Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:19:09
Megan Kimble
This was not inevitable. This was a policy choice. And even in the 1960s, people were saying this is a bad idea. And so that to me was a very compelling kind of find as a reporter to like, be able to document like this is not a new idea. There were freeway fighters in the 1960s. The idea of highway removal has been around since then.

00:00:19:12 - 00:00:32:26
Megan Kimble
It's not a kind of new fangled hippie urbanism idea. Highway removal goes parallel with highway construction, like people have been fighting highways since they were built. And so it was really like, we're running from you to be able to telecom a longer historical story.

00:00:32:29 - 00:00:53:05
John Simmerman
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Simmerman, and that is Megan Kimble, author of the new book City Limits Infrastructure Inequality and the Future of America's Highways are available now. So let's get right to it with Megan.

00:00:53:07 - 00:00:57:22
John Simmerman
Megan Kimball, it's so wonderful to have you on the Active Towns podcast. Welcome.

00:00:57:25 - 00:00:59:19
Megan Kimble
Thanks for having me.

00:00:59:21 - 00:01:06:08
John Simmerman
So, Megan, I love to give my guests just an opportunity to introduce themselves. So who is Megan?

00:01:06:10 - 00:01:17:09
Megan Kimble
Yeah, hi. I am a freelance journalist. I live in Austin, Texas, and I'm the author of a new book called City Limits Infrastructure Inequality and the Future of America's Highways.

00:01:17:12 - 00:01:34:06
John Simmerman
I love it. I love it. And boom, just like that. Here's your book. So, Megan, we are recording this on March 26, but this is going live real soon. When does this when does the book drop?

00:01:34:08 - 00:01:37:27
Megan Kimble
The book published is actually a week from today, on Tuesday, April 2nd.

00:01:37:29 - 00:02:00:27
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And through the magic of editing and everything. You all are watching this and listening this the day after publications because you're getting this on April 3rd. And we are so excited to share with you this this book. This is an exciting book. This is an important book. Many of you know that I do have my own Bookshop.org page, which is right here.

00:02:00:29 - 00:02:32:06
John Simmerman
And we do have the book on here. So right there, first book on the list, right next to Peter Norton's Fighting Traffic in Owatonna Drama. So and for those of you who don't know if you purchase a book through book Bookshop.org, you can also identify your local bookstore to be able to receive a donation. And so that's one of the great things that is super cool about Bookshop.org and it helps some of those local independent bookshops right there in your area.

00:02:32:06 - 00:02:55:24
John Simmerman
So whenever I bring on an author, I love bringing their book into the Active Towns bookshop and doing what we can to give some love to some of those independent bookstores. So with all that commercial out of the way, I'm just super stoked about this book. And I mentioned to you this I mentioned this to you over an email exchange that is so fun to read a book where you're like, I know that person.

00:02:55:24 - 00:03:09:26
John Simmerman
I know that person, that's a colleague, that's a friend. That's a lot of fun. Was it as much fun for you to write in the sense that you're now living here in Austin and you probably run into a lot of these people out and about?

00:03:09:28 - 00:03:26:21
Megan Kimble
Yeah, you know, I certainly didn't know them before I started reporting this book, but it has been I mean, this book is personal to me. I live a mile from I-35. I drove on it every day for several years before the pandemic when I heard it was going to be expanded. You know, my first reaction was that as a journalist, it was it's like a Austinites.

00:03:26:22 - 00:03:42:24
Megan Kimble
So but now. Yeah. And I started reporting this in 2020. So I've spent nearly four years, you know, covering these highways. And I now know a lot of these people pretty well. You know, kind of funny thing about writing a book is you sort of knock on someone's door and say, Hey, can I follow you around for a couple of years?

00:03:42:24 - 00:03:50:26
Megan Kimble
And this might become a book a couple of years after that. And, you know, I'm always surprised by the generosity of people who say, Yeah, sure.

00:03:50:29 - 00:04:32:29
John Simmerman
Yeah. And I can relate as a as a content creator is a videographer and and somebody who points a camera in people's face and say, hey, share your story, etc.. You know, you never know what's going to come of of that little interview, that little conversation that you're having and all of that. I can remember back almost a decade ago to very my very first conversation that I had up in the Dallas area, really, you know, getting to understand about AI 345 and, you know, the situation that was going on up in there and met with Patrick Kennedy again about a decade ago.

00:04:33:01 - 00:04:54:09
John Simmerman
And and that was after we just moved here to Austin. And so it was you know, I was, you know, just trying to get my bearings on on what it's like to live here. But then I guess one of the good things that we should probably do right upfront is talk a little bit about the premise of the book, because there's a story mentioned I-35.

00:04:54:09 - 00:05:18:00
John Simmerman
I just mentioned I. 345 and then there's another I mean, interstate highway involved there in I-45. Talk a little bit about the structure of the book, the premise of the book and and really the the main characters of the book of, you know, these three main locations. And then we've got some sub characters and some subthemes that come out.

00:05:18:02 - 00:05:43:25
Megan Kimble
Yeah. So the premise of the book is basically building highways through the middle of cities was a bad idea. And, you know, the book kind of starts with the beginning of the automotive era looking at how automobiles, you know, took over American cities. And then in 1956, President Eisenhower passed the Interstate Highway Act. And there was a big fight, you know, in the years following that around where should these highways be routed?

00:05:43:26 - 00:06:06:19
Megan Kimble
So I went to the Eisenhower Presidential Library and looked into that and it turned out, you know, even in the 1960s, planners said, hey, we should not put highways through the middle of cities. That this legislative report that Congress looked into in terms of the routing of highways through cities. So it goes into the history of not just the interstate highway program nationally, but also in cities.

00:06:06:21 - 00:06:27:13
Megan Kimble
You know, Dallas, Austin and Houston, cars were pouring on to city streets and highway departments basically accommodated them by building highways right through the middle of existing neighborhoods and next to downtowns. So the but basically traces the history of how did these highways come to be? How did they come to be running through our cities to begin with.

00:06:27:16 - 00:06:52:18
Megan Kimble
And then looking today, you know, fast forward 70 years. Most of these highways are coming to the end of their productive lifespans. They need repairs. They're cracking, they're falling apart. And mostly state dots, including textile, are responding to that. By widening those highways. They're going to rebuild them, but they're going to make them bigger. And so in every city in Texas, there's this sort of grassroots opposition to that idea saying actually wider doesn't work.

00:06:52:21 - 00:07:13:08
Megan Kimble
You know, it's well understood that when you widen the highway, cars, the additional lanes. And so I think there's a kind of a growing resistance to that form of development. So the book kind of looks at the freeway revolts of the 1960s. And then kind of the premise is there's a new wave of freeway revolts today that is really trying to stop this machine of ever wider, wider highways.

00:07:13:10 - 00:07:14:28
Megan Kimble
Yeah, Yeah.

00:07:15:00 - 00:07:37:11
John Simmerman
And I think you sort of alluded to it earlier there in terms of this wasn't necessarily your area of expertise in areas where you were like engaged with and involved with necessarily. You were just like you're on I-35 and you're like, wait a minute, what we're doing what? And and then you dug in and you fell down the rabbit hole.

00:07:37:12 - 00:08:05:06
John Simmerman
Welcome to our world, where we've been fighting freeways for some time and and car dependency. I've been on this fight for the better part of about 15 years, but it must have been like a real head scratcher for you as you're like digging deeper and you're like, understanding the expansion of the interstate highway system and really the the essence and the genesis of what Eisenhower was planning to do and trying to do with the interstate highway system.

00:08:05:08 - 00:08:22:05
John Simmerman
And then and then along comes, you know, the commission to report. There's this interim report and some of the details talk a little bit about how shocked he was to learn about what was actually happening.

00:08:22:07 - 00:08:41:14
Megan Kimble
Yeah, I mean, the basic question driving my book is a very simple one that it took me a book to figure out is like winding highways does not fix tripwire. Are we still widening highways? And as it turns out, like even in the 1960s, even at the conception of the Interstate Highway program, people were saying widening highways is not fix congestion.

00:08:41:14 - 00:09:04:07
Megan Kimble
So interstate highway, this was like one of my favorite reporting finds. I went to the Eisenhower Presidential Library, which is where this photo was from. And I spent three days, you know, looking through the archives. Eisenhower tasked this man, John Bragdon, as to basically oversee the implementation of the Interstate Highway program. And so interstate program was running over budget.

00:09:04:14 - 00:09:30:00
Megan Kimble
It was running $11 billion overbudget, the $25 billion program. It's a significant chunk of money, largely because states were choosing to build highways through cities. And so this guy, Bragdon, basically asked Congress to look into it, to say, did you mean for this to happen? Was this your intent in writing, passing this law? And so that question led to this report legislative intent with regard to, like interstate routes in urban areas.

00:09:30:02 - 00:09:51:14
Megan Kimble
And what it found was no, Congress did not intend for the interstate highway program to be the money enabled by that program, to be You Tube to use to be solve urban congestion. The intent of the program was one of national defense. Let's connect America's cities in case of a nuclear attack and let's enable an economic prosperity by allowing good and travel between those cities.

00:09:51:17 - 00:10:14:09
Megan Kimble
And no point was intended to solve urban congestion. And so Brandon found this. He presented to Eisenhower, as I think, someone in the kind of urbanism world famous meaning. But I really knew before I went to the library was like Eisenhower was unhappy with that presentation. But I actually found the text of Bratton's presentation to Eisenhower, everything that he said to him.

00:10:14:09 - 00:10:34:13
Megan Kimble
And he laid out basically, like all of the you know, he's an engineer, he's a Republican. This is just a matter of simple geometry that rent cars take up more space than people. And so he told Eisenhower he was like, you know, everyone all the experts say the way to solve urban congestion is not through highways, it's through transit.

00:10:34:15 - 00:10:56:12
Megan Kimble
And that is what we should be doing with that money. Instead, we are taking, you know, taking advantage of this 9010 provision that the federal government is going to pay most interstate highways, and they're building highways through their cities and wasting our money. I mean, it was really a financial issue and Eisenhower was frustrated. He said this was not the intent, his intent.

00:10:56:12 - 00:11:01:15
Megan Kimble
And people who had implemented the program that way had done it against his wishes.

00:11:01:18 - 00:11:34:07
John Simmerman
Yeah. And then that brings us, as you said, around to where we are at these days and the way that that has really kind of manifested itself is in these challenges that we have in these three starring cities here in Texas, in Dallas, Austin and Houston. Well, we'll start here, you know, with the the the interstate, this closest to both of us here in in Austin, in I-35.

00:11:34:09 - 00:12:05:13
John Simmerman
And and we'll flip through. We've got we've got Houston next to in I-45 five and then finally Dallas in I. Three 3345 but starting with Austin and I-35. Talk a little bit about this because this was the genesis of sort of you, the spark of you digging into this and understanding this a little bit more. What did you find out when you started to dig into the history of I-35?

00:12:05:15 - 00:12:33:18
Megan Kimble
Yeah, A lot of people who live in Austin might know that I-35 was built along what was formerly East Avenue. So it was this like Wide Boulevard with a big grassy median in the middle. Families used to picnic there. You know, there's a great video, I think, from 1943 that the Chamber of Commerce did that shows it. There's like literally children playing in the middle of the street, right in the 1990, 1928 comprehensive plan that Austin passed, East Avenue was the segregating street in Austin.

00:12:33:18 - 00:12:55:19
Megan Kimble
So black families were not allowed to live west of East Avenue. They were concentrated into a six square mile, quote unquote, Negro district. Well, fast forward 20 years when the Texas Highway Department was building, you know, highways across the state, they chose these avenue is the place to ride a highway through Austin. So they built this massive structure through the heart of the city.

00:12:55:19 - 00:13:19:01
Megan Kimble
And I've talked to elders in East Austin who said, you know, it was this wall. You don't go on the other side of I-35, even after segregation was outlawed, it remained sort of de facto segregated. So it was this highway that has long segregated Austin. It's in 1974, Texas Highway Department made this double decker highway. So it truly is like this kind of wall.

00:13:19:01 - 00:13:30:04
Megan Kimble
It's like very imposing. You know, you can see it from blocks away. It's really hard to bike or walk around it or under it. And so it's very much a kind of a a dividing line in Austin.

00:13:30:06 - 00:14:22:29
John Simmerman
Yeah. You know, and and it really was a segregating dividing line between, you know, what was then, you know, considered white Austin and the black and brown, you know, populations. And we see over on the east side, you know, the legacy of that for sure. But really what ends up kind of happen in I think in as your book sort of unfolds and what we've been living through in, you know, this prospect of I-35 being rebuilt is this tension that exists, you know, with that legacy of a segregating past and in so there's some themes that sort of boil up in the narrative of your book, which is actually kind of related to these three

00:14:22:29 - 00:14:49:00
John Simmerman
points that you have, you know, identified here on the map in the escalator, Delamar La Vista de Lopez, as well as the community Land Trust Home. Talk a little bit about that relevance of of these three points on this map because that's kind of the most people who hear about yeah they're going to be okay. They're going to rebuild I-35.

00:14:49:00 - 00:15:03:17
John Simmerman
Okay. Yeah, whatever. It's going to be pricey. wow. That's, you know, okay, look, whatever. They got the money, right? Okay. All right. You know, whatever. But really, there's there's an impact that's associated with this tough, tough a little bit of a little more about that.

00:15:03:19 - 00:15:20:18
Megan Kimble
Yeah, there's enormous impact. So I sort of started reporting this when I learned about this massive expansion of I-35 through Austin, which, you know, has been in the works for almost 20 years in Texas that finally got it funded. And that as it is, you'll see here, it will expand the highway in some stretches from 12 to 20 lanes.

00:15:20:18 - 00:15:43:29
Megan Kimble
So it will be a significantly larger highway. And to build a significantly larger highway tech that needs to take land. And so the highway will take, I think, something like 140 acres of land, and that includes a lot of businesses and homes that are along the highway, including these three on the map. So isolated, Ana is a Spanish immersion preschool right on the I-35 frontage road.

00:15:44:02 - 00:16:06:16
Megan Kimble
They started in the early 2000s downtown and were forced to relocate after, you know, developer decided to build a high rise hotel on their former school. And then they settled in Cherrywood and have been there for, you know, I think 15 or 20 years. And it's just really kind of like community like, you know, parents from across the city send their kids to school, you know, because it's very centrally located.

00:16:06:18 - 00:16:26:12
Megan Kimble
They can go to maybe they work at U.T. or the hospital across the street and that preschool is will be demolished for the expansion. And so the you know, I spoke to the owners of the preschool who are really worried about finding a new home for their school. It's a sort of existential crisis for them that Austin the real issue in Austin is so unaffordable.

00:16:26:12 - 00:16:50:03
Megan Kimble
Preschools are not high income businesses. And to me, that was so moving because it's not just about one person's home, okay? One person has to move 250 families and their children, they're they're they're kind of days revolve around this place. That's a huge disruption to a community, you know, And it's also like a question of what kind of future do we want to leave those children, which we can kind of come back to with regards to climate change.

00:16:50:05 - 00:17:18:25
Megan Kimble
But the other two are Community Trust properties owned by a nonprofit called Guadalupe Neighborhood Development Corporation that has been building affordable housing in East Austin for several decades now. You know, as I mentioned, the segregation of Austin, while East Austin in part because of that land values were really low compared to the rest of the city. And so as gentrification has come to Austin East, Austin is this huge center of that, and home prices have gone up by a factor of six over the last two decades.

00:17:18:27 - 00:17:40:15
Megan Kimble
So this nonprofit started building affordable homes for people with generational ties to the neighborhood. And the third one is it's number three on the map. It's this property and 1103 Claremont and Jane DC acquired a single family property and set about building two brand new homes to help to house, you know, people with generational ties to East Austin, people who wouldn't have to qualify through their income.

00:17:40:15 - 00:18:01:29
Megan Kimble
So these are people who are typically pretty low income families. And as they were, you know, about to break ground, they learned that Texas not wanted to take that land to build a highway. So to me, you know, the the I-35 project. So it it's this kind of it's going to be a depressed highway through Austin. And the city is now kind of arranging funding to build these caps over the highway.

00:18:02:04 - 00:18:22:09
Megan Kimble
And often that is framed in language of justice as we are going to reconnect, you know, the divide, this dividing line. We're going to restage Austin and I, you know, the founder of G and ah, the executive director of G and DC is really skeptical of that because it's like justice is in kind of supporting the people who were harmed by that highway.

00:18:22:09 - 00:18:41:13
Megan Kimble
And rather than bringing those people back to Austin rather than supporting them in staying here, it's actually displacing people. And so I'm pretty skeptical of the whole kind of cap conversation that's happening because it's it's happening in the context of a massive highway widening that will displace, among other things, a bilingual preschool and affordable housing.

00:18:41:15 - 00:19:30:25
John Simmerman
Yeah, Yeah. And there's a similar sort of narrative that that happens in each of these inner cities when we look at this is the history between I-35 and I 45 down in Houston and and the same thing you've got, you know, identified here, you know, five different locations that are identified on this particular map. Talk a little bit about I-45 in Houston and, you know, some of the the challenges that exist down in this particular area, their fight in I guess we'll talk a little bit more about the I-35 fight in the difference between Rethink 35 and reconnect Austin and the challenges that exist on that.

00:19:30:27 - 00:20:00:29
John Simmerman
But let's let's focus in on on I-45 in Houston just a little bit, because I think what's really beautiful about your book is how you interweave through the years. As you could tell me that you were working on this for 40 years and then you sort of weave the story of these different locations. You know, the three main stores in Dallas and Houston, in Austin, as well as the sub characters in the some of the other subsidies that provide context to this battle.

00:20:01:01 - 00:20:03:15
John Simmerman
But expand a little bit more on Houston.

00:20:03:18 - 00:20:25:19
Megan Kimble
So this project is known locally as the I-45 project. It's actually called the North Houston Highway Improvement Project. And I mention that because it's enormous. It encompasses I-45, but also will rebuild Houston's downtown loop, which includes I-69 and I-10. And this project, you know, it's a huge project that is budgeted currently at $10 billion. And the scope of displacement is staggering.

00:20:25:20 - 00:20:47:09
Megan Kimble
1200 people will lose their homes, 300 businesses will be displaced. And mostly those homes and businesses are owned or occupied by people of color. And so in 2021, one of those people are named modestly. Cooper filed a civil rights complaint. She's a black woman in her thirties who lives right on the I-10 frontage road and her home is in the pathway of this highway expansion.

00:20:47:12 - 00:21:09:07
Megan Kimble
And she saw that it would disproportionately impact people of color and filed a civil rights complaint with the federal government, saying, hey, that's not right. Actually, it's not just not right. It's against the law. And other community groups filed their own civil rights complaints. And as a result, the federal government actually paused. This project in the spring of 2021, which was kind of unprecedented.

00:21:09:07 - 00:21:22:28
Megan Kimble
It was a really remarkable move while they investigated these civil rights complaints. So a lighter the book sort of chronicles the fight to really to stop this highway. And the main group fighting it is called appropriately Stop text on I-45. Yeah.

00:21:23:01 - 00:21:46:12
John Simmerman
Yeah. All right. Let's skip over to Dallas and then we'll come back. Don't worry. We'll come back to Houston because there's a lot more to talk about. We're also going to pull up the the the websites to to each of these different groups within each of these cities. But let's give an overview to to what the I 345 fight is all about in Dallas.

00:21:46:15 - 00:22:08:12
Megan Kimble
Yeah. So this one is actually kind of a fun, exciting, positive fight. So I'm an urban planner in Dallas and Patrick Kennedy, you know, moved to Dallas, started walking under, I think 45, which is this elevated highway that bounds the eastern edge of downtown Dallas and saw that it was kind of falling apart and wondered, you know, like, why is it here?

00:22:08:12 - 00:22:30:01
Megan Kimble
Couldn't it be something better? And so he started this campaign for the removal of 345, which connects I-75 with I-45, you can see there in that map. So he basically started this sort of citywide conversation looking at the removal of the stretch of highway. He and others calculated that removing it would free up or kind of, you know, it's surrounded by like surface parking lots.

00:22:30:01 - 00:22:48:24
Megan Kimble
It's like not his best use of this land. That's right in downtown Dallas. And so he calculated that removing that highway would free up 377 acres of land, which I wish you could put a lot of housing and jobs. And so there's been this sort of conversation in Dallas over the last five years in Texas that actually studied it.

00:22:48:24 - 00:23:05:26
Megan Kimble
We're moving at 345. I guess I won't tell you what happened with that or I won't tell the others what happened with that fight. But it's kind of remarkable. I think, you know, there's a there's a national conversation about highway removal. And I found it to be pretty inspiring that that is happening here in Texas, this very auto centric state.

00:23:05:29 - 00:23:06:08
Megan Kimble
Yeah.

00:23:06:13 - 00:23:36:15
John Simmerman
Yeah. It's it's funny, too, because I have some personal experience with with the Dallas situation. And I had the opportunity to attend the Congress for New Urbanism annual gathering when it was in Dallas. And so I tend to lead fun runs at the annual gathering of the Congress for New Urbanism. And one of the routes that I planned went right through Deep Ellum and went right underneath the 345 area.

00:23:36:15 - 00:24:02:24
John Simmerman
So I'm like, I as I'm reading this and go, Yeah, we ran right through here. We saw, you know, we pause. We actually paused and talked a little bit about what that was like, you know, and how the legacy of these freeways that were ripped through the interstates that were ripped through the middle of these cities and and how that negatively impacted so many of these cities.

00:24:02:24 - 00:24:32:12
John Simmerman
And it's not just these three Texas cities is, as you point out in the book, there's a there's a a a history and a long legacy that, you know, wasn't intended by the original Eisenhower plan, which was really, again, for troop movement and being able to, you know, from a national defense perspective, they didn't expect it to to rim out the middle of viable neighborhoods and in it's much more insidious than all of that.

00:24:32:12 - 00:24:56:02
John Simmerman
It it ripped through oftentimes neighborhoods which were neighborhoods of color. And so you mentioned a little bit there at the very end about this is part of a national fight. And I mentioned Congress for New Urbanism. And in fact, the Congress for the New Urbanism has a freeways with our futures page that they do or report that they do every two years.

00:24:56:04 - 00:25:16:24
John Simmerman
And so that's what we were looking at here on screen now. And when you go back, it's it dates back to 2008 was the very first year that they put the report together. And again, every two years, the UN typically it's right around every two years that they do that they come up with, you know, their list. It's not quite a top ten list.

00:25:16:24 - 00:25:48:13
John Simmerman
Sometimes it's more than ten. Talk a little bit about the revelation that you had when you discovered that, wait, there's like an organization that's been following this for the better part of a couple decades and producing a report about freeways without futures. And oftentimes these freeways without futures are in alignment with some of these challenges that you're documenting within these three or four cities and part of the narrative of your book.

00:25:48:16 - 00:26:08:03
Megan Kimble
Yeah, I found these the freeways that features report through my conversations with Patrick and Dallas about 345. I think what was kind of revelatory to me discovering this was that almost every city has a highway tearing through it that like something needs to be done with it. And in lots of cities across the country, there are people saying, hey, let's get rid of it.

00:26:08:05 - 00:26:21:14
Megan Kimble
You know, this is not supporting our city. It's not generating prosperity. It's polluting out here. Let's get rid of it. And so that, you know, this Dallas example was does not exist in isolation. It's very much part of a national movement. Yeah.

00:26:21:17 - 00:26:45:12
John Simmerman
And I sort of fast forwarded to the report that was produced in 2012 to the inner loop in Rochester, which you I'll highlight in the book. As you know, an area that is in in in transition. It's actually in the process of a it's a it's a positive story in the sense that part of it has been removed and filled in.

00:26:45:14 - 00:27:07:20
John Simmerman
It was, again, one of those ditches of a freeway creating a moat, cutting off neighborhoods. But then there's an additional portion of the of the inner loop that they're looking at. And they're they're trying to be intentional about how the way that they do that, because as you mentioned in the book and as you mentioned earlier, there are some challenges to the lake.

00:27:07:21 - 00:27:32:18
John Simmerman
Removing these these barriers is physical manifestations of segregation. And in separation, we have to be kind of careful and intentional about doing it in a way that is going to be really positive and representative of the people who were affected in the past as well as the people who are there now.

00:27:32:21 - 00:27:52:23
Megan Kimble
Yeah, I mean, I talked to so and as you said, that registers now. They tore down there in a loop. Yes. And they're not considering tearing down the or filling in rather the inner loop north which stretches you know kind of on the northern edge of downtown. And that highway was originally built there. Any road called Market View Heights, which at the time was a kind of a mixed race, low income neighborhood.

00:27:52:25 - 00:28:11:00
Megan Kimble
And I talked it to, you know, kind of older men who remember when that highway was built. They remember what was there and they remember what was demolished to build it. And they are you know, I met them at this kind of event talking about the inner loop north removal, like what does the community want to do with that land?

00:28:11:03 - 00:28:35:08
Megan Kimble
What could be done? How could it research Rochester? And they are very skeptical that anything will change. And I you know, it really struck me talking to them that like, you know, in the 1960s, planners came along and said, hey, we have a great idea to build prosperity for your city. We're going to build this highway. And fast forward 70 years, planners are coming along and saying, hey, we have a great idea to build prosperity in the city.

00:28:35:10 - 00:28:58:18
Megan Kimble
We're going to remove this highway. I think people are understandably pretty skeptical of that idea that this kind of top down approach to urban planning that doesn't maybe take into what a community wants for itself. And that community is very distinct in the sense of lots of people live there now who still live there now, who were impacted when that highway was created.

00:28:58:21 - 00:29:18:26
Megan Kimble
So I think the kind of how you do it better is to just like it takes longer and it's much more complicated to do. Like real community engagement. I think it's possible. I wrote a story for The New York Times about the 11th Street Bridge Park in Washington, D.C., which is kind of the vision is to build a park on an old highway bridge spanning the Anacostia River.

00:29:18:28 - 00:29:36:04
Megan Kimble
And that project has been in the works for a decade, and they have not broken ground. What they have done instead is build a lot of affordable housing, supports small businesses, engage with the community about what they really want. And so it's much more expensive and then it takes a long time. But I think it's certainly possible to do it differently.

00:29:36:06 - 00:29:37:24
Megan Kimble
You know.

00:29:37:26 - 00:30:17:17
John Simmerman
And one of the subthemes I'm going to pop on over here to rethink 35 of their website, but one of the subthemes that is apparent in each of these locations, as well as some of the side examples like Rochester, is what you just mentioned, which is you know, housing and affordable housing. And the fact that, you know, for those of us who are urban, as we understand that there's no way that we can talk about housing and affordable housing in the housing challenge with also taking into consideration land use planning and and the connection to transportation and the challenges of transportation.

00:30:17:20 - 00:30:42:11
John Simmerman
And basically what we've done in the United States is since we went whole hog in to car dependency and we teased apart our meaningful destinations from where we live and where we go to school and where we recreate. It's we've we've made it almost owning a car, almost being the the the baseline, you know, the ante to be even being in the game.

00:30:42:11 - 00:31:10:10
John Simmerman
And so it's really, really interesting when we're when we're trying to like, unwind things and decouple things and put a stop to this, it's like, yeah, but it's not just as simple as tearing this down. Like in the example that in, in, in the case of Dallas, it's like, well, wait a minute, I'm on the far south side and I need a 345 to be able to get to my job in the far north side.

00:31:10:13 - 00:31:33:21
John Simmerman
And again, so it's it's not as simple as just, if we tear this down, everything will be repaired and everything will be hunky dory. It's way more complicated than that. But to your point about community engagement, that's where we're at now with what's on screen. I-35 Rethink 35 is a community engagement group. Talk a little bit about this group.

00:31:33:28 - 00:31:43:27
John Simmerman
They're a group of good friends of mine that I've highlighted here on the channel several times. But I'd love to hear your orientation and how you got connected with them.

00:31:44:00 - 00:32:06:27
Megan Kimble
Yeah. So Rethink 35 is this group that's basically advocating not just not expanding I-35, but actually we're moving an attorney into a boulevard and rerouting interstate traffic on stage 130, which goes to the east of Austin. And so Adam Greenfeld is the founder of the group. He basically kind of put forth this idea in early 2021 after the I-35 expansion was already funded.

00:32:06:29 - 00:32:25:08
Megan Kimble
These great he's British. And he you know, I talked to him about kind of how he got involved in all this. And he grew up on, you know, an island near and off the coast of Great Britain and talked about how, you know, he didn't grow up around highways. So when he moved to a place like Texas, he could see that they're not inevitable and that they're very much a policy choice.

00:32:25:10 - 00:32:44:10
Megan Kimble
And so this group is. Yes, has been around for a couple of years now. And they're really you know, they've canvased neighborhoods adjacent to the highway to try to get people more involved. So, I'm sure, you know, reconnect. Austin has been around for like almost 20. Sinclair BLOCK has been kind of beating the drum of Reconnect Austin for 20 years.

00:32:44:17 - 00:33:05:07
Megan Kimble
And their vision is to kind of is to basically tunnel I-35, to narrow it up substantially and cover it with a cap like they've done in Dallas, but much bigger, spanning the entire length of Austin's core. And I think that's a very compelling vision. I think it's a great vision. I think, you know, I've talked to Hayden back, Walker, who's now kind of taken over for Sinclair.

00:33:05:10 - 00:33:31:13
Megan Kimble
That vision is itself a compromise, recognizing that textile is not going to remove the highway. You know, this is not an agency that is, I think, even willing to consider that idea. But I think they you know, it's kind of watched as reconnect Austin and rethink 35 have interacted and kind of built. You know I see rethink 35 is really shifting the window of what is possible, like shifting the Overton window, so to speak, around like what can people conceive of for I-35?

00:33:31:13 - 00:33:51:21
Megan Kimble
It's not just do we want it wider, Do we want it the same? It's like it could be something completely different. Like, let's talk about that. Let's talk about what do we want as a vision for the city. And so there is a kind of moral clarity around particularly climate change with the Rethink 35 vision, which is to say like transportation is the leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

00:33:51:24 - 00:34:17:11
Megan Kimble
It text itself acknowledges that expanding this highway will add a lot more greenhouse gas emissions to Austin. If, you know, we all lived through people, those of us who live in Austin lived through last summer the hottest on record. It was punishing. And during that punishing summer text approved you know, issued the final record of decision for the I-35 expansion, committing us to more greenhouse gas emissions from our cars.

00:34:17:13 - 00:34:29:14
Megan Kimble
And so that to me, that's like one of the things that got me really interested and involved. This is like from a climate perspective, widening that highway will be catastrophic. And I think Rethink 35 has really leaned into that messaging. Yeah.

00:34:29:16 - 00:35:03:04
John Simmerman
And as you mentioned, you know, reconnect Austin has been something that's been brewing for a long period of time, couple of decades in whereas, you know, Adams group in terms of, you know, rethink 35 is relatively new in the sense that it really sort of bubbled up through his frustration of, wait a minute, we've got you know, we've got states, you know, 130 that loops right around that's a legitimate underused asset from the state of Texas.

00:35:03:04 - 00:35:36:18
John Simmerman
That could be done. It's yes, it's currently a toll road out there, but it's literally something that could be, you know, converted over to and be able to use. And so rethinking this concept of, hey, you know, let's rip a an interstate route through the middle of a city, a downtown, nonetheless, we could do something. And so what I love about the Rethink team and the group and the community is we're seeing just this vibrancy of a of a younger group of activists.

00:35:36:18 - 00:35:59:00
John Simmerman
And so it's like a whole new generation, including students at U.T. and beyond. And so I kind of like as an older guy, I kind of like, this group is cool. I mean, a bunch of younger, a younger generation, they're looking at it in a different way. It's actually going to be their legacy, you know, or this this is going to be a legacy that they end up inheriting.

00:35:59:00 - 00:36:09:01
John Simmerman
If you know, this goes through. And so really, really super cool to see, you know, that youth and that energy that, you know, is part of the Rethink 35 movement.

00:36:09:03 - 00:36:41:03
Megan Kimble
And that's also true in Houston stop Texas that I 45 is the grassroots group they're opposing I 45 expansion and they are really a similarly young group. A lot of people are in their twenties and early thirties. I mean, it's definitely a generic cross-generational, but a lot of the volunteers and kind of people driving that are young people and that also very much struck me as like these people could be doing anything with their, you know, their weekends and they're out knocking on doors across Houston in the sweltering heat, asking to get involved to stop this highway expansion.

00:36:41:10 - 00:36:47:22
Megan Kimble
And I think, yeah, there's a lot of like young energy, which is to me kind of was very compelling. Yeah.

00:36:47:24 - 00:37:09:12
John Simmerman
Yeah. And we have to give some love also to the folks with the remove I-35 group, the community group. This is a coalition for a new Dallas. And they're also, you know, a very much a part of this. Talk a little bit about the community engagement up there in Dallas. And you know, the challenge that they have with I.

00:37:09:12 - 00:37:12:05
John Simmerman
3345 Yeah.

00:37:12:05 - 00:37:29:12
Megan Kimble
So Patrick helped found coalition for a new Dallas Patrick Kennedy with other people and now exists very much independent of and they have for years been beating the drum over moving at through 45 and putting something else there and I think it's pretty you know they I actually don't know if I can really speak to their community engagement.

00:37:29:20 - 00:37:56:26
Megan Kimble
I think what they did very effectively is getting the people in power in Dallas to pay attention to this issue. So city council members, people in the North Central Texas Council of Government and that, you know, advocacy ultimately got to start to consider removing at 345 is like a formal project alternative part of their NEPA process. And from what I could tell, that's the first time Texas has ever formally considered removing an interstate highway as like a project alternative.

00:37:56:29 - 00:38:15:26
Megan Kimble
So they presented this in the summer of 2021 to the public. Hey, here are five options or four options I can't remember for the future of I. 345 and one of them was removal. So I think that speaks to kind of the way that they the way that the Coalition for New Dallas kind of lobbied for change. Yeah.

00:38:15:28 - 00:38:42:00
John Simmerman
I do want to pull up you know the picture you know from the the I-35 fight and have to give Adam a little bit of love here. He's actually been featured here on the channel as in a costume under the moniker Captain Crap land use. So, yes, he looks familiar there. He's he's a fascinating dude and very, very fun to do work with him.

00:38:42:05 - 00:38:54:10
John Simmerman
But this also speaks to the what we were just talking about is the you know, the mobilization of the youth that has been happening in this particular fight. And it's so wonderful to see that happening.

00:38:54:12 - 00:39:20:15
Megan Kimble
Like, I don't know if like anyone is, the youth are mobilizing themselves. People see these as like very existential changes to threats to their future and the sense of climate change. And like, I certainly feel that myself. Like, I think people are beginning to see that highways are a fossil fuel infrastructure and that just like there have been protests against fossil fuel infrastructure for decades, like highways sort of warrant the same level of urgency and action.

00:39:20:18 - 00:39:41:15
Megan Kimble
So that's really just that is actually Adam was speaking in that moment, but it was like a statewide protest. So people like a coordinated protest from group groups across the state, came together in front of the Texas Transportation Commission in Austin to, you know, lobby for change. And I thought that was pretty remarkable, too, in the sense of the kind of maturity of the movement.

00:39:41:21 - 00:39:54:14
Megan Kimble
People in different cities are talking to each other and coordinating, you know, actions. Whereas I think even only five years ago, you know, if you were in Austin, you were working on I-35, they weren't necessarily working on other projects. Yeah.

00:39:54:17 - 00:40:05:15
John Simmerman
We have a few photos here of, you know, some of the impacts and some of the engagement. Talk a little bit about this particular photo.

00:40:05:17 - 00:40:26:28
Megan Kimble
Yeah. So this is in Houston. It's outside the building behind that. That group is called Lost at the Ballpark. And this is I can't read the exact number. Hundreds of units of housing right on a transit line near downtown Houston, right and east of downtown. And that one of the buildings, the front, it's three buildings. The front line is in the footprint of that expansion.

00:40:27:00 - 00:40:52:28
Megan Kimble
And so text out about these buildings and I think in 2020 and we're moving forward with hustling tenants out of them and kind of, you know, we're going to demolish them to build this highway, which is all, you know, well and good. They're they certainly have the authority to do that. But then, as I mentioned earlier, this project was passed by the federal government while they investigated or its concerns and the FHA, VA was clear like no action can be taken on this project.

00:40:53:01 - 00:41:14:27
Megan Kimble
Well, text that moved forward with demolishing the front building. And in fact, they had plans to demolish all three buildings, which back to actually not in the footprint of the highway expansion and so stopped outside I-45 like figured this out in part because one of the volunteers, a guy named Michael Moore, it's like just goes by locks at the ballpark on his daily commute on the light rail.

00:41:15:00 - 00:41:41:25
Megan Kimble
He looked out his window and he thought, hey, there's construction, fencing up, like what's going on? And they found out that Tex had intended to demolish all three buildings when in environmental impact statement text that had only accounted for one of the buildings. So it was going to demolish more housing than it said it would. And so they staged this protest like within a week, like they put the Santa Cruz kind of pulled the this there very quickly and like marched right through east downtown.

00:41:41:28 - 00:42:04:00
Megan Kimble
And with this giant banner in front of the lots at the ballpark building. And, you know, so they kind of caused a fuss. They got they called their elected officials. And as a result, Ted said, do not demolish those back to buildings. And they're currently, I don't know the status, but in conversations around like converting them to affordable housing or for people coming out of homelessness.

00:42:04:02 - 00:42:08:23
Megan Kimble
So, you know, it's like a pretty remarkable example of organizing works.

00:42:08:25 - 00:42:31:14
John Simmerman
And and actually double checking things and holding textile accountable, holding powers that be accountable. It's like don't just assume they're going to do the right thing. You know? I mean, two texts, credit you you've mentioned this in the book. It's like, yeah, they bought the entire property that they could technically do with it whatever they wished to do with it.

00:42:31:16 - 00:42:52:18
John Simmerman
But at the same time, it wasn't in the environmental impact study, you know, when they identified the number of housing units lost, they only identified the front building even though they were going to demolish the two additional buildings. So, yeah, spoiler alert, folks just got me out. It's like, no, you can't just trust that they're going to do the right thing.

00:42:52:18 - 00:43:04:09
John Simmerman
So one of the other subthemes and stars of the of your book is is in screen here in the Forest Theater. Talk a little bit about this and this is up in Dallas.

00:43:04:11 - 00:43:28:22
Megan Kimble
Yeah. So the Forest Theater is you know was a movie theater. It opened in the 1950s. And what was kind of historically at the time, a white Jewish neighborhood. But you see the kind of what's in that picture is within like a decade, two highways were built through that neighborhood. This one is the South Central Expressway tore through South Dallas, demolished I think, 1400 homes.

00:43:28:24 - 00:43:45:15
Megan Kimble
And as a result, a lot of white people left because they didn't like living next to a highway. And, you know, at the time, Dallas was very segregated. There was not a lot of housing opportunity for black families. And so black families moved to the neighborhood. So it became this kind of like a somewhat thriving black neighborhood. And the Forest Theater was where people went.

00:43:45:16 - 00:44:02:03
Megan Kimble
So it was the kind of heart of the neighborhood. You know, I talked to people who would walk up there to like what it showed three movies a day. And some people went to all three because it was the only building in south down through the air conditioned it closed. I forget which year, but, you know, some people have tried to kind of restore it.

00:44:02:03 - 00:44:25:06
Megan Kimble
Erykah Badu temporarily kind of retained the lease to that building, was trying to make it a music center for South Dallas, which remains a, you know, a low income black neighborhood and was trying to get it as an arts education center. And then a couple of years ago, a nonprofit and basically took over the theater and, you know, said about fundraising to restore it as this kind of cultural landmark for South Dallas.

00:44:25:08 - 00:44:55:22
Megan Kimble
So that's what they're doing. It's called Force Forward. They actually are breaking ground in, I think next week, which is very exciting. And they're going to kind of try to bring it back to its former glory. And part of the catalyst for that is what you can see in this picture is the South Central Expressway was renamed S.M. Wright Freeway and Texas Out is actually removing a Sam Wright Freeway and replacing it with a boulevard, in part because it was rendered redundant when they built I-45 literally three blocks away.

00:44:55:24 - 00:45:10:13
Megan Kimble
You can actually see it in the background there. So the four seater, it's like this kind of crazy, like pizza shaped intersection. It's right at the like the tip of the pizza slice of pizza. So it's like literally you can stand in front of it and you look to your left and you look to your right in their highways on either side of you.

00:45:10:15 - 00:45:27:11
Megan Kimble
Well, tech site is part of a kind of a long, complicated story. Decided to remove this like I think two mile stretch of and right freeway and replace it with the boulevard units so they started that several years ago and I would imagine it's going to open fairly soon. I sort of need to check back in on that.

00:45:27:18 - 00:45:42:23
Megan Kimble
But as I was reporting, I kind of watched them tear this highway down. So when I first started reporting in South Dallas, it was like, you know, kind of this elevated, not quite as elevated as in in Austin, but like this kind of elevated roadway cutting right through the middle of the community. You couldn't see on either side of it.

00:45:42:23 - 00:46:03:15
Megan Kimble
It was hard to cross like you kind of had to go down a few blocks, come back around, and they have sense, you know, leveled it. They started, you know, they like removed that highway. And so you can stand on one side of it and look across and see houses across the street and I think it's like a pretty remarkable example of like for one tech that knows how to remove a highway if they.

00:46:03:17 - 00:46:04:09
Megan Kimble
Yeah.

00:46:04:12 - 00:46:20:20
John Simmerman
Yeah. I was I was impressed by that and not in part of the book too is like you you captured the fact that not only is it possible, but they even know how to do it and they even know how much it costs to do it.

00:46:20:22 - 00:46:39:07
Megan Kimble
So, you know, the thing about them, right, is that there wasn't that same kind of like tech stocks as they can move highways because of congestion that will result. You know, all these highways are in Texas mind integral to moving cars around our cities at night did not have that same kind of pressure because there was literally an interstate, you know, blocks away.

00:46:39:07 - 00:46:48:04
Megan Kimble
But I think it's remarkable to see how that neighborhood has transformed as a result of the removal. And that's what's possible for every other neighborhood. Yeah.

00:46:48:07 - 00:46:53:17
John Simmerman
To close us out, we've got about five more minutes here. Just reflect on what this has been like for you.

00:46:53:20 - 00:47:19:19
Megan Kimble
Yeah, I mean, I started reporting this book in part because, like, I didn't like having to drive everywhere I needed to go. And that is largely true in Austin. But I also was really worried about climate change and all of the emissions that are going to result from our cars. I think you just kind of flipped through this stat that frankly made me almost of my chair when I found it that Texas is responsible for almost half a percentage of total worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, that that's not the state of Texas.

00:47:19:19 - 00:47:43:06
Megan Kimble
That is just our transportation system in the state. And so to me, it's like there is like this fight is incredibly important. It's not just about urbanism. It's not just about like what our cities feel like and are they equitable? It's like, do we have a livable future in Texas? And and so I find that I am I still find it like a very galvanizing and as a reporter, I'm very motivated to cover this stuff.

00:47:43:06 - 00:48:15:18
Megan Kimble
I think they're not that many reporters reading environmental impact statement. So in some ways I sort of like loved that I had that feel to myself, like there's not you know, there are there are great reporters in Texas covering transportation, but they're not that many of us. So it was like very rewarding to, as you say, like you can kind of read an environmental impact statement and there's like great narrative there because Texas is promising things that it either can't deliver or it's doing things that it didn't say it would do.

00:48:15:24 - 00:48:39:13
Megan Kimble
Yeah, I think what was also really compelling to me about reporting this book was all of the archival research I did, which you can just like see. This was not inevitable. This was a policy choice. And even in the 1960s, people were saying this is a bad idea. And so that to me was a very compelling, like kind of find as a reporter to like, be able to document like this is not a new idea.

00:48:39:13 - 00:48:59:06
Megan Kimble
There were freeway fighters in the 1960s. The idea of highway removal has been around since then. It's not a kind of new hippie urbanist idea. Highway removal goes parallel with highway construction, like people have been fighting highways since they were built. And so it was really like we're running from mean to be able to telecom. A longer historical story.

00:48:59:08 - 00:49:24:19
John Simmerman
You know, I'm sort of lingering on this final pull quote that you sent along because earlier we were I was talking a little bit about the overall affordability challenge that we have in cities, you know, around the nation and around the globe. And again, a big part of that is looking at the entire household budget. And when you see in Houston, nearly 20% of their household income is being used on transportation.

00:49:24:21 - 00:49:26:24
John Simmerman
Got a problem.

00:49:26:27 - 00:49:49:21
Megan Kimble
Yeah, completely like and what you know that the Houston is almost as expensive to live in as New York City when you combine housing and transportation. So like where we are designing our cities is punishing for lots of people, but especially poor people. And I think that there's like this huge like in we talked a little bit about, you know, people in South Dallas are worried about removing the highway because it creates more access.

00:49:49:21 - 00:50:06:08
Megan Kimble
And, you know, they're it's their access to their jobs. But like kind of when you zoom back a little bit, like perpetuating car dependency is act is punishing and it has the greatest impact on low income people. And so like moving away from that, well, also help us make our cities more equitable. Yeah.

00:50:06:10 - 00:50:32:20
John Simmerman
Yeah. Well said. Well, Campbell, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast. It has been such a joy and pleasure getting to know you a little bit better. I'm so glad that we were able to meet each other in person at the Yimby Town Conference that was here in in Austin. And folks, again available now pick up your copy of City limits is out there.

00:50:32:20 - 00:50:37:01
John Simmerman
And again, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Sounds podcast.

00:50:37:04 - 00:50:38:23
Megan Kimble
And thanks for having me so much fun.

00:50:38:29 - 00:51:05:12
John Simmerman
Hey, thank you all so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be honored to have you subscribe to the channel. Just click on the subscription button down below and ring that notifications bell and be sure to pick up your own copy of City Limits Infrastructure Inequality and the Future of America's Highways, available now at all fine bookstores as well as at the Active Towns Bookshop.

00:51:05:14 - 00:51:23:21
John Simmerman
Click on that link down below. Again, thank you all so much for tuning in. Means so much to me. Until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers. And again sending a huge thank you to all my active towns ambassadors supporting the channel on Patron Buy me a coffee YouTube super.

00:51:23:21 - 00:51:35:07
John Simmerman
Thanks. As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the active town store, every little adds up and it's much appreciated. Thank you all so much.