Read the report: New York’s Highway Heist

Widening highways comes at a great cost: in communities divided, opportunities missed, and eventual remedies to reconnect people and places isolated by exclusionary, car dependent infrastructure. With massive projects underway in nearly every borough, like the Van Wyck Expressway expansion in Queens, the state is now spending more than $5 billion on projects that widen highways — in the nation’s largest city, where 7 million people ride public transit!

Without taking action now to shift gears, New Yorkers can expect more of the same traffic congestion and air pollution that make it tough to get around without a car in many communities and hard to breathe all across the five boroughs.

Now is the time to redirect investment away from projects that widen highways and toward fast, frequent public transit and safe, accessible walking and cycling infrastructure. The New Yorkers for Transportation Equity Coalition is urging state leaders to invest in helping us #GetAroundNY by directing the New York State Department of Transportation to cut vehicle miles traveled, and instead invest federal and state resources in transit, biking and walking to give New Yorkers more options and more freedom of access and mobility.