Editor's note: This is a guest opinion by
Adam Goodman, adapted from a blog
post he wrote for
trainsnotlanes.org. If you're
interested in sharing an opinion, reach out to damn.arbor@gmail.com or drop
us a DM on twitter.
On Wednesday, in Governor Whitmer’s
State of the State address, we once again heard about “fixing the damn roads”. However, MDOT’s own data
clearly shows that conditions are getting worse, not better:
From 2020-2023, the State of Michigan took on a total of $3.5 Billion in
one-time bond debt to accelerate some road-work projects. These “Rebuilding Michigan” bonds did - temporarily - stabilize our statewide pavement conditions.
However, the money is about to run out; after that, conditions are expected to
worsen dramatically.
In fact,
a recent study
concluded we have a multi-billion dollar annual road funding shortfall. $3.5
Billion in one-time funding was never going to be enough - we need that kind
of money every year.
We should ask ourselves, though: Why are our roads so expensive to maintain?
Why do we have such an egregious funding shortfall? While there are many
contributing factors, the most fundamental reason is quite simple:
we’ve massively overbuilt our road and highway networks, and we keep doing
it!
To understand this better, let’s look at a project that’s taking a different
approach: I-375 in Detroit. MDOT proposes to remove the freeway and replace it
with a surface road. There are
many
problems
with their proposal, to be sure.
However, if we consider it very narrowly, from a fiscal perspective, it’s a
good long-term investment: it’s reducing total pavement area and eliminating
many expensive-to-maintain bridges and other structures. It will reduce
long-term maintenance costs for our state.
With our huge
road-funding shortfall, it seems clear we should be doing this sort of project
- right-sizing and simplifying our highway network - everywhere possible...
… but we are doing the exact opposite. In the last decade, we’ve been widening
seemingly half the freeways in Southeast Michigan! These projects are
enormously expensive and destructive - e.g. widening a mere 7 miles of
I-94 in Detroit will cost over $3
Billion, which is almost the entire amount of the aforementioned “Rebuilding
Michigan” bonds. Even worse, though, they will increase maintenance and repair
costs for future generations of Michiganders.
Thanks to decades of this unbridled highway expansionism, Michigan’s total
annual Vehicles Miles Traveled (VMTs) have increased by 65% since 1980 (as of 2019),
according to the
Federal Highway Administration. Meanwhile, our population has only grown by
about 9%. This is unsustainable, in every sense of the word.
Similarly, some estimates suggest our developed land area has sprawled out by
50% over the same time period:
Looking at this, it’s no wonder everything’s crumbling in this state! Not just
roads and highways, but water, sewer, power lines - you name it. We have to
maintain as much as 50% more infrastructure with almost the same population of
taxpayers we had back in 1980.
Highways, though, are key in enabling this sprawl, thanks to a phenomenon
known as
induced demand.
This is a ruinous cycle for our communities, our state, and our global
climate.
In pursuit of climate action, some of our local leaders are trying to break
that cycle. Both the City of Ann Arbor’s
A2Zero plan
and Washtenaw County’s
Resilient Washtenaw plan
have established goals to reduce VMTs by 50% in the coming years… but we will
never achieve these goals if we continue widening our highways. And yet,
widening US-23 is exactly what MDOT is proposing to do, in a study they're
conducting right now!
In fact, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute’s
SHIFT calculator, widening 7 miles of
US-23 can be expected to increase our county’s VMTs by as many as
44 million miles per year, accounting for as many as
400,000 metric tons of added CO₂ emissions by 2050. It’s also worth
noting that these calculations hold true regardless of whether the new lanes
are general purpose lanes, HOV lanes, or any other type.
For all these reasons,
all three proposed widening options for US-23 must be rejected. Our
communities and our state literally cannot afford to keep widening all our
highways!
Take action today to put a stop to this wasteful, unnecessary, and climate
destroying project.