Two years ago we reached out to Transportation California, the trade group that represents the road builders lobby such as asphalt companies, labor unions, contractors, and Caterpillar Inc.
This is a group that we often find ourselves on the opposite side of issues with, especially when it comes to highway widening. The conversation went well, and we discussed where we could find common ground.
We had a glaring thing we both agreed on: neither of us had the data needed to know how many lane miles of highways Caltrans is adding per year, and the impact of those lane miles on emissions, traffic, and road safety.
The conversation led to SB-695 (fact sheet) that Senator Lena Gonzalez (D - Long Beach), who was chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, agreed to carry with Streets For All and Transportation California as co-sponsors, and was signed into law by Governor Newsom.
The bill requires three things of Caltrans:
A five year look back of the following:
Number of lane miles added to the highway system by type
Project description for each project
The number of homes and businesses displaced due to lane additions
Miles of new bike lanes broken down by class
Miles of new sidewalks
A list of the pending projects on the State Highway System with the same information as above.
A yearly data update on:
+ / - in GHG emissions associated with the lane miles added
+ / - in vehicle miles traveled on the state highway system associated with the lane miles added
The mitigation required as part of the projects resulted in additional lane miles on the state highway system
The connections made with locally owned bike and walk facilities.
Two years later, Caltrans delivered the data the legislation required in a report, and will soon be releasing an online dashboard that will be updated regularly.
Here are some highlights:
From 2018 - 2023 the state had 5,100 state highway system projects that collectively added 550 lane miles to the state highway system:
214 miles of general-purpose lanes (standard travel lanes that induce more driving)
101.5 miles of new HOV lanes (carpool lanes)
40.5 of new auxiliary lanes (lanes that go from an onramp to an offramp)
1.4 miles of new transit lanes (bus lanes)
The general purpose lanes and auxiliary lanes the state added will induce more people to drive, making traffic, climate change, and road safety worse.
Even worse, in adding these new miles, the state destroyed 317 homes and 306 businesses, displacing countless people.
Caltrans also installed 160 miles of bike lanes:
93 miles (58%) were class 3 (sharrows which keep no one safe)
53 miles (33%) were class 2 (door zone bike lanes)
12 miles (8%) were class 1 (separated bike paths)
2 miles (1%) were class 4 (protected bike lanes)
Of all the bike facilities installed, only 14 miles (9%) were actual safe infrastructure.
The report also states that Caltrans has another 2,086 projects in the pipeline.
Last year, two bills we sponsored were signed into law:
Our Complete Streets bill (SB-960 - Wiener), which will force Caltrans to build facilities on state highways that consider the needs of all road users
Our bill to restrict the use of sharrow bike lanes (SB-1216 - Blakespear), which will prohibit the installation of sharrows (58% of what Caltrans installed in the report) on streets over 30 miles per hour.
We believe both of these bills will force change at Caltrans, moving away from displacing people to widen highways, and towards building safer, more multimodal facilities on the state highway system.
There still remains a ton of work ahead to stop wasteful highway widening, and we intend to work with our coalition partners and partners in the State legislature to achieve this goal.