There is a longstanding double standard in California infrastructure planning. Freeway widening projects are simply accepted, even though their costs are enormous, even though they usually fail to improve travel conditions, and even though they have significant impacts on communities. I’ve argued before that in the case I’m most familiar with, the widening of Interstate 5 in Orange County in the late 1980s/early 1990s, caused impacts the community found it could live with. But the eminent domain was much more significant than anything contemplated under HSR on the Peninsula, for example.

Few Californians bat an eye at the multibillion dollar costs of these freeway projects But when it comes to high speed rail, every dollar is scrutinzed, every projected rider is closely examined, any uncertainty, any problem, any discrepancy is seen as a sign the project is a horrible wasteful boondoggle that will render the Peninsula uninhabitable and destroy California’s budget and economy.

The hypocrisy stems not from any hard numbers or facts, but from a basic bias. Many Californians are trained to see freeways as necessary – so vital that we don’t even need to ask any basic questions about their value.

Well, it’s time we started. There’s a huge freeway widening project being proposed in San Diego County that strikes me as a true boondoggle – a colossal waste of money that will never be recovered, throwing good money after bad on a facility that increases our dependence on oil, while alternatives can be funded for a fraction of the cost.

The project is a massive six-lane widening of Interstate 5 on a nearly 20-mile stretch between Oceanside and La Jolla. Much of this would overlay a major widening project just north of the 5/805 “Merge” that was done about 10 years ago. Here’s the overview:

Interstate 5 would grow by as many as six lanes — including a roadway-within-a-roadway for car pools, buses and toll-paying solo drivers — under a plan crafted by transportation officials.

Four lanes would be built along the middle of the freeway between La Jolla Village Drive and north Oceanside, similar to the express-lane network on Interstate 15. Two conventional lanes could be added to the regular segment of the coastal freeway as well.

Caltrans plans to release an environmental study on the project as soon as late June and then stage a series of public hearings. Cost estimates for the expansion range from $3.3 billion to $4.5 billion.

The size and cost of this project is jaw-dropping. It would resemble the massive reconstruction of Interstate 5 done in Orange County, started in 1989 and is nearing completion over 20 years later in Buena Park near the LA/OC line. Caltrans is confident that the ridership is there:

Daily traffic on the 30-mile stretch between San Diego and Oceanside averages 700,000 vehicles, from short hops to long-distance commutes. Caltrans expects that figure to swell to a million cars by 2030.

Has anyone examined these projections? Has Senator Alan Lowenthal determined whether they pass his smell test? Has Elizabeth Alexis performed her in-depth econometric analysis? Has the State Auditor determined whether there’s enough funding, and if not, when can we expect her breathless “oh my god the sky is falling this project is DOOOOOOMED!!!” report on the San Diego County I-5 boondoggle?

I’m not asking those questions to be snarky. For example, this proposal is not fully funded:

Half the money needed for construction would come from TransNet sales tax revenue. SANDAG wants to secure the rest from state and federal sources.

The exact cost hinges on the number of lanes built and the layout. Caltrans officials say the soon-to-be-released environmental study will lay out four options.

This is very similar to the situation facing HSR. It’s why the State Auditor published her misleading and flawed report saying the HSR project has a funding problem. So either we can expect her to publish a similar report slamming this proposal, or we’re going to have to ask some very tough and uncomfortable questions of the State Auditor about the biases that went into the HSR report.

As for Sen. Lowenthal, if Caltrans is going to ask the state to fund this, surely he would want to ensure that the numbers pan out. After all, he’s demanding the same of the HSR project.

Further, the massive cost is intended to be paid partly through tolls, and that is looking shaky:

Recent U.S. Census figures show that the percentage of commuters in the county who carpool or vanpool has dropped to 13 percent from 15 percent in 2000. SANDAG officials have reported that traffic counts on I-15, including the FasTrak lanes, have dipped during the recession — a trend that other toll road operators have also noted.

The drop in traffic has raised questions about whether toll roads or high-occupancy lanes are worth building, but transportation planners say they will eventually pay off, once the economy fully rebounds.

Whereas we have a huge pile of evidence from around the world showing HSR meets its ridership projects and pays its own operating costs, we also have plenty of evidence from here in California indicating that tolling doesn’t quite work as a method of funding new lanes. In the 1990s a private contractor built toll carpool lanes in the 91 freeway’s most heavily trafficked portion, between the 55 freeway in Anaheim and the 71 freeway in Corona. If you’ve ever been caught in traffic here, you know this is one of the epic traffic jams in all California. But the 91 toll lanes failed to turn a profit, and the Orange County Transportation Authority had to bail them out and take over the system. The other toll roads in Orange County aren’t faring much better.

Surely you’d think those experiences would lead the HSR critics to flock to the I-5 project and run their fine-toothed combs through the project. So far, I’m not seeing that happen. Why not?

The answer ought to be obvious. It’s not about the accuracy of ridership projections, or about finances, or about benefit to the community at all. HSR is being attacked because people cannot bring themselves to accept the fact that California cannot have broadly shared economic prosperity in the 21st century without fast passenger trains. HSR has much, much less impact on its communities than this insane freeway project will have, but HSR is the one getting all the controversy while this wacko boondoggle skates on by.

The difference is that HSR critics see freeways as perfectly normal and legitimate things, and cannot imagine a world where they are not the primary means of travel. They see passenger rail as optional, as a toy, as a gimmick, as something designed by people who, for whatever unknown reason, are bent on destroying their communities.

It’s not about the numbers at all. It’s about an unwillingness to part with preconceived notions.

Importantly, there is an alternative to this costly I-5 project. And it’s passenger rail:

“Six new freeway lanes?” San Diego Councilman Todd Gloria wrote on Twitter. “No thanks. Prefer $ be used to extend trolley & bike lanes.” …

The San Diego Association of Governments and other agencies are also talking about major improvements to the coastal rail line. Transit officials continue to seek federal funds to complete the construction of a second set of tracks and on related improvements. The estimated cost: $1.3 billion.

Only parts of the route are currently double-tracked — and that severely inhibits operations. Once a second rail line is complete, that opens the door to more Amtrak and Coaster commuter train runs, officials say.

Other local residents understand the need for building light rail and commuter rail instead of spending billions more on yet another I-5 widening project:

That is just amazing. Three years after widening Interstate 5 to be the widest roadway in America we need to do it again? I don’t think so.

Really, with thousands of gallons of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico every day, with two wars stemming directly from the “need” for more oil, with nuclear problems in the Mideast because of, yes, oil, with global warming threatening in particular those on the immediate coastline, it’s still “let’s build more roadway for billions of dollars”?

Let’s get off this oil dependency. Come on, people, build a light rail-based system that works to move us, not more cement.

DOUGLAS LAPPI
Del Mar

Another resident, this time in Solana Beach, had a similar take back in January when this project first arose:

It is hard to know where to begin the objections that many of us have to both of these proposed projects, but let me try:

1) You cannot escape gridlock by “pouring more concrete.” Just look at Los Angeles.

2) Residents living near the present freeway are assaulted by noise and air pollution that I believe violates present California and U.S. EPA limits.

3) Jack Hegenauer and the Clean and Green team of Solana Beach have made the assessment that 60 percent of the greenhouse gases generated in our city come from traffic on I-5, which Caltrans wants to expand by 50 percent, in violation of state law AB232.

4) Twenty years of construction in the North County will result in 20 years of gridlock: Is this all for the sake of our descendants?

5) Kevin Costner had it right, “If you build it, they will come!” Every freeway expansion in world history has led to increases of traffic, leaving things no better off.

Please join with me, with members of PLAGUE and all clear-thinking citizens in opposing this grotesque expansion of our freeways. It is time to get smarter about transportation and not rely on thinking from the 1950s.

If $1.3 billion were spent on double-tracking the Coaster, and $1.2 billion spent on extending the SD Trolley to UCSD and University Towne Centre, you’d be able to take a LOT of traffic off of I-5 and provide capacity to handle new growth without having to spend $3 to $4 billion on this freeway widening project.

Most importantly, you’d be spending money on building a transportation system that reduces, not increases, our dependence on oil. A system that can be powered by renewable energy (if you electrified the Coaster track, that is) and reduce pollution and carbon emissions. Finally, if you add in HSR along the I-15 corridor to downtown SD, you provide yet another option for alternative travel on the key north-south corridors in San Diego County.

It’s good to see that these questions are being asked by people in San Diego County. But where are the rest of the transportation critics? Those who are so quick to interrogate the HSR project ought to be right there on Caltrans about this true boondoggle. Or else we might start wondering what’s really driving their unfair and often unwarranted criticism of HSR.