highways and racial equality
The issue at hand: The Department of Transportation has launched a pilot program to help mitigate some of the racial inequities created by highway construction. Interstate and other new roadways have been known to cut through minority communities.
Q: How do highways affect racial equity? Large projects, including the federal interstate highway system begun in the 1950s, were sometimes routed through lower-income, Black communities, dividing those neighborhoods. One of the worst, in Baltimore, cut directly through a predominantly Black neighborhood, plummeting property values — while the increased transportation dramatically improved business access in majority-white areas communities.
Q: What can be done? Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Thursday launched a $1 billion pilot program aimed at helping reconnect cities and neighborhoods racially segregated or divided by road projects.
Q: What are the remedies? New projects could include rapid bus transit lines to link disadvantaged neighborhoods to jobs; caps built on top of highways featuring green spaces, bike lanes and pedestrian walkways to allow for safe crossings over the roadways; repurposing former rail lines; and partial removal of highways.
About the Author
Justin Beckett is the Team Leader and Senior Designer at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has worked in journalism for 18 years, including stints as a designer and editor at The Daily Press in Victorville, Calif. and Project Team Leader at the Dayton Daily News in Ohio. Most recently he served as an Editions Coach at The AJC.
