Environmental fight over major Sacramento-area highway project is ridiculous – Marin Independent Journal

Some things are just so ridiculous that they demand critical attention. One of them is the opposition by environmental groups to widening the Interstate 80 freeway between Sacramento and Davis.

Motorists have complained for years about what’s been dubbed the “Davis bottleneck,” which often causes miles of traffic jams. What should be no more than a 10 or 15-minute drive can often take 45 minutes or more.

The state Department of Transportation wants to convert center lanes into new toll lanes. Environmentalists, who are trying to block the project in court, argue that it would only encourage more drivers to use the stretch of highway and that the congestion relief would therefore be only temporary.

Opponents also complain that Caltrans and local officials are widening the freeway with the idea of ​​improving the road surface. They also say the project violates official state policy to reduce car traffic as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“These projects are being sold to the public as a way to reduce congestion; they’re not,” Susan Handy, executive director of the National Center for Sustainable Transportation, told the Los Angeles Times. “A court ruling will be very important.”

Ironically, Handy’s organization is based on the campus of the University of California, Davis, where the chronic crowding extends far beyond the campus.

The complaints might have some validity if this stretch were merely a local commuter route, but it isn’t. Interstate 80 is one of the nation’s most important transcontinental arteries, running 2,901 miles from San Francisco to the New York City metropolitan area, with much of its route in the western states following the immigrant trails of the 19th century.

The only other east-west interstates are hundreds of miles to the north or hundreds of miles to the south. That makes I-80 an extremely important route for interstate cargo, a fact that is clear to anyone who shares the highway with an endless stream of big trucks.

Additionally, there are no alternate routes because the eastern portion of the freeway is a causeway over a swampy area that is home to wildlife and often floods during the winter and spring months. Water is diverted to the Sacramento River “Yolo Bypass” as a key element of the Sacramento region’s flood protection system.

Simply put, trucks and cars must use I-80 between Sacramento and the Bay Area or not at all. The idea that widening will increase traffic is ridiculous: the traffic will be there anyway because it has nowhere else to go.

“We are experiencing some of the worst congestion in California seven days a week,” Autumn Bernstein, executive director of the Yolo Transportation District, told the LA Times. “We have more than five hours of gridlocked traffic every afternoon eastbound and (in) Davis.”