Car-centric California is on its way to outlawing the construction of new freeway lanes in most of the state, instead diverting billions of tax dollars toward green projects to achieve racial equality and climate goals.
A bill passed by the Assembly Transportation Committee this week targets areas that have a lower standard of living on the Healthy Places Index, which measures standards such as healthcare, housing, and education. Only the San Francisco Bay area, Sacramento, and most coastal communities rated highly.
Bill author Cristina Garcia, a Los Angeles Democrat, says creating new freeways is racist because it displaces low-income residents from their homes. These residents must live in those areas because it’s what they can afford, Garcia said in the committee hearing Monday.
The bill appears to target Los Angeles, where 3 million vehicles a day are on the freeways.
The analysis of A.B. 1778 says it is “addressing inequities through environmental justice” because freeways were mapped through black and brown communities after WWII. Minorities are exposed to more air pollution caused by vehicles than white Californians, with Los Angeles County 250% higher than the San Francisco Bay area.
“It is outrageous and feels criminal to use state resources to choke and displace communities like mine when the data and research clearly show that this practice is just another example of the systemic racism that is normalized in our policies and practices,” Garcia stated in the analysis.
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“Freeway expansion projects are sold as a means to reduce congestion, however research shows us that they increase congestion by encouraging more driving, thus increasing harmful emission,” she said. “Data also shows that these projects also tend to displace low-income communities of color who are already housing insecure.”
Although the bill passed 8-3 along party lines, it was not supported by two Democratic committee members who abstained. Their constituents have benefited from the state’s largest ongoing freeway widening project that started at the Long Beach border and will end in southern Orange County.
The $2 billion widening of the I-405 freeway started in 2018 and will take another two years to complete. It was funded mostly by a half-cent sales tax increase approved by Orange County voters and will create 16 new lane miles on a freeway that is among the most congested in the nation.
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State taxes contributed $90 million to the project, and two committee members from that area wondered if it would be completed if the bill becomes law. Garcia wasn’t aware of these details when questioned by Democrat Tom Daly, whose district benefits from it.
His constituents, who are in the minority group identified in the bill, overwhelmingly supported improvements on a different freeway as well. Daly said the state already has pollution control law, then asked, “What are the specifics for folks that they are promised something and reneged?”
“I don’t know if they were promised anything,” Garcia responded.
Republican Laurie Davies, representing an area near the border of Orange and San Diego counties, wondered what would happen to the local taxes already collected for the construction.
“One size doesn’t fit all,” she said. “My district that I represent, we don’t have an area for rail. It isn’t like the big cities.”
More than $30 billion is spent annually in federal, state, and local taxes for California’s transportation system, including the controversial 51-cent gas tax. While the gas tax is supposed to be reserved for freeway upkeep and not expansion, California voters have historically passed increases for freeway and on-ramp expansion.
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Several projects in Los Angeles have lingered for decades as congestion steadily gets worse. Besides a two-hour commute to traverse 30 miles of Los Angeles, cars are routinely backed up on side streets waiting through several traffic light rotations before entering onramps.
