The idea that some U.S. highways were built to hurt minority neighborhoods is not new, but in 2021 they are getting new attention from both the Biden administration and a state legislator in California who wants a law to prevent freeway expansion in certain areas of the state.
A provision in President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act is called Reconnecting Communities, and it is a $1 billon program.
Liam Dillon, a reporter with the Los Angeles Times who investigated whether people were displaced to build roads, said in a taxpayer-funded National Public Radio interview:
The point of it is to potentially even tear down freeways, sort of address some of the harms from racist planning decisions with respect to where freeways were cited in the past and sort of reconnect, as the program states. But, you know, that amount again, only $1 billion, sort of pales in comparison to the potential hundreds of billions of dollars that are essentially unrestricted where state transportation departments could use it to further expand freeways and, in many cases, continue to displace families.
“Well, it’s very concerning,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said when asked about the Times report. “It’s something that we need to pay attention to so that these dollars are always doing good, not harm, that they are connecting, not dividing.”
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