Fight Highway Expansions and Transform Existing Highways

New York City’s Robert Moses-era highways isolate and divide Black, Latino, and low-income communities, limit access to green space and economic opportunity, and expose residents to disproportionate levels of danger, air pollution, noise, and heat. Meanwhile, billions of dollars in City, State, and federal tax money continue to be disproportionately used to build and expand highways instead of investing in the more efficient and cost-effective transportation options New Yorkers need. All New Yorkers deserve to live in safe and healthy neighborhoods, and we must invest in sustainable forms of transportation, not build wider roads. Transportation Alternatives is fighting to:

• Immediately stop all efforts to expand New York City’s highways 

• Transform space below and above highways to allow them to connect communities long divided by dangerous highways

• Pass legislation to shift funding from highway expansion projects to funding public and active transportation

Fighting highway expansions and transforming existing highways…

…makes New York City more fair.
People of color and people with low incomes are more likely to live near highways and more likely to die from traffic crashes.

…stops the cycle of “induced demand.”
Expanding highways does nothing to ease congestion: research shows that every 1% increase in new highways corresponds with a 1% increase in vehicle miles traveled in the area. Meanwhile, funding a single mile of protected bike lane reduces vehicle miles traveled by nearly 200,000 miles annually.

…is a better use of our tax money.
Just 20% of funding President Biden’s 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act went towards public transportation and rail combined, while 70 percent went to car infrastructure. Highway construction costs have tripled in the past two decades, while pedestrian, bike, and public transit infrastructure costs just a fraction as much. 

Highway teardown campaigns