Urban highways | Is it too late to repair the damage?

(Kansas City, Missouri) One afternoon, Anthony Roberts sets off to walk to a convenience store across a busy highway. The journey is not easy.

First, he must take a detour to reach an intersection. Then he must wait for the fire to change. When the pedestrian light finally comes on, he has little time to cross several lanes of traffic and reach the wide median of the highway. Finally, he must cross the other traffic lane to complete his journey.

Mr. Roberts’ journey is a small example of the lasting consequences of building highways that cut through urban neighborhoods in every city in the country. Completed in 2001 after decades of work, US Highway 71 in Kansas City, Mo., has displaced thousands of residents and cut off predominantly black neighborhoods from groceries, health care and jobs.

A lot of work

Kansas City officials are now looking to repair some of the damage caused by the freeway and reconnect neighborhoods around it. To date, the city has received $5 million in funding from the Biden administration to help develop plans for potential changes, such as building walkways that could improve pedestrian safety and better connect people to public transport.

This funding is an example of the administration’s efforts to address racial disparities resulting from the way the United States has built its highway infrastructure over the past few decades. The Department of Transportation has provided funding for dozens of projects aimed at reconnecting communities, including $185 million in grants under a pilot program created by the bipartisan $1,000 Infrastructure Act. billion US.

But the Kansas City project also shows how difficult and expensive it can be to reverse decisions made long ago to build freeways that cut through communities of color and divided neighborhoods.

Many of the projects funded by the Biden administration would leave the freeways intact, but would aim to reduce the damage they have caused to surrounding areas. And even removing a road is only the first step towards revitalizing a neighborhood.

“Once a community has been destroyed, getting it back on its feet takes a lot more work than just removing a freeway,” said Beth Osborne, who served as Acting Assistant Secretary for the Department of Transport in the government of Barack Obama and who is now the director of Transportation for America, an association for the defense of rights.

Legacy of the XX^e century

The United States has a long history of highway projects dividing urban communities, dating back to the construction of the Federal Interstate Highway System in the mid-20th century.^e century. In recent years, the idea of ​​removing some of these roads has caught on in several cities across the country, including Detroit, New Orleans and Syracuse, New York.

In his first year in office, President Joe Biden proposed a US$15 billion federal program as part of his infrastructure plan to improve communities affected by the construction of transportation infrastructure. . His initial proposal was scaled down to a much smaller program, with $1 billion in funding, as part of the bipartisan infrastructure package that Congress later approved.

The Department of Transportation announced the first round of grants under the program in February, awarding $185 million to 45 projects. Of these grants, approximately $56 million was allocated for the construction of a bridge over an expressway in Buffalo, New York, and $30 million for the redevelopment of an urban freeway in Long Beach, California.

Kansas City authorities received just over $1 million from this program to study the reconnection of another part of the city, the Westside neighborhood, which is also separated from other areas by a freeway, Interstate 35. .

The Department of Transportation also uses other grants to support projects aimed at bringing communities together. The $5 million grant Kansas City received to address the impact of US Highway 71 comes from a program called Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity, or RAISE. ).

This grant is intended to help the city design improvement plans along a section of the highway. City officials are not looking to completely remove the roadway, but they do want to make it safer for pedestrians to cross from one side of the highway to the other. The construction of footbridges could save residents from crossing the highway on foot, which is dangerous, and would facilitate access to a nearby bus line.

A lasting footprint

The idea for what is now US Highway 71 dates back to the 1950s, when it was envisioned as a way to connect downtown Kansas City to areas to the south. A legal battle in the 1970s and 1980s delayed construction for over a decade, and part of the road was eventually turned into a parkway. Thousands of people, including many black families, have been moved to make way for the 10-mile road, also known as Bruce R. Watkins Drive.

Its construction left a lasting mark on Kansas City. The city’s Country Club District, a cluster of historic neighborhoods west of the freeway where homes typically sell for more than $1 million, was unaffected by the road. The area east of the highway is markedly different, with lower property values ​​and more abandoned or foreclosed homes.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said it was impossible to live in his city without knowing the scars the freeway left on the black community. Churches, schools and businesses disappeared after the highway was built.

Ron Hunt, who has lived for decades in the Blue Hills neighborhood west of the US 71 freeway, said he’s seen the freeway cripple the area economically, increase crime and curtail crime. access to food stores. As other areas of the city continued to grow and flourish, he was saddened to see his community wither away after the highway was built.

Residents like Lisa Ray are trying to preserve what’s left of the neighborhoods they loved. Lisa Ray grew up in Town Fork Creek, just east of US Highway 71, which was once a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood filled with black-owned businesses. But the highway destroyed it, she said.

Today, she and other members of the Town Fork Creek Neighborhood Citizens’ Committee volunteer to provide food and other necessities to seniors the highway has cut off from grocery stores. They are also buying trash bags and organizing clean-ups to keep bottles, car parts and papers from littering the streets. The committee spent money to buy security bars for the doors to prevent break-ins into the neighborhood.

“All we do is try,” says M.^me Ray. I try every day, one block at a time. I can’t help everyone, but I try. »

This article was originally published in the New York Times.