Report: Land Under US Highways Could Earn Over $5 Billion in Property Taxes Yearly

A report titled the Atlas of Inner-City Highway Impacts by urban planner Patrick Kennedy analyzes how much land in the U.S. is taken up by urban highways — and how much more productive the same land could be if designated for other uses.

In a piece for Bloomberg CityLab, Benjamin Schneider describes the report’s findings. “Looking at a three-mile radius from the downtowns of 142 US cities, Kennedy found that roughly 66,000 acres are consumed by highways — land representing an untapped development potential of more than half a trillion dollars, he calculates.” That land equates to roughly $5.2 billion in foregone annual property taxes, Schneider adds.

The report also ranks cities based on how much land near their downtowns is dedicated to freeways. Newark, New Jersey tops the list, with 1,121 acres devoted to highways. Houston, Columbus, Los Angeles, and San Jose round out the top five. 

To assess development potential, Kennedy looked at the value of recently completed development projects in each city’s downtown, then applied that potential value to some of the land used by highways (Kennedy assumes roughly 55 percent of land would be used for private development while the rest would become streets, parks, or other public amenities).

While large cities could gain the most from highway removals in terms of sheer dollars, smaller cities would reap proportionally larger benefits: “In Youngstown, Ohio, for example, property tax revenues would jump by almost 70% if it redeveloped its downtown highways, according to Kennedy; the Michigan city of Flint would collect an extra 50%.”

Kennedy says his report is a long-overdue follow-up to the 1960 Bragdon Report, which questioned the benefits of the newly created Interstate Highway Act. “His next project is to use this data to list the most promising freeways for removal across both economic and transportation metrics.”