BUSINESS INSIDER: A hated, mile-long Bronx highway shows an overlooked problem with America's infrastructure — but it could soon come crumbling down

The Sheridan Expressway starts as an elevated highway in Hunts Point. 

The Sheridan Expressway is a six-lane highway that cuts through the South Bronx in New York City, depriving neighborhoods of access to basic amenities.

It's just one of many highways built in the mid-20th century that have isolated low-income communities of color while ferrying white suburbanites in and out of city centers.

After decades of activism, the Sheridan may be the nation's next highway torn apart as states shift their priorities to consider the role infrastructure plays in shaping communities.

It's six lanes wide and just over a mile long, an unfinished stub symbolizing the larger ambitions of ruthless 20th-century city planners.

When it opened to cars in 1963, the Sheridan Expressway helped whisk white, middle-class suburbanites into and out of Manhattan without having to linger in the Bronx along the way.

But neighborhoods along the Sheridan have suffered. The massive expressway helped drive out thousands of longtime residents who had the means to leave, and several businesses in its path were torn down.

Today, an auto-body shop can be found on almost every block, and trucks clog the streets near the expressway, coming and going from the wholesale food market that serves much of New York City. It has served as a literal barrier, preventing residents from accessing the Bronx River, parks, grocery stores, subway stations, and schools.

Hunts Point, a once vibrant jazz community, is now defined by the Sheridan. Roads are clogged by trucks exiting the Sheridan, and blocks are lined with chain-link fences, auto-salvage yards, and warehouses. The community suffers from abnormally high rates of asthma from vehicle exhaust.

"It's isolated a whole population of Hunts Point," Maria Torres, a 46-year-old Hunts Point resident, said in an interview. Torres has lived in Hunts Point for 20 years.

For years, decades even, residents like Torres have entertained a fantasy: What would happen if the Sheridan just disappeared? Would it bring back clean air and reconnect Hunts Point — a peninsula with a picturesque Bronx River waterfront — to the rest of the borough?.......

http://www.businessinsider.com/cities-removing-highways-cut-off-neighborhoods-2017-7