BAY AREA: A call for more highways--Group argues region's focus on mass transit is flawed

Afternoon traffic along I-880 freeway through Oakland btween Davis St. and Marina. San Francisco Chronicle photo.

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Reason Foundation is pushing the road-building agenda on northern California.

Focusing on the vehicle, rather than moving people and overall mobility, is the same mistake that transportation planners have been making for 50 years. More roads got us to the point where we are at today. The Reason Foundation can release a report, but as long as it ignores reality, and looks to more roads--albeit tolled--as a "solution" nothing will be solved. Where is the region in the world that has constructed "enough" roads to eliminate congestion?

How do we stop the insanity?

Well, according to the Reason Foundation, it's toll roads and dedicated truck lanes:

But the region can avoid emulating L.A.'s tangled traffic and accommodate expected popul,ation growth, the group behind the study says, with a major expansion of the Bay Area's road and highway system -- including a network of toll lanes as well as dedicated truck lanes between the East Bay and the San Joaquin Valley.

For me, it would be transportation demand management, compact development, and eliminating free parking privileges, certainly for work and school. As long as land use development is disconnected from transportation planning, and as long as building and zoning regulations focus on the provision of parking rather than reducing driving, insane policy recommendations will continue to move forward.

Insane thinking includes:

-- Spending billions to build a bridge over the Potomac but arguing that adding accommodations for bicyclists will degrade the environment.
-- Using federal transportation monies to create a toll road in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties that won't reduce congestion and won't be a "freeway." Rather than spend transportation money on such, just have the private sector do it, if a toll road is all that great.
-- Continuing to fight denser development around extant transportation assets.
-- Continuing regional land use and transportation planning paradigms that support deconcentration and sprawl and new construction rather than reducing overall land use and revitalization of extant areas.

And groups like the "Reason" Foundation and the Heritage Foundation continue to support the insanity.

Index Keywords: mobility