Tag: asphalt

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The Infrastructure Bill: A Dinosaur Of A Federal Transportation Program

For those applauding the passage of the Infrastructure Bill…

Step one for repairing a problem: Stop making it worse

  • The refrain “roads and bridges” – there is no provision to repair anything before building new and bigger roads adding to environmental disaster.
  • Money for transit, but billions to promote more driving will undermine it as long as we keep building new roads and prioritizing driving as an unalienable American right.
  • The US has a horrible history of  building highways bisecting and destroying already poor neighborhoods, yet the practice continues with Louisiana’s current $750 million plan to bulldoze a Black neighborhood in Shreveport.
  • Subsidizing oil and gas industries keeps fueling cars and the construction of new roads, continuing the destruction of the environment.
  • President Biden’s pledges to cut emissions, pointing at the transportation sector.  But “Beth Osborne [and T4America]… accused Congress of ‘doubling down on a dinosaur of a federal transportation program’ that she said has produced a dangerous, inequitable and unsustainable transportation network.” – Airline, automotive, oil, gas and all related industries like asphalt etc. are all responsible for the climate disaster.

“With the infrastructure deal completed, the Build Back Better budget reconciliation act is still awaiting action. That package does include some important provisions for improving access to transit, grants for reducing emissions, and more. But it’s tough to swallow knowing that the infrastructure deal is likely to make many of these same issues worse, something we wrote about last week:

“We are encouraged to know that Congress is taking seriously the need to address climate change, equity, and economic recovery. But the $40 billion included here unfortunately won’t be enough to redeem the $645 billion-plus infrastructure bill that will continue to make many of those same problems worse. As we’ve said throughout the second half of this year, the administration has a difficult task ahead to advance their stated goals of repair, safety, climate, equity, and access to jobs and services through these small improvements, while spending historic amounts on unchanged programs that have historically made those issues worse.”

Read more…

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The Big Picture : We Can’t Afford Car Domination

We’re drowning in asphalt.

It’s become obvious with the thousands of miles of empty roads and highways during the COVID-19 outbreak. We need to rethink the way we get people around.

The nation is criss-crossed with roads that we can’t maintain. “…highways just don’t make financial sense. And not just in the age of COVID-19, when almost no one is driving if they don’t absolutely have to. It’s true all the time — even when our economy is at its peak.”

This article is about federal dollars and highways, but the story is the same for states, cities, and local roads. We need to rethink about the way people can get around without cars. “Highways get 67 percent of total transportation dollars, and are already deeply subsidized by the federal government (but operating budgets and maintenance are left to the states, which is a little like giving someone a puppy that they can’t afford to feed.)”

 We Could Never Afford America’s Highways — Even Before COVID-19

We’ve never been able to afford our car-dominated roads. Coronavirus just reveals how bad the situation has always been.

By Kea Wilson

To put it bluntly, in the nearly 70 years since the Federal Highway Act of 1956 gave states a 90-percent discount on a brand new freeway systems of their very own, no state has ever found a reliable way to maintain all that asphalt without extensive federal assistance. We have 50 distinct road-funding structures across 50 states, and no one has found the magic amount to charge for gas taxes, DMV fees and sales taxes to make the math work and subtract from the $786-billion highway maintenance backlog. Highways are always “crumbling.” Car-focused road infrastructure always needs more money. Politicians are eternally showing up at ribbon-cuttings for new highways, then quickly realize that they can’t maintain the roadways they just opened.

Read all about it:

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/04/13/we-could-never-afford-americas-highways-even-before-covid-19/