Highway Boondoggles
Streetsblog Basics
Highway Boondoggles 2023: Salt Lake Shenanigans
Plans for a major freeway expansion based on over-inflated traffic projections are a wrongheaded way to deal with the region’s rapid population growth.
December 3, 2023
Highway Boondoggles 2023: Is the BQE the Queen of All Boondoggles?
Built between 1937 and 1964, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is an enduring symbol of the destructive, car-centric transportation planning of the early- to mid-20th century.
November 29, 2023
Highway Boondoggles 2023: The Pain in Maine Falls Mainly in … Gorham
Here's a self-defeating new highway that will merely exacerbate suburban sprawl — reinforcing the very conditions that are causing the traffic problems in the first place!
November 27, 2023
Highway Boondoggles 2023: Pandering in the Panhandle
How bad is this boondoggle? Supporters are trying to sell it as if it includes a fancy deck plaza — which it does not.
November 24, 2023
Highway Boondoggles 2023: A Cape Cod Canard
It's not just the replacement of the Bourne and Sagamore bridges that's the problem — it's all the other highways that will turn Cape Cod into a parking lot.
November 15, 2023
Highway Boondoggles 2023: This Year’s Poster Children for Bad Projects
Once again, transportation funds that could be used to repair streets, roads and bridges are instead diverted into costly, damaging highway expansion projects. Here's this year's list of the worst of the worst.
November 10, 2023
Memorial Day Op-Ed Special: To Halt Wasteful Highways, America Needs a ‘Road Review’
America has a highway-happy, boondoggle-building transportation policy system. It doesn't need to.
May 29, 2023
A Teen Activist’s Message to Transportation Leaders That Everyone Needs To Hear
Teenage climate organizers are standing up to adult policymakers.
May 7, 2023
Rest In Pieces, ‘Fix-it-First’: Biden Caves to GOP on Highway Expansions
The Biden administration has caved to GOP pressure and will no longer push states to repair existing highways before building new ones, a move that angered livable cities advocates.
March 7, 2023
Locals Don’t Love the City’s Long-Awaited Re-Widening of Crumbling BQE
The city on Tuesday unveiled long-awaited plans for the beleaguered triple-cantilever section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, proposing three fairly similar options for a redesign of the crumbling infrastructure that will restore three lanes of traffic in each direction, albeit with a park on top.
December 14, 2022