Article and Graphics created by and used with permission of Rick Longinotti and the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation
Streetsblog California is my go-to news source for understanding state transportation politics. Streetsblog editor Melanie Curry reports on the California Transportation Commission's approval of funding for several highway expansion projects, including the auxiliary lanes in Santa Cruz County:
"There is still a disconnect between this policy direction [aligning funding with climate goals] and investments, as made clear by the projects approved this week. While there was some money for transit, and some multimodal components were included, many of these projects include adding new highway lanes. New lane miles are frequently framed as necessary by local jurisdictions in the name of safety or as congestion relief....Bryn Lindblad of Climate Resolve points out that less than five percent of the total $516 million awarded to L.A. Metro in this round is for transit, with the rest going to highways."
Our state and local political leaders are faced with a dissonance that is now impossible to ignore, thanks to years of climate advocacy. You can't reduce greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously expanding highways. Our progress in climate advocacy is reflected in the way highway expansion proponents now market their projects: with a heavy dose of green-washing. Our local Regional Transportation Commission has misappropriated the concept of "bus-on-shoulder" to justify highway expansion plans that go back two decades. As my 11 minute video points out, the so-called "bus-on-shoulder" project should really be called "bus-in-auxiliary lanes", where buses will get stuck in the kind of traffic you see in the photo of the Morrissey to Soquel auxiliary lane (above).
The only thing standing in the way of this highway expansion project is the Sierra Club and CFST lawsuit. We have high hopes for success, because the EIR on Highway 1 expansion (2019) never once mentioned bus-on-shoulder, nor did it analyze other transit options as alternatives to expansion. If we succeed, our community can have a conversation about genuine transit strategies that would offer South County commuters real alternatives to being stuck in traffic. Please contribute to this important movement to shift from the rhetoric of sustainability to the reality. For a contribution of any size, we'll sign you up for Something to Love---Something to Hope For, A Conversation with Jonathan Franzen.
Thanks.
Rick Longinotti
