Coalition of Environmental Justice, Climate, and Disability Advocates: Move Ahead Washington Moving Us in Right Direction On Transit & Active Transportation, But Reveals Deep Flaws In Our Transportation Funding Future
As the Washington State Legislature moves to approve the $16 billion Move Ahead Washington transportation package, a coalition of environmental justice, climate and disability advocates including Front and Centered, 350 Washington, and Disability Rights Washington, celebrate investments in transit and active transportation, but question the choice to continue to expand highways using General Fund revenue.
When we build highways, it never relieves congestion because people change their driving habits and the lanes fill again. Highway expansion results in expanded air pollution and climate change. Yet lawmakers are investing $11 billion in roads, negatively impacting 37 of the most vulnerable communities in the state. What’s more, the 13 biggest highway projects would add 8.8 million metric tons of C02 by 2050, and 954 million vehicle miles traveled, at a crucial moment for climate. This brings even more air pollution to overburdened communities, violates state emissions targets, wastes public funds and threatens the future of all Washingtonians.
Not only is road expansion harmful, it is doubly so when it is funded with revenue that could be used to meet our other urgent needs, like affordable housing, healthcare, education, rural broadband, potable water, and disaster response. We strongly disagree with the legislature's use of billions of General Fund and Public Works dollars to expand highways.
By the end of the decade, service on debt from previous road projects will eat up 67 cents of every dollar of gas tax revenue. Meanwhile we have been unable to afford the cost of maintaining the highway system we have. By choosing to expand highways, we are not only saddling future generations with the climate, public health and accessibility burdens of highways, they will be stuck paying off the bond debt and the maintenance costs of our expanded highway system.
We are celebrating the Move Ahead Washington’s larger investments in transit, paratransit and active transportation infrastructure. These are significant increases from what was proposed in last year’s package and we know that it was thanks to our organizing and our refusal to accept the status quo that got us to where we are today.
“Just over a year ago, we started mobilizing non-drivers to insist that our mobility needs be included, and it’s exciting and empowering to see how this organizing and coalition building has shifted the funding priorities of this package,” said Anna Zivarts, Director, Disability Mobility Initiative, Disability Rights Washington. “We can’t wait to continue building this movement and holding our leaders accountable to building a future that works for us, and we are looking forward to seeing the research on the needs of non-drivers that we were successful in getting funded.”
We are also excited to see the Complete Streets mandate for WSDOT on maintenance and preservation projects which will start to address the backlog of sidewalks and accessible and biking infrastructure on our state roads. We applaud the legislature for passing a small budget proviso to study a state frequent transit standard. Washingtonians are not equally served by transit, this study can be the first step in providing safe and useful transit for people all over the state.
But what are we investing in? “Much of this package is being spent on highway expansion, which is essentially fossil fuel infrastructure,” said Ingrid Elliott, of 350 Washington. As House Transportation Committee Chair Fey said in the committee hearing today, “the resources not in the Climate Commitment Act, all the General Fund money, goes to highways.” Not only could these General Fund dollars be spent on other urgent priorities, like affordable housing, but also Chair Fey went on to say that such fossil fuel investments limit the ways our country can respond to the current crisis in Europe and “a lot of this has to do with dependence on foreign petroleum. It’s a lesson we should pay attention to.”
Chair Liias noted that we’re investing in “three critical freight corridors – US 2, I-90 and I-5 to Portland. All of Washington has a freight system that works. We’ve seen what happens when freight is disrupted. We’re investing in the supply chain.” Andrew Kidde of 350 Seattle responded, “Trying to solve our freight mobility problems by adding general purpose lanes will only result in those problems returning in a couple years when the highways fill up with cars. To address the vitally important issue of freight mobility, we need to provide freight-only lanes, for example, in the Gateway project.”
“We celebrate the historic investments in transit, bike, and pedestrian projects in this transportation package,” said Paulo Nunes-Ueno from Front and Centered. “Hopefully these dollars will go towards making good on the clear demands BIPOC communities have made over the years: we want cleaner air, better transit, and safer streets. The proviso for a Statewide Frequent Transit Study will hopefully be the first step in providing Washingtonians all over the state with useful, and reliable transit service.”
“At the same, this transportation package represents a severe failure to take climate and environmental justice seriously,” Nunes-Ueno added. “The package spends over $4B expanding highway capacity, the majority of which will impact the communities in Washington which are most overburdened by pollution according to the state’s own Environmental Health Disparities Map. In addition, we have quantified the climate impacts of the highway expansions the legislature just funded and they are extreme. This package is a step backwards in our fight against climate change. We call on the legislature to enact a comprehensive inventory of the impacts of the projects on pollution that harms people’s health and their climate impacts. Ultimately, this package -- despite its long overdue investment in transportation justice -- is still largely stuck in the past putting over two thirds of the $16B towards highway projects that will create more congestion, more pollution, and more greenhouse gasses; all problems that the legislature punted to future generations. Again.”
Front and Centered is a statewide climate and environmental justice coalition serving communities and organizations of people of color.
The 350 Washington Network unites 350.org local groups across the state to grow the global, people-powered movement for climate justice.
The Disability Mobility Initiative is a program of Disability Rights Washington, a private non-profit organization that protects the rights of people with disabilities statewide.
