Last week, the California Transportation Commission met in Malibu, just miles from where a wildfire fueled by global warming ravaged the community a year earlier. Instead of using this moment to make a statement that California would never again support projects that amounted to climate denialism, they poured $17.9 billion into road projects, much of which went towards massive highway widenings.
Transportation is California’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. As advocates have pointed out for decades—in fact, they pointed it out here last week—expanding highways doesn’t solve congestion. It induces more driving. Within five to ten years, new lanes fill up, often leaving traffic as bad or worse than before, while locking in higher emissions and more pollution.
The state has set ambitious climate targets. State leaders, including Newsom, routinely position California as a global climate leader. But the rhetoric doesn't match what the state actually funds. Just yesterday the Governor’s office issued a press release praising himself/the CTC for investing in transit projects, or as they called it: “$900 million in cutting edge transportation for the future.” This effort came 5 days after the Sacramento Bee published a story about all of the highway widenings CTC funded.
Most of the projects that Newsom’s office listed in his release are good projects. And you can tell the pride that Newsom’s team put into promoting that work. Except for the typos. One section of the release references $273 million invested in “next generation tail technology” when I assume it means "rail technology." In a press release specific to Bay Area investments, Caltrans brags about supporting a “bicycle detention system” instead of "detection system."
And while the state is loud about the $900 million spent on rail projects, it's quiet about the $17.9 billion in road projects, nearly twenty times what is invested in "transportation for the future." Commissioners approved funding for new lanes on Highway 101 near San Francisco, expansions on Highway 37 (yup, the one that will be underwater) in the North Bay, and additional lanes on highways in Kern, Madera, and Lake counties.
Just five of these road projects together received nearly as much funding as the entire Active Transportation Program.
The state’s only dedicated funding source for walking, biking, and safer streets was cut by hundreds of millions of dollars over the last two years. Meanwhile, highway projects continue to move forward with far fewer constraints and far greater resources.
This is not balance. It’s inertia. Sitting adjacent to the ashes from the Palisades Fire, the CTC decided to keep going forward with highway-friendly politics that will continue to burn fossil fuels and raise the global temperature…and try to gaslight us that change is here.
