, 2013 | No Comments

In response to our critique of the Texas Transportation Institute’s congestion rankings, which take traffic delays out of context and risk being used to justify road expansions, former New Jersey DOT leader Gary Toth raised this question: What if, instead of getting frustrated with the report, we reframe its interpretation? He does it by pointing out that the […]

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The Revolving Door: TxDOT’s Phil Wilson, “Revolver in Chief”

By Angie Schmitt | Feb 1, 2013 | No Comments

This is the final installment in our three-part “Revolving Door” series about how cronyism in state DOTs leads to wasteful highway building. The first part profiled Ohio DOT chief Jerry Wray and the second part looked at Oklahoma DOT boss Gary Ridley. Both Wray and Ridley left the DOTs to work as asphalt industry lobbyists, only to return […]

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The Revolving Door: Oklahoma’s Gary Ridley – Asphalt Lobbyist, DOT Chief

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 30, 2013 | No Comments

This is the second installment in our three-part “Revolving Door” series about how cronyism in state DOTs leads to wasteful highway building. The first part profiled Ohio DOT chief Jerry Wray, who has switched back and forth between working directly for the asphalt industry and shoveling money to the asphalt industry as a public official. […]

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The State DOT Revolving Door: Meet Jerry Wray, Ohio’s “Asphalt Sheriff”

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 29, 2013 | No Comments

One of the top goals of the national transportation reform movement is to get state DOTs to spend their money more wisely. The feds distribute tens of billions of dollars to state DOTs each year with very few strings attached. But for every state like Massachusetts or Tennessee that’s decided to shift toward building walkable […]

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Meet the $4.7 Billion Birmingham Highway Only Cronyism Could Build

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 28, 2013 | No Comments

It is really a testament to how dominant the highway industrial complex has become that we even have to talk about Birmingham’s Northern Beltline, a $4.7 billion outerbelt first proposed in the 1960s. But with backing from big companies that would reap windfall real estate profits from the highway — and with a U.S. Senator […]

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