Dan Walters has an interesting column today that seemingly comes out of nowhere – a long complaint about California’s incomplete freeway plan:
When Jerry Brown began his first stint as California’s governor in 1975 – he apparently yearns for a reprise next year – he more or less shut down the highway construction program that had transformed the state, for better or worse, in the three decades following World War II….
A few new freeways were built, such as the Century Freeway in Los Angeles and Interstate 5 between Sacramento and Stockton. But dozens of projects, some of them in the works for decades, were erased, leaving Caltrans’ last official freeway map a quaint artifact.
Walters doesn’t mention that freeway construction has been quite a bit more widespread than that – Highway 85 in the San José area, the eastern half of Interstate 210, and numerous state-maintained toll roads in Southern California are just a few of the all-new freeways built since 1980. More significantly, thousands of miles of freeway lanes have been added to existing freeways over the last 30 years. The most prominent may have been the massive decade-long effort to double the size of Interstate 5 in Orange County, but across the state we can find freeways that are much larger in 2009 than they were in 1979.
So when Walters complains about the unbuilt Sacramento-Bakersfield Highway 65 freeway, or the “missing link” along Interstate 710 through South Pasadena, it’s hard to see this as a particularly bad outcome.
California’s zeal for building freeways will go down in history as a truly colossal waste of money, a stunning misallocation of resources, and a central cause of the economically and environmentally ruinous policies of sprawl. What’s done is done, and so we ought to be looking forward to smarter transportation policies that don’t double down on past mistakes, but that instead support the kind of economically sensible land use policies California needs to thrive in the 21st century.
So when Dan Walters wonders whether LA County will find the $3 billion to finish the 710 extension, I wonder whether LA County will find the political will to abandon a project that hasn’t made sense for 30 or 40 years. Antonio Villaraigosa wants to accelerate the timeline for building the Subway to the Sea – a task that will require several billion dollars more than LACMTA has on hand. Tunneling a subway under Wilshire Boulevard is far more vital to Southern California’s future than tunneling a freeway under South Pasadena.
Walters understands the nature of the choice before us:
One wonders which will come first – closing the I-710 gap, digging the peripheral canal or building a 500-mile-long bullet train. No one now breathing may be alive to learn the answer.
Let us hope and work to ensure the bullet train is that answer. Jerry Brown’s original goal in the 1970s was to rein in freeway construction and start building high speed rail. 30 years later we may finally have a chance to put that plan into action.
Instead of building more freeway lanes, we need to put tolls on existing freeways (starting with Interstate 5 between Tracy and Santa Clarita) and use that money to fuel the growth and operating budget for mass transit. Ten years from now, when Californians travel around their state on bullet trains and wave at the slower, costlier, gas-guzzling vehicles stuck on the freeways, they will wonder what the hell took us so long.
California’s zeal for building freeways will go down in history as a truly colossal waste of money, a stunning misallocation of resources, and a central cause of the economically and environmentally ruinous policies of sprawl. What’s done is done, and so we ought to be looking forward to smarter transportation policies that don’t double down on past mistakes, but that instead support the kind of economically sensible land use policies California needs to thrive in the 21st century.
Those freeways were a poor idea. Must be why the economy sucked so much post- World WAR II.
The only reason California has less mass transit than the Upper Northeast, New England area is because they got massive amount of federal funding that California never got.
This guy’s pen is mightier than his brain. It’s hard to even read him, because he sounds like your doughy fat old white Republican neighbor, not someone deserving the supposed prestige of the largest state in the union’s capital’s paper of record.
He should maybe write Op-Eds for the Needles paper.
What gets me about all of these projections is that the technology is very near for making cars “mass-transit”. What
would happen is that you would issue a request and a unit
(the appropriate size and fuel type–electric for within 40/50 miles, gas otherwise) for the trip you want
to take) would be at your door in 5 minutes and take
you (automatically) to where you want to go. All of
these automated vehicles would talk to one another and
not be under driver control. They would use existing freeways but the capacity of these freeways would be 3 times
what it is now (due to optimization of the system).
My gut feeling is that this type of system would be
technologically feasible in 10 years but won’t be fully
implemented for 20 years (but think of the jobs available to Americans if we put it in place here first and then can export the technology to the rest of the world). Prototypes
exist today. Result: less fuel used (no more leadfoots),
many fewer deaths, etc.
For policy, then, what does this imply? No subway to
the sea–Wilshire will be turned into an automated strip
carrying 3 times the people it does today. Trains will
still be necessary for intercity travel but freeway construction can be halted (due to increased capacity).
Sprawl will still be a problem–people like yards and
this change will allow living even further out in the
country.
CA population far out strips our freeway capacity. These roads will only get more congested which means more idling of cars and trucks which means more pollution. We should have definitely been building more freeways. Even with mass transportation there still will be a demand for roads and freeways.
Notice how they are all called “freeway” in California, except for the toll roads, which are called “toll” roads, just to make the point.
In New York, one has the Thruway and some Expressways in NYC. Philadelphia is served by an Expressway. Washington has the Beltway.
Only in California does everyone insist that government must be “free”.
Isn’t there some relationship between big office buildings and big apartment buildings and mass transit?
You see mass transit in urban centers because it is the only possible way to move people. You don’t see mass transit in suburban or rural areas because mass transit is completely inefficient in those areas. It could never be worth the money.
I use mass transit every day and I don’t miss driving at all. However, if my living situation were suburban or rural, there would be no chance for it. And that is where the majority of Californians live.
I say again: The train goes right by where I live and to where I work. If they ran more frequently, I would take them.