Highway Action Coalition
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The Highway Action Coalition was a civil society organization in the United States founded in 1971 to fight the highway lobby, also known as the "road gang", or “highwaymen”, and to fight for funding for public transportation and pedestrian-focused urban planning.{{cite web |last1=Rosenbaum |first1=David E. |title=For the Highway Lobby, a Rocky Road Ahead |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/02/archives/for-the-highway-lobby-a-rocky-road-ahead.html |website=The New York Times |date=April 2, 1972}} They served as part of a broader movement called the highway revolts, freeway revolts, road protests, or expressway revolts. They were active until at least the mid-1980s.{{cite web |title=Ngram Viewer |url=https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Highway+Action+Coalition&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1930&year_end=2020&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CHighway%20Action%20Coalition%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2CHighway%20Action%20Coalition%3B%2Cc0}}{{full|date=July 2019}}
Highway Trust Fund
In 1956, the United States began constructing the Interstate Highway System, the largest public works project in history.{{cite journal |last = Weingroff |first = Richard F. |title = Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, Creating the Interstate System |url = https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/summer-1996/federal-aid-highway-act-1956-creating-interstate-system |journal = Public Roads |location = Washington, DC |publisher = Federal Highway Administration |volume = 60 |issue = 1 |date = Summer 1996 |access-date = March 16, 2012 |issn = 0033-3735 }} In rural areas the highways were popular, but by the late 1960s many Interstates had begun to penetrate inner cities, destroying neighborhoods, adding pollution, and generating political resistance. Local anti-highway groups sprang up in dozens of locations from Boston to Seattle calling for changes to the Highway Trust Fund, an exclusive source of highway-only dollars from Washington.{{cite news|work=Saturday Review|title=Can We Bust the Highway Trust?|first=Denis|last= Hayes|date=June 5, 1971|page=48}}
Founding
In 1971, Environmental Action and several other organizations launched the Highway Action Coalition (HAC) with the purpose of allowing the federal Highway Trust Fund to be used for mass transit and other non-highway transportation projects.{{cite book|title=Beauty, Health and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955-1985|first=Samuel P. |last=Hays|publisher=Cambridge University Press|place=New York|date=1987|page=466}} Although the trust fund was among the nation’s most sacrosanct of funding sources, and although it was defended by the political might of the automobile, oil and construction industries, HAC used its citizen lobbying and its publication, The Concrete Opposition, to harness the anger and call for flexibility in funding all modes of transportation.{{cite news |last1=Hainer |first1=Michael |title=One Road for the Rich |url=https://newint.org/features/1980/10/01/new-highways |accessdate=5 October 2018 |work=New Internationalist |date=2 October 1980 |language=en |archive-date=October 7, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181007073827/https://newint.org/features/1980/10/01/new-highways |url-status=dead }}
Advocacy success
On March 14, 1973, in a 49-44 vote, the Senate allowed up to $850 million of Trust Fund money to be spent on mass transit; while the House of Representatives did not go so far, the final compromise did “bust the trust” for the first time.{{cite news |last1=Braestrup |first1=Peter |title=Senate Votes Transit Use of Road Fund |work=Washington Post |date=15 March 1973}} On August 13, President Richard Nixon signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973—still with the old nomenclature but now allowing spending on transit.{{cite news |last1=Madden |first1=Richard L. |title=Mass Transit Aid Voted by Senate |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/02/archives/mass-transit-aid-voted-by-senate-cities-could-eventually-use-part.html |accessdate=5 October 2018 |work=The New York Times |date=2 August 1973 |language=en}}