The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Today we have to break more bad news to our 6-year-old daughter. A mesquite tree, growing a little cattywampus near the side of our business, is coming down in preparation for the expansion of Downtown Links, the third phase expansion of Barraza-Aviation Parkway to the I-10 freeway. Our daughter calls this tree “Pony,” as she can easily climb onto its trunk and pretend it’s a horse. She’s not the only kid who has befriended this tree. Many over the years have played on or near it since Exo Roast Co. opened, and countless customers have rested in this rare spot of shade in our city.
We’ve had to share a whole season of bad news with our daughter. Her classroom is on Zoom, her social life evaporated, and it was so hot and rainless all summer that we could hardly play outside. When temperatures finally cooled, the smoke in the air made it unpleasant, if not unsafe, to be outdoors. And now we have to tell her that her favorite tree — in a city that needs more trees — will disappear to make room for more cars.
Although Downtown Links, funded by the Regional Transportation Authority, presents itself as a “multi-modal connection project” that includes provisions for people walking and using bikes, the bulk of its $76 million budget is plainly car-centric. It’s designed to provide “an alternative route around the downtown core” to help move motorists past businesses like ours. It was approved by voters in 2006, before we began to live the consequences of unchecked greenhouse-gas emissions. It is precisely the type of plan now being called out, and in some cases, dismantled, across the United States.
Paradigm shifts in urban planning question the personal automobile as the default for moving people through cities. In contrast, Downtown Links follows a 1970s-era perspective where the individual car is king, where the suburbs are a haven beyond the hassles of the city, and where roadways designed for speed provide the pathway for progress rather than improvements in the city itself. RTA is clearly out of step with now commonly accepted practices for smart growth, and we can only imagine it proceeds by inertia alone. Even the city of Tucson favors more progressive solutions like urban infill in a revitalized downtown, microtransit, and the Complete Streets Initiative, which calls for safer, slower streets that move people through our city with dignity.
Many of our customers are flummoxed by this plan. They didn’t see it coming. Worse yet, some didn’t know what they were voting for in 2006 (or didn’t vote at all). And now, inexplicably, RTA Next is planning a new, 20-year project focused on more road “improvements” like Downtown Links. With miles of new roadways and “no more than 4%” of project costs devoted to landscaping, we’ll just get more asphalt, emissions and heat. Further, RTA Next doesn’t just redouble the current plan and its fallout, it also attempts to overcome current budget shortfalls. With the 2008 recession and near economic collapse due to COVID-19, the project is proceeding under a “Construction Management At Risk” model — meaning there may not be enough money to finish it. Can we really afford to tie our limited future resources to outdated transportation strategies, especially when we can’t afford to complete them?
Years to come, we don’t want to share more bad news with our daughter: that our city is too hot, dry and smoggy to live in. That’s why we support organizations like Living Streets Alliance, which is pushing to ensure that our streets exist for everyone, not just for cars, and Borderlands Restoration Network, working for a verdant future on public and private lands and to make local economies ecologically restorative. RTA Next is funded by our taxes, and it’s time that we pay attention to their plan and get involved. Before there’s more bad news.
