New Projects To Widen Highways Would Displace 1,000s Across State; Some Texans Have Had Enough
Texas, with its wide-laned roads and supersized highways, seems like an unlikely place for a rebellion against the supremacy of American car culture. But last week a band of residents from across Texas descended upon the state’s department of transportation (DoT) to voice fury over new highway expansions that are set to displace thousands of people and raze hundreds of businesses, schools and churches. Meanwhile, the state is actively crushing local plans to encourage more cycling and walking as an alternative to driving.
Festering concern over the seemingly endless swelling of highways has even sparked an unusual intervention from the federal government, with Joe Biden’s administration launching a civil rights investigation last year into the Houston project that has paused its construction. “Federal transportation department monitoring and intervention on civil rights grounds is rare,” said Theodore Shaw, director of the center for civil rights at the University of North Carolina. “The courts have not done much about it.”
Holding signs riffing off familiar tropes in this conservative state, such as a picture of a bicycle under the words “Come and take it”, several dozen protesters rallied outside the Texas department’s headquarters in the shadow of Texas’ pink-hued capitol in Austin. “It’s just plain Jane boring lanes, more and more lanes,” said Fabian Ramirez, a structural engineer whose property in Houston’s Northside district is set to be flattened as part of a controversial $9bn project to widen and realign the city’s highways. “There’s no train, there’s no bus, there’s no anything that supports mass transportation. It doesn’t exist. They [Texas DoT] love concrete. I mean, geez. I love building stuff, but I also have a moral compass.”
Ramirez said repeated expansions of highways in Houston have invariably destroyed homes in Black and Latino neighborhoods like his. “All of these Black and brown neighborhoods are being attacked by this expansion,” he said. “I should be able to enjoy being Mexican in Houston in 2022 without somebody trying to push me out of my neighborhood.” City leaders in Texas, meanwhile, have also started to question the car-centric status quo. San Antonio planned to narrow a two-mile stretch of Broadway Avenue, a key thoroughfare, and add protected bike lanes, only for Texas DoT to overrule the city in January to halt it, citing fears over worsened traffic congestion. Ron Nirenberg, San Antonio’s mayor, accused the state of “1950s thinking” and a “religious fascination” with highway expansions. “Five years ago the idea that there would be any elected officials publicly opposing a freeway widening would seem farfetched,” said Jay Crossley, executive director of Farm and City, a non-profit that works on Texas urban living issues. “A lot is changing in Texas.”
EDIT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/29/texas-highway-expansions-project-displacements-protests
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