 | | More than two generations after the Claiborne Expressway was built in New Orleans, the economic, environmental and cultural costs of its development are being reconsidered.William Widmer for The New York Times |
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One Black Neighborhood's Stake in the Infrastructure Bill |
NEW ORLEANS — In the days after the House passed a $1.2 trillion spending package that promises to pour money into America's aging infrastructure, several residents of a storied New Orleans neighborhood turned to the highway that divides their streets and pondered a common question: What does this mean for us? |
For decades, that highway — an elevated stretch of Interstate 10 that runs above North Claiborne Avenue in the Tremé neighborhood — has been cast as a villain that robbed the historic African American community, taking many of its homes, businesses and a glorious strand of oak trees when it was built more than a half-century ago. |
Since then, generations have envisioned a day when it might be removed — or at least closed off to traffic — and the neighborhood restored to its former vibrancy. Now, the infrastructure bill sets aside federal funding to help neighborhoods like Tremé. |
"Finally. Finally. Finally," said Amy Stelly, co-founder of the Claiborne Avenue Alliance, a community organization working to dismantle the highway, which was singled out by President Biden this year. "We have been talking about what to do with the highway for as long as I can remember." |
 | | Amy Stelly, a longtime Tremé resident, is a leader in the campaign to remove the Claiborne overpass.William Widmer for The New York Times |
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But with just $1 billion — 5 percent of the $20 billion the Biden administration originally proposed — allocated to reconnecting neighborhoods that suffered after highways divided them, it could be considerably longer before Ms. Stelly and other Tremé residents witness the removal of the Claiborne Expressway, which one early study estimated would cost more than $500 million. |
The infrastructure bill, signed this month by Mr. Biden, earmarks $250 million in planning grants and another $750 million in capital construction grants to reconnect neighborhoods bisected by highways. But that money is just a small fraction of what it would cost to address aging highways in New Orleans and dozens of other cities across America, from Tampa, Fla., to Rochester, N.Y. |
Today, more than three dozen citizen-led campaigns are underway, according to the Congress for the New Urbanism, all focused on grappling with the consequences of the highways that were carved through their communities. |
Removing or retrofitting any one of those highways — which were built as a way to modernize regional transportation and meet the demands of postwar progress — will be neither inexpensive nor quick. |
A plan to remove a section of Interstate 81 in Syracuse, N.Y., and rebuild a portion of Interstate 690 carries a price tag of at least $2 billion — about twice the amount of funding approved by Congress for the entire country. The project to fill in a portion of the Inner Loop East highway in Rochester cost about $25 million. |
"It's an important step, but a small step," Ben Crowther, program manager for the C.N.U.'s Highways to Boulevards and Freeways Without Futures initiatives, said of the congressional funding. "I am looking at this as a down payment." |
Some residents believe that urban highways, despite the disruptions they may have created when they were built, should remain. They cite the cost of removal or modification and the impact to traffic, particularly if there are no easy alternative routes. |
But the national conversation about the impact of highways in urban communities gained fresh traction as the country confronted its history of racism and racist policies after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. Those campaigns took on new urgency as Mr. Biden made racial justice and climate change part of his domestic agenda. |
"There's the recognition that driving these highways through the communities in the first place was wrong," said Chris McCahill, managing director of State Smart Transportation Initiative, a transportation think tank based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "And so now the question becomes, what to do about it now?" |
 | | Louisiana cleared more than 100 properties along the corridor to make room for the highway.William Widmer for The New York Times |
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While Louisiana leaders could see about $6 billion from the larger $1.2 trillion package steered to the state's aging roads and bridges, they said it was too early to know how much might go to New Orleans or whether removal of the Claiborne Expressway would even be among the top priorities. |
In New Orleans, city officials had not yet decided whether to pursue federal grants and were in the "early stages of reviewing the legislation and the opportunities it creates," said a city spokesman, Beau Tidwell. |
Still, Representative Troy Carter said he hoped the city might be a model in both removing the highway and in reinvesting in the neighborhood and protecting its "heritage." In various scenarios that state and local leaders have explored, a number of ramps would be taken out or the highway itself would be removed from downtown, with traffic diverted around the area. |
"I would love to be able to restore that beautiful corridor to its original luster. But the devil's in the details," he said, adding that community input was critical to "make sure we don't swap one evil for another." |
The highway's age means it would need to be rebuilt if it were not torn down, said Shawn Wilson, secretary of the state's Department of Transportation and Development. "So that gives us an opportunity to re-envision what the corridor looks like, in terms of housing, green space and economic opportunity, and in terms of transit, safely connecting the neighborhood." |
In Tremé, century-old oak trees, towering and lush, once lined the wide median along North Claiborne Avenue. As far as the eye could see, they formed a protective green canopy above children playing after Sunday Mass, couples holding picnics and families celebrating the parades and pageantry of Mardi Gras. |
"If you talk to anybody in Tremé, they can tell you about the day the trees came down or when the highway was built," said Lynette Boutte, a hair salon owner whose family's roots in the neighborhood extend back generations. She wants to see the highway, nicknamed "the bridge" or "the monster" by residents, closed and retrofitted as a green space. |
 | | "If you talk to anybody in Treme, they can tell you about the day the trees came down or when the highway was built," said Lynette Boutte, whose family's roots in the neighborhood extend nearly two centuries.William Widmer for The New York Times |
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In announcing the infrastructure plan this past spring, Mr. Biden acknowledged the damage that highway systems had done to some communities across the United States. He specifically pointed to Claiborne Avenue as an example of how transportation projects had severed neighborhoods and helped drive racial inequities. |
Claiborne Avenue, once referred to as the "Main Street" of Black New Orleans with more than 100 businesses, wilted under ill-fated urban renewal policies. Only a few dozen businesses stand today. |
[Read more about how Biden's infrastructure package could eventually help reimagine Treme. And listen to an episode of The Daily, featuring the writer of this article, that delves deeper into how the package might address such historical wrongs.] |
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