SANTA CRUZ – Though the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission recently got good news around part of its Highway 1 Auxiliary Lane and Bus-on-Shoulder project in the form of a state grant, it may hit a new obstacle with the effort in early 2022 — a lawsuit.
The Campaign for Sustainable Transportation and the local chapter of the Sierra Club are suing Caltrans for certifying the final environmental impact report (EIR) put together by RTC and a contractor that circulated in January 2019. This is the second time The Campaign for Sustainable Transportation has sued Caltrans in regard to an EIR; the first time it sued with the Sierra Club on board as a member of the coalition over the Soquel/Morrissey Auxiliary Lane project completed in 2013.
Rick Longinotti, the co-chair of the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation, said the lawsuit was filed within 30 days of the final report being released but that proceedings had been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He has been told by attorneys that the civil trial on the matter will begin in January 2022.
“There are limited tools available to the public when it comes to policy,” Longinotti said. “One thing we can do is focus on the EIR. There is no enforcement of (the California Environmental Quality Act) other than lawsuits. Agencies can create a bogus EIR and if no one sues you, it’s legitimate.”
Complaints listed
According to the petitioners’ opening brief of the complaint, the organizations feel the EIR was inadequate due to its lack of consideration of greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental contaminants in addition to possible “environmentally superior” alternatives. This, Longinotti explained to the Sentinel Wednesday, could have been weighing transit on the rail corridor, express buses in their own lane or adding to the frequency of buses available on nearby Soquel Drive.
“There was the addition of HOV lanes, or doubling the width of the highway. There was an option called TSM, which is just auxiliary lanes and ramp meters. Then there was a no-build alternative,” Longinotti said. “There were no transit alternatives examined by the EIR.”
The plaintiffs also have a bone to pick with Caltrans’ alleged decision to add significant additional analysis to the EIR in its final draft form that they feel still did not meet the requirements as dictated by CEQA. The alternative selected in the final EIR, the HOV lane option, was granted without proper baseline as the draft EIR allegedly included traffic data from as far back as 2001.
Generally, Longinotti said, adding an HOV lane both ways only has short-term advantages for the community.
“It hasn’t panned out in terms of the experiences we have from Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara counties. Transportation researchers have found there’s a short window of time in which, if you’ve added a lane, it relieves congestion,” Longinotti said. “It’s between five and ten years when you experience re-congestion.”
Re-congestion happens for several reasons, Longinotti explained, including the fact that when the highway is more open people will make different decisions around their travel plans. For example, if someone that works in Silicon Valley sees in the first few years that traffic has lessened, they may consider moving here and adding to the total county population. That’s another car on the road past the relief stage, he said. The phenomenon is called induced demand or induced travel.
“Caltrans’s trick is that (they say) widening reduces greenhouse gas because cars are going to flow faster. If they can go 40 mph rather than 10 mph, they burn out less gas and are more efficient. But if the relief is short-lived, that’s bogus,” he said.
Anticipated success
Longinotti said that he expects to win the case in front of a judge in Sacramento and when he does, he wants RTC to have “a day of reckoning” composed of community meetings with voters to discuss that highway expansion is allegedly not going to benefit them in the long run — especially voters in Watsonville and Aptos that regularly see long commute times.
“RTC members know this, and they can’t plead ignorance anymore,” Longinotti said before referencing the Innovators in Transportation Speaker Series in 2018. “Three out of the five speakers talked about induced travel and how widening highways doesn’t reduce congestion for long.”
A representative of the RTC indicated Friday that Longinotti shouldn’t be so sure of his victory.
“The RTC has confidence that the EIR is complete, the lawsuit will be dismissed, and our community will not be deprived of all of these benefits,” the RTC’s Communications Specialist Shannon Munz said.
Longinotti said he feels that while the state is pulling away from the idea of highway widening, RTC has been stuck on it. The failure of Measure J in 2004, which would have allocated two-thirds of the tax money to widen the highway, is proof voters don’t support the concept, he said.
“Everyone agrees on the goal of expanding access to everybody,” the county resident said. “We can differ on our strategies but when you’re so attached to one strategy, such as highway expansion … they’ve been attached for over 20 years (and have) lost sight of meeting the goal.”
Munz disagreed, adding that the auxiliary lane and bus-on-shoulder project is a component of a larger multi-modal project meant to improve transit time for buses, reduce cut-through traffic on local streets and improve bicycle safety among other goals. So far the agency has secured $107 million to build it and believes that is because of its alignment with state strategies.
“This project is consistent with the State’s climate goals and social equity policies, which is why the California Transportation Commission decided to fund this transformative project,” Munz said.
A Caltrans representative said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.