New bridge? A dream too far

A 1950sera vision is not going to solve the Bay Area’s 21st century transportation challenges. Yes, we need to think big and bold — and that requires getting out of our comfort zones on transit investments and landuse decisions.

The construction of a new bridge across the San Francisco Bay is the definition of a nonstarter, or at least an idea that ought to be well down the priority list. That would be the case even if this region had a great track record of building bridges on time and on budget with no serious defects.

Drivers who cross the existing stateowned bridges will be paying toll surcharges for as far as the eye can see to cover the overruns of the $6.5 billion new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. Depending on which benchmark is used, the final tab was at least six times the original estimate.

The eastern span replacement was necessitated by concerns about its seismic vulnerability. It did not add a single lane of capacity but at least it should keep the bridge upright after a major earthquake.

The 1950sera vision of an asphalt-based solution to transportation across the bay was given new life last week by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, DCalif., and Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, DConcord. One possibility would be to link Highway 238 in the East Bay to Interstate 380 near the San Francisco International Airport. They maintain that it would relieve congestion on the Bay and San Mateo bridges and would “do more than any other project to alleviate congestion in the region.”

But the reality is that another few lanes across the bay would do little, if anything, to relieve gridlock in a region where freeway traffic has increased 80% since 2010, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. MTC has recommended against the new vehicle crossing between the two existing bridges.

DeSaulnier called it “MTC’s ‘can’t do’ attitude.”

However, new freeways and bridges in an overwhelmed region tend to fill up as soon as they are built, as commuters have an incentive to get back in their cars. Also, as MTC’s Randy Rentschler rightly noted, “The proposed bridge is hemmed in by freeways that are maxed out on both sides ... We could build a 20lane bridge and it would still perform poorly” unless those freeways were widened.

We certainly agree with Feinstein and DeSaulnier that the region needs “big, bold ideas to address this oversized problem.”

But those big, bold ideas need to think of longterm solutions, not roads and bridges that meet the demand forced by myopic planning decisions of the past. They need to get in the comfort zones of elected officials who are resistant to change.

A genuine solution will require policymakers to more seriously consider the traffic implications of landuse decisions. It will require measures such as Sen. Scott Wiener’s push for legislation that would compel higherdensity housing around transit hubs. It will require stronger pressure on communities that have balked at building new housing, even as they approve more commercial development. It will require greater investment in mass transit systems, including ferries and most likely another transbay tube for BART.

An additional bridge in the absence of all of the above is an exercise in futility and blueprint perpetual gridlock.