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Ineffective, Expensive, Unjust
For decades, widening roadways has been the go-to approach to tackling traffic congestion, and time after time, that approach has failed. Below are just a few of the major impacts of roadway widening.
Widening Makes traffic worse
Widening Makes traffic worse
If project planners add a lane to the freeway, even carpool or toll lane, they will increase vehicle miles traveled across our region by at least 145.3 million miles per year*.
That's the same as a car crossing the Golden Gate 230,000 times, or circling the globe 16 times EVERY DAY.
Though widening roads may look like a reasonable solution to traffic, decades of research has shown that adding any kind of lanes to roadways actually causes more people to drive more often. This effect is called induced demand. To learn more about induced demand, check out the CA Department of Transportation's own overview: Rethinking How We Build So Californians Can Drive Less.
*Source: NCST Induced Travel Calculator included in CA Department of Transportation's flagship Environmental Impact Analysis Framework
Help us tell representatives to stop pushing bad projects and actually solve the problem:
Widening wastes hundreds of Millions of dollars
Widening wastes hundreds of Millions of dollars
Adding lanes to the freeway will cost hundreds of millions of dollars just to make the problem worse. That's money that could instead go to real solutions like meaningful investment in transit, major improvements to the walkability and bikeabililty of our communities, and a fix-it-first approach to existing roads that quickly tackles issues like poor signage and potholes.
Join us in telling representatives to stop wasting money and invest in real solutions:
Widening harms communities
Widening harms communities
The census tract surrounding the project area has one of the highest pollution burdens in our state. - CalEnviroscreen 4.0
Highways may seem like a neutral part of life, they're not as innocent as they at first appear. Built throughout the Jim Crow era, highways were used as a tool to reinforce segregation. These roads cut through black and brown neighborhoods, displacing more than a million people, devastating communities, and causing harm that continues to this day.
"No matter how people have come to live around highways, they face ongoing negative physical and psychological impacts. Highways drive disinvestment, create unhealthy and toxic places to live, and inflict traffic violence on surrounding communities."
- Report: Freeways Without Futures, Congress for the New Urbanism
The area around the 101 project site is already one of the hardest hit by pollution in our state. It also includes some of the Bay Area’s oldest Equity Priority Communities, including Downtown South San Francisco, Bayshore, the Bayview, and Visitacion Valley. These neighborhoods meet specific thresholds of people of color, people below the poverty line, and zero-vehicle households that cannot take advantage of car access from freeways.
The area around the project is designated as an Equity Priority Community by the Metropolitan Transit Commission.
Recently, other Caltrans districts have been taking promising steps to begin reversing the harm to neighborhoods affected by highways. Unfortunately, our local Caltrans district is still pushing projects that widen freeways, further harming entire communities that have already suffered the most severe and lasting consequences of US-101 and 280.
Help us protect and heal our community:
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