Cross Bx. redressway
Joe deal could end planner’s ‘racist’ legacy
The Bronx, torn asunder by a Robert Moses highway decades ago, should get money under the infrastructure funding President Biden wants to set aside for communities damaged by racist planning, the borough’s newest representative in Congress said Sunday.
Biden is pushing for some $2.3 trillion for a wide range of projects, from modernizing bridges and highways to building electric vehicle charging stations.
The package includes $20 billion to redress inequities caused by past highway projects, many of them in communities of color, with details still being worked out.
“The Cross Bronx Expressway has left in its wake decades of displacement and disinvestment, as well as environmental degradation,” Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat elected in November, told the Daily News.
“The time has come for the South Bronx to be lifted by a 21st century New Deal rather than be haunted by the ghost of Robert Moses,” he said.
In the mid-20th century, Moses, one of the most influential forces in city history, established the east-west expressway as a part of Interstate 95.
The roadway tore up the community, displaced residents and led to heavy pollution that to this day helps make the borough the most unhealthy county in the state, according to the nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s annual rankings.
Torres said all options, including shutting down the expressway, should be on the table.
“Highway redesign, as well as vehicle electrification, would represent a structural shift on public health in the Bronx,” said the congressman, who expects to meet with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in the coming weeks. “The $20 billion fund is a historic opportunity, and we in the Bronx ought to seize the moment.”
The Biden administration continued to make its case for massive investment in infrastructure over the weekend, saying the proposed spending is all about jobs.
The package would not only recover jobs lost during the pandemic but boost employment in the long term, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said Sunday.
“We cannot only have a strong job rebound this year, but we can sustain it over many years,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “That’s the goal.”
The work would be funded by boosting the corporate tax rate — to 28% from 21% — among other steps.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowed last week to fight the package “every step of the way.”
But Republican Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri said Biden could win GOP support by scaling back his proposals.
“There’s an easy win here for the White House if they would ... make this an infrastructure package, which ... even if you stretch the definition of infrastructure some [is] about 30% of the $2.25 trillion we are talking about spending,” he said, also on “Fox News Sunday.”
Buttigieg echoed Biden’s declaration that the infrastructure package represents a “once-ina-lifetime” opportunity for the country.
“I don’t think, in the next 50 years, we’re going to see another time when we have this combination of a demonstrated need, bipartisan interest, widespread impatience and a very supportive president who is committed … not just to the infrastructure itself but to the jobs we’re going to create,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”