Why CalBike Opposes Proposition 45

Proposition 45 begins with a diagnosis that is difficult to dispute: California has forgotten how to build, and the friction of regulation is too burdensome, resulting in delays and inflated costs. Useful infrastructure gets caught in procedural thickets that raise costs without always producing better outcomes. There is clearly appeal to a ballot measure promising faster environmental review.

The problem is that Proposition 45 is far less careful than the sales brochure might lead you to believe.

The measure would accelerate review for a broad category of projects, including transportation. It would impose stricter deadlines, limit the alternatives agencies must consider, and restrict judicial review. But the same reduced friction available to a bikeway or transit project would also be available to a highway expansion, and in a state that often seems more eager to widen a doomed highway than expand transit, it is not hard to imagine this will result in more sprawling freeways than verdant bikeways. That is why CalBike opposes Proposition 45.

“California cannot be a climate leader if it allows highway expansions to skirt environmental regulations,” said CalBike Executive Director Kendra Ramsey. “We need to fully support active transportation and transit, and scrutinize any projects that increase driving, if we want to solve the climate crisis.”

The initiative’s central mistake is treating transportation as a single public good. A bus lane, a protected bikeway, and a freeway widening can all be described as infrastructure, but they do not produce the same future. Yet, Proposition 45 would place both in the same expedited category, blind to induced demand or driving alternatives. Reduced friction does not operate in a vacuum. California’s highway-building institutions already have money, plans, political allies, and decades of momentum. Open the gates equally and the results will not be as lopsided as they have always been.

Shortcomings of Prop 45: 

• It treats fundamentally different projects alike. A project that gives people an alternative to driving would receive the same expedited treatment as one that induces more driving and locks in additional emissions.
• It ignores the power of the institutions already positioned to build. California’s highway industry has money, plans, political allies, and decades of momentum. Reducing friction equally does not create equal outcomes. It strengthens the projects that already have the machinery behind them.

“We strongly oppose it,” said Sierra Club California Director Miguel Miguel. “We know that what they are really trying to do is eliminate a lot of the environmental safeguards that have existed for a long time. People have to read long technical documents to get a better understanding of whether a project is right or wrong for their community. It takes time for us to do discovery and have conversations with neighbors. Our input needs to be valued. Are developers trying to make it efficient or cut out the true voices of people who have concerns?”

There is a serious case for reforming the California Environmental Equality Act. There is a serious case for making housing, transit, active transportation, and clean energy easier to build. But Proposition 45 avoids the harder and more necessary task of deciding which projects deserve acceleration and which deserve scrutiny. That is the fossil in amber at the center of this debate: California’s old highway-building machinery, preserved inside the language of a newer abundance movement.