New Caltrans Video Claims Widening 5 Freeway Is Good for Air, Congestion

In this new promotional video, Caltrans District 7 inexplicably proclaims that widening a stretch of the 5 freeway in southeast L.A. County will "reduce congestion" and "improve air quality." The video, shown at Metro's board and committee meetings recently, further boasts about "better safety" and how outsized new bridges over the freeway will each "dwarf the original bridge." It goes on to herald Caltrans' $1.9 billion project (funded by Metro's Measure R) as a "21st-century transformation."

What it really resembles are all of those dreadful 20th-century transformations that gave L.A. County its current congestion and foul air, plus plenty of child asthma, noise, disconnected neighborhoods, obesity, and other problems. These are all accompanied by budget-breaking infrastructure maintenance costs passed along to our children's generation.

The flaws inherent in Caltrans' outdated thinking are summarized well by UCLA professor Michael Manville, in what he calls "Transportation Economics 101":

Apparently Caltrans' L.A. experts skipped Transportation Economics 101. Perhaps they skipped Induced Travel 101, Air Pollution 101, and any lessons learned from expensive widening projects everywhere in the world. Somehow it appears that Caltrans' leadership really believes that its car-centric Level of Service calculations represent reality, which they never have.

At a state policy level, Caltrans is taking steps to move toward a more holistic approach and away from widening every freeway everywhere. In L.A. County, their multi-billion dollar zombie engineering efforts continue to remain focused on more and more and more freeways lanes. Here, they are still using bogus discredited claims to promote these costly destructive mega-projects. Sad.