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by\u00a0Jose Fermoso<\/a><\/strong> March 12, 2026 (Oaklandside.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/oaklandside.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/20211110-205545.jpg\")
Oakland is crisscrossed by freeways, the multi-lane arteries that massively expanded in the 1950s and reshaped city life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A new report, \u201cThe Atlas of Inner-City Highway Impacts,\u201d found that those highways have not lived up to their mission of facilitating traffic and are instead squatting on highly valuable land that could be better used for economic development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Patrick Kennedy, an engineering lecturer at Southern Methodist University and longtime highway critic, found that the use of urban land for highways costs cities hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes every year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By his calculations, Oakland would benefit more than any of the 142 cities he studied by removing freeways within a three-mile radius of downtown, with a potential gain of $23.9 billion in new development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To come up with his analysis, Kennedy told the Oaklandside, he drew two circles, one with a radius of one mile from each city\u2019s downtown, and one with a radius of three miles. Then he looked up county tax assessment data to calculate the average tax revenue generated by recent property development. This allowed him to calculate the average per-acre value of the land if the freeways were removed and a little over half of the recovered land was used for development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Never miss a story.<\/strong> Sign up for The Oaklandside\u2019s free daily newsletter.<\/strong>Email<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLet\u2019s say 55% of it becomes developable as new private investment that\u2019s taxable, and that 45% would be new surface streets, parks, schools, that might be tax-exempt,\u201d he said. \u201cSo the two things that go into making a really high number like Oakland has are high-value real estate and lots of highway land. As you can imagine, with California land prices and costs, you get to a really big number when you have a lot of highway land.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His approach doesn\u2019t account for how freeways degrade the value of surrounding land, due to pollution and road safety concerns, and how their removal might increase that land value \u2014 and further boost tax revenue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kennedy\u2019s research found that other cities have much more land in freeways than Oakland, including Newark, New Jersey, and Houston, Texas, but their lower property values put them lower on the list for the potential benefits of removal and development. Other cities he analyzed with land roughly as valuable as Oakland\u2019s, such as San Francisco, have fewer freeways crisscrossing densely populated areas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In his rankings, Oakland ranks in the top five across multiple metrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kennedy\u2019s research comes on the heels of two decades of research assessing the potential of freeway removals to accelerate economic development, especially as old highways get older and costlier to maintain and more young people want to live in denser downtowns that don\u2019t rely on highway transit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Oakland, the removal of the I-980 highway in particular has in recent years gone from a daydream to a strong possibility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2020, the Biden administration sought to reconsider the long-term use of highways. Its Reconnecting Communities program, managed by then transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, awarded billions of dollars in funding to state agencies to study how the potential removal of highways could affect the communities displaced by their construction. The gist of the idea, built on a community equity model, was to develop plans that would financially benefit those communities \u2014 which in Oakland and elsewhere were majority Black and low-income \u2014 and also benefit the city as a whole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In California, Caltrans, the state transportation agency, has been studying the I-980, which began construction in the 1950s and over more than two decades uprooted the residents of West Oakland, many of whom had migrated from the American South seeking new jobs and opportunities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFrom the 1960s through the 1970s, the interstate system was displacing over 100,000 people per year every year, which is just an insane number,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cI wanted to chart what the impact on population density in various cities across the country was, and could I learn from that, and then say, \u2018Okay, I see this data point says this city lost population in downtown, dropped to 20%, and how does that relate to where the highways were built?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n During a tour of Oakland in 2022, Buttigieg told The Oaklandside that the I-980 was like a \u201cgash\u201d across the urban landscape, creating a physical separation between low-income communities in West Oakland and the growing job opportunities downtown. This separation, he said, led to decades of disinvestment in West Oakland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Since Buttigieg\u2019s visit, Caltrans has been working with city officials, the local community, academics, and design and construction companies to study the potential effects of removing the I-980. RBA Creative, an Oakland company led by Randolph Belle, the main community partner for Caltrans\u2019 I-980 outreach, has been raising the question of how economic reparations might be provided to affected communities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides the potential economic benefits of I-980 removal, experts have found that it\u2019s underused by drivers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kennedy\u2019s report cites John Stewart Bragdon<\/a>, a key player at the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, the main agency in charge of constructing the nation\u2019s highway system, saying in a 1960 report that cities \u201cshould actually invest in high-capacity transit, rail transit, to solve local issues and let us build the interstate system outside of cities,\u201d according to Kennedy. That recommendation appears to have gone unheard, and freeway construction has bisected cities for decades. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kennedy told us that the European model of building freeways around major city centers and then using public transit for intra-city travel is still the best, most cost-effective way for people to get around \u2014 and the system that most benefits a city\u2019s economy. If a highway today, like I-980, is not well used by city residents to get around, he said, it\u2019s just a shortcut that\u2019s not truly necessary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor Oakland, I-880, that swings around by the port, you\u2019re probably not gonna be able to get rid of that,\u201d he said. \u201cBut on the other hand, I-980, that\u2019s a local road, and has no business being an interstate or part of the interstate system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last year, the Reconnecting Communities federal program was \u201czeroed out<\/a>\u201d by the Trump administration, according to the National Association of City Transportation Officials, cutting off $200 million in funds that had been expected to be allocated through national grants to cities. A month ago, on February 3, Trump signed the $1.2 trillion act that ended the partial government shutdown, which included only $30 million for the Reconnecting Communities programs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone deserves to have someone looking out for them, including you. That\u2019s why we made it our job. When you give to The Oaklandside, you\u2019re defending facts, funding truth-seekers and keeping Oakland informed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Help us keep our news free with a donation today.<\/strong><\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n DONATE<\/strong><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n jose@oaklandside.org<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jose Fermoso covers road safety, transportation, and public health for The Oaklandside. His previous work covering tech and culture has appeared in publications including The Guardian, The New York Times, and One Zero. Jose was born and raised in Oakland and is the host and creator of the El Progreso podcast, a new show featuring in-depth narrative stories and interviews about and from the perspective of the Latinx community.More by Jose Fermoso<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The highway impact report found Oakland forgoes $23.9 billion in development and $181 million a year in property taxes thanks to urban land swallowed up by freeways. by\u00a0Jose Fermoso March 12, 2026 (Oaklandside.org) Oakland is crisscrossed by freeways, the multi-lane arteries that massively expanded in the 1950s and reshaped city… Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/oaklandside.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Oakland-without-highways-1600x1081.png\")
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Removal of the I-980 is under review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Your gift fuels our journalism.<\/mark><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Jose Fermoso<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n