La Crosse Area Planning Committee Meeting

Unfortunately, the LAPC passed a resolution supporting phase 2 of the La Crosse Area Transportation Study at their meeting last Wednesday.  There were two encouraging things about the meeting - First that so many people showed up to voice their opposition to new road construction.  Second, that Mayor Kabat made clear his opposition to the study by being the lone no vote.  Mayor Kabat also was able to add the Strategy H "no build" option back into the study, and attempted to have two destructive options removed from the study.

Mayor Kabat will be at the March 29 Sierra Club meeting to give his view on La Crosse area transportation, along with Chuck Lee, who will present alternative means of meeting transportation goals.  Please come to the meeting to thank the mayor for his actions, and to plan what our next steps should be.

Here's a copy of my presentation at the LAPC of the Coulee Groups position on the transportation study:

Coulee Region Transportation Study

The Department of Transportation is going to propose going ahead to study six road construction options as the only solutions to a predicted north-south transportation problem.  The six strategy packages include five possible roads through the marsh and an option to expand Hwy 16 and La Crosse Street. 

New and expanded roadways encourage expanded urban sprawl, increasing the number of vehicles on the road, ultimately leading to more congestion.  The additional vehicles also increase fossil use and CO2 released to the atmosphere, adding to global climate change, a problem that state employees aren’t even allowed to discuss.  The expanded roadways damage neighborhoods and local natural areas, ultimately degrading the city.
The Sierra Club recommends a more progressive approach to getting people and goods efficiently to their intended destination - increase mass transit, bicycle, and pedestrian facilities; encourage carpooling and ride sharing; stager work starting times; foster compact mixed use development; use smarter traffic control systems while making targeted improvements to existing roads.  This kind of solution requires putting neighborhoods and natural areas at a higher priority than highways.  It’s more challenging than building new roads because it requires modification to the way we develop our area.  But this kind of change is already occurring in the country – A smaller percentage of people own cars than at any time in recent history.  Young people are waiting longer to get drivers licenses.  More people are moving to compact city neighborhoods close to work and shopping.   Uber is creating new ways to travel by car, with autonomous vehicles a distinct possibility in a few years. 

The transportation scene will be much different in 2050, and the DOT is still proposing the same old solutions.  They say the no-build option will be evaluated, but I don’t expect serious consideration.  If it was, they’d be talking about seven solution options instead of six.  We don’t need to spend more time and money evaluating build options.  Spend the study and construction money on getting people to their destination without using cars – the money will go a long way to making a mass transit system and a bike ped system in an attractive community that really works for the residents.

 

Sierra Club joins anti-TPP letter

From the National Sierra Club

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, 40 leading environmental groups including the Indigenous Environmental Network, Bold Nebraska, Friends of the Earth, 350.org, and the Sierra Club sent a letter urging Congress to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. The letter, sent to Congress a day before President Obama and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meet in Washington, D.C., follows TransCanada’s January announcement that it plans to use rules in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to force American taxpayers to compensate the company for President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL project in November 2015.

In January TransCanada announced its intent to use the “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) system in NAFTA to ask a private tribunal of three lawyers to order the U.S. government to pay them more than $15 billion as “compensation” for the pipeline rejection -- a decision that spared communities the threat of increased climate disruption and spills of dirty tar sands oil.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) -- a pending trade deal symbolically signed by the 12 member nations’ leaders at a ceremony in February but still requiring approval from Congress -- would extend virtually the same broad rights that TransCanada is claiming to more than 9,000 new foreign-owned firms operating in the U.S., roughly doubling the number of foreign corporations that could follow TransCanada’s lead and challenge our environmental protections in unaccountable tribunals.

Road expansion plans move forward

Transportation issues are front and center as the Wisconsin Department of Transportation Coulee Region Study group pares its plans to six. All of their final proposals include substantial road building in the La Crosse River marsh or expansion of Highway 16 and La Crosse Street. Read more about it in the current issue of the Coulee Region Sierra.

At the March 16 meeting of the La Crosse Area Plannng Committee's Policy Board, the DOT will ask the LAPC to weigh in on moving forward with the next phase of the project - environmental review of the six proposed options.

The Sierra Club believes more roads are not the answer. Further study of unacceptable options is a waste of energy, time, and money.

Therefore, we encourage you to contact members of the LAPC Policy Board and ask them to support a no-build option. If you are able to attend the Board's meeting on March 16 at 4:30 p.m. (room 3220 La Crosse County Administrative Center), please do.

And we invite you to attend the Sierra Club's March 29 meeting which will focus on alternative options for improving transportation in our region. (You don't have to be a member to attend, but you should become a member if you agree with the club's goals!)