Posted on 08/10/2021 4:58:15 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Tucked into US President Joe Biden's expansive infrastructure bill is a plan to knock down "racist" roads that he says harm minority communities - but not everyone he's trying to help agrees.
A fine layer of soot covers the straw-yellow paint of the wooden houses that line Interstate 81, a highway in downtown Syracuse, New York state, held up by rusted steel girders and dingy pillars of cement.
Civil rights activists call this mile of the interstate a "racist highway" because roads like this one divide minority neighbourhoods and pollute these communities. Urban planners want to tear it down - and now, President Joe Biden also has it in his sights.
Mr Biden has put his weight behind an expansive trillion-dollar infrastructure plan that, if passed, would become the biggest investment in America's roads, bridges and byways in decades. An enormous political undertaking, the package would not only tackle repairs on old power lines and potholed roads, replace drinking-water pipes and expand broadband access, but also aims to address climate change and racial inequalities.
It includes $1bn for "reconnecting communities", which means tearing down urban highways that run through neighbourhoods like the one in Syracuse. But whether knocking down roads along which generations of Americans have lived is a route to racial progress is an open question - and there are plenty of sceptics.
"There is racism physically built into some of our highways," Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary, has said.
Experts say there is some truth to this assertion. When the US highway system was being built in the 1950s to 1970s, urban planners often designed them to cut through neighbourhoods where "property values were lowest, because those houses were the least expensive to purchase", said Mark Rose, a history professor at Florida Atlantic University.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Hi.
Damn near everything is racist. From highways, to buildings, to roads and bridges. Even mountains, rocks and trees have become racist.
Statues too.
Who knew?
5.56mm
Let’s go down to the crossroads, and try to make a deal.
Bump
Duh...
Did they want them to have to buy million dollar mansions to demolish? Just to be 'fair'?
Liberals lack the ability to think clearly.
The plan is to tear down some highways? That sounds like a foolish and expensive plan.
I think someone beat us to that option.
No more “blacktops”? Concrete supremacy.
Tucked into US President Joe Biden’s expansive infrastructure bill is a plan to knock down “racist” roads that he says harm minority communities - but not everyone he’s trying to help agrees.
A fine layer of soot covers the straw-yellow paint of the wooden houses that line Interstate 81, a highway in downtown Syracuse, New York state, held up by rusted steel girders and dingy pillars of cement.
—
These very same highways that sliced up urban centers were all contracted in the 1960’s and 1970’s by the then Masters of the Universe in the very same Federal Government. Now, as before, the only winners will be their fat connected political cronies raking in bloated government contracts.
You forgot to include the biggest evidence of systemic RACISM exemplified by th incessant, blatant segregation of Day & Night!
Oh Noooooo!
While I might agree that highways through urban areas likely didn’t help things, electing Third World Potentates to run those cities was a FAR LARGER contributor to their demise.
Roadsides could benefit from the utilization of chain gangs. Prisoners doing real but menial work would be good for the prisoners and for America
Imprisoned urban detritus chained together in tandem could do wonders for our roadways as they experience the world away from their normal confined city habitat
bump
Turns out it isn't really a "racist mile" - what a shock. There are two sections on the south side where 81 divides residential areas. Mostly it divides residential areas from what looks like light industrial use, or in one area a large graveyard. You know, if I lived there, I'd be ok with that division.
There are maybe two sections, about a quarter mile each, where there are actually residential areas on both sides. In one case 81 is still on the surface so yes, it divides that neighborhood. In the other, it is raised, so there is easy access to both sides on surface streets.
I'm fairly certain that highway was there before most (any/all?) of the residents moved in. It reminds me of people who move next to an airport, then later on petition to get the airport shut down or their operations curtailed due to the noise.
I also looked around the area on the map. If you tear down the highway (gosh these leftists are awfully good at "tearing down" stuff, aren't they? statues, institutions, police departments, cancelling individuals, now roads?) then what? Do you re-route it? There doesn't seem to be any good routes without just moving the problem to another neighborhood. You could just drop it, but then traffic would be forced to detour miles around the city on 481. That's not great for the environment, nor for businesses in the city.
In short, this is a bad, even stupid idea. But then that is to be expected - there are leftists/fascist/socialist/race-baiters promoting it.
Let’s play a theoretical game and assume some stretch of some highway was a bad deal for some residents in its path, and that even on occasion might have geographically divided a local community.
Even if that could be proven to be true, does that automatically make tearing down that stretch of highway the best, the financially best solution. Consider the likelihood that traffic patterns will be so disturbed by tearing down a stretch of highway that not only will the taxpayers be tearing it down but likely building an alternate path to replace what gets torn down.
It might be financially better, and better in other ways as well, to make other public investments in the affected area and/or possibly even public help in assisting movement from the affected area.
The history is that the type of situation described by some as “racist” has been not “racist” but disruptive in the ways described - grossly damaging a local community. That is what happened when Robert Moses built Interstate class highways across the Bronx. They ran through and divided thriving multi-ethnic Middle Class neighborhoods, and what followed was decades of economic decline in the Bronx.
The type of situation is real, it’s just not “racist” in nature no matter who is affected.
Liberals lack the ability to think clearly.
In Houston, I-45 runs through downtown where a lot of poor people live. An expansion project intended to widen the road has been stopped due to “racism”. The intention is to give the road more capacity to help evacuate people from the city before a hurricane. It is intended to save lives.
But no, we cant have that.
Reconnecting communities
Everyone stored at one place
Uh, excuse me, but Interstate 75 doesn't run through Oklahoma, much less Tulsa.
All roads lead to the ‘hood.
Just stick up signs saying MLK freeway and be done with it.
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