Adding lanes to existing highways or building new ones increases congestion, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions while taking money away from needed roadway maintenance, transit, walking and biking investments. California must stop expanding highways.
Every highway expansion, every extension, or new highway encourages more driving, more emissions, more pollution, and more congestion. Our state can’t meet climate goals and protect residents from the devastating effects of climate-fueled disasters while continuing to prioritize driving.
When buses and trains are clean, safe, reliable, and frequent, public transit is an appealing alternative to the hassle of driving. It’s also a way to get around with a much smaller carbon footprint, and it reduces congestion.
When communities have safe, separated bike lanes, protected intersections, well-maintained sidewalks, and lower driving speeds, more people choose to get around by biking or walking. Active transportation reduces vehicle miles traveled and enhances the health of individuals and neighborhoods.
California can’t afford to build one more highway.
Walking, rolling, and taking transit are better for the environment and for our health. The solution to gridlock is better bikeways, safer intersections, traffic calming, reliable public transit, and other measures that make it safer and more appealing to get around by bike, walking, or taking transit.
When we invest in dense, affordable housing close to public transportation, it provides more than homes for Bay Area residents. Infill housing puts people close to the destinations they go to every day: work, school, services, shopping, and more. And, as Transform’s analysis showed, investing in housing is also a powerful way to reduce emissions and reverse climate change.
The true costs of driving — congestion, pollution, collisions, etc. — are not captured in existing taxes and fees. This incentivizes driving. By charging drivers based on how many miles they drive or based on their contribution to congestion, road pricing can be a powerful tool to simultaneously reduce demand during peak times, make more efficient use of infrastructure, and create a new source of funding for more equitable transportation solutions.
Each year, extreme weather and climate-related disasters take a bigger toll on our state, yet our transportation budget continues to fund expanded highway capacity, baking in warming for decades to come. We can’t continue the transportation policies and priorities of the past without destroying our future.
Transform has a plan. We understand the shifts our state needs to make in transportation spending to shift Californians from single-occupancy vehicles to public transit, biking, and walking. With a strong coalition of environmental, social justice, and active transportation advocates, we work to stop highway expansion and secure investments in our clean transportation future.
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