Earlier this month, the California Transportation Commission (CTC) approved allocations for a bevy of projects programmed in four SB 1-supported programs. As Streetsblog describes, many of those projects, which were brought to the Commissioners by CTC staff, are emblematic of discredited highway expansion planning. Even in some cases in which the projects provide transit options, those options are often an afterthought and will not be implemented in such a way as to be competitive with other uses on the corridor.

We are concerned that current guidelines for these programs are not inducing applications that are transformative enough to meaningfully change the trajectory of California’s auto-dependency, though we are heartened that Commissioners spoke to the same problems. We intend to work with the CTC to ensure that all future cycles of SB 1 programs have more stringent requirements to minimize auto capacity expansions.