Political correctness is running amok in the Biden White House. In his infamous infrastructure bill with a cost of $2.5 trillion dollars. Only $639 billion is for infrastructure. But, there is $20 billion set aside for tearing down existing racist infrastructure. The two highways that have been mentioned are the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans and Interstate 81 in Syracuse, New York. Evidently, these roads pass through poor areas therefore they are racist.
The Biden administration even asked Texas not to expand the highway in Houston. Houston, We have a problem. This money will be used specifically to tear down existing infrastructure. There is a very good reason that highways pass through poor neighborhoods rather than upscale neighborhoods and it has nothing to do with racism.
When you build a highway anywhere, you are in a position where you must buy up a lot of homes to make room for the road. So, naturally, you build the highway where you can buy homes cheaply. Imagine that you must take out 500 properties costing say $100,000 each. That’s fifty million dollars. Now, buy 500 homes in the affluent neighborhoods where the homes average $500,000. That comes out to 250 million dollars.
NEW: The feds have told TXDOT to pause I-45 expansion pending further review. The truth is, they have acted in bad faith throughout this process, refusing to incorporate expert and community feedback. We won't be bullied. Thanks to everyone who is pushing back. pic.twitter.com/WNwzmgd2eE
— Lina Hidalgo (@LinaHidalgoTX) March 11, 2021
The Biden administration is taking highway equity to heart and it is growing on a daily basis. This could very well add billions to the cost of building new infrastructure. In most cases when you tear down one highway, you almost have to build another highway to handle the traffic. So, we end up spending a large amount of money with no more access than we had before.
The concept of the injustice of racist infrastructure continues spreading throughout the Biden administration as they work towards racial equity across government.
“Black and brown neighborhoods have been disproportionately divided by highway projects or left isolated by the lack of adequate transit and transportation resources,” Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg wrote on social media in December, promising to focus energy on “righting these wrongs.”
In March, Buttigieg’s department sent a letter asking Texas to pause an interstate expansion in Houston while they investigated racial justice complaints.
During his Senate confirmation hearings in January, Buttigeg promised to fight racial injustice in infrastructure.
“I also recognize that at their worst, misguided policies and missed opportunities in transportation can reinforce racial and economic inequality by dividing or isolating neighborhoods and undermining government’s basic role of empowering Americans to thrive,” Buttigieg said in his opening statement.
