Roads Mired in Review Gridlock

President George Bush was in office when the state began studies to build a new offramp to speed motorists from the San Diego Freeway to Los Angeles International Airport. Bush’s son is now in charge, and the project has yet to break ground.

In San Francisco, children born the year the Loma Prieta earthquake nearly destroyed the Central Freeway will be high school seniors when it is replaced.

In San Mateo County, a new route around an unstable precipice along California 1 was proposed about the time the first American was shot into orbit. Today, space travel is routine, but the bypass is years from completion.

These projects are part of a $1.8-billion transportation project backlog that has prompted Gov. Gray Davis to order state officials to speed up the environmental review process that often keeps freeway and transit projects on hold for years--sometimes decades.

The governor has reason to be concerned: Last year he announced a $5.3-billion budget for 141 new freeway and transit projects over the next six years--nearly doubling the state’s transportation budget. He worries that these projects will get stuck in the review gridlock like so many others have.

But environmentalists vow to oppose any drastic shortcuts because they fear that an accelerated review may give the green light to projects that destroy wildlife habitat, harm endangered species or pollute the air and water.

“Everyone always attacks these review programs,” said Carl Zichella, a spokesman for the Sierra Club in California. “But the fact is that they help us make good decisions.”

Many transportation projects are delayed by funding shortages and community opposition. But the environmental review--encompassing everything from plants and animals to views, aesthetics and noise--is the only element that consistently delays construction five or more years. It is also one of the few elements that government officials can control.

In response to Davis’ directive, the California Department of Transportation has already proposed some ideas for shortening the review period.

For example, when it suspects that a project will harm wildlife habitat, the agency will move ahead with plans to reduce the impact without waiting for a long study to confirm the threat, Caltrans Director Jeff Morales said.

Comment Periods Won’t Be Extended

But he also warned that Caltrans will no longer be willing to extend the public comment period for projects beyond what the law requires. Morales said these and other changes could halve the scrutiny that now drags on for five to seven years.

“It’s absolutely critical that we get our projects through the environmental review process, not by getting around it but by improving how we do it,” he said.

Until now, the agency’s track record has been less than stellar. Between June 2000 and July 2001, Caltrans completed only 65% of its environmental documents on time, an internal analysis by the department found.

The California Transportation Commission, the decision-making panel for Caltrans, has acknowledged that it will be difficult to improve that rate given the number of projects that Davis hopes to move ahead.

In a recent report to the Legislature, the panel said: “The number of environmental documents overdue portends an even worse project delivery crunch in the next few years.”

The report noted that, before the first shovel of dirt can be turned, projects funded with state and federal money must conform to the California Environmental Quality Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and more than a dozen other laws.

“The process of complying with each of them contributes to the lion’s share of delays during the environmental phase,” the report said.

Federal transportation officials also hope to speed environmental checks in California and other states. In 1998, Congress approved legislation that provided more money for extra staffing to push projects ahead, one of several streamlining improvements.

But since that effort was launched, the federal review process has been cut by just two months--from five years and eight months in 1998 to five years and six months last year, according to federal officials.

The urgency of the challenge is driven home by projections that California’s population of 34 million will grow to 46 million by 2020. Los Angeles County’s population is expected to leap from about 9.7 million to 12 million.

By 2025, the average speed on most Southern California freeways during the peak morning commute is expected to drop from 34 mph to 20 mph or less, according to regional transportation experts.

The delays in completing freeway improvements are particularly frustrating for motorists stuck on increasingly crowded roads.

“It’s getting worse, and no one sees a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Phil Van Camp, a regular commuter from the Inland Empire to Orange County.

Caltrans planners, some of whom spend decades on a single project, are also annoyed by the delays.

Vince Bertoni, director of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Planning Assn., said the environmental review process is slow because it has been extended beyond an analysis of the threats to plants and animals. Now, he said, planners must consider whether the work will be aesthetically pleasing or if it will obstruct a neighbor’s view.

“It has become an effective tool for people who want to oppose a project or slow it down,” he said.

But Zichella of the Sierra Club defends the process, saying a long debate ensures that only the best projects are built.

“If there has been a project on the books since the 1960s, it’s a dog,” Zichella said.

But even projects that are predicted to cause little or no significant environmental harm can take years to review.

Caltrans spent 10 years studying the proposed Arbor Vitae interchange in Inglewood near LAX before concluding last year that the $55-million improvement would cause no significant harm to the environment.

Still, a group opposed to LAX expansion challenged the interchange, claiming that it would draw additional traffic and car exhaust to the area. The work is on hold.

Major projects often are delayed when locals and environmentalists change the course of a project that has been under review for years.

Consider the Devil’s Slide tunnel project on California 1, just south of Pacifica in San Mateo County.

Since California 1 was built in the 1930s around the unstable Devil’s Slide precipice, Caltrans has launched several efforts to prevent the road from sliding away during storms. In the early 1960s, the agency proposed a 4.5-mile elevated bypass around the slide.

A final environmental report was completed in 1986, but the project was halted after the Sierra Club sued and a court ruled that Caltrans had failed to adequately study the potential noise problems.

Just as Caltrans completed a supplement to the earlier study, San Mateo County voters in 1996 approved a measure calling for a tunnel around the slide area.

The environmental reviews for the tunnel were completed early this year, and the $165-million project is expected to be built by 2006.

Voters also changed the course of a repair project for the Central Freeway in San Francisco, which was severely damaged by the Loma Prieta quake in 1989.

In 1997, San Francisco voters approved a measure to reconstruct the elevated freeway that connects the East Bay and South Bay to the city’s northern and western neighborhoods. A year later, opponents of the freeway approved another measure, demanding that the freeway be torn down. The following year, pro-freeway forces put another measure on the ballot to reverse course again and rebuild the freeway. But that final measure failed.

Now, San Francisco plans to replace the freeway with a six-lane boulevard at street level. The project is expected to be completed in 2006.

Although Caltrans had already studied a boulevard option, voters asked for a route that had not been considered. Environmental review of the new route forced another year of study.

One of Caltrans’ most difficult and time-consuming projects has been a plan to reroute U.S. 101 in Mendocino County around the rural community of Willits. It is an idea that has been on the drawing board since the 1960s.

Traffic on U.S. 101 now rumbles through the center of town, where it creates a bottleneck along the city’s main thoroughfare.

The project has been complicated by the presence of several endangered fish, plants and birds in the area. Since 1986, Caltrans has studied 30 alternative routes in hopes of creating the least environmental damage.

All Four Routes Would Harm Plant

The state has narrowed the options to four, and even the remaining paths have their shortcomings. One route would threaten the habitat of the endangered spotted owl. Another would cut through rivers that spawn the federally protected chinook and coho salmon. All four would threaten a rare plant called Baker’s meadow foam.

“Everybody is frustrated with the process,” said Lena Ashley, a Caltrans project manager who has worked on the project for 14 of her 15 years at the agency.

A final environmental review is expected to be completed in 2003--nearly 17 years after the first study began.

David Drell, a spokesman for the Willits Environmental Center, a group that has opposed a freeway bypass, said the long review is the price a democratic society pays for building a project that everyone can support.

“All the environmental reviews have allowed Caltrans to more responsibly build a project that the public can count on,” he said.