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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

Sunday, August 25, 2002

Fill 'er up

Traffic on I-80 between Sacramento and the Bay Area is bad -- and shows every sign of getting worse before it gets better

It carries long-distance commuters, cross-country truckers, sports fans heading from the Valley to the San Francisco Bay Area and skiers heading from the Bay Area to the Sierra Nevada.
As freeways go, Interstate 80 between Sacramento and the Bay Area is a jack-of-all-trades. Increasingly, it's also a jam-packed road to frustration.

"My worst commute time was 5 1/2 hours from San Mateo to Sacramento two years ago and a distance of only 110 miles," said longtime I-80 commuter Robert Patterson of Sacramento.
"I left at 2:30 in the afternoon and got to Sacramento at 8 that evening, and there were no visible accidents, nothing on the radio traffic reports, just traffic -- and lots of it."

Traffic backups at spots such as Cordelia, where Interstate 680 intersects with I-80, are fast becoming a horrific travel tradition -- no matter what time of day. State Department of Transportation figures show the number of daily vehicles has risen markedly all along the route. In 1992, an average of 110,000 vehicles traveled past the Highway 680 interchange on I-80 at Cordelia in both directions. In 2001, the number had risen to 136,000.

"Cordelia Junction has to be the worst," said Patterson, who is 37. "Six-eighty north, merging two interchange lanes into one, which is trying to merge with traffic that is simultaneously trying to exit 80. And that's just heading east. "West is even worse, with people shooting across four lanes to try and get into the offramp for 680 south at the last minute." Patterson blames poor planning and a shortage of car-pool lanes for clogging the interstate.

But at the heart of the matter, say environmentalists and transportation planners, is growth in both the Bay Area and the Sacramento region.

And there is more to come.

By 2025, the Bay Area's population is expected to exceed 8.2 million, a rise of more than 1.4 million from current figures. In the next 20 years, 1 million people will be added to the Sacramento region, according to the Sacramento Area Council of Governments.

"The leading cause of our traffic congestion problem is sprawl development," said Natalie DuMont, Solano-Napa field representative for Greenbelt Alliance, a conservation and urban planning nonprofit organization.

There are some options to the freeway tangle, including state-funded passenger train service between the two areas. In the last three fiscal years, ridership along the route has risen 132 percent.

"I like to say our three best marketing tools are I-80, I-80 and I-80," said Gene Skoropowski, director of the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority, which runs trains between the Sacramento area and the Bay Area. "The whole name of the game is providing people with choices."

Still, train ridership constitutes only a small percentage of travelers between the two regions. So the state is trying to alleviate the problem with a record number of roadway improvements. "We are going to aggressively look to add capacity to that system," said Dennis Trujillo, state Department of Transportation spokesman. Lanes will be added along the route "so we can make this commute easier on the hundreds of thousands of people that use it."

A 25-year plan to relieve congestion on I-80 includes about $3.5 billion from state and local transportation agencies, said Caltrans spokesman Robin Witt. "Over this 25-year horizon, the amount of vehicle traffic will increase up to 50 or 60 percent," Witt said. "You have to run very rapidly in transportation today just to stay even."

One project under construction is the new four-lane Carquinez Bridge, a $355 million project scheduled to be complete by 2007. The new span will replace the original steel cantilever bridge that was built in 1927 and now carries westbound traffic. An adjacent four-lane cantilever span built in 1958 carries eastbound traffic.

Pete Hathaway, SACOG's deputy director, said it's amazing how quickly a once free-flowing freeway can reach capacity. "A lot of people don't realize how fast it can sneak up on you," Hathaway said. "Then, if you step back and say, 'Let's add a lane,' how long does it take to do that?

"In rural areas, they have to study the habitat, and in the urban areas, they have to consult with communities and worry about sound walls. It takes time to do the studies, design and round up the money."

Expanding freeways has drawbacks other than the obvious noise and pollution. "The freeway ultimately widens out into the neighborhood, so you have to buy houses and move the sound walls back," Hathaway said. "It is very expensive." And when lanes are added, ultimately it just encourages more people to commute. Eventually, the lanes get loaded to capacity again, Hathaway said.

One possible solution, he said, is creating toll lanes. Orange County, for example, has a toll road that charges motorists more when the regular freeway lanes are full and less when they are empty.
Hathaway concedes that, for now, the notion isn't politically viable for I-80.

"Would that be in the cards 10 years from now?" Hathaway asked. "I don't know. If you were in the Bay Area and there was a toll road that would whisk you along to the mountains for $5 -- and you wanted to get there early -- you would pay."

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