Caltrans Spending 51 Million Tax Dollars On ‘Comprehensive Shade & Heat Mitigation, Vehicle Mileage Monitoring, Airport Ground Transportation’ Around SoCal

Caltrans is awarding more than $51 million of your tax dollars in planning grants to 89 projects to help make the state’s transportation system more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

Caltrans says of the 51 million dollars, more than  $48 million (94 percent) will benefit disadvantaged communities. More than 12 million dollars is coming from SB1, the yearly increases in the gasoline tax in California…a source of funding that is not sustainable as government at every level pushes people into electric vehicles.  By 2035, there won’t by any new gasoline powered vehicles sold in California.  Without any gasoline powered vehicles, there would be no reason to sell gasoline hence the State would not get any tax revenue from gasoline taxes.

 Most of the projects are in Northern California.

Three projects are related to the desert:

The South Coast Air Quality Management District is getting 450-thousand dollars to work on a plan to monitor every mile you drive, which is called VMT…Vehicle Miles Traveled.   Your car would be under surveillance so that it would not be allowed to travel more than 10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit of the street you are driving on. 

The Southern California Association of Governments is getting half a million dollars to conduct a study on surface transportation around airports in Riverside, Imperial, San Bernardino, Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura Counties.

The City of Palm Springs is getting 4-hundred-thousand dollars  for what Caltrans calls the Comprehensive Shade and Heat Mitigation Plan for Multi-modal Transportation.

In English, that’s a proposal that will focus on sustainable and resilient transportation planning to mitigate and adapt to extreme heat in the Coachella Valley.

Caltrans says it is aware that  daily summer temperatures in the Coachella Valley  regularly exceed 100 degrees.   Obviously that has been the case since human beings became aware of the fact that the Coachella Valley is in the middle of the desert.

Front and center is to focus on underserved and low-income populations, by studying heat and shade equity so adaptive climate-appropriate shade structures and landscape designs can be built along transportation routes. 

100 dollar bills growing in the grass.

Photo from Alpha Media Portland OR