An opinion piece about the ways in which the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, aka the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, fails to address national equity, especially for...
An opinion piece about the ways in which the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, aka the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, fails to address national equity, especially for low-income people. The author acknowledges that a portion of the funding in the law is valuable, good, and fair, but that a very large portion of it is inherently being distributed in inequitable ways, economically and environmentally.
The piece essentially argues from the position that many existing pieces of American infrastructure, primarily highways and urban highways in particular, were constructed in an inequitable way for the sole purpose of serving high-income suburban citizens specifically at the expense of low-income urban citizens. (Most highways were built through poorer areas that offered less political resistance, causing displacement and permanently rupturing city cohesion and layout.) Additionally, highways in particular are a relatively inaccessible kind of infrastructure due to their requirement to personally own a multi-thousand dollar vehicle, which is a financial challenge for many citizens and physically impossible for disabled/older people. Lastly, it relies on research that automobiles are inherently energy-inefficient at transporting a given number of people a given distance relative to other modes, trains in particular; and that the majority of transportation-related emissions (81%) are from automobiles.
Because of these historical inequities and because maintenance and expansion of the automobile-centric status quo do not equate to sustainable or net-zero environmental policy, the author argues that more funding in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law should be allocated to alternatives "like transit and active mobility infrastructure."
Even in climate-leading states like California, 81 percent of the state’s transportation investments are going to maintain and expand the roadway system. In some cases, funds meant for repairs and pollution reductions are also being misused for highway expansions.
The sheer scale of investment in building and expanding more highways is also many times greater than the investment in repairing their harms. The Reconnecting Communities program, which aims to reconnect the neighborhoods torn apart by 20th century highway construction, provides just $1 billion (out of $350 billion for federal highway programs) to a handful of planning and construction projects. And in several cases, grants were given to projects that would keep or even expand highways. Nationally, that means these transportation equity efforts are likely to be set back (or at least overshadowed) by the new highway buildout.
Because of these dynamics, the IIJA could end up funding a huge setback for U.S. climate goals and transportation equity. What would that mean? Highway expansion and construction projects would continue to displace residents: a plan to expand I-45 in Houston would demolish roughly 1,000 homes, about half of which are low-income units, as well as five houses of worship and two schools; residents in Austin have raised similar issues around the plan to expand I-35. Air pollution and asthma rates in roadside communities would also likely rise. And all these issues would disproportionately affect low-income communities and communities of color.
Highway expansion is one of those boring and mostly unnoticed infrastructure changes that causes a lot of long-term damage in particular. It's a slow burn, but inducing more automobile traffic (i.e. a modal shift away from transit and freight rail) is just not great for the environment or for traffic management in cities.
The author makes only general suggestions on improvements because this is a pretty gargantuan enterprise. The gist of their preferred alternative is things like "building up our public freight and passenger rail[,] electrifying our school bus fleets[,] and investing in EV infrastructure." They say that we ought to "build constituencies that raise scrutiny over the decisions our Departments of Transportation make" in order to address equity and environmental issues. Departments of Transportation have a reasonable amount of leeway in deciding who gets grants for which projects, and they do consider public comments when issuing grants, so this is not unreasonable.
They also mention that the Labor Network for Sustainability is "bringing together transit organizers and transit unions from across the country to discuss the issues we’re facing and the changes we need" and that they are "urging members of Congress to fight for these priorities, including Rep. Hank Johnson’s bill for federal funding of transit operations" (H.R. 3744 in the 117th Congress), i.e. adopting a similar federal model for transit funding as the federal government has already adopted for highway funding. In other words, leveling the playing field.
Since H.R. 3744 (117) was not even voted on, it would be useful to reach out to your representatives to ask them to reintroduce the text of Johnson's proposal in a new bill in the current Congressional session and vote in favor of it. (Whether it will pass, I could not say, but it is always worth talking to your reps.) Although I think that his bill is extremely incomplete at a duration of four years, so I would advocate for an indefinite program, with annual funding being indexed to inflation to keep the amount allocated steady in real dollars.
Personally I would also like to see more regular funding for freight rail infrastructure. There is very little reason that long-distance trucking ought to be cost-competitive with freight rail given its ridiculous inefficiency, environmental damage, and impact on roadways themselves. Private freight railroads should pay for their own operations, but track upgrades and that sort of thing have a high initial capital cost and should be more regularly enabled by government. European regulators are working toward this already, though the US freight rail industry is actually further along.
An opinion piece about the ways in which the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, aka the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, fails to address national equity, especially for low-income people. The author acknowledges that a portion of the funding in the law is valuable, good, and fair, but that a very large portion of it is inherently being distributed in inequitable ways, economically and environmentally.
The piece essentially argues from the position that many existing pieces of American infrastructure, primarily highways and urban highways in particular, were constructed in an inequitable way for the sole purpose of serving high-income suburban citizens specifically at the expense of low-income urban citizens. (Most highways were built through poorer areas that offered less political resistance, causing displacement and permanently rupturing city cohesion and layout.) Additionally, highways in particular are a relatively inaccessible kind of infrastructure due to their requirement to personally own a multi-thousand dollar vehicle, which is a financial challenge for many citizens and physically impossible for disabled/older people. Lastly, it relies on research that automobiles are inherently energy-inefficient at transporting a given number of people a given distance relative to other modes, trains in particular; and that the majority of transportation-related emissions (81%) are from automobiles.
Because of these historical inequities and because maintenance and expansion of the automobile-centric status quo do not equate to sustainable or net-zero environmental policy, the author argues that more funding in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law should be allocated to alternatives "like transit and active mobility infrastructure."
Highway expansion is one of those boring and mostly unnoticed infrastructure changes that causes a lot of long-term damage in particular. It's a slow burn, but inducing more automobile traffic (i.e. a modal shift away from transit and freight rail) is just not great for the environment or for traffic management in cities.
The author makes only general suggestions on improvements because this is a pretty gargantuan enterprise. The gist of their preferred alternative is things like "building up our public freight and passenger rail[,] electrifying our school bus fleets[,] and investing in EV infrastructure." They say that we ought to "build constituencies that raise scrutiny over the decisions our Departments of Transportation make" in order to address equity and environmental issues. Departments of Transportation have a reasonable amount of leeway in deciding who gets grants for which projects, and they do consider public comments when issuing grants, so this is not unreasonable.
They also mention that the Labor Network for Sustainability is "bringing together transit organizers and transit unions from across the country to discuss the issues we’re facing and the changes we need" and that they are "urging members of Congress to fight for these priorities, including Rep. Hank Johnson’s bill for federal funding of transit operations" (H.R. 3744 in the 117th Congress), i.e. adopting a similar federal model for transit funding as the federal government has already adopted for highway funding. In other words, leveling the playing field.
Since H.R. 3744 (117) was not even voted on, it would be useful to reach out to your representatives to ask them to reintroduce the text of Johnson's proposal in a new bill in the current Congressional session and vote in favor of it. (Whether it will pass, I could not say, but it is always worth talking to your reps.) Although I think that his bill is extremely incomplete at a duration of four years, so I would advocate for an indefinite program, with annual funding being indexed to inflation to keep the amount allocated steady in real dollars.
Personally I would also like to see more regular funding for freight rail infrastructure. There is very little reason that long-distance trucking ought to be cost-competitive with freight rail given its ridiculous inefficiency, environmental damage, and impact on roadways themselves. Private freight railroads should pay for their own operations, but track upgrades and that sort of thing have a high initial capital cost and should be more regularly enabled by government. European regulators are working toward this already, though the US freight rail industry is actually further along.