California Transportation Commission is set to spend over $600 million dollars on projects that will worsen traffic and air quality.

(Sacramento - June 18, 2025) A broad coalition of groups working in transportation and the environment today announced their opposition to six highway expansion projects slated to be awarded over $600M in state funding by the California Transportation Commission later this month. Awarding funding to these projects, the groups contend, is wasteful spending that will exacerbate long-term traffic congestion and lock Californians into expensive driving commutes at a time when state resources are being cut for public transit and other options for commuters who want to get off the roadways.

“By awarding funds to these projects, the CTC is perpetuating the expensive myth that adding highway lanes relieves congestion, when decades of research and our own lived experience tells us that the opposite is true,” said Jeanie Ward-Waller, director of ClimatePlan. “There are better ways to spend our limited transportation dollars that will actually improve our quality of life and reduce climate emissions and harmful pollution in environmental justice communities.”

Among the six projects opposed by the group:

• In Sonoma County, State Route 37 Sears Point to Mare Island: This project would award $73 million to an “interim” lane expansion on a highway that is predicted to be underwater due to sea level rise within 15 years.
• In Tulare County, State Route 99 Tulare Corridor: In addition to adding more lanes that will simply encourage more driving, the project will drive a deeper wedge right through this community, with no connectivity for pedestrians and cyclists.
• In LA County, State Route 71 Pomona: Project will continue construction on a corridor in which Caltrans displaced dozens of residents by converting an existing arterial highway into an 8-lane freeway.

“The SR 37 project typifies the flawed thinking behind these highway expansion projects,” said Zack Deutsch-Gross, policy director of TransForm. “They’re tossing aside serious environmental concerns to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a highway that’s going to be underwater in 15 years under the misguided notion that it will reduce traffic.”

Researchers in countless studies have documented “induced demand” for driving, which describes how adding new highway lanes in the hope of reducing traffic only encourages more drivers to use the road, which in the end results in higher levels of congestion. Perhaps the best example of this was the $1.1 billion 405 Freeway expansion in Los Angeles, called “Car-mageddon,” which after years of frustrating construction delays and closures actually resulted in worse congestion on the freeway within days of opening new lanes in 2015.

“With California’s EV regulations in jeopardy, it’s time for us to get serious about spending our transportation dollars in a way that actually resolves our transportation needs and addresses climate change,” said Jamie Pew with NextGen California. “People deserve choice about how they move around, but instead the state is pushing people into crowded highways.”

Opposing groups pointed out that the six projects are inconsistent with the Climate Action Plan for Transportation Infrastructure, adopted by the California State Transportation Agency in 2021. This plan calls for, among other things, a commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by providing alternatives so people can opt out of driving, creating public transportation and active transit options, and minimizing housing displacement as a result of highway projects.

“Environmental justice communities in the San Joaquin Valley already suffer from the worst air pollution in the nation,” said Emma De La Rosa with Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability. “Widening SR 99 in Tulare will bring more trucks and pollution through communities where families desperately need clean air and investments for safe local streets.”

The six projects opposed by the coalition are sponsored by Caltrans and the counties listed below, and include:

1. Solano/Sonoma Counties - SR 37 Sears Point to Mare Island Widening Project
2. Tulare County - Tulare Six-lane and Paige Ave SR 99 Interchange Project
3. Los Angeles County - SR 71 Gap Closure Widening Project
4. Stanislaus County - SR 132 West Phase 3A New Expressway Project
5. Contra Costa County - I-680/SR-4 Interchange Expansion
6. City of Moreno Valley - SR-60/World Logistics Center Parkway Interchange Expansion

"For the past decade southern Californians have consistently ranked safer, more walkable streets as a transportation priority, recognizing the rise in preventable traffic collisions and the value of basic public goods such as safe routes to school,” said Wesley Reutimann of Active San Gabriel Valley. “Yet over the same period the state has consistently underfunded such active transportation projects, even following historic influxes of flexible, federal funding. If not now, when?" 

“Highway expansions and car-dependent planning are driving up the cost of living for Californians,” said Hana Creger of The Greenlining Institute. “While state leaders pour billions into widening roads, everyday people are paying the price—through longer commutes, rising transportation costs, and communities pushed further from jobs, schools, and services.” 

"The Transportation Commission has shown it can make strategic investments in getting Californians out of traffic and building the charging infrastructure we urgently need to replace dirty diesel trucks with those that contribute zero emissions,” said Carter Rubin, director of state transportation advocacy, NRDC. “Unless we go all in on these clean transportation solutions, we risk backsliding on air pollution and traffic. With the federal administration blocking our clean air progress, we can't afford to spend billions on projects that take us in the wrong direction." 

“The California Transportation Commission continues to move along more of the same inadequate policy with projects that we know will not meet the need that they are supposed to address and will worsen the ability to meet state and regional goals,” said Marven Norman, Environmental Policy Analyst, Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice.

“If California wants to be a leader in climate, community health and biodiversity preservation, it needs to stop investing in highways that pollute our air and fragment our natural landscapes,” said Elizabeth Reid-Wainscoat of the Center for Biological Diversity. “People and wildlife suffer for decades from these bad planning decisions. The solution is clear, we just need to put our money where our mouth is and invest in public transit instead."

About ClimatePlan

The ClimatePlan partnership was formed in 2007, and works to improve land-use and transportation planning to protect Californians’ health, communities, environment, and climate. The coalition now includes more than 50 partners, who represent a broad range of interests, from urban planning and public health experts, to social equity advocates, to farmland preservationists. ClimatePlan’s mission is to advance policies and programs to address the relationship between land use policy and climate change, and leverage the resources and partnerships necessary to realize more sustainable and equitable development throughout California.

Learn more at climateplan.org.

photo by Corey Oltman