Justin Rex/AP Photo
Traffic flows south on Interstate 45, November 19, 2021, in Houston. The projected I-45 expansion would widen this section of highway.
There is a great deal of optimism over the climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act; the remnants of what was Build Back Better still include $369 billion in climate spending. But what of the other living remnant of BBB classic—the bipartisan infrastructure package, now the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA)? The whopping $1.2 trillion deal, with $550 billion over five years dedicated to new spending, will have large effects on climate change.
It all depends on future choices. How states and local governments use federal funding for roads will largely determine IIJA’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions. About $110 billion in new spending for roads, bridges, and major projects will be allocated to states through an expanded Highway Trust Fund and grants which allow substantial leeway for states. They can choose to use the money on projects that promote resilience to climate change, like using nature-based solutions to protect coastal roads, or continue to expand and widen highways, leading to increased emissions.
Passenger vehicles and heavy trucks account for over 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions for the transportation sector. While it might be intuitive that more and wider roadways would reduce emissions by lessening time in traffic with engines idling, the reality is that expanded highways typically induce more driving, and become congested again soon after expansions are complete.
Despite this “iron law of congestion,” state transit authorities keep expanding highways in hopes of reducing traffic, often displacing residents of surrounding neighborhoods that are disproportionately poor and nonwhite. While things are not nearly as bad as the lunatic freeway binge of the 1950s and ’60s, neighborhoods are still being bulldozed to make room for cars. In South Carolina, for instance, plans to widen I-526 will overwhelmingly displace low-income residents of Charleston—where, according to reporting by The Washington Post, 94 percent of displaced residents and structures are located in majority Black and brown communities. It isn’t cheap, either: The highway is now slated to cost $2.35 billion, the most expensive project in Charleston County’s history.
Now, most of the money is coming from state and local sources, but federal money is involved too. A review of listings for federally obligated projects showed that over $2 million from the National Highway Performance Program (NHPP) had been used for widening of I-526 in 2020.
What’s more, that pot of money will grow. This federal grant is one of several boosted by the IIJA with significant flexibility for how funding is used, making it likely that continued expansion will greatly rely on them. The NHPP and another flexible grant, the Surface Transportation Block Grant program (STBG), are some of the largest grants programs administered by the Department of Transportation, with allocations of $148 billion and $72 billion respectively over five years. Both programs disburse grants by formula, meaning they lack the extra level of scrutiny that competitive grants allow.
The I-526 expansion is one of several questionable highway projects that receive, or may receive, funds from federal grants that have been boosted by IIJA. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) accuses these highway expansions of “sucking money away from road repair, transit and other local needs,” and doing nothing to solve traffic congestion: “Since 1980, the nation has added more than 870,000 lane-miles of highway—paving more than 1,652 square miles, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island—and yet pre-COVID congestion was worse than it was in the early 1980s.”
States can choose to use the money on projects that promote resilience to climate change, or continue to expand and widen highways.
Despite the Department of Transportation’s recommendation that IIJA funding “should be used to repair and maintain existing transportation infrastructure before making new investments in highway expansion,” states and local governments aren’t prohibited from making bigger highways, which they often do; in 2020, 13 percent of all federal highway funds went to expansion after 15 percent in 2019.
If enough states and regional planning organizations choose highway expansions over other, greener investments in infrastructure, it could significantly hamper efforts to reduce emissions. The Georgetown Climate Center modeled two scenarios, one low-emission and one high-emission. In the latter scenario where 27 percent of IIJA funding is allocated to highway expansion, more than 200 million additional metric tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere, about 1.6 percent more than the baseline scenario. If Republicans have anything to do with it—a New York Times investigation recently found GOP state treasurers working diligently to block any climate policy—this will happen.
However, in the low-emission scenario, where only 4 percent of funding is allocated to expansion, emissions are reduced by 1.3 percent, saving about 250 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from being released. This reduction is because funding that would have gone to highway expansion would be invested in zero- and low-emission transport, such as EVs, buses, bicycles, and rail. IIJA modified the existing STBG so that such low-carbon projects are possible with traditional highway funding, which makes its $72 billion potentially available for green infrastructure projects that might otherwise be used for highway expansion. These investments would be in addition to specific IIJA allocations of $15 billion for EV charging and low-emission and zero-emission busing, and $39 billion in public transit.
In short, the infrastructure bill contains a lot of climate danger but also a lot of promise. States, local governments, regional transportation planning organizations, and metropolitan planning organizations have substantial power over how fast the nation reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Instead of choosing policies that hamper national climate efforts and produce bad results, they could lead the transition.
