Opposition Grows to I-10 Bypass
by atlatl Saturday, Dec. 01, 2007 at 3:57 PM

Arizona residents turned out in force against plans for an I-10 bypass at a recent public meeting, pointing out that the highway would serve real estate developers and global trade while harming Arizona's ecology and culture.

Concerned Arizona residents, ecologists and academics turned out in force on the night of Wednesday, November 29 to oppose the Arizona Department of Transportation's (ADOT's) plans to construct an Interstate 10 highway bypass intended to allow heavy trucking traffic avoid the entire area between Phoenix and Tucson.

Much of the opposition centered around the fact that all proposed routes would pass through critical ecological areas, including the San Pedro Riparian Corridor, Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness or Saguaro National Park (see map below). Other concerns included the role a new highway would play in facilitating development, and its contributions to economic globalization and global warming.

The public meeting began with a presentation by ADOT and consulting firm URS about the results of the Interstate 10 (I-10) Phoenix/Tucson Bypass Study, a "preliminary assessment of the need and feasibility for a new transportation corridor that would provide an alternative to I-10, from the Buckeye area to eastern Arizona." The results of this study will be presented to the State Transportation Board before the end of the year, and the board will then decide whether to proceed with further planning for the bypass.

In the hour allotted for public comment after the ADOT presentation, approximately 40 people spoke out passionately against the bypass plan, with only one voice in favor (this person claimed that the San Pedro River Valley, a world-renowned avian corridor, contains no wildlife other than "maybe a few quail").

The first to comment was a representative of the Cascabell Working Group, who objected that the public meetings had been scheduled for only a week after the study's results were made public. He said that the overwhelming objections raised in the first round of public meetings had not been taken into account in the study's findings, leading him to wonder if the study's conclusions were "predetermined from the start." He criticized the report's failure to take ecological, archaeological, historical or cultural impacts of the road into account.

Traffic or Trade?

As a number of those who commented pointed out, ADOT's stated reasons for the road are illogical and likely false. While two of the four stated reasons concern alleviating traffic in the Tucson and Phoenix metro areas, less than 10% of Tucson traffic and less than 5% of Phoenix traffic is through traffic -- the vast majority of it is local and would not be affected at all by the wide bypass planned.

The bypass appears designed to increase the trade volume that can be moved through Arizona, and ADOT acknowledged the road's importance in this regard. Having I-10 as basically the only route across Arizona, ADOT noted, puts the economy "in jeopardy," as a single accident, downed bridge or other traffic blockage can shut down trade for days.

In this light, the road makes much more sense. The US Department of Transportation recently named I-10 one of its six "Corridors of the Future," highways earmarked for a surge in federal funding to increase their capacity to deal with heavy truck traffic (another one is I-69).

"The trade and tourism corridors are becoming so congested that they are having an effect on our economy," Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters said on a September visit to Tucson.

But as those gathered on Wednesday noted, strengthening the globalized economy does not benefit the people of Arizona, who would be better served by a greater reliance on local and sustainable resources.

Unlimited Growth

Another of ADOT's stated motivations for the bypass is to "serve the expected rapid population growth and land development" in southeast Arizona. But it is far more likely that the road is intended to enable, rather than facilitate, this development. By punching through and degrading currently protected areas and by increasing accessibility of relatively remote regions of southern Arizona, the bypass would open vast tracts of land to developers.

As Randy Serraglio of the Center for Biological Diveristy said, "This isn't a road to nowhere. It really is a road to somewhere that doesn't exist yet."

When asked if the proposal for a bypass came from Transportation Board member Si Schorr, a "powerful real estate lawyer," ADOT representative Dale Buskirk confirmed this.

"Is there anything else anyone needs to know?" the questioner asked the crowd.

In addition to practicing real estate law, Schorr is also a member of the National Association of Homebuilders Legal Action Network for Development Strategies and serves on the board of the Pima County Real Estate Research Council.

Not Which Road -- No Road!

While many of those assembled criticized specific sections of the proposed route, the overwhelming sentiment was that ADOT should not be considering a bypass road at all, no matter where it goes.

"We shouldn't be talking about which route is which, we should be talking about whether we should be having an expansion at all," said Shyla W., outreach coordinator for Ironwood Forest National Monument.

The bypass plan was blasted for its failure to consider southern Arizona's limited water resources -- which will necessarily limit growth -- and the looming catastrophe of global warming, which will only be worsened by building more petroleum-dependent infrastructure.

"It's disappointing that in the 21st Century, we are still coming up with 1970s solutions," said Roy Emrick of the Sierra Club's Rincon Group.

Some of those present instead urged ADOT to increase freight and passenger reliance on rails rather than roads. But according to wildlife biologist Lisa Haynes, the impacts of railroads on wildlife are nearly as severe as those of highways.

"Studies have shown that in some cases, despite wildlife crossings, road kill is still the single highest source of mortality of wild cats and other species," Haynes said. "Trains are not much better. I know of three mountain lions killed by trains -- and those are just the ones I know of."

Finally, it is worth noting that no matter how interstate trade moves, whether by road, boat, or rail, it is still serving to maintain an immoral and fundamentally unsustainable economic system.

Stop the Bypass!

There are plenty of reasons to oppose any I-10 bypass.

There is simply nowhere to put such a road without destroying irreplaceable ecological treasures. Roads inevitably encourage development and reliance on an unsustainable, fossil-fuel based system. And fundamentally, we should be opposing anything that the government says it needs to sustain its globalized economy.

For now, everyone should submit public comments to the State Transportation Board urging them to drop plans for a bypass.

Of course, even with the overwhelming public opposition to this road, plans may still go forward. As ADOT representative Buskirk noted on Wednesday, the State Transportatin Board "[does] not report to nor are they accountable to the state legislature."

So comment now, but know that more action may be needed in the future. We will never let them build this road!

More Info

Basic Background
Bypass Study official web site
Large Map of Proposed Routes (PDF)

Background on Infrastructure and Trade

I-69 Resistance
NAFTA Superhighway
Root Force

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