Sooner or later, San Diego is going to have to confront the fact that it has legal obligations pulling it in opposite directions on climate change. 1/

https://twitter.com/mattmoves93/status/1650694045465968641

This freeway widening was actually considered *mitigation* for all the development in northern San Diego. Development impact fees were paid specifically for its construction. Legally speaking, the city can’t just leave that $$$ unspent, or redirect it to another project. 2/

Took ≈6 hours, but the San Diego City Council is finally taking up the $22.5 million expansion of the SR-56 freeway. Background: kpbs.org/news/environme… Staff presentation will be about five minutes. Caltrans and city staffers are in the chambers.

Something to understand about the SR-56 widening (vote on Monday) is that it's funded with developer fees. Think about that. San Diego made housing *more expensive* so it could widen the freeway.

Here are some other projects with the same funding sources as these $22.5M 1/

https://twitter.com/acbowen/status/1583470545781239808

The freeway widening's largest funding source ($12.1 million) is CIP Fund 200636. Also getting money from this fund ($64k): Citywide traffic calming projects.

Mayor Gloria is giving a freeway 189x more money from this fund than he's giving to projects that can save lives. 2/

Some observations: For years I heard the city of SD say it wanted to improve streets “for all road users.” It carefully avoided speaking about the conflict between the wants of drivers (parking, speed) & safer streets. Last night I heard a change in tone. 1/

https://twitter.com/acbowen/status/1593772286363938817

After the gut-wrenching testimony from @SDSafeStreets, I heard council members acknowledge that sometimes to save a life, you have to inconvenience drivers. And in a society with moral clarity, lives are more important. Spoke about this last year 👇🏻 2/ voiceofsandiego.org/2021/07/23/vos…

Less than three months ago, San Diego promised to achieve net zero GHG emissions in 13 years. Now city staff, and by extension @MayorToddGloria, want to spend $22.5 million to expand a freeway.

Buckle up for a doozy of a 🧵. 1/
kpbs.org/news/environme… The project would add 2.2 miles of HOV lanes to SR-56. The city says they’ll encourage carpooling and the rules of "induced demand" don't apply. This is the well-documented fact that freeway expansions put more cars on the road. 2/
governing.com/now/why-the-co…

In an interview last week, @CMJenCampbell made some comments I think are worth sharing. The selection of the council president, she said, "should be done behind the scenes" and "has nothing to do with the public." Here are her full, unedited remarks. 1/ To be clear, a "behind the scenes" selection of the council president would violate the Brown Act. In 2014, the council had to redo its council president vote because of suspicion that a deal had been struck in secret. 2/ kpbs.org/news/2014/dec/…

Early Saturday morning, a woman sped through a curve on College Ave in El Cerrito and hit a telephone pole. She was hospitalized with serious but not life threatening injuries. #VisionZero A woman riding a Bird scooter hit a crack in the sidewalk in Ocean Beach and was thrown over the handlebars. She hit her head on the sidewalk and was hospitalized with a skull fracture and brain bleed — injuries that are life threatening. #VisionZero

Supervisor @nathanfletcher says the five *new* confirmed cases of #COVID19 in San Diego County point to the “very likely reality that we now have community spread.” County is announcing a legally enforceable ban on all gatherings of more than 250 people. Smaller gatherings are discouraged.