The US Is About to Waste $305 Billion On Roads We Don't Need
The Backwards Way We Build Infrastructure
The House bill, nicknamed FAST Act (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation), will help pump much-needed funds into subways, light-rail lines, and other transit projects, including $4 billion per year for biking infrastructure.
This is good news. But the FAST Act will also allocate lots of money to expanding or building new highways—an ongoing, outdated attempt by transportation departments to “fix” congestion. This is the big problem with bills like FAST: For any kind of transportation bill to be effective in this country, highway projects need to be uncoupled from transit projects. Why? Because they’re two different things with two very different final outcomes.
Widening roads is not a solution for alleviating gridlock, as so many cities have spent billions of dollars over the past few decades learning. Investments in transit on the other hand, including walking and biking infrastructure, have been proven to help traffic flow and save cities money over time—not only due to decreased costs for construction and maintenance, but also from a public health perspective. A truly transformative transportation bill would require that states spend the money on forward-thinking sustainable transit solutions, not backwards car-focused policies.
(Jalopnik.com)
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