By Damien Newton | August 19, 2025
This is a frustrating ruling, Caltrans admits the project will increase VMT (and greenhouse gas emissions) in the long-term in the environmental documents submitted to the CTC. Caltrans combined two projects into one at the start of the decade and didn’t do a full environmental study as a result. The judge notes that the project has no long-term benefits and yet the project is still moving forward.
Click here to read the article in full.
By The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board | June 7, 2025 | The Sacramento Bee
The perpetual roadwork on Sacramento’s highways is a never-ending story of surprise detours, dangerous lane splits, metal-smeared K-rails and tragic fatal accidents — all in the futile pursuit of a solution to relieve congestive traffic. A “solution” that will be obsolete in less than a decade.
Presented by Sacramento Valley Section APA (American Planning Association) and Caltrans
As planning, design, and community development professionals, most of us chose our professions because we want to “Do the Right Thing.” But when you’re working to solve complicated, multi-faceted challenges like climate change, the housing crisis, and structural inequities, with many stakeholders and limited resources and power, determining what that right thing is can be hard to define. And once defined, it can be even harder to implement. By bringing together diverse perspectives from various disciplines, industries, and backgrounds, this Speaker Series will explore this notion of what it means to “do the right thing,” how there isn’t one right answer, and how we can use these ideas to connect to a sense of purpose, challenge the norm, and collectively work towards a common goal.
All sessions will be held from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Please check in prior to 9:30 a.m.
Join us for networking after each session from 11:30 to Noon
West Sacramento Community Center, 1075 West Capitol Avenue, West Sacramento
Free parking at 1271 West Capitol Avenue (behind Walgreens)
A Live Streaming option is available for all sessions at the same price as attending in person.
On January 11, 2024, ECOS submitted a letter to the California Department of Transportation, District 3 containing our comments on the Yolo 80 Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR). In our letter, we give various reasons why the DEIR should be revised and recirculated.
By Stephen M. Wheeler and Barbara Leary, Special to the Bee | October 17, 2023 | The Sacramento Bee
If we want to know why our state’s transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions have risen since the early 2010s, a good place to look is Caltrans. The agency has long been fixated on widening roads and creating “induced demand” which has led to more driving. Currently, this cycle continues through the agency’s questionable efforts to create additional lanes on the I-80 Yolo Bypass causeway leading into Sacramento. And recently, a high-level administrator was demoted after attempting to stop such actions.
Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article280482349.html#storylink=cpy
Monica Stark, The Davis Enterprise, October 15, 2023
“‘It’s been pretty obvious to me just from observing the ‘rehabilitation’ project that it was doing the sort of deep roadbed work needed for widening,’ Stephen Wheeler, UC Davis professor of human ecology, said…”
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