The Overhead Wire Daily | April 17th, 2024 | Reallocating Money

After cancelling the 710 highway widening, LA Metro found itself with $743 million to spend elsewhere. A 35 person task force was put together and came up with a plan for spending the money on active transportation, transit, complete streets, safety and more.

I’ve been reading Megan Kimble’s book City Limits on Texas’ highway fights and I continue to think about how TXDOT could better spend the $85B it’s allocated to mostly highways over the next decade. Instead of widening three highways, taking taxable properties off the rolls, and doing more environmental and social harm, they could focus on community improvement and access projects. I can imagine that $85B would go a long way in doing some real good, but we’re not there yet.

It also doesn’t have to be just road projects re-imagined. After figuring that a second downtown route with a subway wasn’t going to be in the cards at this time, DART now has $1.3B to spend on other priorities. I love a good subway as much as the next person, but it might behoove us to think about how we can boost access during this massive pandemic induced urban realignment.

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