A wider highway promises faster trips, new investment, and billions of dollars flowing into Houston. Susan Graham and Ally Smither have spent years asking who receives those benefits and who is asked to move, breathe more pollution, or watch another neighborhood get divided. Recorded at the 2024 Strong Towns National Gathering, this session follows Stop TxDOT I-45 through lost votes, a federal pause, and the long work of keeping people involved after the project moves forward anyway. The same system now struggling to maintain what it already built is still asking communities to make room for more.
Hey, this is Norm. Before we get into today's episode, I wanted to let that we just released a brand-new video on YouTube with Smart Growth America called "We Built the Best Interstate System. Now it's falling apart. The video features Chuck and Beth Osborne talking about what happened after the interstate system did the job it was built to do.
We are spending more than ever on transportation, but our roads and bridges are aging. The repair gap keeps growing, and yet the system still pushes expansion over maintenance. That connects closely to today's conversation with Susan Graham and Ally Smither of Stop Texdot I-45. They talk about what it takes to organize when a huge highway project is treated like it cannot be stopped, even by the people whose homes and neighborhoods will pay the price.
You may recognize this episode from when we originally ran it in 2024, but the lessons from Susan and Ally remain relevant today. You’ll find the video that we've released in the show notes, as well as our mission accomplished white paper on this topic. With that, I hope you enjoy this episode.
Hello, it’s good to see all of you. Thank you so much for coming to this session. I feel flattered you chose to be here rather than Chuck's talk because I think Chuck is doing a talk right now too. But that's great.
Well, my name is Tiffany Owens Reed. I am the host at the Bottom-Up Revolution. This is a live recording, so I'm coming to you live from the Strong Towns Gathering in Cincinnati, Ohio. Yes, thank you.
Cincinnati so far is proving to be just so delightful. It's my first time here. I'm really enjoying it. My son is here with me.
He’s eight months old, and he’s been very tolerant as I take him on lots of walks and give him narrations of all the different design components that he's seeing. So it's a good time. One thing that always stands out to me. So this is the second national gathering for Strong Towns.
But anytime I'm around Strong Towns people and like at these events, one thing that's always really fun to notice or to observe is how so many people I'm talking to-they come from such interesting backgrounds. They come from some interesting places. Sometimes they work in the urban fields or tangential fields. Sometimes they’re just like data programmers.
I don't know if that's an actual title, but we're gonna pretend it is. Anyway, the point is, it's always so fun to see how Strong Towns really can attract so many different kinds of people and how there's room for so many kinds of people, whether or not they're like professional urbanists. I find that to be so encouraging because it's a continual reminder that no matter who you are, what your strengths are, what your talents are, what your interests are, there's probably something you have to offer your community, something that you can bring to the table.
So I hope you, yeah, just take some time to think about that, and that's relevant to our conversation today because we're talking with two ladies, neither of whom saw themselves working in transportation advocacy or fighting freeways, and I’m really excited for them to tell you their story and to learn more about what they're doing as they fight the expansion of I-45 in Houston. So I'm joined by Susan Graham and Ally Smither. Smither. Okay, great.
They are a part of a movement in Houston, Texas called Stop TxDOT I-45, which is a coalition of neighbors and organizations working to prevent a massive highway expansion. If you don't know, Houston is already famous for its massive highways and terrible congestion. Susan and Ally and the people they work with are trying to push back to prevent even more traffic, more air pollution, more sprawl, but more importantly to inspire a new vision for what mobility can look like in their city. Susan is a retired nurse who has lived in Houston for a very long time and who started I-45 up to hearing about the tech stop plans for her neighborhood, Ally is originally from London, Ontario, Canada.
She's a professional opera singer who stumbled upon this whole world of transportation advocacy during COVID, as well as a new professional path in communications, community advocacy, and most recently, chief of staff for Senator-elect Molly Cook. Congratulations! So, Susan and Ally, welcome to the show. Susan, I'd love to start with you.
You founded Stop I 40 555 years ago, several years into your retirement. For you, it all started with attending a meeting about the highway and sending a letter to TXDOT, to which you received nothing but silence. Can you tell us about that meeting and that letter?
Good morning. I'm really excited to be here. Really excited to tell a little bit of our story and to meet all of y'all. We feel very honored.
I live in an inner city neighborhood in Houston, and I moved there because of an affordable housing project that was built by a CDC in my neighborhood, so I had lived in more affluent areas of the city most of my life, and so moving to this neighborhood was quite an adventure for me, and I got involved in Houston is divided into super neighborhoods, which is something that was done by the city, and those are supposed, in theory, to be the governing body that feeds information to the city as to services and needs and requirements. I was on the leadership team for the super neighborhood, and TXDOT came to talk to us about the I-45 expansion, and we were very concerned about what the impact that it was going to have on my little neighborhood in the inner city. We were going to be cut off from the rest of the city. We already are defined.
Our boundaries are defined by highways already. We were going to have more noise, more air pollution, more dangerous streets for our kids to be able to get to school and back, and go under freeways to get to their elementary school. So a group of us got together, very smart people, and we wrote a very detailed letter to TXDOT explaining our concerns about the project. Probably more than 10 pages long of details, and we didn't even get an acknowledgement from TXDOT that they even received our communication.
That was very disturbing to us. We had spent an awful lot of time and energy poring over maps and trying to learn about freeway infrastructure in writing this letter. We were really upset about that. So and so, I decided that just wasn't okay.
So, and we'll talk a little more about stop. But I think that's my question. But anybody can. I guess the story is that anybody can really get involved in this stuff, and then you're off on a journey, and you don't even know that you were supposed to be on it, but it's a great fun.
So,
So I want to spend most of our conversation talking about the work that you all do and the ideas that motivate you. But to orient the audience, I would like to give an overview of the project. So I've talked to both of you all outside of this recording. Of course, you all showed me some great maps.
So I'm going to give an overview of the project, and then I'll let you all correct or add on or clarify anything that I said. So, TXDOT is proposing a $12 billion project that seeks to connect three different highways by cutting through at least six different neighborhoods, adding 24 miles of highways and interchanges, and destroying over 1,079 homes, almost 400 businesses, and five churches. Okay, so did I get that What would you add, Ally? If you would want to clarify or expound on any of that, please do.
Yeah, I would add a couple things, and to mirror what Susan said, we're so excited to be here and really grateful to y'all for inviting us. I think something that's really, really important to understand about this highway expansion is it's not the only highway expansion happening in Houston. This is one major artery that is central to a master plan to expand most of the urban freeways inside the city's core. So a lot of the times people will say you can't win the I-45 fight.
To which I say, every highway that was stopped in the U S. Took 17 years or so to stop. So yes, we can. But also, the advocacy and work happening around this highway is also the bedrock of the work that's going to happen around the other ones.
Right. That's the first thing I would say. The second thing I'd say is those six neighborhoods, many of those are predominantly historic black and brown neighborhoods, and that is by design. So when we're thinking about this highway, it is fundamentally a civil rights issue, and it's fundamentally unfair.
Now, the official story, Susan, maybe you can speak to this. How is the DOT framing this project? Like, what do they say when they come to the neighborhoods and talk about it.
Well, they talk about population growth-that the city is going to grow and grow, and they have to expand the highway to manage the already horrible conditions on our freeways. But their modeling is all flawed, and Houston has actually lost cars on I-45 over the last 10 years. It's going down instead of up. We don't expect it to continue to go up.
They talk about congestion, and they say that this freeway is going to fix the congestion because people will be able to move faster. But what it's going to do is put more cars on an already on a bigger freeway, and we'll be back to where we started. So the induced demand is not a word that our TXDOT our dot has any belief in. So that's how they frame it that it's necessary.
I grew up. I spent fair amount of years in Houston, and until this project came up, I never really thought much about freeways. It's the way the landscape was, and that's the way people got around. Then, and this is what we were hoping to do with part of our movement is to get people to see how they can move differently from point A to point B.
So we want to stop the expansion, of course, but we also want to get people to start looking at things differently. When I got the opportunity to see things differently, and that no, we didn't need to expand our highways. We needed to add other alternative forms of transportation and give people options and choices. That's when things started to change.
So that's part of what we're here for: is to just try to get people to see the world from a little different light.
That's a great, great segue for my next question. So I'm going to do what I just did. I'm going to give a summary of what you all do, what your what your work looks like. I'm assuming you all talk a lot about what you do.
So I was like, maybe I can give you all a little break. I'll summarize it and then put you in the more fun position of correcting me. Okay, so here is some context on the work to oppose this project and to present alternatives and to communicate concerns. So this highway expansion has been in progress for more than two decades, but it really came to public awareness in 2017.
In 2019, there was a council vote against the funding, but a few hours later, they came around and it passed. The council voted for it. The city offered an alternative, which TXDOT rejected. After a series of complaints from various organizations, including Stop TxDOT I-45, the project was put on pause by the Federal Highway Administration.
Then, in 2022, the county, the city, the Federal Highway Administration and TXDOT. It sounds like they got in a room together and came to some what they call a voluntary resolution agreement, which is supposed to govern how TXDOT moves forward with this project at this point. So that's really important. One thing that's if you're interested in the fighting freeways side of things, one thing that I found is really important is to really understand this because I think there's this big picture concept of like oh opposing more highways, but it's really important to understand what exactly that looks like for a specific context for a specific community and what are what are the tools and resources available.
So I've talked to for instance Rethink I-35 and they use some different tools to get their to get the highway to get that project paused or to oppose it right. I think they actually filed a lawsuit in that case. So that's like one example of like, well, what are the legal tools we can use to pause this project to get more analysis of this project to get more oversight of the project. So this VRA is pretty central to where you all are at now, and what's happened, Ally, can you just jump in and kind if you need to smooth out any bumps in my summary and help us understand like what is important to know about your context with fighting this highway and just what have you learned in terms of what are the tools available to oppose freeway expansions?
Yeah, this is this is a great question. So right now we are, as Tiffany said, under the purview of this voluntary resolution agreement from USDOT and the FHWA, and I'm going to be completely honest with y'all. It is very weak. The language does not hold them to task, so we are acting essentially as watchdogs.
We are trying to ensure that it goes beyond the letter of the law, but it's very difficult because people are interested in sticking to that letter, even when it's unjust. So we're in a position now where we did all the things we were supposed to do, and I’m glad we did them. We filed the Title VI complaint. We engaged with our city.
Something that's really important to understand is the city made a whole proposal. They hired consultants. They came up with an alternative vision. Did everything right.
The county engaged, and all of that was ignored because the law is on TXDOT's side fundamentally in Texas. If you think about our state constitution, there's a mandate to spend most of the money for transportation on highways. If you think about our NEPA, the environmental stuff, they have self-certification, so they get to say, what, this little section of the highway, it doesn't affect anything. So we are just in this absolute chokehold from TXDOT, which means that you have to basically try all the tools at once.
So that means going the legal route. I don't know how they say it in the U. S. Both work.
I should know that we're talking about roads. So we went. We went the legal route. We went to the feds, and we're still going right.
But we are also going the organizing route. We are up in there creating noise about it because you never know when it's just gonna change, And we don't know that. You just have to keep moving forward through it. But the issue with the VRA is essentially that they're complying to it.
They're trying to, but it's not holding them to task. Like a great example I'll give is we were in a meeting with the feds, and we were telling them that one of the meetings that they held was not ADA compliant because someone who could not see could not enter the building. It was too crowded. The elevator wasn’t working.
Like it was just it wasn't ADA compliant. They were like, "Well, technically the building is ADA compliant, and TXDOT submitted that it was. Our response is, "Well, that's just not good enough. It's not actually ADA compliant in practice.
So what are you going to do when in practice it's wrong, but the law is correct? Right. That's where we're at right now. So we're just continuing to amp up the pressure on it, and that's our main tool right now.
Susan, Susan, could you speak a little bit about also the tactical approaches that you all have used, and like Ally said, like raising noise about it or making noise about it, so to speak. But also the I feel like there was another term you all talked to me about. But what have been some other tactics you all used to just get gain attention, get grow awareness?
Well, when we when we got started with Stop TxDOT I-45, we joined forces with two other nonprofits that I think had a lot to do with the fact that we're here today, and both of those were pushing back against this freeway. But because of a lot of the restrictions of being a 501 c3, there were a lot of things that they could not do, and they were asked. They were thinking they needed an activist grassroots organization that could make noise, and they were very excited when we showed up on the scene, and they were our support for information, for technical details, for understanding the NEPA, understanding the FEIS, understanding all those documents that I, as a registered nurse who had been doing clinical research, had no clue about, and that was one of the reasons why. But what we, one of the things that we first did, we did a delay the vote action at our MPO.
I think all of y'all have an MPO, and we brought 60 plus speakers to that body, held them there for six hours, made them listen to people that they did not want to listen to. They even had to buy us pizza, and that's where we started. We lost that vote. We expected to lose that vote, but we were there and we were vocal.
That by that action, we got connected up with local media, and so we were in the papers. We were on socials, and those things made a really huge difference. We've done things from go up to our Texas Transportation Commission to speak, which oversees TXDOT in Texas, and bring our big banner that says you can't pave over us into the hearing room, and did we win that fight? No, we didn't win that fight.
But we got more notice, and we brought more people to the table. We brought more people in because people saw that there was some avenue to be able to at least speak back, we've hung banners off of the freeway. We've done a lot of those things, but also when Ally came on board, she upped our communications game by like 1,000% And so, because you don't need someone my age doing social media just doesn't work. So, and so she took over that, and we were able to start connecting with all of the state of Texas.
So now we have a regional group across the state, and we also are working on. We it's good to make noise, but you've also got to change policy, so you have to work from all different angles. You need to be the person that's in the paper from stopping the traffic on the street, but you also need the person that's starting to make the actions that are required to change policy. One of the things that happened out of result of Stop TxDOT I-45 was a group of people, including Ally, that started a PAC and put a proposition on the ballot in Houston to change how the city of Houston is represented at our MPO because we are very much outvoted by our outlying suburban counties.
So, and it passed overwhelmingly passed, and it's still in negotiation. So, because it's not been enacted, but so we try to think from all different perspectives, not just from the grassroots organizing. But that's where we the energy comes from, and that's where the smart people like you show up to help and get us to where we need to be. So we work from all different perspectives, all different levels.
Ally, so I'd love to for you to share a little bit of your story. You were you were a normal Houston resident, and you were not thinking about like oh transportation advocacy cities what but so I would love for you to tell your story how did you hear about this Susan just mentioned the work that you do on the communication side so love for you to tell us a little bit more about how you found out about this organization how you got involved and just what has that been like for you to have this blooming career and as a professional opera singer, and then to discover this whole new world, and how have you balanced those two, reconciled those two? Like, what does that look like for you?
Yeah, so I found out about Stop because a friend of mine told me that I'm gonna be honest, told me that I should go to the picnic because there was a girl there he wanted me to introduce him to, and I'm a great friend. So I was like, "Of course I'll go. So that's how I went to the stop picnic, and I really think that first moment of meeting Susan and all the other organizers there was formative, just foundationally to how I think about organizing and how I live now. Because at that picnic, the message was clear, the atmosphere was welcoming, actively welcoming to new people.
It wasn't just we're going to talk to the other insiders there. The focus is on the new people who come in, and then they had an excellent organizing funnel. You signed up. I got a call the next day about the general meeting, which is going to be two days later, and I got a reminder text about two hours before the general meeting.
So I said, "Oh well, they followed up so much. I think I should probably go to the general meeting. Then I was in, But I probably would have gone just back out into the world if that hadn't happened, So that welcoming atmosphere, that commitment to what I later learned was horizontal leadership and organizing. At that first meeting, they were like, "We're trying to turn out comments for NEPA.
Does anybody have any ideas? I said, "Well, my husband and I are currently unemployed because we are classical musicians and it is a pandemic. We have all this time. We could do some concerts.
They said, "Yes, go with it. There was complete trust, And I think that's one of the things that's really exceptional about stop and the way that we organize is. I think there is this instinct on issue work to try to keep a really, really tight grip, To control and like you want to have clear messaging, you want to be honest, and you want to like move decisively, but you have to be willing to let other people in, and that sometimes means relinquishing control. You should be excited that other people are coming, and that requires a longer mindset and some trust in the universe.
But that's what I learned from Susan. So that's how I got in. What
Resonated with you about the transportation side? This like technical. I feel like the freeway fighting is a little bit intimidating, but I also know that when I first started paying attention to things about like how cities are designed, like it also could be like really exciting and fun world to explore. But what really clicked with you about that particular issue, or just about like transportation in general, or like what was it like?
Just like all of a sudden learning to see the city from in that way, from like this design perspective, and
Yeah, I think it was actually the displacement that really moved me. All these families that are being moved from their homes seemed just absolutely wrong, and that was reason enough. I'll be totally honest, I was moved more by the human aspect of it, and it took me probably a year and a half to start being fully comfortable with the technical side of things, and luckily, once I had the courage to ask for support on the technical side of things, people offered to help me with them. People sat down and taught me how to read the policy.
They taught me how to read a GIS map. Friends, volunteers, people working at nonprofits, but I didn't come in from that technical side. I didn't know a lot of that, but people came and taught me, and that's why I'm here.
One term we've been using in this conversation. Either of you can explain this, whichever one. But NEPA, y'all have said NEPA a couple times. For people who don't know, can.
Just provide an overview of what that means and how does that affect your work?
NEPA is the National Environmental Policy Act, and all big infrastructure projects, including freeway expansions, roadways, that are going to be using any federal money have to go through a NEPA process, and they go. It has to do with environmental review, so they look at, air pollution, noise, all those types of issues. Very complicated, so I'm not going to go into the details. But in Texas, in some of the other states, and mainly in the South, I think have they're able to self-certify their own NEPA document.
So there's no really federal review that goes into this NEPA, but it's a very crucial part. The Biden administration recently added regulations to NEPA that'll make it a little more difficult for states that don't self-certify to be able to get through this process, which we're very grateful for. But right now, we're trying to get the feds to take away self-certification from TXDOT.
So NEPA is one of those. If I understand it correctly, it's one of it's a policy that provides a basis for complaint. If I understand correctly, so I think Rethink I-35 did this. They used NEPA as the basis to file a lawsuit and said this project is not following NEPA.
I know I've heard of that one and I've heard of civil rights lawsuits, basically saying, "I'm not, I don't understand the civil rights one fully or as like super well. But I think that's just an example of how you can look for policies that exist or laws that exist, and say, "We might have oppositions to this highway on so many on various grounds, but here are the ones we can stand on legally, so we can stand on NEPA legally. We can stand on civil rights laws legally, and make our case using those laws that exist. So that's a bit of a strategic move.
Can you all talk to me about the civil rights side of this? I feel like you all have done something on that side too, in addition to NEPA.
Yeah, so this was slightly before my time, but a coalition of groups filed a Title VI complaint to the federal government. That's essentially saying that this project discriminates against people on the basis of race, which it does, and it's because of that complaint that the highway was paused for two years. It was lifted because of the voluntary resolution agreement. So, if you're interested in filing a Title VI complaint, if you have grounds for one, we found a law group that specializes in them, and they helped us with it with this coalition of orgs.
Filing a complaint doesn’t mean it’s going to be taken up. A civil rights lawsuit is slightly different, but you can file a complaint. It's not technically a lawsuit, but you want to make sure that you're being really tight about your comms around it to make sure that there's enough pressure that it is taken up and not just dismissed.
I have some other questions I'll come back to, but while we're on this topic of what you can use as a basis for stopping, pausing, or complaining about a federal highway project. One thing that's always been on my mind, and I'd be curious to know what you all think about this. One of the central campaigns at Strong Towns is fiscal transparency, more truthful accounting, and just more responsible financial practices.
One thing that's always stood out to me is how much money localities are going to have to put forward for these projects, in the short and in the long term. But I don't see any cities taking like complaining or taking up opposition to these projects on financial grounds. Basically saying this project is going to put us in a really bad financial situation, and we actually can't afford this. I'm just curious.
I asked the rethink I-35 people the same thing, but Have y'all ever talked about that? Do you think there's any grounds for opposing freeway expansions on fiscal grounds? Just in term in terms of like long term resilience and in terms of overall affordability
In Houston, the I-45 expansion and the $12 billion that's going to be brought to the city and the county in building this project is seen as a plus. They don't think that they could possibly turn down this money because they see it as money. They see it as jobs. They see it as supporting companies.
They see it as progress. They see it as improvement. They don't see it as a negative. They don't see how continuing this process is going to cost the city money.
In the long run. When we tried to get it stopped at our MPO when it was on pause, they succumbed to the threat from TXDOT that TXDOT would just send the money to another city, and they saw that as a huge loss to economic development in the city of Houston, whereas we see it the opposite.
Yeah, backing up everything Susan says, and then I want to add to it the web that is woven with the money. It is not just that the money is going to the project; it's who that money is going to within the project, and who those people give money to, Contractors are making billions of dollars on this project, and they give massive donations to our politicians. You will notice if you follow that money, the people that are the most vocal about the economic success of a highway model are the ones that are receiving the most money from contractors. So we're working to track a lot of that.
That's the first thing I would say. The other thing I would say is there's a lot of I was worried about saying this word wrong obfuscation of the truth with what this plan is going to deliver. A big thing that we talk about a lot. With this plan is cap parks, they're going to bury and cap the highway in the East End of downtown after doubling its width into a robust economic area.
In all the arguments that they send to elected officials and the press, there are these beautiful renderings. I will also add, they also sent these renderings to the feds when they were investigating the civil rights complaint, and I don't think a cap park has grounds for to be involved in a civil rights complaint. But all those renderings that they send, that is not included in the $12 billion price tag. That is additional money that the city's going to cough up.
If y'all aren't from Houston, we're in a moment of austerity. We don't have that money, so that's the second thing I would say. Then the third thing is that they give the good things in the wealthy white neighborhoods, and they put the bad things in the black and brown neighborhoods, and that pits people against each other and creates a gap between who is willing to advocate for what. So there's stuff that's hidden, and then there is a lot of money being passed behind closed doors to make sure that things happen for people who are going to make a lot of money off of this.
Thanks for speaking to that.
Yeah, I think that our new mayor that we have now in our city, which is turning back the clock on many of the things that happened in Houston and street projects, is a benefited from that money, and I think it's the reason why he was elected.
So, Ally, you were mentioning, how this can create divisions between neighbors and make it really difficult to come together to advocate. But you all have been able to bring people together with your organization, and a lot of other organizations are doing something similar, Susan. Outlaw, for you to tell me. You mentioned earlier in our conversation how before this you just saw freeways as part of part of the city.
It's the status quo. Just is what was normal, which I think most of us can relate to. So, what has that been like for you putting this on the radar of people who might feel similarly, who might never think about transportation. Who might feel like, oh, that's the way things are.
Helping them, helping them rethink those norms and helping them rethink that status quo.
Well, I don't know if I've been that successful with this with my friends because they're all my age and they are like whoa. So I start at the local level. I started, what's this going to look like in your neighborhood? What's going to happen to how you get around?
To be honest, in the city of Houston right now, I wouldn't be able to get around the city of Houston without a car. It's not possible for me. It might be possible for me if I was 40 years younger, but at this point in my life, I couldn't do it because the bus stops are too far away, and it takes too much time. So, but then when you start talking about, wouldn’t it be lovely if we could catch a bus from our corner, and go downtown and not have to park our cars and be able to be outside, and then also I think with the type of people that I really hang out with, the civil rights issue resonates with them.
The fact that this, they started dividing and destroying black and brown communities in the city of Houston in the 1950s when we started building all of these highways that came through our cities, and today they're. They're-damaging the same communities that they already damaged in the first place, and so most of the people that I hang out with are pretty progressive people, and they're thinking when it comes to other issues besides transportation. So when I can link their progressive views around civil rights, around displacement, around all the other inequities that we see in our society, and I can link that with the transportation issue, then I can get them to pay attention to me and to understand that this is not about moving people; it's about destroying cities and just and like back in the 50s, urban renewal, which is how this all got started.
So there's a great book written by Megan Kimball that's called City Limits, and it goes through all of that process that started back with Eisenhower back in The 1950s, And it's a fascinating read. So
I'm glad you brought that up because I had this question about. It seems to me that part of the problem is that Department of Transportation's don't really have to be responsive or accountable to public citizens of a city they're working in at all. So I've always thought this seems to me to be part of the bargain that states made with the federal government back in 1950s with that original policy from Eisenhower, the Highway Act, trading a significant amount of local agency for that for that infusion of cash, And feeling like if they didn't take the money, then another city would beat them and be and they might lose people moving to another city, or so to speak, So I've always seen it as cities giving up their right to self-determine, their right to self-govern in this area, and especially as it pertains to how they would integrate highways into their built environment.
Because it seems to me that cities really, it seems like a loss of agency. We just had a highway expansion in Waco not too long ago, and I think they'll tell you that it's this great collaboration. But like under the surface, I don't think cities can really-I don't think they have very much say when the DOT comes through with the project. So it strikes me as one of those things that felt might maybe it felt like a good idea back then.
Especially when cities are desperate for money, and the federal government comes along and says, "Hey, we'll give you all this money if you just built these roads, but now. Looking down the line, like where we are now, the dark side of that deal is really starting to show, with like now you have a DOT that can come in and start bulldozing through neighborhoods all over again, and the city just do they feel like they can't? What is that like? Just around.
Do you feel like this can change? Do you feel like this? There's a way we can get DOTS to be more accountable, more transparent, and give cities a little bit more say and a little bit more control over what happens.
I'm going to turn this over to Ally, but I wanted to say something really quickly. It was very eye-opening to me to find out that the mayor of Houston, Texas, has absolutely no legal authority to stop a freeway project going through its city. They can be influencers, but they cannot say no. Neither can our Harris County judge.
All of the city and the county are the and the people within that jurisdiction are the people that are being harmed by this project, but they have absolutely no authority to stop it, and that was one of the reasons why the action for the MPO. Then I'm going to turn this over to Ally.
Yeah, I think this is a complicated question, and for me, it ties directly to like imagination and being able to imagine what's going to be different in 10, 20, or 30 years. TXDOT, I'll speak to ours, is not accountable to anyone. It's not, but we can be accountable to each other, We can practice deep transformational organizing-not just mobilizing, but the organizing where we take care of each other, where we teach each other, where we are growing our movement, where we are connecting with people we agree and disagree with, and being loving people in our city and just courageously attached to a better vision, and that eventually one day will result in change. It may not be soon, but someday it eventually must change.
So, although TXDOT isn't accountable, we are, and we will keep working until they are when the system changes.
Do you feel like we that's a paradigm that can change that with the DOT having so much power like that? Do you think there's any hope for making that making the highway conversation any more democratic?
Absolutely, absolutely. We have thrown ourselves onto the fire for that hope, and I think one day it absolutely must change. There have been plenty of things in the world that seemed hopeless that eventually changed, and we're committing to it, even though sometimes it feels like running straight head first into a brick wall. But one of those walls is going to break, and the other walls will fall down.
Ally, one thing that stood out to me from learning more about your organization is how you all use the arts in your work. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yes. Did you want to say something first? Yeah. Okay.
I'm sorry, Susan.
We're we're a horizontal org. In other words, we don't have any elected leadership of our group. People just emerge organically up to leadership status. We have working groups, and generally we have a lead for those working groups.
We worked very hard on a mission and vision and values for our group that we all did together, which I think was very formative for us. So we work a little differently than most organizations. If you read the literature, they say that horizontal orgs really don't work well in bringing in people into groups. But we have found it to be essential for us, we do a lot of things differently.
We try to. One of our sayings is make it easy for people to show up. Don’t send out a communication asking them Ask them to send a letter to TXDOT, and not provide them any background information to help them do that. It's not that people may not care.
It's that they have two jobs, they've got three kids in school, and they're trying to go to soccer. They’re trying to fix dinner and go to work. But they'll show up if you if you support them. They'll show up if you ask them and help them.
If you show them that there is a way in which their voice can be heard, and not make it not make them climb over obstacles to get there, so we try to eliminate as many obstacles as possible for people being able to show up. Like Ally shows up at our picnic and she wants to do concerts, and we're like, go for it because there's no vetting process. There's no boxes that have to be checked. There's no someone that has to approve of that.
We have, of course, we have informal leadership, but that changes as people come and go. Molly Cook, who came to our group and taught us how to organize because she actually went to school to learn how to organize. Who's now going to be our senator elect? Of course, she's not in the streets with us.
It's stopped, stopped, and Ally's moving on to be her chief of staff. But people will come in and fill in those spaces because they will be asked to do so, and they will be encouraged and mentored to do so. I think when we start looking at this, is not what can our organization do per se, but what can we do to bring all of the people that are like-minded in the city of Houston together, and we have little groups popping up in Houston right now. Like every other week, it feels like we have another little organization that's finding a little peace, and we will be working to connect all of these groups together in a regional network, so that we can start sharing and mentoring and bringing people in and bringing in the people that are going to be the most directly affected has been the hardest piece.
So those are the people that you've got to go and knock on their doors. You got to go talk to those people. You're not going to be able to get them on social media. You're not going to be able to go get them to a meeting because they're too busy doing surviving.
But if you go knock on their doors and you talk to them, and you under get them to understand what's happening to them. We've done everything from hire eminent-domain attorneys to sort to help them and to support them and get them to understand what their legal rights are because TXDOT takes advantage of the fact that they don't have this knowledge, so it's it's a different way of looking at how to get people to connect. So we do a lot of social stuff.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, Susan. I would not have thought about that because I feel like there can be in the urbanism world there can be a little bit of a disconnect between people who are really passionate about design or ideas or like the Strong Towns five campaigns, but then there are people who are actually going to live in those realities or who are going to be affected by those who might not have any idea who might not have the time or the margin or the energy to be to like even keep even know where to find that information about what's even happening in their city. So, Susan, I'm glad you brought that up. Of like, the people who are going to be affected by many of these bad policies probably won't even know until it's too late.
Probably don't have the language to even articulate what's happening. So, I think seeing your role is also educational, of like going to those neighborhoods, going to those people who are going to be affected by that, and really help them understand what's happening. I'm just, yeah, I really appreciate you bringing up that perspective.
Yeah, and I wanted to add to that too because I think a lot of the people whose doors we knock on, right, whose homes might be taken for the highway, we learn from them. They have a more foundational understanding of any of this than we do. They may not use our language, but they understand that a wider highway doesn't work. Some of them, second generation displacement, Their grandparents were displaced by highways, and now they are being displaced.
So it's reciprocal learning both ways, and it's providing honest, honest engagement and like honest response time, Like if they call, you pick up, Things like that really, really matter in building that trust so that you can work together. Yeah, yeah.
Really becoming clear that this, the work you all doing, really requires thinking across the whole like landscape of all the different people, Like you have people who are really good at understanding policy. You have people who are really great at like connecting with people. You have people who are really good at knocking on doors. People who are like Molly, who can aim for like
Running for office. Running for office,
And so, thinking, I think in any type of community act of like advocacy work, really thinking about that whole profile of like who all do we have in our community and what can they bring to the table, and really being mindful of where those gaps might be. The like advocate. I don't really know the right way to frame this, but like someone like me who might be really passionate about getting rid of like, too much parking in our downtown, but also making sure to talk to the families who feel like if they lose that parking, they can't bring their kids downtown because it'll be too stressful, And so just making sure to bridge those social gaps. Ally, tell us about the arts.
I think that's where we left off. Oh yeah, one
Of the one of the things we're proudest of, or I feel so proud of is Stop now has a comms team of five young women, and we meet, and we all learn from each other, and we try new things. A lot of them are very artistic, so we started doing some more art stuff. They made a zine, they commissioned artwork from people, and this was right after we received the voluntary resolution agreement. The pause was lifted, which was absolutely heartbreaking.
There were several months where it just we couldn't figure out what our next step would be. It was one of the biggest disappointments of my life, to be completely honest. Art in that time, and where we've been organizing for five years, and we'll probably be organizing for many, many, many more years. Art is one of those things that can keep people together when things get really, really difficult, and it also brings in new people.
So we've done a zine, we've done music, we do art activities at our events, and that has just been so moving. It also, as I said, brings in new people and sustains us while we do this really hard work.
Susan, you all are functioning largely as a watchdog organization right now, like really looking at the VRA and really trying to see if TXDOT is keeping up their end and abiding by it. But I would love to know from you what would you like to see beyond that role. Like, what would you all like to see for transportation in Houston in general? I know you all mentioned that the city proposed an alternative plan.
Are you hoping that plan gets more serious attention, or do you have something in particular that you would like to see as it pertains to transportation in Houston? One
Of the things that we first asked for when we got in this fight was for TXDOT to just stop and go back to the drawing board, and we really we wanted them to stay within the current footprint. We wanted we wanted transit on our freeways. We wanted commuter rail going out to Houston is a sprawling city, and highways have contributed to the fact that we are a sprawl city, and they're continuing to build more and more loops around the city of Houston to provide access for builders to go in and develop neighborhoods way outside. So,
What would you like to see? What
We would like to see is, like, we have a toll road that they're trying to put through my neighborhood into downtown, and what we're asking for is for this not to be a freeway or a tollway in the. Traditional sense of that is that we want it to be a boulevard coming into downtown, providing a welcoming and beautiful entrance into the city of Houston. We want it to have transit on that part in the middle of that boulevard, or however the designers come up with that goes to the airport. We have no rail to our airport in the city of Houston, and they had rail to the airport or BRT to the airport on the original I-45, but I-45 expansion is which is supposed to start building this year won't be done until 2038.
So, and that's probably a very optimistic estimate; it may be 2048. So we want to put transit on that with stops within the neighborhood that provide more access for people to be able to get around without having to use their cars. Are we going to win that? I don't know, but this is not tech stop money; it's Harris County money, so we have a little more leverage with that.
But those are the things that we're trying to get our city leaders to see: is that we need to provide access for other ways for people to get around.
So more of a more of a multimodal future. Multimodal,
And we'll probably never be able to be in the city of Houston, but it's built, be able not to have a car. That's just within this inner city neighborhoods. Yes, we'll be able to do that. But to realize the landscape that we live in, and be able to build out alternatives, get people to understand how great it is to take the commuter rail in from Katy versus having to drive their cars and sit in traffic for an hour each way each day.
Yeah. So those are the things that we're trying to put forward. You got any ideas, Ally?
Yeah. Anything you want to add, Ally?
Yeah. I'd also say that our highways are busted, They should just fix them. You don't need to widen it to fix it. There used to be a “fix it first” memo, and then they quietly withdrew it, put it back.
People are dying on our highways, and more people are going to die if you make it wider. I think a lot about the safety aspect of it, the human cost of this. They should be fixing it and making it more safe by getting people off the roads, and I think that's a vision that more people could hopefully maybe get behind.
We're going to close this episode a little differently than I normally do. I normally ask people to give us local recommendations for their city. But Ally, you all have this virtual art gallery on your website, including some poems, and I was wondering if you would close out this conversation by reading "“Underneath the Northbound I-45 Bridge, I Am Kissing You.”
This poem was one of the art pieces submitted in our request for our zine, and it's by Serena Hermitano. At the speed of the White Oak Bayou, I am kissing you with the instinct of the bluebonnets that arrived early this year, and arrive earlier every year. There's a romance to this endless warmth, like holding your hand during rush hour, the sunset dancing on the sea of cars beyond us, cars also with people looking at the sunset, all moving at the speed of the withering White Oak Bayou, and it's moments like this where I look to you and ask, if romance is dead, where do we bury it when all this city is paved over?
Thank you all so much for being here. Yes, Ally and Susan, thanks so much for sharing your story and your insights with our audience. Thank you for attending, and if you're listening to this, I will be back in two weeks with another episode.