Fixing the ‘Legacy’ Highways That Don’t Work for Anyone

In a memorandum released in late July, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) highlighted the fact that states can take advantage of dozens of federal programs to improve “legacy” or “orphan” highways, reports Jeff Wood in Streetsblog USA.

These roads, built early in a city’s development, have been adjusted and augmented, often haphazardly, to meet the needs of increased traffic and new types of mobility. “That Frankenstein of a human-centered street and a car-centered, highway-style road is often referred to as a ‘stroad’ — and state highway agencies aren't big fans of them either, since all those pesky pedestrians and stoplights make legacy highways highly inefficient at moving cars.” In Washington state, for example, “the crash fatality rate on legacy highways is than three times higher than the rest of the roadway system.”

According to Wood, “states can already leverage 27 different federal programs in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to transform these roads with traffic calming measures, wider sidewalks, bike lanes and more. Twelve of those programs are ‘formula’ grants, which means a certain amount of money is guaranteed to each state based on a DOT calculation, and states don't even need to compete for the funds.”