The Overhead Wire Daily | February 14th, 2024 | State Road Diet Preemption
I hope everyone has a great Valentine’s Day however you celebrate.
Over the last few years articles about state pre-emption of cities have been increasing a lot. (There are 44 links specifically on the topic in our premium link archive) As more and more cities go to left leaning elected officials, conservative states try to gain back lost leverage and control over legislative priorities. But lately culture war politics have been spilling into policy disputes such as when the Texas Republican Party Platform decided road diets were a plot and needed to “protect drivers”. San Antonio was the target of the governor specifically on this front. A single Indiana legislator has also been trying to kill approved bus lanes for several years.
The most recent of these is a bill in the Arizona legislature which would approve a continuation in funding for the Arizona State DOT. But the tagged amendments are quite ridiculous and read off like someone watched too many 15 minute conspiracy theories on TikTok. The primary objective is to kill intercity rail between Phoenix and Tucson by restricting funding from federal sources. That specific fight is an old saw, but the other added items in my opinion are more damaging longer term. The bill would restrict the State DOT from doing any lane reductions, building or maintaining electric charging stations, planning for emissions reductions or reducing VMT.
My favorite response to the bill was from State Senator Teresa Hatathlie who said “If you want to go suck on somebody’s tailpipe, be my guest.”
I would expect the governor to veto this specific bill over these additions, but my guess is that some state legislatures around the country will only get worse when it comes to transportation and climate policy bill restrictions when cities try something different.
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