New Tool Uncovers Exact Costs of Downtown Highways

A Dallas-based planner is mapping the costs of downtown highways in American cities, analyzing the redevelopment potential of the land used by roadways if it was devote to other uses.

As Kea Wilson explains in Streetsblog USA, Patrick Kennedy’s research uncovers the collective costs of highways in dozens of cities, showing how “by tearing highways out of their innermost downtown cores or converting them to boulevards, cities can unlock billions of dollars of redevelopment potential, increase badly-needed property tax revenues, and reduce individual households' commute costs, often to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars per household per year, at least when the costs of maintaining shared infrastructure are added to the costs of owning and maintaining a personal vehicle.”

Kennedy calculated the total acreage sacrificed to highway uses, eliminating land that would be tax exempt for uses such as schools, and calculating the property tax potential for the remaining space. “In Chicago, for instance, reimagining those right-of-ways could open up nearly $8.3 billion in redevelopment potential within three miles of the Windy City's epicenter; in Boston, it's $16.3 billion.”

Kennedy hopes advocates can use the tool he is creating to show the concrete financial impact of highway expansions and illustrate a different, less auto-centric path forward.