Mere days after California legislators passed an historic gas tax increase, highway planners are already salivating over using the money to build new freeways:
From Hans-the-Fremont-Traffic-Czar:
“Perhaps the most exciting thing Senate Bill 1 provides for Fremont, Caltrans and all of Silicon Valley is the opportunity to finally get the State Route 262-Mission Boulevard connector between I-880 and I-680 upgraded to a full freeway. The concept being pursued is a below-grade expressway allowing traffic to pass through without stopping at the two signals at Warm Springs and Mohave.
“This corridor is practically congested 24/7 and uncorking this bottleneck should be a welcome relief for daily commuters to Silicon Valley jobs, Silicon Valley’s weekend warriors heading to Tahoe, and increasingly for truckers hauling shiny new electric vehicles emerging from the Tesla Motors factory.
“This project was previously thought as unfundable due to anemic levels of state funding, but SB 1 has changed that. There is now over $500 million available annually for improving congested corridors and freight corridors. I can’t imagine there are many more worthy highway corridors across the state for this investment than 262.”
The gas tax increase was sold as a way to close the maintenance deficit in California’s roads, not to build new highways.
Moreover, the SR-262 is the most useless highway project imaginable. It would blight the commercial district near the $1 billion newly-built Warm Springs BART station, while doing absolutely nothing to improve automobile congestion.
[…] Some are already plotting to use gas tax increase for new highways (Systemic Failure) […]
Nothing to relieve congestion? Really?
Have you used this stretch of road recently? The volume of traffic really kills it for locals and pedestrians, bicyclists; so getting these cars onto a restricted access facility would actually make the area more attractive for the BART station.
Have you paid attention to the last century of transportation infrastructure recently?
no, you won’t fix these problems with asphalt, you only encourage more of them everywhere else.
Even today it’s obvious that the areas around elevated freeways are NOT attractive or conducive to development. The city of Fremont would be much better off leaving the commercial district there and coming up with ways to reduce traffic demand. A lot of good Taiwanese food there too!
The “Cross Connector” has a long history:
Click to access CMA7700_I680I880CrossConnector_factsheet.pdf
That half-mile segment of Mission is awfully hostile to bikes and peds.