Position Paper for Second Round of Public Meetings

Cascabel Working Group

The Cascabel Working Group would like to make a statement for the public record concerning the study of a proposed I-10 Bypass around the Tucson and Phoenix areas. The Executive Summary and Eight Working Papers prepared by the URS consulting company were posted on the ADOT web site only one week ago, a week which included Thanksgiving. We would like to protest the haste with which these public meetings have been scheduled so soon after the URS report has been made available. Since this study has been ongoing since April and any actual project will take years if not decades, this appears to be unseemly haste.

However, even with the briefest examination of these papers, we are obliged to express our disappointment in this study. We understand this study to be only preliminary. However, even a preliminary study should have excluded the routes through the San Pedro River Valley and the Aravaipa area for many reasons. Not the least of these reasons is the input of those of us most familiar with this area. The opposition of most people in this area, which is noted in the URS report, has been given short shrift. One might think that the conclusions were preordained from the start.

In this regard, we are upset that the term “stakeholders” does not seem to include residents and landowners in areas that will be affected. Only governmental and a few other long established organizations seem to fall under this rubric. That may actually be irrelevant, as the views of these bodies have not been taken into consideration either.

We are aware that no Environmental Impact Statement has been prepared so far. Nevertheless, we had hoped that a somewhat deeper examination of ecological, archaeological, historical, wildlife, and related issues would have been undertaken before now.

The URS report both ignores some obvious alternatives and sweeps other possibilities under the rug as being unworthy of analysis and consideration. Even though it is absolutely clear that the traffic congestion in the downtown Tucson area is 90% locally generated, no local bypass option was put on the table, nor was the option of double-decking the downtown stretch of I-10.

Our group had questioned some of the early assumptions of population forecasts. They seemed at variance with overall US population growth estimates and the special problems of the southwest, such as water. In this report, we did not discover any evidence that these numbers had been looked at with an objective eye. Similarly, global warming and petroleum issues did not seem to be factored into traffic forecasts.

It is also surprising that although some “conclusions” have been reached, there are really no recommendations in the report. Since URS has not seen fit to make a recommendation, our group will make one: “Forget the Bypass idea.”

In summary, we feel that the report prepared by URS is inaccurate, inadequate, and a completely unsuitable basis for making a decision on such a momentous an undertaking as an $8 billion expressway from nowhere to nowhere. The one place they seem to be “dead on” is their statement that there is no funding in sight. We sincerely hope that ADOT will not decide to proceed with this Bypass based on this study.