Not a Professional Engineer? You Can Still Help End Highway Expansions
Better Streets Broward members and FDOT employees pose for a group photo after a public meeting. (Source: Better Streets Broward.)
Sarah Clark, a resident of Florida, and her friends are working to change how their state invests in transportation. At a handful of Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) meetings, they’ve told engineers they want Florida to prioritize improving the public transit system instead of spending billions of dollars on endless highway expansions and improvements. For the most part, the advocates have been met with pushback from FDOT staff, but just as the group began to feel a wave of discouragement, they encountered a positive interaction that gave them hope for meaningful change.
“They [FDOT employees] said they’re gonna hang our group photo in their office as a reminder that people come to these meetings and care about their city,” said Clark, who is the Local Conversation leader for Better Streets Broward.
A bumper sticker made by Better Streets Broward. (Source: Better Streets Broward.)
The promise of hanging up a photo, while a simple action, has catapulted locals into a renewed ambition to continue shifting the transportation discussion. It’s a nod of encouragement for the Broward County Local Conversation, and other advocates alike.
Clark, and most of her friends, are not engineers or professional city planners. They don’t advocate for a better transit system full time, either. They are simply people who live in their city, with regular jobs, who care about their place’s financial and communal well-being. Together, they show up to any public meeting they can—if not to give a public comment, then to at least be present and active in municipal and regional decisions.
But before this moment with the photograph, Clark and her friends were starting to question if showing up at state meetings was worthwhile, especially after an event from the prior evening, where the public meeting they’d attended felt like a torrent of vague statements and random numbers to justify building more highway lanes. “They just were not listening to us, essentially,” said Local Conversation member Maximiliano Goldstein.
Yet, in spite of the discouragement, the group decided to attend at least one more event together. This time, when Clark, Goldstein, and others stood up to give public comments, the engineers actually listened and thanked them for their commitment to engage. And while the staff members present noted their current plans relied a lot on highway improvements, they also acknowledged a shift toward a more versatile transportation system is beginning, albeit slowly.
“It made us want to participate in this stuff more,” said Goldstein.
Now, the group plans to keep showing up and speaking up at regional meetings. They know their voices will be heard, and that they have the power to make a difference. They’ve learned that even though it can appear as though no one is listening, they shouldn’t be discouraged if engineers or staff members respond to ideas with massive amounts of pushback. “You'll find someone, somewhere, eventually, who is on your side,” said Goldstein.
Clark, Goldstein, and their friends do what they can in the balance of their busy lives to advocate for better transit. For these locals, ending highway expansions is crucial to creating financially resilient, safe, and livable cities.
“Every time we widen a highway, we are not just spending millions of dollars on widening…we are giving ourselves so much maintenance cost down the line,” Clark told FDOT employees at a public meeting that previewed the department's projects for the next five years. “We are not going to get a future that’s any different than what we have now if we keep doing things the way we do now.”
Too often, neighborhoods throughout America have been victims to expanding pavement as businesses and homes are torn down in favor of more driving space. This pattern of displacement has caused harm in many communities throughout America.
“We don't have the space to keep expanding our roadways without demolishing homes and businesses,” Goldstein pointed out to FDOT employees during the public meeting.
Transportation should build wealth, not demolish it. Each growing community has the opportunity to implement different transportation options. Sometimes, advocates just need to point those options out.
Are you looking for a community to help you end highway expansions? Check out Strong Towns Local Conversations; there’s probably a group near you
Seairra Jones serves as the Lead Story Producer for Strong Towns. In the past, she's worked as a freelance journalist and videographer for a number of different organizations. She currently resides between small-town Illinois and the rural Midwest with her husband, where they help manage a family homestead. When Seairra isn’t focusing on how to make our towns stronger, you can find her outside working on the farm, writing fictional tales in a coffee shop, or reading in a hammock.