Description: Challenge to interstate widening project.
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City of Long Beach v. State of California Department of Transportation
Case Documents:
Filing Date Type File Action Taken Summary 07/16/2015 Petition for Writ of Mandate Download Petition for writ of mandate filed. The City of Long Beach filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court challenging the California Department of Transportation’s (Caltrans’s) compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in its “secret approval” of a project to widen an approximately 16-mile-long corridor of Interstate 405. The Orange County Transportation Authority was also named as a respondent in the lawsuit. Among the alleged inadequacies in the CEQA review was a failure to determine and disclose whether greenhouse gas emissions would be significant. The City of Long Beach contended that Caltrans “shirked its duty” by refusing to make a determination of the significance of the greenhouse gas impacts and calling such a determination “too speculative.” The petition alleged that the project would result in a 39% increase in vehicle miles traveled over baseline conditions for the widened freeway segment.