Editor's Note: The views and opinions expressed in all blog posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Redwood City Pulse or its staff.
The 101 Express Lane project was never going to work. For years, transportation researchers have been saying that highway widening might not be working and often creates more problems and more pollution. Katy Freeway (I-10) in Houston is the widest freeway in the world and also polluting proof that widening never works, not even with carpool lanes.
In fact, carpool lanes are known to make traffic worse with something called the HOV Paradox: "The more effective an HOV lane is, the less effective an HOV lane is."
Basically, if it is not a bus lane, the HOV lane might do more harm than good. The Board of the SMC Express Lanes Joint Powers Authority (SMCEL JPA), with the help of the Board of the SMC Transportation Authority (SMC TA), pretty much raised air pollution and carbon emissions by another 25% for Equity Focus Areas along the corridor, something they promised they wouldn't do anymore.
How do you salvage a failed Big Car project?
So when your big car project is increasing congestion, air pollution, health problems and health care costs – and especially for Communities of Concern (CoC) – what do you do to salvage it?
First, you give yourself an Environmental Award, and then you rebrand your highway widening as a "Transportation Equity Project." So SMCEL JPA and SMC TA came up with the idea of taking $600k per year and re-investing that via an Equity Program. Some of the desired outcomes for this Pilot Equity Program were:
- Goal 1: Strategies to benefit underserved communities who live near
- Goal 2: programs reflect input from historically marginalized communities
- Goal 3: supports the Express Lane benefits and goals (e.g., travel time)
- Goal 4: Encourage mode shift to high-occupancy modes
- Goal 5: Improve the Active Transportation network adjacent to the corridor
The project team also came up with four alternatives for this program:
- Alternative 1: encourage some CoCs to use the express lanes by driving for free
- Alternative 2: encourage some CoCs to use Caltrain and SamTrans
- Alternative 3: construct walking/biking infrastructure in CoCs
- Alternative 4: encourage some CoCs to carpool more
It's not that complicated. There is really only one correct answer here. "Transportation Equity" is about people that don't have cars. Highway widening hurts all people in "historically disadvantaged neighborhoods" that are close to the pollution coming from these additional lanes. So, any Equity program must benefit the whole neighborhood, especially residents who don't drive. Only Alternative 3 fits that bill, as only that alternative would help to re-connect these marginalized neighborhoods that are disconnected by the highway. The project spreadsheet speaks volumes; no other alternative comes even close.
So, it was rather surprising that the project leadership team chose Alternative 1 instead. Alternative 1 clearly violates program goals 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, which makes it the worst of the four. But the thinking of the board might have been that if poor people get to participate in the creation of more air pollution, more noise pollution, more microplastics, and worse health outcomes for their own disadvantaged neighborhoods … they can hardly complain about it, can they? So, over 1,500 underserved recipients of the funding have been turned into ambassadors and co-conspirators of this highway widening.
Confession and Redemption Time
Just after a few months, the San Mateo County Transportation Authority (SMC TA) also found out that the project did not fix congestion and that the Express Lanes were a $600,000,000 mistake: "San Mateo County officials are seeking public feedback on how to reduce congestion and improve mobility along the U.S. Highway 101 corridor."
They also seem to indicate that Alternative 1 was the wrong choice: "The project aims to find solutions beyond highway infrastructure planning and includes studies and recommendations relating to travel by foot, car, transit, bike, scooter, and ferry." Therefore, the project team is now looking for input for bike/ped projects they missed the first time around. The Confession and Redemption Project runs under project name 101 Connect and will create a planning document called Active 101. With cool project names like these, what could go wrong?
Did SMC EL and SMC TA really see the light?
Unfortunately, they did not. They are preparing the residents just for the next phase in the roll-out of another highway widening. And they fell into $400,000 of funding provided by Caltrans and are quickly taking credit for it. It's a very cheap way to greenwash the Express Lanes just a little more.
All in all, SMC EL JPA and SMC TA will spend an estimated $1,200,000 on a few miles of HOT lanes, while giving Caltrans' $0.45 million might go to a consulting company to give us yet another study to research if 'sharrows' are still not better than bike lanes.
"The $400,156 grant will be combined with $51,844 in Measure A funds to create the Active 101 planning document to help identify and prioritize mobility projects."
Holly Pedestrian Bridge
If the board of SMC TA was really serious about Project 101 Connect, the $400,000 would have come from their own budget, and it would have been far more. Connection projects like Holly Street or Hillsdale Blvd have been dangled in front of residents for many, many years now. How about SMC TA taking just 2% of the funding for their big car projects and doing something good instead? Why not put the money into these two last-mile projects instead and fulfill old promises at the same time? SMC TA indirectly put the blame on San Carlos for not being willing to finish the bridge after the SR-101 project undid the original plans. But why would San Carlos or San Mateo be in charge of funding something SMCEL JPA and SMC TA messed up in the first place? SMC TA is the agency that is spreading around funding for big car projects like Woodside Interchange, Grade Separation, Ferry Service, etc. – how about doing a few ADA projects for people without cars instead? Why not also transform the Dumbarton Railroad Corridor into a bike/ped project since no railroad will ever be running there?
An almost insulting $450,000 for ped/bike project plans tells us that there are not enough Active Transportation Friends (ATFs) on these boards. So, who is currently in charge of providing real Transportation Equity for Priority Focus Areas via project document Active 101?
- Emily Beach, Rico E. Medina, Carlos Romero, Alicia Aguirre, Gina Papan, Michael Salazar, Mima Crume for SMCEL JPA.
- Emily Beach, Rico E. Medina, Carlos Romero, Noelia Corzo, Ray Mueller, Julia Mates, Mark Nagales for SMC TA.
More Information
- Reducing Congestion – Katy didn't
- HOV Toll (HOT) lanes
- How Carpool Lanes Failed America
- NPR: A Brief History Of How Racism Shaped Interstate Highways
- Why are so many drivers cheating in car pool lanes?
- Induced Demand
