acramento voters have had enough of Mayor Heather Fargo’s do-nothing administration and we believe they will choose professional athlete and philanthropist Kevin Johnson as their new mayor in the November runoff election.

As such, “Mayor” Johnson’s first order of business should be to mount a campaign to re-route I-5 to city perimeters and add to its capacity.

Work begun this month to improve Sacramento’s main arterial has massively inconvenienced commuters while the downtown portion is closed, but it will not permanently cure the highway’s maddening traffic gluts. That will require re-routing an expanded I-5 out of the downtown.

Last week, Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Weintraub suggested that I-5 be re-routed to West Sacramento. Specifically, he recommended that interstate traffic be routed around the city and that the downtown portion of I-5 be decommissioned as a highway and reborn as an intercity boulevard.

We agree. The space made available by re-routing could be used to reconnect the city to its riverfront, whose access I-5 has truncated. This “found land” could be put to many innovative uses. It might even provide a new arena site.

While we agree with Weintraub’s recommendation, we know that the Bee would oppose increasing I-5’s capacity. Bike paths and single-track transit are more the Bee’s preference.

And we suspect that we would disagree with the Bee on how the I-5 re-routing should be funded. We expect that the Bee would call for an increase in federal gas taxes to pay for the project. Or it would dispatch the Sacramento congressional delegation to secure a massive federal spending earmark.

That is where we would part ideological company with the Bee. Gas taxes are already too high. Increasing them when the cost of gas is skyrocketing and the economy tanking is not only economically inadvisable but politically impractical. Even after the collapse of Minnesota’s Interstate 35W bridge last year, polls showed Americans opposing a five-cent increase in gas taxes to improve transportation infrastructure. Nor do we support pork barrel spending. It has been a recipe for budget deficits and corruption.

A far better approach is to look for private-public partnerships that could develop the perimeter routing more quickly and at less expense to taxpayers. The efficacy of major roadways operated as investor-owned utilities has been proven in Australia, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and elsewhere. Global capital markets now see the U.S. transportation system as a potential investment opportunity. Private equity investors have already financed California’s 91 Express Lanes project and SR-125 South Toll Road.

The Texas Transportation Institute’s analysis of 20 years of data on urban traffic congestion demonstrates that congestion increased the least in those few metro areas that have expanded highway capacity in pace with traffic growth. More than a decade’s experience with value-priced “HOT lanes” in Southern California proves that market pricing of “managed lanes” can relieve congestion and generate revenue to help pay for new capacity. Atlanta and Los Angeles have begun planning for truck-only toll lanes as part of their expanded highway capacity.

We expect presumptive “Mayor” Johnson to be an innovative thinker who will consider these potential solutions as well as others. We believe that he will eschew the failed status quo, that his policies will be an antidote to the current administration’s prevailing ennui. Not only do we anticipate that he will seek a cure to I-5’s worsening problems, but we expect him to help seal the Cal Expo development deal by securing developer participation in the new arena site and, just possibly, by enticing the Oakland Athletics to forsake their proposed new Fremont stadium location for one adjacent to the arena.
Johnson, we can’t wait for you to help us remake our city—starting with I-5.