Grant to help Mich. with plan to tear down divisive highway
WASHINGTON — A long-delayed plan to dismantle Interstate 375, a 1-mile depressed freeway in Detroit that was built by demolishing Black neighborhoods 60 years ago, was a big winner of federal money last week, the first Biden administration grant awarded to remove a racially divisive roadway.
The $104.6 million is among $1.5 billion in transportation grants handed out to 26 projects nationwide thanks to increased funding from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.
It allows Michigan to move forward on its $270 million effort to transform the stretch in Detroit into a street-level boulevard, reconnecting neighborhoods and adding amenities, such as bike lanes.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has said he would make racial justice a priority in his department’s funding awards, pledging wide-ranging help to communities. Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, two of the city’s predominantly African-American neighborhoods, were razed as part of the 1950s creation of an interstate highway system, displacing 100,000 Black residents and erecting a decadeslong barrier between the downtown and communities to the east.
Hailed by city and state leaders as helping rectify a past racial wrong, the federal money represents a key first step that advocacy groups say will inspire dozens of citizen-led efforts underway in other cities to dismantle highways.
Still, advocates cautioned that Michigan’s plan to build a six-lane city boulevard risks simply replacing one busy roadway with another. Some longtime Black residents worry they could be priced out of the city by new business development and shiny condo buildings that promise direct links to downtown.
After years of planning dating back to 2013, the highway removal is estimated to begin as soon as 2025, two years earlier than expected, with construction finished by 2028.
“This stretch of I-375 cuts like a gash through the neighborhood, one of many examples I have seen in communities across the country where a piece of infrastructure has become a barrier,” Buttigieg said Thursday to highlight the grant.
Detroit’s project would create a slower-speed boulevard that aims to improve safety by removing a steep curve and adding LED lighting, while removing 15 old bridges and two stormwater runoff pump stations and building out wider sidewalks, protected bike lanes and pedestrian crossings.
Other winners of the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America grants announced last week include $32.5 million for Flagstaff, Arizona, to build pedestrian underpasses to reconnect lower-income neighborhoods isolated by a 1-mile segment of railroad to downtown; $100 million to Clear Creek County, Colorado, for upgrades to 8 miles of the I-70 Mountain Corridor, including electric vehicle charging stations; $110 million to New York to expand refrigerated warehouse space at its Hunts Point food distribution center; and $70 million to improve rail track in Chicago.