Secretary Buttigieg and Black mayors preview transportation projects designed to heal historic inequities
Source: CNN Politics
Published 6:29 PM EDT, Fri April 26, 2024
CNN Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Friday joined Black mayors from across the nation to preview the work his department is doing to bring transportation projects to their communities to correct historic wrongs. The projects, made possible through the Biden administrations $3.3 billion Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods program, were among the issues discussed at the annual African American Mayors Association Conference in Atlanta.
More than 130 grants have been awarded across 41 states to improve the lives of residents negatively impacted by decades-old transportation structures, according to Buttigieg. That includes addressing highways built several decades ago that have cut off access to schools, career opportunities and even medical services.
In an interview with CNN, Buttigieg said the investment aims to strengthen communities across the nation and create opportunity through better connectivity.
This is about making sure that federal dollars are part of the solution in communities where sometimes federal dollars have caused harm in the past, he said. Just about every place Ive been to has some story of some piece of infrastructure that went through some part of town, often a community of color, that did not have the political power to reshape or resist it.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/26/politics/buttigieg-mayors-conference-infrastructure-reaj/index.html
Crowman2009
(2,504 posts)We definitely need more subways, rail, trolleys, buses, and walkable/cyclable cities. Maybe even vans and rideshares for rural areas as well. There definitely needs to be less vehicles on the road, electric or not.
BumRushDaShow
(129,755 posts)housing was built near or around places of employment (whether urban with the factories or rural with the farms). Then the suburbs happened, the factories closed, and the businesses moved out to suburbia and exburbia to get away from "the minorities" in the urban areas. They did that by buying up the farms in the rural areas to relocate to, ruling out or scuttling any common sense means or methods of transportation to those brand new office parks, other than by car.
A slow reversal is underway but that will take time.
BaronChocula
(1,616 posts)Many ignore or are just ignorant of the deleterious effect of white (only) flight to the suburbs. When Whites left, so did the economic establishment, creating economic deserts in many areas.