Even as Californians’ taxes rise to fund infrastructure projects, the traffic-congestion problem continues to worsen. In many cases, the blame lies not just on governmental waste. Often, this is by design. For instance, after state lawmakers in 2017 raised the gas tax to address the transportation backlog, localities spent the extra money on “road diets” that eliminated road lanes to promote transit use.
We call it the Congestion Lobby – groups of government planners, bicycle advocates, urbanists and progressive utopians who lobby governments to make road congestion worse. They dislike automobiles, so they advance policies that try to coerce people into abandoning their cars in favor of biking or bus riding. They often promote these goals quietly to avoid antagonizing voters.
These dubious policies sometimes come from the feds. The latest example involves Costa Mesa, which recently received a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to promote road safety. It’s part of a $420-million package of California projects announced by U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla. We support infrastructure projects that improve pedestrian safety, but the Costa Mesa money is so counterproductive it would be better used in a bonfire.
Per the feds: “This award will be used by city of Costa Mesa to provide a weekend Pedestrian Safety Festival on Harbor Boulevard for four weekends over the course of one year. The four-to-six-lane roadways will be reimagined with various programming and a primary focus on the importance of pedestrian safety.” Those might be good weekends to spend in Newport Beach or Santa Ana.
The grant’s ultimate goals are even weirder, as the event will help officials “determine the potential of reducing automobile capacity in the area surrounding the festival and specifically of the potential of future permanent or semi-permanent closures of Harbor Boulevard adjacent to Newport Boulevard.” In other words, Costa Mesa is considering permanently shutting main thoroughfares – something that will turn commuting into a nightmare.
If you wonder why congestion never gets better, realize that one key reason is your local officials prefer utopian anti-driving “reimagining” schemes to real-world road improvements.
