California Department of Transportation, District 4
Attn: Yolanda Rivas
By e-mail at SM101DEIR_EA_comments@dot.ca.gov
Dear Ms. Rivas
I am writing to comment on the Recirculated Partial Draft EIR/EA for the U.S. Highway 101 Managed Lanes Project. Though I currently serve as the Mayor of the City of Mountain View, these are my personal comments. Our City Council has not discussed this project.
I find the Recirculated Partial Draft confusing. Filled with models and relying on references to other document, it obfuscates the central purpose of the preferred alternative: It is designed to encourage affluent drivers to drive greenhouse-gas-emitting single-occupancy vehicles (SOVs) by creating a complicated, expensive mechanism for collecting tolls.
It would be much more equitable and environmentally sustainable to abandon the toll lanes and focus on expanding capacity for high-occupancy and electric vehicles.
Page 3-15 of the draft states that the project would not significantly “Conflict with an applicable plan, ordinance or policy establishing measures of effectiveness for the performance of the circulation system.…” For Mountain View, at least, I believe this is not true. For example, Mountain View has adopted plans to allow for the development of 3.5 million additional square feet of office space and 9,850 new housing units in our North Bayshore area, along U.S. 101 at the southern edge of the Managed Lanes project. We are planning for retail, schools, parks, and transit. To minimize traffic and limit greenhouse-gas emissions, we have adopted enforceable restrictions on the use of single-occupancy vehicles.
The Managed Lanes project, on the other hand, has the potential to pour large numbers of SOVs onto our streets. That is, the project is working against our best efforts. The draft does not address this impact.
It appears to me that the project is simply designed to generate revenues for transportation and transit investments. That’s a worthy goal, but there are other ways to generate such revenues — such as taxing employers that are to a good degree responsible for the growth in Bay Area traffic — without promoting unsustainable traffic and aggravating the impacts of income inequality.
Sincerely,
Lenny Siegel