Highway Hypnosis

“The sun will go out in five billion years, and they’ll have to finish I-35 in the dark!” Although this joke is decades old, told again and again by weary and cynical Texas drivers, the sentiment still rings true today. Texas freeways operate under what economists have dubbed the “Fundamental Law of Road Congestion”—every time a highway is expanded, induced demand causes more cars to appear to fill it, leading to an endless cycle of expansion and congestion. In light of this phenomenon, Megan Kimble begins her book City Limits with an obvious question: “If widening highways doesn’t fix traffic, why [are] we spending billions of dollars to widen highways?” 

When automobiles were first introduced in the US, they were sold alongside the American dream of freedom and independence. In Texas, where nearly half the population lives and works along the central spine of I-35, that kind of autonomy is priceless. Many Texas politicians also operate under the belief that increased car capacity is synonymous with economic development and progress. Kimble suggests that under these ideals—which are loudly and consistently supported by many local and state policymakers—Texans have been lulled into complacency within a transportation system that is no longer tenable. 

Organized in three parts documenting the past, present, and future of highways in America, City Limits weaves together case studies, historical anecdotes, and personal testimonies to examine highway infrastructure at the scale of state and local governments. The book focuses on highway projects in three Texas cities: I-45 in Houston, I-35 in Austin, and I-345 in Dallas. The looming threat of highway expansion forms the backdrop for tales of vibrant communities across the state that are looking to fight back against infrastructure projects that endanger their very existence. 

Interspersed with stories of cherished family homes and community centers lost to freeway construction, Kimble’s narrative expands to recount the national history of our highways. She explains how President Eisenhower’s establishment of the federal Highway Trust Fund and the subsequent state and local policies that fell into place in its wake led us to where we are now, fighting to stay connected using a network designed to help us spread out. 

Kimble does not shy away from discussing the historic and contemporary use of highways to enforce racial and socioeconomic divisions in Texas cities. The Black and Hispanic neighborhoods of East Austin—established via redlining in the infamous 1928 Austin Master Plan—are still under attack as the I-35 Capital Express Central project lays claim to yet another strip of land along the east side of the highway. Similarly, Houston’s historically Black Fifth Ward neighborhood is once again being diminished by the expansion of I-45, decades after it was first torn apart to make room for the freeway. 

When Kimble tells the story of David and Goliath, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) undoubtedly plays the role of the insurmountable giant. In addition to being backed by decades of existing federal and state policies, TxDOT has been a part of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Assignment program since 2014, meaning that the state can self-certify its environmental review for infrastructure projects. Kimble astutely points out that TxDOT is essentially operating without federal oversight while still receiving billions in funding from the Federal Highway Administration. Grassroots organizations like Stop TxDOT I-45 and Rethink35, on the other hand, are supported mostly by the unfunded volunteer efforts of shopkeepers, architects, teachers, students, nurses, and others during their off-hours. Aiming to educate readers and spur them into action, Kimble illuminates the ways in which TxDOT manipulates data, overcomplicates traffic models, and uses loopholes to resolve public opposition to their highway expansion projects without actually changing their plans at all. 

“You can’t fight TxDOT” is a refrain repeated by many of the activists Kimble interviews in City Limits. Against such a strong adversary, deterring a highway expansion—or even removing a highway—seems impossible. “But cities have always been layered places, colonized and disputed and reclaimed,”  Kimble points out. “It’s all just construction.” 

Kimble dedicates several chapters to proving that even in Texas, highway infrastructure is not inevitable. In 1967, opposition from Austin’s “freeway fighters” against the proposed Central Expressway and Town Lake Expressway was so strong that neither project was built, preserving Austinites’ access to Town Lake and saving historic structures in Central Austin from destruction. In 2012, the Woodall Rodgers Freeway in Dallas underwent a “cap and stitch” procedure to sink the roadway and construct the 5.4-acre Klyde Warren Park on top of it. In 2020 in South Dallas, something incredible happened: the S. M. Wright Freeway, originally a portion of the South Central Expressway, was demolished and replaced with a tree-lined boulevard. These recent events, Kimble argues, signal that we are in the midst of a second wave of “freeway revolts” emulating the highway protests that were prevalent across the nation in the 1960s. 

The stories told in City Limits stress that highway removal or remediation can be just as harmful as construction or expansion. Kimble challenges designers, urban planners, and local activists to devise revitalization plans that enhance rather than erase the existing communities. A case study in South Dallas follows the Forest Forward movement, which seeks to restore the neighborhood around the famous Forest Theater after the removal of the S. M. Wright Freeway by improving schools and creating new community amenities. Citing the concerns of her interviewees, Kimble cautions that if the ultimate goal is to remove urban highways, the new system needs to ensure that the opportunities for jobs, healthcare, and resources afforded by those highways are reintroduced directly into the neighborhoods themselves. She advocates for design that brings communities back together, helping them recover from decades of endless and isolating urban sprawl. 

Kimble’s approach to the subject of urban highways demonstrates how freeways touch almost every aspect of our lives, extending into the realms of affordable housing, environmental racism, and climate change. She discusses recent transit projects that shine as bright beacons of hope for a better future, like the 2022 overhaul of the Dallas bus system and the planned Project Connect light rail system in Austin. In revealing what happens in city council meetings, at highway protests, and behind closed doors at TxDOT, Kimble explains complex subjects in a straightforward manner that encourages readers to support the fight against highway domination in Texas and across the country. 

City Limits is simultaneously a historical account and a call to action, urging readers to support the emergence of a new transportation lifestyle—one tied not to asphalt and gas prices, but to the people and places around them. Kimble’s query at the beginning of the book is a trick question: If widening highways doesn’t fix traffic, maybe highways aren’t the solution after all.