Secretary Anthony R. Foxx

Remarks at Center for American Progress 
Washington, DC • March 30, 2016

"Bridging the Divide: Connecting People to Opportunity"
Remarks as prepared for delivery

Hi everybody. I'm Anthony Foxx, U.S. Secretary of Transportation.

Before I get started I want to ask: How did you get here today?

How about you?

Raise your hand if you drove.

Raise your hand if you took a bus?

Or the metro?

Did you walk? Or ride a bike?

That train, bus, or bike you took plays an incredibly important role in your life. Transportation profoundly impacts all of us and it’s my job as Secretary to think about that all the time.

But I’ve added a new part to my job description. I’ve been working to get beyond thinking of transportation as something that takes us places. Instead, I’m trying to get us thinking of transportation as a place. Every inch of concrete, steel, and asphalt we traverse is actually connected to some place.

And I’d like to talk with you today about how transportation can help or hurt places. And how the growing gaps between the wealthy, the poor, and the middle class have been exacerbated by our transportation system.

These gaps are not confined to rural or urban areas. They’re not confined to race.

And yet, attitudes about race and the poor have been embedded in our infrastructure for far too long.

Nothing in our built environmental is accidental. 

To understand this point, we need to step back and understand how most things in our built environment are the product of intentional design.

NEXT SLIDE – 2 – Baseball

Did you know that even home plate is supposed to point in a certain direction? Rule 1.04 in major league baseball recommends that home plate should face northeast.

They figured out that, in any other direction, the sun could fall onto the batter’s eyes.

Here’s Yankee Stadium, which adheres to this rule better than some other teams.

I would offer what really makes the Yankees so awesome is good pitching …

NEXT SLIDE – 3 – Pitching

And …yes, that’s me.

Home plate is just illustrative.

The point is there’s a reason why things are built the way they are.

It’s no different in transportation.

Intentional design can be seen in all forms of transportation infrastructure – transit systems, airports, railroads, you name it.

But, in the interest of time, let’s use our nation’s highway system as a case study.

NEXT SLIDE – 4 – Highways

In the 1950’s, President Eisenhower launched our Interstate Highway program, and the federal government started funding up to 90 percent of project costs in order to build a nation-wide connected highway system.

It started with 8 miles in the middle of Kansas.

Eventually it grew to become one of the most expansive and impressive road networks that the world has ever seen.

And as we all know, it has served as an engine for our economy for decades.

The highways were designed to get people from rural areas and suburbs into urban cores as fast as possible.

Inevitably, the highways had to run through someone’s back yard.

This prompted protests known as “highway revolt” all over the country – no one wanted these thoroughfares running through their neighborhood.

We now know – overwhelmingly – that our urban freeways were routed through low-income neighborhoods.

Instead of connecting us to each other, highway decision-makers separated us.

And if you lived in an area slated for a highway project, you had to move and that also had severe impacts people.

Remember: most of this occurred before federal civil rights legislation took effect.

What decision-makers thought of low-income communities is reflected in where and how they built our transportation infrastructure – certain values of that time are embedded in that infrastructure.

NEXT SLIDE – 5 – Quote 1

The man who envisioned this highway system, longtime director of the former U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, Thomas MacDonald, said his goal was to “get farmers out of the mud.”

In a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, MacDonald advocated displacing people in order to get those farmers out of the mud. He said that destroying low-income areas with highways would, in effect, serve a higher and more legitimate purpose, converting them into a “public asset.”

NEXT SLIDE – 6 – Quote 2   

Robert Moses, the country’s infamous freeway designer, was even more overt when he said that plowing freeways through low-income areas would make Baltimore healthier in the long-run.

Folks, these were leading voices in our country. Their views were widely embraced and took root all over America – including in a sleepy Southern city of Charlotte, North Carolina, where I grew up.

NEXT SLIDE – 7 – Charlotte

This is the house I grew up on Crestdale Drive in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

My grandparents bought the house in 1961. Early on, the neighborhood contained a small network of interconnected streets.

NEXT SLIDE – 8 – I-77 & I-85

Later, federal money and state decision-making led to two highways surrounding the neighborhood, destroying the connective tissue. Neighbors were separated from neighbors. The corner store was gone because the corner was gone.

A new more convenient, high speed thoroughfare had been created. But the way of life of another community had been destroyed.

I grew up living with those barriers. Even though I had no idea how they came to be or what they really meant. I had no idea that it was not only physical, but also psychological and economic. This barrier caused my community to become more dangerous and less desirable.

It became clear to me only later that those freeways were there to carry people through my neighborhood, but never to my neighborhood.

Businesses didn’t invest there.

Grocery stores and pharmacies didn’t take the risk.

I could not even get a pizza delivered to my house.

Later when I was on the City Council and as Mayor, I made decisions about new roads, new transit lines, and even re-zonings.

And I really understood how much people think about these decisions before they make them.

The people in my community were not invisible; it’s just that at a certain stage in our history they didn’t matter.

NEXT SLIDE – 9 – Brooklyn

In the 1880’s there was a community in Charlotte’s second ward named Brooklyn. It was a thriving community – home to churches, schools, doctors, and theaters.

This was the heartbeat of the black community in Charlotte. When folks like Louis Armstrong or Duke Ellington came to Charlotte, that’s where they played. It was a place to see and be seen.

There’s no trace of it today.

Brooklyn was systematically eliminated. By 1912, the local paper captured the prevailing views that Brooklyn was far too valuable to be left to African- Americans.

They wrote, quote, “farsighted men believe that eventually this section, because of its proximity to the center of the city, must sooner or later be utilized by the white population.”

And then, in the 1930s, Brooklyn was redlined by new federal policies. Meaning that mortgage loans in the area were assessed as risky. People could not take out loans to buy a home, nor could they take out a loan to improve their home.

In 1947, the planning commission labeled Brooklyn as an industrial zone.  How is that for property values?

The 1960’s brought a new urban renewal program in which a mass “slum clearance” effort wiped Brooklyn off the map. Through all of this, infrastructure choices aided and abetted the destruction of this community. And then came the highways.

First came Independence Boulevard cutting a gash right through the heart of the community.

Later, an inner beltway – I-277 – which remains to this day.

This is the enduring image of what this meant to so many of the folks affected.

NEXT SLIDE – 10 – Charlotte Highways

Let’s take a look at the development of Charlotte’s highway system. Even before I-77 and I-85, here’s how the system evolved.

The east-west and north-south expressways were built first. Then a circumferential interstate was built around it.

NEXT SLIDE – 11 – MAPS

Today, if you live near a freeway, chances are very high that you’re poor. Just look at Charlotte.

Here’s a map in the 1960’s. The blue areas represent the higher income areas and the red represents the lower income levels – these red areas are real people.

NEXT SLIDE – 12 – Income

And here’s a map of today. By the time we reach 2013, there's almost no denying this direct correlation between those low-income areas and the highway system. 

NEXT SLIDE – 13 – Displace

Now let’s zoom out.

We looked at total household displacement from the first 20 years of the construction of the interstate system and we found that a majority of people displaced were people of color. If you add urban renewal programs on top of that, like what happened in Charlotte, roughly two-thirds of the families displaced were low-income.

People were forced to sell their homes at below market value, taking their main source of wealth and their dignity. Many still live on the edges of our freeways. They paid a heavy price for the system we depend on every day.

But we’re all still paying a price for this. And I would argue that part of that price is that we have entire areas in this country where the infrastructure that is supposed to connect people is constraining them. And achieving a middle class life is made harder because of past transportation decisions.

As I have surveyed the country, this correlation is not unique to Charlotte.

In place after place, highways cut the heart out of low-income and minority communities.

NEXT SLIDE – 14 – Miami

Here’s Miami.

I-95 cut the heart out of Overtown, a thriving black community.

NEXT SLIDE – 15 – Staten Island

They call the Staten Island Expressway the Mason-Dixon Line.

NEXT SLIDE – 16 – St. Paul

Last summer, St. Paul’s mayor issued an apology for the racially motivated routing of a highway through the Rondo neighborhood. 

NEXT SLIDE – 17 – New Orleans

Here’s New Orleans:

The Claiborne Expressway put an overpass in what used to be a green space that ran right through the well-known Treme neighborhood.

NEXT SLIDE – 18 – Los Angeles

Here’s Los Angeles. The Century Expressway was one of seven freeways built that led to decay in African-American and Latino communities.

NEXT SLIDE – 19 – Seattle

I-5 was built through the city’s oldest blue-collar community despite residents’ concerns they’d be isolated from the rest of the city.

NEXT SLIDE – 20 – Des Moines

Rural areas were hit too. Here’s Des Moines.

I-35 cut through dozens of farms just south of the city, separating farmers from their land.

NEXT SLIDE – 21 – West Baltimore

Here’s West Baltimore.

A generation ago, Robert Moses wanted to plow through a West Baltimore community known as Harlem Park, a then thriving middle class neighborhood.

Harlem Park was destroyed before the project was stopped. Now some in the community call it a “Highway to Nowhere.”

The people of West Baltimore never stopped pushing for a better connection to jobs and opportunities than the freeway offered. Today, a majority of West Baltimore residents have neither a car nor access to transit to get to a job.

NEXT SLIDE – 22 – Red Line

After years and years, a new transit project called the Red Line was put forward.

We planned to commit nearly one billion dollars to this project, only to have it cancelled by the State of Maryland.

NEXT SLIDE – 23 – St. Louis

Let’s talk about when St. Louis International Airport started to expand in the 1980s, continuing through the 1990's.

Airport officials purchased land in Kinloch, Missouri, which was a well-populated African-American community. Federal officials were committed to assisting residents of Kinloch relocate, but the fabric of the community was forever altered.

NEXT SLIDE – 24 – Kinloch

Here’s a picture of part of Kinloch before the airport was built, and here's a picture after the airport was built.

But where did these people go? Some of them went to Ferguson.

NEXT SLIDE – 25 – Atlanta

This is Atlanta. But it could be any place in the country.

There's no sidewalk. Where there are sidewalks, there are no crosswalks. This road was built only for people with cars.

NEXT SLIDE – 26 – Raquel Nelson

Imagine you are a mother ending a 90 minute bus ride. You’re carrying bags of groceries and your three children are tired, and anxious to get home.

Your house is 85 feet across the road. Yet, the nearest crosswalk from this bus stop is roughly a third of a mile away.

Most people would take that 85 foot chance across that street.

One mother, Raquel Nelson, took the chance.

And as she crossed the street, two of her children darted ahead of her. As her four-year-old son, AJ, chased after his sister, he was struck and killed by a driver.

This accident is a tragedy. But what’s even more tragic is that it is not an isolated incident. Not in Atlanta, not in this country.

NEXT SLIDE – 27 – Bike/Ped Fatalities

Here is a map of bicycle and pedestrian fatalities in Atlanta between 2001 and 2013.

Those gray areas represent communities of concentrated poverty.

This is representative of what’s occurring nationally.

Which is not surprising, because only 49 percent of low-income neighborhoods have sidewalks.

In high-income areas this number is closer to 90 percent.

If we want a society in which everyone has a real shot at the American dream, then it is imperative that we acknowledge the divisions we’ve embedded with the concrete, steel and asphalt in this country. Even in cases like this, where the concrete and crosswalk markings never came.

Transportation gets us places and transportation makes or breaks places.

NEXT SLIDE – 28 – Funding

How did this happen? It happened because federal money and state and local decision-making made this happen.

The federal government puts about 60 billion dollars into surface transportation every year.

90 percent of that 60 billion dollars goes directly to states through a set formula.

When we look at surface transportation spending across the entire country, 98 percent of all surface transportation expenditures are made at the state and local level.

The same federal, state, and local governments that created these problems have an equally powerful ability to solve them.

President Abraham Lincoln once said: “The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot, so well do, for themselves – in their separate, and individual capacities.”

Transportation is one of those things we can’t do on our own. We can’t build roads to all the places we have to go by ourselves. So we have to do this together.

But the question is: what kind of country do we want to build? What kind of connection do we want to have to each other? What kind of fabric are we trying to weave into this country? And we have to acknowledge that the fabric that was woven into past decisions was not an inclusive fabric.

But that doesn’t mean that’s how it has to be going forward. We can choose a different path.

So how do we connect people to opportunity?

NEXT SLIDE – 29 – Connecting People 1

First: Transportation connects people to opportunity and can invigorate opportunity within communities.  To the greatest extent possible, we should support transportation projects that do both.

NEXT SLIDE – 30 – Charlotte Blue Line

One of the greatest examples of transportation expanding opportunity in a community can be seen in Charlotte today.

The Blue Line was built and opened in 2007 and it occupied a part of the city – the South Boulevard area – that was full of underserved areas that are now populated by new housing, new neighborhood services, and restaurants.

That area has come to life and generated almost two billion dollars of investment just in that area alone.

Now they have an extension going north. But without east-west connectivity, you’re still repeating mistake of history. You’re not connecting people to each other.

NEXT SLIDE – 31 – Charlotte GoldLYNX

That’s why the city’s street car extension is also important.

And by the way, this east-west connection is going to connect neighborhoods that have historically been on the chopping block for generations. And for the first time, they’ll have an asset that will attract jobs, investment, and new neighborhood services.

NEXT SLIDE – 32 – Connecting People 2

Second: While we cannot change the past, we can ensure that current and future transportation projects connect and strengthen communities, including areas that have, in the past, been on the wrong side of transportation decisions. 

Now before you start telling me how expensive it will be to remedy, keep in mind, that our infrastructure is aging and much of the system built 50 and 60 years ago will need to be fixed or replaced entirely.

And frankly, we have no choice but to build new infrastructure to prepare ourselves for the future. Last year our Department released the Beyond Traffic framework – a draft report examining the challenges facing America’s infrastructure over the next 30 years.

The report tells us that we can expect 70 million more people, 65 percent more trucks on the road, and 45 percent more freight over all – with that impending growth coming our way, America will either be in the transportation construction business, or we will choke on our own traffic. So if we are going to build new, build better.

So what does this look like?

NEXT SLIDE – 33 – Columbus Cap

This is Columbus, OH. Last summer folks came together for the opening of the Long Street Bridge, which restored a valuable, long-lost connection.

When I-71 was constructed in the early 1960’s, it separated the King Lincoln neighborhood from the central business district in downtown Columbus. But the Ohio Department of Transportation recently built this bridge to cap the I-71.

This project is having a real impact on local residents. When local resident Gwendolyn Macon-Beck was asked how she felt about rebuilding this long-lost connection, she exclaimed “My heart gets so big, it’s about to pop out of my chest.”

NEXT SLIDE – 34 – Connecting People 3

Lastly: Transportation facilities should be built by, for and with the communities impacted by them. Development of transportation facilities should meaningfully reflect and incorporate the input of all the people and communities they touch.

Transportation is one of a few things we have to do together – it demands everyone being at the table to do it properly. Every inch of asphalt and concrete and steel built to move us occupies a space. Or plays a role in creating place. It isn’t too much to ask to ensure that all places be good places.

So listening to our citizens and giving them meaningful input is important. Developing a generation of enlightened transportation professionals who think of an overpass or a thoroughfare as the same work of art as the Brooklyn Bridge.

We’ve never told transportation professionals to worry as much about the people living in areas that abut transportation projects as much as they worry about moving traffic. So, the public input process has to be robust.

NEXT SLIDE – 35 – LeDaya Epps / Crenshaw

I see this happening in Crenshaw, Los Angeles, where a working mom named LeDaya Epps is helping to build a new light rail connector in her neighborhood.

This connector is bringing Crenshaw to life, spurring new housing and jobs like LeDaya’s.

Our Department knows that a system is most effective when it is built and planned by the people it serves, so we launched a pilot program last year called Local Hire that allows contractors to hire people who live in the communities where they’re building.

NEXT SLIDE – 36 – DOT Actions

We can’t fix this all at once. The way we fix it is one project at a time – one neighborhood at a time. And our Department has been working hard to give communities across the country the support they need to affect positive change and expand opportunity.

We’ve been making access to opportunity a priority for discretionary funding with programs such as TIGER and Ladders of Opportunity Transit grants – which have funded dozens of transformational projects.

For instance:

In Texas, we gave the state more than $20 million that will provide rural transportation services across the state and provide low-income and people with disabilities affordable and reliable transportation and access to jobs.

In Richmond, VA, we gave $25 million dollars to help the city create a rapid bus transit corridor to connect areas residents from economically distressed communities to jobs, education and services.

In Detroit, MI, we gave $37 million to complete their downtown streetcar system, which will now connect the city’s downtown business district to its other economic, cultural, and civic assets.

It also will allow a Detroit resident named James Robertson—who captured the nation’s attention last year by walking 21 miles roundtrip to his job because he had no car and the buses were so unreliable—to now make that same trip under much less duress.

Our funding programs are having a very real impact.

We’re also carrying out other opportunity-focused initiatives like LADDERStep and Safer People Safer Streets, and Rides to Wellness – all of which are increasing access and safety in communities across the country.

Specifically, through our LADDERStep program, we’re providing technical assistance and attracting public and private resources for game-changing community transportation projects in seven major cities across America.

Cities such as: Atlanta, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Phoenix, and Richmond.

We’re reforming standards and promoting connectivity to help planners better measure how their networks are serving people.

We’re updating planning requirements to make decision makers more responsive and accountable.

Overall, we’ve put our money where our mouth is and proposed $20 billion a year to reconnect communities, expand transit, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure and incentivize coordinated regional land use planning.

And I’ve been working to change the culture at the Department by further empowering our Office of Civil Rights and naming the first Chief Opportunity Officer in the federal government.

NEXT SLIDE – 37 – Conclude

But our Department can’t do it alone, which is why I’m asking every state and local elected official with any transportation decision making authority to commit to connecting people to opportunity.

We can’t change everything about the past, but we can certainly work as hard as we can today to repair our infrastructure to make it the connective tissues it ought to be.

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