In a move reminiscent of the federal purge of useful information from the internet earlier this year, Caltrans has deleted a presentation from its website - an explainer on proposed Highway 37 road widening in Napa County. The timing of the deletion, the week before the California Transportation Commission is set to vote on whether or not to award the project $73 million, and days before the Sacramento Bee covered the project, is suspicious to say the least.
But don’t worry, plenty of people saved the project before it was deleted. You can download it here. If you’re interested, the original link for the presentation was here.
The presentation was well known amongst advocates. In November of 2020, Caltrans prepared a presentation to announce a new study for a temporary “fix” to congestion problems on the mostly-single-lane Highway 37 from Vallejo to Sears Point through the environmentally sensitive Napa Sonoma Marsh.
“I amplified it in my outreach to legislative staff a few weeks ago and then noticed today that it disappeared from Caltrans website,” wrote Jeanie Ward-Waller with ClimatePlan last Friday. “I'm sure, coincidentally, that it's up for funding at CTC next week."
Ward-Waller is referring to advocacy against Assembly Bill 697, which seeks to exempt the widening from state mandated environmental review that has passed the Assembly and is moving through the State Senate.
One of the presentation's purposes was to assuage environmental concerns, but one line on page 26 has become a rallying cry for those opposed to the project.
“Additionally, with the projected sea level rise, most of the existing SR 37 will likely become permanently inundated by the mid-century and even as early as by 2040, thus cutting off a major regional transportation route. “
While there are many reasons that people oppose the proposed widening (road widenings are bad for the environment in a meta sense, they don’t reduce congestion but increase the amount of cars, California has a desperate need to spend transportation dollars on transit, walking and bicycling, and, as already stated, this particular project needs extra waivers because it cuts through an environmentally sensitive wetland, etc.) nothing quite captures the attention of the general public to how bad a project can be as spending a half a billion dollars for a project that would literally be underwater within a decade of completion.
"For $73 million, the CTC should require life vests to be part of the project, since drivers will need flotation devices to move through the corridor by 2040," quipped Zack Deutsch-Gross, with Transform, one of the groups leading the charge against the project. "At a time when the federal government is clawing back billions in clean transportation funding, we shouldn't be spending taxpayer dollars on a project that will be underwater."
