Highways as a Barrier to Equal Access

Abstract

There is a widening gap between growing concentrations of blacks and other minorities in the central cities, and whites and the expanding supply of employment opportunities in the suburbs. While exclusionary zoning controls have been seen by many as the most immediate barrier to suburban opportunities, transportation facilities and the lack of them play an important role. The federal highway program in particular, while a powerful stimulus to dispersed development, has, in its implementation, failed to protect equal access to the benefits of development such as housing and employment—benefits often made possible entirely by the provision of highway access where none existed before. As a result the comprehensive planning of metropolitan areas is seriously undermined, and new barriers are erected which threaten to perpetuate the burdens and disadvantages which a long history of racial discrimination has produced. Regional planning agencies are needed with adequate authority to make and implement integrated land-use and transportation decisions based on a clearly expressed metropolitan development policy that includes the goal of eliminating all barriers to equal access. In the interim the discriminatory aspects of current transportation policies and projects should be challenged.