Caltrans’ $400M fix of Highway 99 in Fresno doesn’t solve major traffic bottleneck | Opinion
.jpg "Traffic backs up on Highway 99 in Fresno, California, on Sunday, June 12, 2022, after a shooting on Olive Avenue just off the highway.")
Highway 99 is a horrible freeway.
This is something Fresno-area residents of all ages, races, income levels and political persuasions can agree upon. The state highway that connects the San Joaquin Valley also unites us in our hatred to drive on it.
From that standpoint, any investment in Highway 99 should be cause for approval, if not widespread celebration. Anything to make the venerable workhorse less treacherous and congested.
Which brings us to Caltrans’ $400 million fix-it plan proceeding through the government pipeline.
My take: That’s a lot of money to spend on a freeway construction project that does little to solve the biggest traffic problem on 99. While creating new hassles for residents and businesses.
As motorists know all too well, Fresno’s freeways have two consistent bottlenecks. Most notorious is the McKinley Curve on Highway 41. (Why was that curve built in the first place? People tell me it’s because Memorial High, back in the early 1980s, refused to budge. I don’t know if that’s true, but it makes for a good story.)
The second no-go zone is the interchange connecting Highway 180 and Highway 99. Starting around 2 in the afternoon, the right lane on 180 West leading to the 99 North connector becomes a line of cars and semi trucks that backs up past the Fulton Street on-ramp.
While sitting bumper to bumper, one can’t help but admire the civil engineering brainpower that squeezed more than 90% of the traffic (those merging from 180 West to 99 North) into one lane while keeping three little-used lanes for everyone else.
Yes, that’s sarcasm.
Plan breezes through City Council
Rather than redo a badly designed freeway interchange, something Caltrans did not all that long ago on Highway 168, the agency wants to alleviate traffic by adding another lane on 99 and removing two exits at Belmont and McKinley avenues.
Even though such outdated thinking — that widening freeways creates less traffic congestion — has long been disproven. Such research has been cited even in Caltrans’ own policy briefs.
I hoped some of those concerns would be raised during Thursday’s Fresno City Council meeting. Alas, no. A deputy director for Caltrans District 6 had barely started her presentation when Councilmember Miguel Arias interrupted and made a motion to amend the city’s contract with the state agency to allow for the $400 million project to proceed.
The vote was 6-0 and merited hardly any discussion from the dais. What a pity.
Only three people spoke during public comment, notably an official with Chapel of Light Funeral Home who asked the council to engage with Caltrans over closing the Belmont exit and the impact it would have on Fresno’s cemeteries and funeral processions.
“As much as Caltrans wants to say they vetted this very thoroughly, it’s false,” Michael Rabara said.
The agency, Rabara told the council, performed its traffic study in 2021. At a time when the cemeteries along Belmont corridor were closed during the pandemic.
All those burials and funeral processions that didn’t register in Caltrans’ study have since returned to normal. And once the Belmont ramps are no more, that traffic must exit at Olive Avenue and access Belmont by another road (Hughes Avenue) of which Rabara didn’t paint the most flattering of pictures.
“Would you entrust your 85-year-old mother or grandmother coming down prostitute alley to get to our funeral homes?” he asked.
Caltrans omits NOx from review
As justification for the Belmont and McKinley closures, Caltrans says they don’t meet the one-mile separation standard between exits. But clearly that’s not an evenly applied rule, or else there wouldn’t be three exits within a mile of each other on 41 in downtown Fresno.
Meanwhile, in south Fresno, Caltrans is planning $140 million worth of construction to the American and North avenues exits on 99 — “improvements” that pave the way for more truck traffic and warehouse sprawl in neighborhoods that are already overburdened.
In that project’s environmental review, Caltrans left out one of the Valley’s most hazardous pollutants, nitrogen oxides, a gas compound released into the air by engine exhaust. As if the extra truck trips generated by those expanded interchanges would have zero net effect on the health of nearby residents.
That flawed thinking can also be found in certain aspects of the 99 “pavement rehabilitation project” between Clinton and El Dorado avenues. (You’ll get no arguments here over replacing the 50-year-old road surface or building a new pedestrian bridge and soundwall near Roeding Park.) Among six “benefits’‘ listed on the final page of the council presentation is one that reads “Less SR 99 congestion = Less Green House Gas emissions.”
First off, they’re called greenhouse gasses. One word. You’d expect Caltrans to know that, or at least proofread its work.
Second, the whole thing is based on a false premise, one Caltrans itself has acknowledged: Widening freeways only encourages more freeway drivers, soon negating any congestion or pollution benefits.
In other cities, including Los Angeles, communities are starting to push back against the pressure of freeway expansion and invest that money in public transportation and infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians. Because the only sure path to less traffic is fewer people driving.
Think of all the bus routes and bike paths that $400 million could buy in Fresno. Instead, we’ll get 3.2 miles of slightly smoother, less accessible freeway with the same bottleneck. Thanks, Caltrans.
