Teen climate activists take aim at SANDAG regional plan

Protesters KC Gupta (center left), Elena Gilli (center right) and Chris Roberts (far right) outside SANDAG’s downtown office July 11. (Photo by James Miller/Times of San Diego) Before the July 11 SANDAG Board of Directors meeting, KC Gupta and Elena Gilli, both 17, met outside the agency’s downtown office to protest SANDAG’s 2025 regional plan. Reviewed every four years, SANDAG’s regional plan orients how the county spends money — $1.3 billion this fiscal year — on transportation systems and infrastructure. The teens describe themselves as climate and transportation activists. Gilli is headed to UC Berkeley in the fall after graduating from La Jolla High School in May, while Gupta is a rising junior at the Bishop School in La Jolla. Gilli said she volunteers with San Diego 350’s Youth v. Oil Campaign, and that public transportation is a lifeline for San Diegans. “A good transportation system can connect communities,” Gilli said. “It can be a tool of equity and it can advance social justice — and a bad transportation system can entrench inequities.” Although SANDAG has until the end of the year to approve their regional plan, the agency’s transportation committee meeting at 9 a.m. Friday is the last opportunity for the public to make comments on the proposal. Gupta, who serves as executive director of the People’s Platform of San Diego, said he and Gilli plan to host another rally outside SANDAG’s office at 8:30 a.m. Friday. According to KPBS, SANDAG’s regional plan expands highways in the county by adding 93 new miles of managed lanes — which are usually open to carpools, buses and cars that pay a toll — and by converting 259 miles of existing highway into managed lanes. Gupta explained that the regional plan doesn’t reflect youth activists’ priorities. “The current plan falls short,” he said. “It proposes something around 300 miles of managed lanes, which are highway expansions masquerading as lane conversions and HOV lanes, and we know these things induce traffic demand. Our current public transit system doesn’t work for youth or working riders that depend on it, and SANDAG isn’t doing enough.” According to Gupta, the cost of building public transportation infrastructure dwarfs the price tag of increasing trolley frequency, which he said is often riders’ top priority. “When we build these massive projects, the cost of service compared to the cost of building these are so radically different,” Gupta said. “MTS estimated it would be $4.2 million a year for seven-and-a-half-minute service on the Blue Line, and it was a $2.1 billion project.” Carmel Valley resident and the co-leader of San Diego 350’s Transportation Team, Chris Roberts, 64, said the regional plan typically schedules infrastructure projects for completion far into the future – for instance in 2035 or 2050. According to Roberts, transit projects speak to young activists who rely less on cars, but these projects will not be completed anytime soon. Teens like Gilli and Gupta fighting for transit projects will be older than 40 when some of them open. Gilli said she is concerned that public transit projects — such as planned rapid bus routes — will take 25 years to complete. “A lot of the transit funding is not yet secured,” she said. “It’s relying on ballot measures that haven’t been passed yet,” adding that she would like SANDAG to prioritize public transit for funds they already have, instead of managed-lane highway expansions. Gupta said he grew up in New York City riding public transportation every day to school. When he moved to San Diego during the pandemic, he said he couldn’t rely on transit because it took so long. Gupta said younger people benefit from robust public transportation. “We’re the riders,” Gupta said. “High schoolers, college students, young workers — it’s really a campaign led by people under the age of 25 who take the bus to school, ride the trolley to work or wait in the heat for an unreliable 929.” He called the SANDAG plan is a “car-centric way of thinking.” “There really is change that needs to be made, and small changes can have a massive difference,” Gupta said. “So things like changes that are less than 1% of the SANDAG budget can have a massive difference on transit riders.”