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Why Not to Support Highway Widenings by Randy Ghent In fighting road projects, most activists concern themselves primarily with protecting the landóforests, farmlands, communitiesóthat would be bisected and/or destroyed. Because of this, they often advocate reroutes, widenings or upgrades as an "environmental" alternative to construction of new roads. Here's a few reasons why we should avoid such a pitfall: 1. Subsidies to the highway-building/trucking industries via road-building expenditures undermine railroad shipping regardless of whether the road building is new-terrain or widening/upgrade. Rail is about eight times more energy-efficient than truck. 2. Traffic expands to fill available road space. When we don't refute traffic planners' assertions that increased road capacity is needed, we've lost half the battle. 3. It follows that automobile-generated pollution also expands with available road space. The U.S. car fleet is the single biggest contributor to global warming. Thus the forests and farmlands will fry from global warming even if they're not bisected by a new roadóunless we also fight road widenings and upgrades. 4. Since we can't afford to maintain the roads we already have, we shouldn't build more lanes or new roads. We are $230 billion short in maintenance funds nationally in the U.S. (Even conservatives will respect and embrace this argument, which is really the only argument we need.) 5. Traffic congestion is often a necessary condition for auto-alternatives to "compete" with cars. Drivers need incentives to eschew the caróand saving time by not sitting in traffic is a convincing one. Conversely, if driving is quick and convenient, alternatives will suffer. Thus, we must not seek to alleviate congestion by facilitating car travel. 6. It would be contradictory to promote local business as an alternative to long-distance trade if we also promote widenings/upgrades. Facilitating and subsidizing long-distance trade undermines the competitiveness of local products. This hurts local farmers, even though widenings/upgrades may not destroy much farmland directly. 7. We should not lengthen our oil supply lines (roads) since oil will be depleted domestically by 2020 and globally by 2040. More road capacity leads to more oil consumption. We will eventually not have enough oil to maintain existing roads, let alone build more and drive on them. 8. Drivers go faster on upgraded roads because of a perceived safety increase. Accidents increase accordingly, as does roadkillówhich also increases when animals have to dodge more traffic in wider lanes. Please think about the above in the context of your local road fights. Using these arguments we can bring fundamental issues before the publicórather than reducing our campaigns to narrow, localized efforts striving to protect merely a particular special place. |
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