Sacramento is a city with limited transit options and lots of freeways, a city at the absolute downstream end of freeway rivers flooded with vehicles. Light rail only serves some portions of the city, and farther out along the light rail lines, many neighborhoods are not connected to stations, forcing residents to drive downtown.  

Buses are few and far between. There aren’t enough bicycle routes. Pedestrians take their lives in their hands when they cross the street, even if crossing on a green light with a walk sign. Freeways and streets grow more congested every year and, at least in the Central City, parking grows ever more expensive and difficult to find.  

Air pollution is getting worse. Green house gases are rising and people who don’t own cars or can’t drive any longer are finding it difficult to get to work, school or daily errands. 

Sacramento is a city badly in need of a transportation make-over of the kind that would provide the average person with a viable alternative to his or her car. Unfortunately, that isn’t the direction in which we seem to be heading.  

The Sacramento Council Area of Governments (SACOG), the agency which is responsible for determining how state and federal transportation dollars are allocated, continues to put the bulk of the region’s resources into expanding existing freeways and highways and building new ones. One of the major goals in its 2035 transportation plan is to add so called "high occupancy vehicle" (HOV) lanes, or carpool lanes, to all of our freeways. That means an additional lane in both directions on Highway 50, I-5 and I-80 from outlying areas to downtown. It also means “flyover bridges" that will allow HOV lane users on one freeway to transition onto another freeway without ever leaving their special lanes and new HOV on and off ramps along the WX portion of Highway 50.  

SACOG justifies all this on the grounds that HOV lanes will encourage more car pooling and, thus, reduce congestion. But there is no evidence to show that car pool lanes really do get more people to car pool and, except for morning and afternoon peak periods (a total of six hours per day), anyone, solo drivers included, can use the lanes. SACOG’s plans, if carried out, will result in our region spending hundreds of millions of dollars on freeway expansions which will serve only the needs of people who own cars while leaving little money to spend on a multi-modal transportation system that would serve everyone and be more cost effective and efficient. 

The first freeway targeted for expansion in the SACOG plan is Highway 50. The potential impact of the Highway 50 widening, including the proposed “fly over” lanes and new, elevated on and off ramps along the WX, galvanized the community into action. Neighborhood associations on both sides of the WX realized that, not only would this project give more money to freeways at the expense of other forms of transportation, but the increased traffic that it would generate, together with the increased noise and visual blight that would result from the elevated fly over lanes and on and off ramps, would seriously impact their neighborhoods. They organized a coalition of neighborhood and community groups called Neighbors Advocating Sustainable Transportation (NAST) to fight back. 

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires that any construction project that has the potential to significantly affect the environment must undergo an Environmental Impact Review (EIR). The purpose of an EIR is to review all the potential impacts of a proposed project -- if and how those impacts can be mitigated, and what possible alternatives there might be to the project. Caltrans' stated purpose for the Highway 50 HOV project was to relieve traffic congestion on the highway by widening it. Caltrans prepared the EIR for the first phase of the project, HOV lanes from Sunrise to Watt Avenue. Although EIR’s are supposed to include alternatives, Caltrans did not think to include the obvious alternative of expanding the capacity of mass transit along the Highway 50 Corridor.  

NAST and The Environmental Council of Sacramento (ECOS) reviewed the EIR, found it did not analyze a transit alternative, nor did it address the increased air pollution and green house gas emissions that would result from more vehicles using the widened freeway, and decided to sue. The suit was filed in June of 2007 and on July 15, 2008 Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley ruled in their favor.  

Caltrans was ordered to prepare a new EIR and to include an analysis of how much additional green house gas would be emitted if the project were built and how enhancing mass transit in the Highway 50 Corridor would compare to widening the freeway. The judgment was groundbreaking in that it was the first time that a California judge had said that greenhouse gases must be considered as part of an EIR. And it provided NAST and ECOS an opportunity to work with RT to develop a public transit alternative that Caltrans could use for its analysis. 

NAST came into being because of the proposed Highway 50 expansion, but NAST members quickly realized that Highway 50 was just one part of a much bigger problem and that it needed to broaden its goals from stopping Highway 50 to fighting for a transportation system that 1) focuses on moving people in the most efficient ways possible rather than solely on moving cars; 2) creates a series of transportation options that will benefit everyone at any time of their life and no matter the price of gas; and 3) protects neighborhoods and business districts from the impacts of traffic and freeways, thus helping them become livable, walkable and bikeable.  

The bottom line for NAST is that no additional money should be spent on expanding streets and highways until our region has built a transit, bicycle and pedestrian transportation system that provides people with real alternatives to cars so that traffic congestion is reduced and people who can’t or don’t want to drive can get where they need to go. 

For more information about NAST go to www.nastsacramento.blogspot.org.