State Bill Would Stop Highway Expansions Near Vulnerable New Yorkers

Could we send the highways to Hell?

New York State will halt the expansion of highways near public housing developments and asthma hot spots, under a new bill that seeks to protect some of the poorest and most vulnerable New Yorkers from excess pollution and emissions.

Assembly Member Emerita Torres (D-Bronx) recently introduced the Stop Highway Community Harm Act to ban the state from widening highways within 200 feet of public housing or in ZIP codes where the three-year average of asthma-related emergency department visits exceed 70 visits per 10,000 people, slightly above the New York City average of 64.6 visits per 10,000 people.

Torres arrived in Albany two years ago and immediately joined the fight against the Five Bridges Project, which would have enlarged the Cross Bronx Expressway with a “diverter road” during highway repairs. She said that fight, and her personal desire to safeguard New Yorkers with little say over transportation planning, inspired her to write the bill.

“Our public housing communities, they’re vulnerable,” said Torres. “We’re talking about young children, elders and families who are on fixed incomes, who are generally so close to highways and the related air pollution and noise pollution that it causes.”

Torres’s experience with the Cross Bronx repair project influenced the bill’s text, which prohibits adding new lanes, converting shoulders and medians into travel lanes and widening shoulders in a manner that increases vehicle throughput or operating speeds.

The state DOT ditched its plan for a hulking four-lane road to carry traffic during repairs to some elevated segments of the highway, but the agency is still planning to expand the Cross Bronx by 50 feet to install wider shoulders that comply with federal highway safety standards.

Torres said she took additional inspiration from New York’s SIGH Act, which bars the construction of schools near highways in order to protect children from pollution. She was dismayed to learn that state and federal law lacks any comparable provisions for public housing or areas with high asthma rates.

“We don’t have [a] standard for the community when it comes to how close they should be in terms of public housing near a highway,” Torres said. “There’s no federal standard for that. There’s no state standard for that. And I think that’s a problem, because you can build a highway wherever you want, with [no regard] for whatever vulnerable community is residing there.”

The state insists that it needs to bring up the Cross Bronx to federal standards in order to receive federal money for its rehabilitation, and argues that it doesn’t plan to add any new lanes — but Torres and other activists don’t buy that explanation. She said that a wider shoulder brings car pollution that much closer to people’s homes.

“The Department of Transportation is [arguing] that it’s not an expansion, it’s for safety reasons,” she said. “But in essence, you’re still expanding the highway, where a truck can park [or] idle on the highway.”

New York has made halting progress toward ending its highway expansion era. The state plans to tear down the I-81 viaduct in Syracuse, convert the Sheridan Expressway into a boulevard, and cap the Cross Bronx Expressway. But its inclination to expand continues to rear its big, ugly and noisy head.

Torres’s bill would also create a more thoughtful process for planning future highway expansions. Those projects already require environmental assessments to determine the impacts of construction, but current law doesn’t explicitly require those assessments to consider whether expanding public transit would achieve the same outcome as a proposed expansion.

During the fight against the Five Bridges proposal, activists repeatedly pushed to improve transit for people living near the Cross Bronx Expressway. Torres wants to enshrine that demand in state law.

“This goes a step beyond [an environmental assessment], with respect to particular alternatives,” she said. “One thing that the community has really demanded that I agree with, is we have to decrease the number of cars and trucks on the road in this area. Having the alternative discussion and having the additional data analysis and information is really important.”

Torres’s bill is likely to bring even more attention to its original inspiration. Indeed, on Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx) sent a letter to Hochul in which she urged the state executive to “reject any plans to expand the Cross Bronx Expressway beyond its current footprint.”

“Instead, I urge the state to prioritize standard bridge repairs and identify safer, more effective solutions that reduce traffic and improve air quality before construction begins,” then nationally known representative told Hochul.