Because there is so much damn traffic on the road!!!
This post will probably only interest those who live in or near Santa Cruz, Ca. Or those who drive through Santa Cruz during commute hours. Or those who are interested in the politics of development.
I was having a discussion about the gridlock on state Highway 1 with my friend Mark the other day. I was taking the position that refusal to widen Highway 1 from the current four lanes to six lanes was anti-family. Mark believes widening would only promote sprawl.
Being pro-widening runs counter the prevailing political opinion in Santa Cruz. It marks me as somewhat conservative. Let me say that only in Santa Cruz (or maybe Berkeley) would I be considered conservative.
Here's my position. Keeping Highway 1 at its current configuration hurts families. The total gridlock forces parents to leave their families early and to get home late. Moms and dads are stuck in traffic and can't get to Little League games, dance recitals, parent-teacher conferences or early enough to play catch in the back yard. When they do get home, nerves already frayed from working too hard for too little pay, become totally undone while gulping down exhaust fumes and playing bumper cars with real cars. So when they finally get in house all they want to do is drop in a chair turn on the TV and veg out.
What's lost is real dinner, real conversation and developing real relationships.
A jam packed Highway 1 is also bad for neighborhoods. Commuters desperate for any movement take off onto city streets bringing highway level traffic onto streets designed for much less volume. This results in neighborhoods that can't be walked, biked or played on and degraded quality life for residents.
Mark can make his argument much better than I can (and maybe he will if he comments on this post). It goes like this: poor planning is the cause of the mess. Widening Highway 1 will only encourage more development and that will lead to more population and that will lead to more congestion and that will lead to the need to widen Highway 1 once again.
Mark would like to see some real planning that would include mass transit and placing new development where residents would have access to these new transit choices. To that I say, Me too. But I have little hope that's going to happen.
I have been watching affordable housing advocates try to get new projects approved in Santa Cruz County. Every project is a death match. Everyone it seems, wants those projects to go somewhere else, anywhere but in their neighborhood. Often, the opponents are the same people who are against widening Highway 1. I can only imagine the battle if it is proposed to dig up a few neighborhoods to put in the infrastructure needed for a light rail system.
The truth is there is no consensus in Santa Cruz to build high density housing and until there is a consensus, there will be no political will to get real about developing a functional mass transit system.
The only realistic alternative is to widen Highway 1. It's the least we can do for families.
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1 comment:
I agree with you. Traffic delays are anti-family. My argument with the widen the road approach is that it is insufficient.
I also agree that in many communities it is very difficult to change the accepted wisdom on public policies. If there is a traffic squeeze: widen the road. If there are too many children of school age: make the school bigger. These solutions exist because they seem to solve the problem. But we should know by now that what seems to solve a problem works only if the problem is defined in a limited way. There is no effort to examine possible unintended consequences. It's the unintended consequences that leave people frustrated that they have spent a pot of money to solve something but instead have created a new and bigger problem that will be even more costly to solve.
Instead I argue for a more comprehensive look leading to planning that can meet as many of our community's goals as possible, while trying to imagine as many of the "what if's" as we can. If Big Daddy is really pro family (and I sincerely believe he is) then he should be advocating for a deeper inquiry into solving the problem he so ably identifies. It's not just transportation, though transportation is a real part of the problem. It is also the way we think about community development: what kind of a community do we really want, and how will we square that with the growth in population that is happening.
A real look at all of this is necessary ultimately. Why not begin now?
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