Urge the SANDAG Board to Not Appeal the 2050 Regional Transportation Plan Court Decision

Please sign our letter asking the SANDAG Board to not appeal the SANDAG Regional Transportation Plan ruling.

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Late last month a California appeals court rejected SANDAG’s 2050 Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) for failing to meet our state’s commitment to lower greenhouse gas emissions, or as KPBS’ Alison St. John puts it, the commitment to “taking approximately 15 million cars off the nation’s roads“.

This marks the second time our judicial system has indicated that SANDAG, our regional planning agency, ought to come up with a better plan than the one they seem intent to push through.

The SANDAG 2050 Regional Transportation Plan is a $200 billion dollar plan that covers all transportation projects scheduled to get implemented on the ground between now and the year 2050. Of that $200 billion, $2.5 billion has been set aside for bikes. Sounds great. But that $2.5 billion is 1% of total funds that will be spent. Furthermore, SANDAG themselves clearly don’t consider bicycling to be an actual mode of transportation despite all their handwaving on how much they support bicycling given their own projected growth of bicycling as shown below:

scenario_information_vmt_mode_share

 

In short, SANDAG is spending $2.5 billion dollars on improving the bikeability in San Diego County but don’t anticipate the percentage of people riding a bicycle to change in any way. While our advocacy supports the creation of world-class bike infrastructure, that advocacy goes hand in hand with relying on data that more people on bikes results in less people driving on the roads and a healthier and more improved quality of life for all.

State law and community support calls for reducing the number of vehicles on the roads, not maintaining the status quo – which is what SANDAG’s plans actually intend to do.  Thus, the existing proposed 2050 RTP is nothing short of a big waste of money – our money.

We have been asking, along with many other community based groups and advocacy organizations, for SANDAG to create a new scenario – in their update to the 2050 RTP. To date the SANDAG board has ignored their own community and constituents. Now, the courts have rejected SANDAG’s RTP and we are urging the SANDAG Board of Directors that will be meeting tomorrow in a closed session to not appeal the most recent court decision. Please join us and sign this letter that will be automatically emailed to the SANDAG Board of Directors.