COMMUNITY COMMENTARY: Protect coast from freeway expansion

COMMUNITY COMMENTARY: Protect coast from freeway expansion

by Mindy Martin

Courtesy of The Coast News Group

  Coast News Group

I recently attended a meeting organized by citizens and the Sierra Club regarding proposed expansions to the 5 freeway. I am embarrassed to say that, before this meeting, I was largely unaware of this project. It was no secret. This publication has run a few stories. The city councils have been mulling it over for a while now. And, of course, citizens groups have already organized an opposition! Yet, even though I live less than a mile west of the freeway in Oceanside, I had no idea about the monstronsity Caltrans is planning.

A recent transplant from the East Coast, I like to joke that the state of California finds itself in such a mess because the weather and the views are so lovely that people just don’t care about politics. I’m beginning to see that there is some truth to that, and I fell into the trap. I volunteer, but it occurs to me now that I only get involved with feel-good projects. Like so many people, I’m turned off by the tenor of local politics and exhausted by what seems to be a wildly inefficient process. Like so many other people, I’ve been leaving the work, the oversight and the standing up to someone else.

Well, not any longer. After listening to the presentation and doing some thinking and research of my own, I’ve come to the following conclusions:

First, the Sierra Club, like Caltrans, has a bias. It also seems clear that some of the citizens organizing the meeting are something shy of moderate. I strongly support conservationist causes, too. All fine, but this is not merely an environmental issue; it is a community issue. One need not be an environmentalist to acknowledge the aesthetic value of the coastal and lagoon views. Obscuring those assets with concrete sound walls is a bad idea. One need not be an environmentalist to be concerned about construction over the lagoons, especially given the 40-year completion horizon. And, one need not be an environmentalist to realize that a freeway the size of the 15 will bring noise and traffic that will forever transform the beach cities.

Second, everything I read and my own intuition suggests that more lanes only encourage more people to drive. And, once the congestion returns (if you’re not convinced that it returns, take a trip up to L.A.), we have the same traffic and the same poor public transit system — with no money for improvements. A $4.1 billion freeway project surely saps resources and removes the immediate incentive to develop transit and/or explore innovative alternatives to congestion problems, like getting freight off the freeway or re-routing trucks during rush hour. Right now, we have a fantastic train that is almost entirely useless, and prohibitively expensive, for commuting. Perhaps, we could use a fraction of these dollars to work on that?

Finally, we cannot rely on our elected officials to handle this for us. Since the meeting took place in Carlsbad, two Carlsbad mayoral candidates, both of whom presently serve as

councilmen, attended. Keith Blackburn said he had yet to take a position on the expansion. There is a lot of information, he said, and he just hadn’t made up his mind. Initially, Matt Hall was similarly noncommittal. But, as he explained that this was very complicated, that council had been reviewing this for years, I leapt to my feet with the obvious follow-up. “How, then, can you have no position?” Ultimately, he said he supported some expansion, though not the whole enchilada. I wondered if he held back because the election was so close or because he sensed that it was a tough room.

I’m sure these are good men. But their job is to juggle interests, and the citizens’ are just one among many. The bottom line is that we cannot assume that our representatives know what we want or share our views. We have to tell them, demand action and go around them when necessary.

Join your neighbors Citizens Against Freeway Expansion on Facebook and I-5 Plague website at www.i-5plague.com/. Both have instructions to submit comments/questions. The deadline in Nov. 22.

Mindy Martin is an Oceanside resident.

Read more: Coast News Group - COMMUNITY COMMENTARY Protect coast from freeway expansion

Opinion: Alternatives to the Widening of Interstate 5

A member of Citizens Against Freeway Expansion gives his take on the widening of I-5.

By Steve Goetsch | Email the author | October 31, 2010

Jerome Stocks recently expressed his opinion about the widening of I-5 on Encinitas Patch. In reply, I would like to discuss the first of five alternatives, the one that CalTrans never discusses: the No-Build option.

The proposed expansion of I-5 has exploded in size and cost from the original project approved by SANDAG in 2000, which was projected to cost $516 million, cover 20 miles and last 13 years. The current Caltrans proposal is projected to cost $3.5 billion to $4.5 billion, cover 27 miles and last up to 40 years.

More importantly, SANDAG stated emphatically at that time (as former Solana Beach Mayor Marion Dodson has repeated for 10 years) that there was to be "no taking of private property." When Caltrans Manager Arturo Jacobo was questioned about this contradiction at a June 2010 Solana Beach City Council meeting, he replied that with the present Caltrans proposal it was not possible to avoid taking private parcels.

A Caltrans document (see PDF) lists up to 230 homes or businesses that could be "partially acquired" and up to 36 parcels that could be "fully acquired." Six homeowners in Solana Beach have already received notices that Caltrans wants to acquire their property by eminent domain and as many as five parcels could be condemned in Encinitas.
                         

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Will the proposed expansion of I-5 relieve traffic congestion? The Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A & M University, which Caltrans helps to subsidize, states bluntly in its annual report on Urban Mobility: "You can't build your way out of congestion." After the proposed 40-year expansion program, it is doubtful that traffic would run smoothly for more than five years. Why? Because a freely running freeway attracts traffic from other routes of transportation, thus clogging itself—a major new freeway or freeway expansion attracts more development, which adds more traffic. In plain English, expansion doesn't solve the problem.

What are the alternatives? Mass transit is something the San Diego region has barely explored. Los Angeles, home of more freeways per square mile than any other city in the world—and the nation's worst congestion—is embarking on a crash program to rebuild the light rail system the city foolishly dismantled in the 1950s.  A trolley line is now scheduled to be built from downtown San Diego to the UC San Diego campus and the UTC shopping center. It should be extended all the way to Oceanside.

Unfortunately, trolley lines cannot share the tracks with passenger or freight trains due to federal safety laws. The heavy truck traffic from San Ysidro transiting our county could and should be diverted to freight trains or barges to remove the slow-moving, highly polluting and very dangerous monster trucks from our freeways. Germany has banned such heavy trucks from their highways except at night, which would also lessen the congestion at rush hour.

Finally, some countries are beginning to charge drivers by the total number of miles they drive each day. Some also charge extra for entering heavily congested areas during weekdays, as the Conservative Mayor of London, England, has already done.

The 800-pound gorilla in the room is growth. Why is San Diego County the only California coastal county that does not have a Slow Growth or No Growth law in place? Have we ever had a referendum on the continuation of decades of rapid growth? These  factors should all be considered when discussing the proposed I-5 expansion.

Steve Goetsch is chairman of the Solana Beach Public Safety Commission and the Solana Beach Clean and Green Committee. He works as a medical physicist at the San Diego Gamma Knife Center, assisting neurosurgeons and radiation oncologists in treatment of patients with brain tumors. He also teaches graduate students in medical physics at San Diego State University.