Caltrans District 3 (which covers Sacramento, Yolo, El Dorado, Placer, Nevada, Sierra, Butte, Glenn, and Colusa counties), is committed to widening freeways, now and forever. They do not intend to comply with direction from Caltrans headquarters, or with the upcoming complete streets policy, or with guidance such as Cal STA CAPTI (California Action Plan for Transportation Infrastructure), which requires Caltrans to consider climate impacts of its projects. Caltrans D3 only knows how to build and widen highways, and they don’t believe that any other transportation modes are important.

Take a look at the list of current projects on the D3 web page. Most are highway widening projects. Of course Caltrans never uses the term widening, it uses terms such as enhancement, improvement, and multimodal to hide the true nature of these projects.

Caltrans has a long list of on-the-shelf projects which it will move to when these projects are done. Some of these projects were designed 20 or more years ago, when much of society had not yet woken up to the environmental and social damage that freeways cause, and before the surge of deaths and severe injuries to walkers on the state highway system. They will be pulled off the shelf and built, because that is what Caltrans does.

All of this is well to anyone who works with or follows Caltrans. Many engineers and planners won’t talk about this on the record, but privately confirm it.

A recent article on Politico (Caltrans official says she was demoted for objecting to highway expansion)explains why Jeannie Ward Waller was fired/demoted. It was for calling out Caltrans D3 for violating the law, misusing maintenance funds to widen highways. This one goes beyond earlier articles on StreetsblogCal (Caltrans “Shakeup” Is a Bad Sign) about the firing/demotion.

Retribution is an interesting action, usually reserved for dictators and right wing politicians, but it seems to be alive and well in Caltrans.