Suggested Citation:
Lee, Amy E. and Susan L. Handy (2023)

The Policy and Politics of Highway Expansions

. Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis, Dissertation UCD-ITS-RR-23-66

Abstract:

This mixed-methods dissertation explores questions related to the governance landscape and the institutional and political factors that surround highway expansion projects. Highways and highway building are a central contributor to a myriad of environmental and social problems, ranging from local air pollution to global climate change to displacement of homes and businesses. But even as toxic air pollution and climate events batter people around the globe, states like California – a forerunner in climate and air quality policy – continue to spend billions of dollars each year to expand highway capacity. This invites questions: what transportation infrastructure is in the plans that aim to reduce transportation emissions, to what degree do actual transportation investments align with these plans, and why does highway expansion receive such a large amount of funding? I investigate the regional transportation planning and programming process as well as power, perception of problems, evaluation of solutions, and policy beliefs among actors in the highway policy arena.

To what degree do actual transportation investments align with regional transportation plans? I use a detailed project-level analysis to examine and compare the regional transportation plans and transportation funding – “programming” – for five metropolitan regions in California. Auto infrastructure received the majority of planned and programmed funds in all regions except the San Francisco Bay Area. Near-term programming was more auto centric than the investments in long-range regional transportation plans. Spending patterns in most regions frontloaded auto infrastructure by putting a majority share of the funding toward road and highway expansions, which bakes in auto-oriented land development and travel demand and undermines the GHG reduction goals of the regional plan. Results also showed significant variation in how different MPOs in the state do business, the practice of “washing” or stretching funds for unstated purposes, and pervasive opacity in the descriptions of projects in the pipeline that obscures scrutiny of project impacts and benefits.

Why does California spend this significant amount of transportation dollars to expand highways? California has taken state-level action to compel the transportation sector to contribute to solving climate change, air quality, and equity problems. But the highway policy arena is highly decentralized and its most influential players are not focused on solving these larger-scale and longer-run problems. Influence and control in California’s highway policy arena largely rests at the local level. With local influence on highway projects and, in many cases, locally controlled funding, these institutions can set the agenda for highways in their jurisdictions. They can choose what transportation problems to solve and the salient and urgent transportation policy problems for local institutions were near-term and nearby. There is a mismatch between the scale of influential institutions and the problems they are trying to solve. This mismatch perpetuates highway expansion despite the near certainty that continued highway expansion impedes the state’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, and further equity. But these findings indicate several possible routes for attenuating highway expansion.