All are on back burner; business as usual on the roadways.
Roads are an essential piece of our culture- linking people, goods and services. No sane individual could propose not to have roads. But the blind development of infrastructures designed for the perpetuation of yesterday’s problems is not a step in the right direction.
Who would believe that the endless lane additions and overpass overhauls, commuters stuck at zero miles an hour, toxic envelopes of fumes- all continue to be a part of our unsustainable future?
But they do. Like the headline says, road construction is booming. It is one of the burgeoning sectors in our economy. The Caltrans Economic Recovery Website states “Obama and Congress recognized that investment in transportation infrastructure” (predominantly roads) “is one of the best ways to create and sustain jobs and leave a legacy to support…generations to come.” Re-paving the country may indeed leave a legacy, but science predicts we will not have very many more ‘generations to come’.
Building roads, it appears, is one of our de facto priorities, and here lies the dichotomy: Obama Administration Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood stated in July that we “must implement policies and programs that reduce vehicle miles driven.” Global science dictates we reduce the number of vehicles on the roads. But our efforts and spending are actually for just the opposite, with no end in sight. State and federal cost breakdowns indicate current and future spending for roads outpacing other forms of ground transport by at least 3-to-1, and actual spending ratios are much higher.
We are familiar with the Einstein quote, “We cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.” Nor can we simultaneously prevent and prepare for more cars on more roads. But that is what we are doing.
Why? One reason is jobs. The LA Times reported that the White House estimates 11,000 jobs per billion spent on highway work. In the spirit of Roosevelt’s New Deal, Obama needs to put people to work fast. But in the face of carbon emissions data and the global environmental crisis, taking a page from the New Deal (remember this was three-quarters of a century ago and long before global warming concerns) does not represent the kind of ideology put forth in the ‘campaign for change.’ Obama spoke of change for the future, not stepping back 75 years into the past. We’ve heard the cliché, ‘if we don’t learn from the past we are doomed to repeat it.’ In this case that is exactly what we are in the process of doing.
The California Department of Transportation (CDT) says California has been awarded $1.8 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARA) funds for 478 highway and local streets projects. This is in addition to all non-ARA appropriated funds for roads projects.
This country and its citizens need and deserve safe roads and workers need to be paid to build and maintain them. But the future script of this country and the rest of the world can’t be the endless building of new roads and widening of existing ones to make way for more and more cars and trucks. This is not new information. Governments and scientists alike have agreed that more cars are not the way to go. But the talk does not correlate with the actions.
Since June 11 the CDC has announced over $400 million for road projects. $134 million of that is allocated for land purchase for future road projects. In addition to these funds, Governor Schwarzenegger told us a month before about the whopping $1 billion in funds to widen the I-405 in LA. Every penny of these funds is for the purpose of accommodating more cars.
Obama has talked of change and moving the nation forward. He spoke of progressive strategies for our future. So far with regard to ‘implementing policies and programs that reduce vehicle miles driven,’ as his administration’s transportation secretary professes- the data is showing strategies of the past and steps moving our nation backward. As the weeks and months tick by, we the people still await the signs of a change for the future. The President can’t be expected to correct or reverse a century’s worth of an economy and infrastructure designed for the automobile. But is it reasonable to expect that the leader of the free world begins to point us in the right direction?