Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is announcing a $1 billion dollar first-of-its-kind pilot program aimed at helping reconnect cities. The goal is change road projects that resulted in racially segregated or divided neighborhoods that were created by road projects. Buttigieg is pledging wide-ranging help to dozens of communities despite the program's limited dollars. Alabama has been criticized for this in the past.
The Reconnecting Communities program is designed so cities and states can apply for the federal aid over five years. The projects are meant to fix problems caused by roadways that were built primarily through lower-income, Black communities after the 1950s creation of the interstate highway system.
A 2020 article in the Vanderbilt University Law School Review was critical of decisions made in Birmingham during the creation of the Interstate highways. The article, “White Men’s Roads Through Black Men’s Homes: Advancing Racial Equity Through Highway Reconstruction,” spotlights how Birmingham city leaders used a 1926 racial zoning ordinance that required the legal separation of black and white neighborhoods. The Interstate highway, the report complains, was used to enforce that segregation policy. City planners reportedly used the development of Interstates 59 and 65 to advance this segregationist agenda.
New projects, in the just unveiled DOT “racial equity” plan, could include rapid bus transit lines to link disadvantaged neighborhoods to jobs. It could build highways featuring green spaces, bike lanes and pedestrian walkways to allow for safe crossings over the roadways. The plan could also repurpose former rail lines, and partially remove of highways to help with integration.
The Transportation Department has aimed to help communities that feel racially harmed by highway expansions. The Federal Highway Administration last year taking a rare step to pause a proposed $9 billion dollar widening project in Houston, partly over civil rights concerns. That move likely spurred action in other places such as Austin, Texas, where environmental and racial justice groups recently filed a lawsuit to force the Texas transportation agency to better lay out the impacts of a proposed highway expansion project.
