By Ben Crowther
The most recent spherical of Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Grant Program (RCN) awards introduced final week underscores the necessity for a transformational infrastructure invoice that places communities earlier than highways. There are a number of transformative initiatives amongst this 12 months’s recipients, however the majority are smaller fixes and few deal instantly with the basis reason behind disconnection: highways and large roads.
This 12 months, the quantity of funding accessible for the Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Grant Program was bolstered by the Neighborhood Entry and Fairness Grants (a program of the Inflation Discount Act), to a complete quantity of $3.3b.
USDOT made the choice to allocate the entire Neighborhood Entry and Fairness Grants in a single go, so subsequent 12 months funding is again all the way down to 2022 ranges. This implies the vast majority of federal funding devoted to repairing the harms of earlier transportation planning, notably these completed to Black and brown communities and lower-income communities, has now gone out the door.
So in what must be a banner 12 months for reconnecting communities, do the picks handle historic injustices and construct new infrastructure that promotes walkability and multimodal entry for underserved communities?
Transformative: Tasks that Push the Envelope (~$610m)
On the prime of the heap are the initiatives that handle the center of the issue: huge roads and unhealthy transit.
Daring, transformative initiatives like Syracuse’s substitute of I-81 with a Neighborhood Grid or New Rochelle’s conversion of Memorial Freeway right into a linear park are what RCN candidates ought to aspire to. A number of of the planning grant awards, like Reconnecting MacArthur Park, the Nationwide Metropolis/Southeast San Diego Greenspace Hall Undertaking, and Carry Again sixth, have the same focus, with an emphasis on connecting underserved communities to companies, facilities, and inexperienced house. Hopefully these plans translate into future capital development awards.
Bus fast transit additionally had a day. 4 bus fast transit initiatives (Los Angeles, Buffalo, Columbus, and Tukwila) introduced house a complete of $353m. Giving buses devoted lanes and improved stops and stations is a good way to make an reasonably priced type of transit extra dependable.
Lastly, a sidewalk undertaking. However not simply any sidewalk undertaking. The Metropolis of Houston obtained $43m (!!!) to spend money on sidewalks, drainage, and tree cowl in two of town’s most economically deprived communities, the place sidewalk protection is sparse or non-existent. Think about if all sidewalk initiatives had been funded at this stage.
Nuts-and-Bolts: Essential Road Fixes (~$1.4b)
Subsequent up, the smaller scale, nuts-and-bolts initiatives that make up the vast majority of the awards. These embrace full streets initiatives, multimodal enhancements, visitors calming measures, bike/ped paths and trails, the rerouting of heavy vans exterior neighborhoods, and extra open-ended research to determine what to do with divisive infrastructure like roads and rail. These initiatives are all much-needed enhancements for his or her respective communities, however in some circumstances work round dividing infrastructure moderately than take care of it instantly.
Freeway Mitigation: Automobile Infrastructure by One other Identify? (~$590m)
Most elaborate “pedestrian” infrastructure is admittedly automotive infrastructure, as Joe Cortright at Metropolis Observatory notes. This freeway mitigation class consists of that sort of pedestrian infrastructure: freeway caps ($410m), bike/ped bridges and underpasses ($117m), and parks/districts beneath highways ($62m). The development of all these is based on the highway’s continued existence and so they’re normally constructed to maintain driver comfort, not pedestrian enjoyment.
Of those three subcategories, freeway caps have essentially the most potential to be transformative, in the event that they cowl a good portion of the freeway and are tied to bigger reparative efforts. All three forms of mitigations will be helpful in restoring connections, however on the finish of the day, communities dwelling close to these highways are nonetheless topic to the air pollution, harmful driving, and disinvestment that comes with an enormous highway.
Problematic: Freeway Mitigation within the Context of Enlargement (~$675m)
Our final class is a small subset of 4 initiatives that suggest mitigations for deliberate freeway expansions, or within the case of Denver, a freeway growth accomplished in July 2023. Nonetheless, USDOT awarded these 4 initiatives an outsized quantity of funding: 20% of the entire quantity accessible.
When Secretary Buttigieg launched the Reconnecting Communities program in 2022, he described it as “the first-ever devoted federal initiative to unify neighborhoods dwelling with the impacts of previous infrastructure selections that divided them.” RCN awards to the I-5 Rose Quarter Enchancment Undertaking, the 400 East and 900 South Interstate Crossings Undertaking, Our Future 35, the Reunited Denver Undertaking Globeville Elyria-Swansea allow present infrastructure selections that broaden and perpetuate the divide highways trigger.
Mixed, these 4 initiatives push a whole bunch out of their houses, companies, daycares, and colleges. The state DOTs concerned have made it clear that growth is their first precedence and reconnecting communities an afterthought. They eye RCN grant cash as leverage to unlock freeway growth cash.
By granting awards like these, USDOT rewards the unhealthy habits of state departments of transportation and units an unwelcome precedent: state DOTs don’t want to significantly take into account mitigations in their very own initiatives, as a result of the RCN program will bail them out.
It’s unlucky to see the restricted funding of the RCN program put to this use, particularly when a lot different cash that would fund freeway mitigations is obtainable within the different applications of the IIJA. Happily, {dollars} from the RCN program can’t be spent instantly on increasing the freeway, so there’s nonetheless the chance for state DOTs to stroll away from the freeway expansions and simply construct the caps, bridges, and underpasses. We strongly urge recipients and their companions to rethink their plans for growth and as an alternative spend money on actually reconnecting communities.
Remaining Takeaways
About 38% of the $3.3 billion awarded this 12 months went to freeway mitigation initiatives. Positive, that’s lower than half the accessible funding, but it surely nonetheless means a good portion of what ought to have been a transformative program has gone towards a business-as-usual strategy. With the vast majority of its cash now out the door, it’s secure to say that the RCN program moved the needle simply barely. To be honest, USDOT can solely award initiatives that had been submitted, so an absence of imaginative and prescient from state DOTs and their companions bears duty as properly. The complete system is in want of reform and one small program alone isn’t going to get it there.
The announcement of the RCN grants additionally comes on the heels of an evaluation by Transportation for America that reveals up to now almost 25% of IIJA funding spent (over $33 billion) has gone towards freeway expansions. This strategy to spending the record-setting funding within the IIJA threatens the nation’s fairness, local weather and budgetary objectives, at a time when transportation is the most important supply of emissions in america. Numerous freeway expansions funded by the IIJA are being constructed with none remediations in any respect, inflicting new injury at a price a lot, a lot sooner than the RCN program can restore it.
Because of this the Communities Over Highways coalition, led by America Walks and over 200 organizations robust nationwide, is looking for a moratorium on freeway growth, to make sure communities have the sources to spend money on highway upkeep, safer streets, dependable public transportation, and reconnecting communities. Till we overhaul our transportation system to redirect the vast majority of funding into community-oriented infrastructure investments, we are going to preserve failing to satisfy our fairness, local weather, and upkeep objectives.
