Florida’s newest highway boondoggle bill will cost billions and threaten children’s health

A transportation system for the 21st century includes better public transit and more walkable and bikeable cities—not endless miles of asphalt.

A transportation system for the 21st century includes better public transit and more walkable and bikeable cities—not endless miles of asphalt.

But a new bill signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 17 would handcuff Florida to our transportation problems of the past by spending billions of tax dollars to build three new tollways that will harm children’s health and fail to solve traffic congestion.

“If you build it, cars will come,” said Matt Casale, director of our national transportation campaign. “Expensive highway expansion projects, or boondoggles, ultimately lead to more traffic and more car emissions, which trigger as many as 4 million new cases of childhood asthma worldwide each year.”

Florida PIRG and our national network are urging decision-makers to adopt a fix-it-first approach to the roads we already have and to invest in a cleaner, healthier future of transportation.

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Photo: Expensive highway expansion projects, or boondoggles, threaten our health and fail to meet our changing transportation needs. Photo Credit: formulanone via Flickr, CC BY SA 2.0