For some time in 2016 I was driving for Uber and going from Sacramento to the Bay Area to make more money. I'd go out there drive for the day, sleep at the rest area, then drive again, then drive back. It must've been a few dozen times that I made that drive before Uber seemed to lower their rates and I stopped doing it, and I noticed the traffic is horrible.
There is far too much congestion on I-80 from Sacramento to the Bay Area. Now I'd like to see I-80 widened where it can easily be done, and I'll write about that separately. However, I think we need to build an alternative to I-80 and looking at a map I thought I found land that could be used for a new highway, going through nature preserves between Vacaville and Hayward.
I'd like to look at if we could build a highway there with no other development like gas stations; there would be a warning as to the lack of any gas stations. There would be rest areas for cars and trucks, areas for hikers to enter the preserves, and a somewhat unsightly but needed set of fences running along the new highway to protect vehicles and wildlife from each other. In the fenced off area there would be solar panels running along the entire highway as we would need fences either way, and there would be enough space between the fenced area for maintenance people to drive a truck.
The bottom line is we need an alternative to I-80 to ease congestion. And traffic congestion is bad for the environment. After all if you are not going anywhere and your vehicle is running you are still using fuel. This would need to be studied and planned however I did study trip planning in trucking school and doing nothing would be anti-growth.
Another point is that I'd like to squeeze a desalinized water pipeline in the fenced area with those solar panels. Although there would be little along this new road there would be some large Ohio-style rest areas with a Starbucks, a likely overpriced McDonald's and a good amount of big rig parking. And clearly there would be places to reverse direction on the highway. This would be a toll road.
