Here's Why Cities Across America Are Spending a Fortune to Tear Down Their Public Highways
by Saul Zimet, 6/27/21, Foundation For Economic Education

A growing movement of local govts & communities across
the US is beginning to grapple with an unfortunate
realization: The highway boom of the 50s & 60s produced a
massive amount of infrastructure that seems to have done
more harm than good.

“Highways radically reshaped cities, destroying dense
downtown neighborhoods, dividing many Black communities &
increasing car dependence,” Nadja Popovich, Josh Williams,
& Denise Lu wrote in a recent New York Times article.

Many cities “basically destroyed themselves” in order to
accommodate motorists, said UConn prof Norman Garrick,
who is studying the effects of transportation infra-
structure on American cities.

Destruction and Regrowth in Rochester
-----------------------------
Rochester’s Inner Loop, completed in '65, is one prominent
example. This freeway destroyed hundreds of businesses &
homes while separating downtown from the rest of the city,
the NY Times reports. And in recent years, local officials
have been trying to undo the damage.

In 2013, Rochester spent roughly $25 million to take out
an eastern segment of the freeway. Apartment buildings
have since been built in its place, and smaller roads once
separated by the Inner Loop have now been reconnected,
facilitating the easy transport of walkers & bikers in the
area. Following the $25 million removal project, over $300
million of private investment was brought into the city,
according to a Rochester City Newspaper article.

Now, Commissioner Norman Jones & other city officials are
pushing for the rest of the Inner Loop to be removed. Jones
estimates that the removal project would cost between
$70 million and $250 million. This likely would be a
worthwhile investment for the growth of the local economy,
judging by the success of the previous removal project.

Similarly, according to the Times, “Nearly 30 cities
nationwide are currently discussing some form of removal.”

Detroit, New Haven, Somerville, & Syracuse have all
committed to some form of highway removal. And in the
enormous infrastructure plan released at the end of March,
Biden proposed allocating $20 billion to reconnect
neighborhoods divided by the ill-conceived highways.

Unseen Costs
--------------
These damages to communities & neighborhoods are often
irreversible. Once you’ve severed relationships between
local businesses and institutions, they can’t necessarily
be reconnected.

And due to the compounding nature of cumulative economic
growth, losing a few decades between the installation of
a problematic highway & its eventual removal is not just
a problem during those decades. It's a problem for every
subsequent decade, during which the locals could've been
building on a more robust economy, but instead may forever
be stuck a few steps behind where they would have been.

But perhaps the most significant unseen cost of such
expenditures is the loss for whatever projects those
resources should have gone to. The millions of dollars
spent building a highway, & then the millions more to
remove it, could have been spent improving people’s lives
instead of devastating their communities. If the money were
left in the hands of individuals to spend as they saw fit,
instead of taxed away from them & spent at the discretion
of bureaucrats & policymakers who have little insight into
their lives, the money would almost certainly have gone
to much more beneficial uses.

Such alternate uses are rarely even considered when it
comes to public works like Rochester’s Inner Loop, as
Henry Hazlitt explained in his seminal 1946 book "Economics
in One Lesson". For this, Hazlitt blames economic illiteracy
& a lack of imagination. Proponents have the public
construction clearly in view, but what they fail to see is
all the things that go uncreated for the sake of it: “...
the unbuilt homes, the unmade cars & radios, the unmade
dresses & coats, perhaps the unsold & ungrown foodstuffs.
To see these uncreated things requires a kind of imagination
that not many people have. We can think of these non-existent
objects once, perhaps, but we cannot keep them before our
minds as we can the bridge that we pass every working day.
What has happened is merely that one thing has been created
instead of others.”

And private spending tends to have far better results for
the community than govt spending. The strong incentive to
improve one’s own life, & the specific knowledge of one’s
own needs & desires, position private institutions &
individuals much better than any govt bureaucracy to invest
their own private capital. Therefore, tax-funded invest-
ments like those made during the highway boom of the 50s &
60s are usually destined to be worse than whatever potential
private investments they have inevitably replaced.

Infrastructure of a Free Society
--------------------------
Given the countless beneficial uses of a few million dollars,
or a few billion, building a bridge or a highway is probably
not usually the best possible investment. But sometimes it
undoubtedly is, in which case private people & institutions
can be left to invest in it on their own, if the money is
left in their hands instead of taxed away from them. (And
if regulatory measures don’t prevent them from making such
decisions.)

Basic infrastructure such as roads & bridges are often
listed as examples of things that simply can’t be left to the
private sector. But if private individuals & institutions
are left free to spend their resources as they see fit,
there is nothing preventing them from making whatever invest-
ments they deem most beneficial, which history suggests has
often included basic infrastructure when regulatory forces
didn’t get in the way.

Private sector road building was common throughout much
of American history until, as Univ of Georgia historian
Stephen Mihm has written, “Private roads went out of
fashion in the late 19th century, as reformers sought to
bring everything from utilities to roads under centralized
control and regulation.”

These private ventures were funded partially by toll revenue
(despite price control legislation making them less profit-
able). However, private investors were also motivated to
fund hundreds of roads for reasons other than direct profit.
“They sought the indirect benefits of having a road run thru
their communities, which helped increase trade & also the
stature of the road’s pioneers,” Mihm writes.

If something is truly valuable, people will generally be
motivated to invest in it without being forced to through
taxation. And free individuals, companies, & communities,
knowing their own wants and needs in infinitely greater
detail than any centralized authority, are in a far better
position than government officials to make such decisions.

The ignorance & corruptibility of anyone given power over
the private capital of others is a recipe for needless
waste & destruction. Rochester, & the dozens of other
American cities that are rethinking the highway mistakes
of the past, have learned this the hard way. If we learn
from their example, we won’t have to.

https://fee.org/articles/cities-across-america-realize-their-public-highways-have-done-more-harm-than-good