- This video is sponsored by Hello Fresh.
Welcome to Austin.
Austin is the Texas state capital
and home to The University of Texas.
It's one of the fastest growing Metro areas in the US
thanks to a booming tech sector.
Austin grew by 26% in eight years.
With growth that fast,
there have to be some growing pains.
And one major pain point has been traffic.
Highway congestion is really bad for a city its size,
which is not surprising considering how many more people
live in the area compared to 10 years ago.
The Texas Transportation Institute,
a state research agency has identified I-35 which cuts right
through Austin as the most congested roadway in the state.
And the state is taking action.
It's developing plans for an expansion of the freeway
to allow for more traffic.
The Texas Department of Transportation plans to add
two manage the lanes,
meaning high occupancy vehicle or carpool lanes,
through the central city.
After initial promises of "no higher, no wider,"
its proposals include displacing over 140 properties,
split evenly between businesses and homes.
Despite Texas DOT promises that the project
will relieve congestion,
it's not popular with all Austinites.
Community leaders and several Austin City Council members
oppose the expansion.
And even mayor Adler,
a proponent of the expansion,
doesn't wanna see it get wider
and displace residents and businesses.
The city's own Department of Transportation
has released competing proposals
for reconfiguring the highway.
And community activists,
like the organization Rethink35,
have put forth their own ideas.
They're calling for the highway to be replaced with
a surface boulevard and the highway lanes either completely
tunneled or removed entirely.
The Texas DOT has said that they
will not consider outside proposals,
but limit themselves only to the narrow options
they've already presented.
Now local activists are fighting this already,
but the Texas DOT is a well-funded arm
of the state government,
and they'll be a formidable foe.
Now you might be asking yourself,
why does a state government get to decide
where a freeway goes and how wide it is
through a city like Austin?
Shouldn't local residents and city officials
get the final say?
In this video,
we're going to untangle the web of power and money
that exists to build highways,
whether or not the public actually wants it.
Let's get into it after the bike bell.
(bell rings)
To understand why state departments of transportation
are so powerful,
we have to start at the top,
the US Constitution.
The 10th amendment,
the last of the original Bill of Rights,
states that any powers not claimed in the constitution
by the federal government belong to the states.
Notably nowhere in the constitution is a city
or local government mentioned.
This created a hierarchy where the federal government
claimed its powers in the Constitution,
left the rest to the states,
which then doled out some of its powers
to local governments.
They passed laws to allow local governments,
to enact ordinances, statutes, and laws that pertain
to their local jurisdiction,
so long as they don't contradict state laws.
Some cities called Home Rule cities have a broader range
of powers than Dillon's rural cities,
who have a more limited scope.
Austin, like most major cities in the US
is a Home Rule city.
The system as a whole works pretty well.
The federal government works on national issues.
The state government works on issues
pertaining to its state,
and local government is free to pass laws and ordinances
that make sense at that very small scale.
Now, there are some people who advocate for states' rights.
That means more power for the states as opposed
to the federal government.
And there are local control people who want more power
to local and city governments as opposed to state control.
Okay, we're done with civics 101.
Local governments get their power from the state
who get their power from the 10th Amendment
of the Constitution.
But why would something like the routing of a highway,
be a state issue, not a local one?
I mean, it's local residents and businesses
that might be displaced due to the routing of the highway.
Way back in 1956,
Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway Act.
It guaranteed a nine to one federal match
for highway construction.
This meant for every dollar of state DOT spent,
the feds would kick in $9.
This was a tremendous incentive for states
to build highways.
And that fact is also important.
It would be the states who built and maintain
the interstate highways with robust federal funding.
But there's another layer here too.
The federal and state governments realize
that one of the most challenging aspects
of building a highway network would be
getting them into central cities.
They mandated that all urban areas
create metropolitan planning organizations.
Their primary purpose will be to create
a regional transportation plan and a list of projects
that needed state and federal funding.
In Austin, that organization is CAMPO.
If you look at CAMPOs most recent list of projects,
the I-35 project is right there.
$4.9 billion for new lanes for the highway,
right through central Austin.
Why would the Austin Metro area want this highway expansion?
Well it's important to understand the distinction
between the city and region.
Many city of Austin residents won't see any benefits
from this freeway because they may live close enough
to downtown, the Capitol area, or UT Austin,
that they could just go on surface streets
or take alternative modes to get where they need to go.
The highway really benefits suburban commuters,
people moving throughout the Metro area.
Austin is a major influential player in CAMPO,
but there are plenty of other suburban jurisdictions
who see adding freeway capacity in Austin is a great idea.
And they don't have to deal with the downside
of widening it.
They just get the benefits.
But this project isn't just the idea
of suburbanites around Austin.
By its own admission,
the Texas DOT has had this project on it's radar
for over 30 years.
The Texas DOT commissioned a study
by the Texas Transportation Institute,
a government agency with a reputation
for publishing positive studies about cars and trucks.
And guess what they found?
That I-35 needed to be widened.
There was no other feasible alternative.
The Texas DOT points to the study
every time someone suggests an alternative.
The problem is that the Texas State DOT,
like state DOTs across the country,
have for their existence, primarily been about one thing,
building new highways.
It's only recently that they've been required
to consider alternative modes often as a precondition
to receive federal funding.
If you're a state DOT, you're a hammer,
and every transportation project is a nail,
where a nail in this case is a new highway project.
You get what I'm saying.
They can not imagine an alternative that doesn't involve
dealing with congestion by building more lanes of highway.
They know how to get the funding approved at the state
and federal level too.
They have $5 billion burning a hole in their pocket,
and they wanna spend it on a highway.
The point of this video is to help you understand why it's
so difficult to oppose highway widening projects
and tear down existing highways.
There's an entire infrastructure that exists to build
and maintain them.
And billions of dollars and thousands of workers
support that effort.
And cities, even if they don't want a highway,
will be forced to acquiesce.
It's for the good of the state and national highway system.
Nevermind the people displaced by the highway.
The concerns of residents who breathe in the bad air
or all the people killed while driving on it
will be minimized in the process.
It is possible to oppose a freeway.
The freeway revolts in San Francisco and Portland
are great historical examples, but notice the word revolt.
It's not enough to be passively opposed
to new highway lanes.
People need to rise up and demand an end to the project.
Rethink35 and other community partners
are doing a great job of organizing this resistance.
They've also done the important work
of proposing an alternative vision.
This has been a theme on this channel lately,
from the efforts to Lid I-5 in Seattle to the team
working to convert Lake Shore Drive in Chicago
into a boulevard.
All of these grassroots efforts give me hope
that residents can organize to stop a machine
designed for one purpose,
build more highway lanes no matter the cost.
It was great visiting Austin,
but I was happy to get back to my family.
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