California needs to reform its environmental review processes.
And that basically means that the state needs CEQA reform. The California Environmental Quality Act was passed in 1970 to require state and local governments to identify significant environmental impacts of projects and then plan for how to mitigate or avoid those impacts.
Unfortunately, it has commonly resulted in delays to much-needed housing, transit, and climate-positive projects.
It should be easier to build housing in our cities. It should be easier to build clean energy. And it should absolutely be easier to build the transportation projects that help people drive less, improve pedestrian and cyclist safety, and reduce the emissions causing the climate crisis.
Proposition 45 is not written that way.
Instead of making good projects easier to build while maintaining scrutiny for bad projects, Proposition 45 largely treats them as if they have the same climate impacts. As a result, it would make it substantially easier to approve highway expansions while leaving many of California's most important transit and active transportation projects with little or no additional benefit.
We Should Be Streamlining the Right Projects
There is nothing wrong with the basic idea behind Proposition 45. California's environmental review process often takes far too long and costs far too much.
The problem is that not every project deserves the same level of streamlining.
A protected bike lane does not have the same environmental impacts as a freeway widening.
A rail station does not have the same long-term consequences as adding more highway lanes.
Yet Proposition 45 fails to distinguish between projects that advance California's climate goals and those that undermine them.
In fact, the state has already streamlined many types of infill housing, active transportation, and transit projects
We’ve already made monumental progress on CEQA Reform that renders some of the arguments for Prop 45 moot.
AB 130 and SB 131, passed last year, included CEQA exemptions for urban infill housing development, implementing a local government’s Housing Element, day care centers, food banks, wildfire risk reduction, broadband, public parks, and more.
SB 71, also signed into law last year, expanded and extended CEQA exemptions for certain bike and bus projects.
Highways Get the Benefits
One of the biggest consequences of Proposition 45 is that highway projects would receive expedited environmental review.
The measure imposes firm deadlines on agencies, narrows the alternatives that must be studied, limits when public comments can be submitted, and substantially restricts judicial review. These changes would all apply to highway expansion projects that qualify under the measure.
California already has institutions dedicated to widening highways. Those agencies have funding, staff, decades of project pipelines, and political momentum. Giving those projects a faster approval process means many of them will become even harder to challenge before construction begins.
If your goal is to widen freeways, Proposition 45 helps.
If your goal is to stop or curtail these projects that increase driving and pollution, Proposition 45 hurts.
Many Good Transportation Projects Don't Receive the Same Benefit
Ironically, many of the transportation projects Californians most want to build and that are beneficial to the environment will not be helped by Prop 45.
The initiative completely excludes California High-Speed Rail from its transportation provisions. The state’s most-known transit project was intentionally omitted not because it was good policy, but because it didn’t poll well, despite certainly needing faster environmental review.
Additionally, Prop 45 relies on a narrow legal term, "exclusive public mass transit guideway", to qualify transit projects for streamlining under the measure. Under California law, that term refers to dedicated transit guideway facilities like certain rail infrastructure and does not encompass the broad range of transit improvements or active transportation projects Californians need.
That means many beneficial projects, including certain train stations, rail improvements that are not exclusive or public guideways, bike trails, and many bicycle and pedestrian projects, receive little or no additional streamlining under Proposition 45 unless they already qualify under existing law.
So, to review:
Highway expansions receive faster environmental review.
California High-Speed Rail does not.
Many rail projects do not.
Many bike and pedestrian projects do not.
In a state where transportation is the number one source of climate emissions, this is not sound climate policy.
This Isn't the CEQA Reform California Needs
Streets For All has long supported reforming CEQA to eliminate unnecessary delay.
We’ve worked on streamlining projects for electric rail and pedestrian malls – the kinds of projects that will have no significant environmental impacts, and could even provide environmental benefits.
If a project reduces greenhouse gas emissions, improves safety, increases transit access, or gives people alternatives to driving, California should make it easier to build.
If a project expands highways, induces additional driving, and locks in higher emissions, it should continue to receive careful environmental review.
Proposition 45 does not make that distinction. Instead, it removes procedural barriers for projects regardless of whether they move California toward or away from its climate, transportation, and public health goals.
We Can Do Better
California should absolutely reform CEQA and build upon the progress that has been made.
But reform should accelerate the projects we need more of, not the projects we've spent decades trying to move away from.
We don’t have to choose between keeping CEQA exactly as it is and passing Proposition 45.
The legislature should continue to pursue reform to make it dramatically easier to build housing, transit, bicycle infrastructure, clean energy, and other climate-positive projects while preserving meaningful environmental review for projects that expand highways, increase driving, and result in higher emissions.
That is the kind of CEQA reform Streets For All supports.
That is not what Prop 45 is and that’s why we oppose Prop 45.