Hella construction on Sacramento's Hwy. 50 promises little long-term relief | Opinion

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The perpetual roadwork on Sacramento's highways is a never-ending story of surprise detours, dangerous lane splits, metal-smeared K-rails and tragic fatal accidents - all in the futile pursuit of a solution to relieve congestive traffic. A "solution" that will be obsolete in less than a decade.

Caltrans announced this week that the "Fix50" project will go until at least 2026 and will cost $529 million - a year later than the original completion date of the summer of 2025 and nearly $50 million over the estimated budget of $483 million. For a mere 7-and-a-half miles of road, that's a cost of more than $70 million per mile.

The project will add new carpool lanes in each direction from Watt Ave. in Rosemont to the intersection with I-5 downtown; replace crumbling pavement with reinforced concrete; add retaining walls and widen the highway between 39th and 65th street undercrossings; build new sound walls along the south side of the highway from Stockton Blvd. to 65th St.; upgrade and widen several on and off ramps; improve signs, drainage, guardrails and utilities; and widen 12 bridges overall - among numerous other, smaller improvements.

But at what cost?

We don't mean the more than half a billion dollar price tag - Californians are well-accustomed by now to that level of spending. The bigger issue is that the Fix50 project is notoriously dangerous for drivers, and statistically, will be out-of-date by 2035.

So why are we investing more than half a billion dollars when Sacramento could be putting that money toward a project that improves mass transportation? Such forward thinking would not only alleviate traffic, it could save lives and assist Californians in our climate-neutral goals overall.

Why do we insist on repairing and widening when we could be innovating?

The construction on Hwy. 50 has already resulted in multiple fatalities, and is statistically likely to only cause more before its completion. According to data from the California Highway Patrol, the number of wrecks from March 2021 and December 2021 doubled from that same period in 2020 on westbound Highway 50. Ronald Fitzgerald , a local man, died on Hwy. 50 in 2021 after he crashed his motorcycle into a car stalled on the road's non-existent shoulder, leaving behind a loving wife and family - and all for what?

This boondoggle project is funded through multiple sources in the state , with Caltrans subsidizing nearly $90 million of the construction costs under California's Senate Bill 1 - also known as the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017. Caltrans has also relied on $52.2 million from Sacramento's Measure A Transportation Sales Tax to support the project, and the State Highway Operation and Protection Program is funding an additional $387 million.

But all of the extra money and construction delays are unlikely to relieve Sacramento's notorious congestion issues in the long run.

It begs the question: What's the point?

More lanes, but no less traffic

UC Davis Professor Susan Handy, who specializes in transportation, explained that adding lanes to a roadway only relieves traffic in the short term. The new lanes actually encourage more drivers to use the road which simply leads to more traffic.

"We don't adequately account for the pain that we all experience during construction," Handy said about the Fix50 project in 2023 . She cited the increase in crashes, deaths and severe congestion as the cost of that hubris: "The analysis that Caltrans and others are doing overstates the benefit of widening the freeway. And data analysis is also understating the environmental impacts of widening the freeway."

In a state like California, where driving is as second-nature as breathing and many commute on the highway to work, construction projects like "Fix50" do more harm than good. With thousands of federal workers returning to the office on July 1, piling more cars on the road, the situation will only worsen.

Caltrans, hell-bent on highway construction, is a lost cause. It's going to take leadership by a governor and a legislature to start investing in transit that can attract commuters and truly reduce congestion.