Executive Summary

The Solano Transportation Authority (STA) has predicted a 400% increase in the county’s congestion over the next 25 years.  Congestion on major corridors promises to be even worse – I-80 heading to San Francisco is expected to experience a 545% increase in congestion.  A popular misconception is that population growth will cause this congestion. In actuality, the problem is that people are simply driving more.  In fact, while traffic congestion is predicted to explode in Solano, population is predicted to increase by a comparatively modest 45% through 2025.  With the same 45% population increase, the number of miles Solano residents travel will grow by 60%, hours on the road will increase by 150%.

Sprawl is the primary cause of congestion.  According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the leading cause of congestion is the locating of jobs and housing far apart and away from public transit.  These sprawl development patterns force people to spend increasing amounts of time in their cars.  Solano residents know this fact well, as they have the longest average commute in the Bay Area.  Sprawl also has negative financial, civic, and health impacts, highlighted by the fact that Solano County has the highest per capita asthma rate in California. 

Since the 1950s, the standard response to traffic jams has been to widen highways and build new roads.  Recent studies show that rather than solving congestion problems, highway-dependent solutions may in fact perpetuate the problem. While intended to address congestion, ill-conceived highway-building strategies often supply the road infrastructure to catalyze more sprawl, and therefore more congestion.  An analysis by the Surface Transportation Policy Project of 46 metropolitan areas in the United States found that communities that built less roads between 1990 and 1999 saw no more of an increase in congestion than communities that invested heavily in road building.  This surprising result is due to the fact that when new road capacity is built, drivers take trips they would not have taken previously (“latent demand”).  Additionally, new capacity encourages new development, which in turn leads to more traffic (“generated demand”).  According to a 1997 study of California metropolitan areas, the traffic induced by latent and generated demands leads to 50-90% of new highway capacity being consumed within five years.

 

Solano County is at high risk of more sprawl development.  A 2000 study by Greenbelt Alliance found that 18.6% of Solano County’s land base is at risk of being consumed by sprawl.  Solano’s Measure A effectively removes the county from the business of sprawl development by preventing the rezoning of agricultural lands without a vote of the people.  But it does not prevent Solano’s cities from annexing land and developing it in a sprawling pattern.  This danger is particularly evident in the city of Vacaville’s draft Vision Statement for the year 2025 which proposes annexing and developing over 4,000 acres outside the current city limits. 

 

Rather than attempting to build our way out of congestion, why not give people a choice in how they travel?  Providing alternatives to driving serves the needs of those who don’t drive—a surprising 39% of Solano County residents.  Providing alternatives to driving also reduces the number of vehicles on the road, thus decreasing the congestion suffered by those who do choose to drive. 

 

Strategies to create transportation choices include support for effective transit, ridesharing, and pedestrian and bicycle safety.  Currently local bus service is under-utilized, largely because evening services are limited or absent, Saturday services are limited, and Sunday service is absent.  Conversely, services like the Vallejo Ferry and commuter buses are often full because of their relative convenience.  Ride sharing is also popular.  Nearly 20% of county commuters take advantage of ride sharing – the highest percentage in the Bay Area.  Pedestrian and bicycle safety, along with the proper maintenance of existing streets and roads, are also critical to creating transportation choices and to improving the county’s quality of life.

 

Transportation choices must be supported by smarter land use patterns, which have proven popular among Solano residents.  At a recent countywide workshop co-sponsored by STA and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), participants chose a future growth pattern that would locate significantly more housing and jobs near transit, without significantly altering the character of the area. 

 

The STA plans to ask voters to approve a sales tax in November 2002 that is expected to raise $1 billion for transportation projects over the next 20 years.  This sales tax provides an opportunity to choose investments that will expand our transportation choices and build a safer, more livable county.  However, it also poses a threat.  If the sales tax focuses too much on building highway capacity, the county could easily spend the $1 billion widening roads, only to see them fill right up again.  Furthermore, unless incentives are included in the sales tax plan to protect Solano’s farmlands and open space, the roads could spur more sprawl and more congestion.  In March 2002, a coalition that now includes five organizations and eight elected officials submitted ten “Transportation for a Livable Solano County” recommendations to STA (discussed in Chapter 4).   

 

It is clear that highway construction will play a major role in the countywide projects proposed by the STA.  The I-80/I-680/SR-12 interchange will be the plan’s marquee highway project, but its price tag alone could exceed the overall value of the sales tax. And STA’s wish list includes nearly $3 billion in other highway projects.  To assure that the entire sales tax is not consumed by highways, the sales tax should limit highway funding to projects that are already well developed and have significant likely or committed funding from other sources.  This will allow local dollars to leverage additional state and federal funds and maximize STA’s ability to deliver the projects. 

 

Other countywide projects that should be funded through the sales tax include programs to prevent future sprawl and congestion.  These include a “Smart Growth Zone” program to help fund the planning of smarter development, a Transportation for Livable Communities program to fund community-oriented transportation projects, and a conservation easement program to purchase the development rights of particularly threatened farmlands and open space adjacent to highway and road projects.  As well, countywide mass transit and ride-sharing projects should be funded to reduce congestion.  These include the Express Bus Network, Vallejo Ferry, Capital Corridor and Commuter Rail, and the Solano-Napa Commuter Information (SNCI) Program. To maintain mobility for people who cannot drive or choose not to drive, the sales tax should also provide significant funding for elderly and disabled “paratransit” service, enhanced local bus service, and pedestrian and bicycle safety.  The sales tax should also be used to implement the “fix it first” principle to meet the shortfall in the local roads and streets maintenance budgets.

 

These recommended programs to increase transportation choices, alleviate congestion and prevent sprawl could take the lion’s share of the money raised by the sales tax.  Fully funded, these projects would likely cost well over $800 million.  However, when compared to the several-billion-dollar price tag on the highway wish list, these programs are a bargain.  The long-term livability of Solano County is dependent on the quality of our transportation choices. 

Last updated 6/21/02