This is a story about Metro and Caltrans' plan to widen the 14 Freeway from Santa Clarita to Palmdale.
For starters, though, some context.
This summer and fall, record heat has been killing people up and down California. This week, California - especially Southern California - is experiencing climate-change-driven record heat. Santa Clarita just finished a week when excessive heat advisories warned of "really dangerous temperatures... in the 115 degrees range." Palmdale set a new nighttime heat record. Wildfires are widespread, as is unhealthy air quality; hot suburban North L.A. County experiences these issues more acutely than much of the rest of the state.
The science is clear. Humans are heating up the climate. There are various activities causing this, but for California and especially for L.A. County, the biggest source of greenhouse gases is driving.
Today's news is about one more Metro and Caltrans freeway expansion project (among many Metro and Caltrans freeway expansions in L.A. County) designed to increase driving, further harming the climate, exacerbating the heat, threatening the future. Preventing driver inconvenience appears to again trump preserving a habitable climate.
Back to Metro and Caltrans' plan for the 14.
In 2022, the Metro board approved a motion directing the agency to study how to "correct sub-standard configurations" (a highway widening euphemism) on 25+ miles of SR-14 from Santa Clarita through Palmdale.
14 Freeway expansion has been primarily championed by two Metro boardmembers, Glendale City Councilmember Ara Najarian and County Supervisor Kathryn Barger. Both Najarian and Barger mentioned the project in Metro discussions of VMT (Vehicle Miles Traveled) mitigation (how California freeway expansion is now required to address some freeway harms).
Najarian stated, "we’re planning some improvements on the SR-14. We believe that they are clearly identified as safety improvements. But in any event, there’s some concrete that’s going to be laid to increase some travel lanes..." How the 14 Freeway widening will mitigate increased driving remains an open issue. Will the project trigger investments in VMT reduction (such as bus and rail upgrades) in the area?
The Metro project page maps the project, but has very little information (no project documents). There are a few Metro SR-14 presentations in agenda documents for the North L.A. County Transportation Coalition. NCTC is the governmental Joint Powers Authority that steers Metro projects in that part of the county (similar to how various Councils of Governments - COGs - do in other subregions.)
Metro recently presented the alternatives they studied for the 14 Freeway corridor; this gives an indication of what features are likely to be part of the project as it moves into environmental studies and approvals.
For the 14 Freeway, Metro initially considered a wide range of improvements - from adding general purpose lanes, various types of Bus Rapid Transit lanes, HOV lanes, and even lane removal.
You can probably guess where this story is going. As usual, Metro highway builders ended up picking the "standard lane addition" alternative - as they found it improves safety and reliability, and minimizing community impacts.
The next questions were: where to add more general purpose driving lanes, and how many. Metro pared the analysis down to three stretches.
Based on Metro and Caltrans 2021 project study report (summarized on page 5) the full three-segment widening is expected to cost $204-277 million.
The next step was going to be to share all this analysis with the public at two 14 Freeway project scoping meetings announced to take place this week. Then Metro postponed those meetings, with no explanation.
Supervisor Barger responded in a press statement blaming the meeting cancellations on Caltrans. She begins, "I am not happy. I’m aware the delays were caused by Caltrans, but this process needs to keep moving forward urgently."
"We’ve waited long enough to make improvements to the SR-14" which Barger termed "the lifeline route in North Los Angeles County." Barger's statement enumerated 14 Freeway issues, "lane drops and lane gaps" and "high accident rates and unpredictable travel times" then concluded, "We need to tackle these issues head on and without slowing down.”
Streetsblog reached out to Caltrans and Metro to clarify why this week's 14 Freeway meetings had been postponed. Caltrans District 7 Media Relations Manager Eric Menjivar responded, “Caltrans and Metro are refining our proposed project alternatives to make it a successful scoping period. We will reschedule the project scoping meetings as soon as possible.”
