Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Thursday will launch a $1 billion pilot plan to address what he sees as cities and neighborhoods racially segregated or divided by roads.
Buttigieg has previously declared “there is racism physically built” into U.S. infrastructure, promising to address it soon after taking office.
As Breitbart News reported, he argued that some highways and bridges across several cities were designed to divide communities by race.
“Well if you’re in Washington, I’m told that the history of that highway is one that was built at the expense of communities of color in the D.C. area,” he said. “There are stories and I think Philadelphia and Pittsburgh [and] in New York, Robert Moses famously saw through the construction of a lot of highways.”
“There is racism physically built into some of our highways, and that’s why the jobs plan has specifically committed to reconnect some of the communities that were divided by these dollars,” he added.
Now he has moved to correct what he sees as a racial road system that is part of a broader systemic problem across the nation.
AP reports under the Reconnecting Communities program, cities and states can now apply for the federal aid over five years to rectify harm caused by roadways that were built primarily through lower-income communities after the 1950s creation of the interstate highway system.
The grants are being made available under President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law.
Pete Buttigieg drives an electric bus during a tour of Lane Transit District (LTD) electric buses in Eugene, Oregon, U.S., on Wednesday, July 14, 2021. (Moriah Ratner/Bloomberg via Getty)
“Transportation can connect us to jobs, services and loved ones, but we‘ve also seen countless cases around the country where a piece of infrastructure cuts off a neighborhood or a community because of how it was built,” said Buttigieg, who was announcing the pilot program later Thursday in Birmingham, Alabama.
According to AP, he described Reconnecting Communities as a broad department “principle” — not just a program — to address the issue with many efforts underway.
“This is a forward-looking vision,” Buttigieg said. “Our focus isn’t about assigning blame. It isn’t about getting caught up in guilt. It’s about fixing a problem. It’s about mending what has been broken, especially when the damage was done with taxpayer dollars.”
Under the program, $195 million in competitive grants is to be awarded over the next 12 months, of which $50 million will be devoted for communities to conduct planning studies.