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.
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