{"id":72538,"date":"2025-07-18T11:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T11:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/72538\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T11:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T11:44:11","slug":"teen-climate-activists-take-aim-at-sandag-regional-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/72538\/","title":{"rendered":"Teen climate activists take aim at SANDAG regional plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Protesters KC Gupta (center left), Elena Gilli (center right) and Chris Roberts (far right) outside SANDAG\u2019s downtown office July 11. (Photo by James Miller\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

Before the July 11 SANDAG Board of Directors meeting, KC Gupta and Elena Gilli, both 17, met outside the agency\u2019s downtown office to protest SANDAG\u2019s 2025 regional plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reviewed every four years, SANDAG\u2019s regional plan orients how the county spends money \u2014 $1.3 billion<\/a> this fiscal year \u2014 on transportation systems and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The teens describe themselves as climate and transportation activists. Gilli is headed to UC Berkeley in the fall after graduating from La Jolla High School in May, while Gupta is a rising junior at the Bishop School in La Jolla.<\/p>\n

Gilli said she volunteers with San Diego 350\u2019s Youth v. Oil Campaign<\/a>, and that public transportation is a lifeline for San Diegans.<\/p>\n

\u201cA good transportation system can connect communities,\u201d Gilli said. \u201cIt can be a tool of equity and it can advance social justice \u2014 and a bad transportation system can entrench inequities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although SANDAG has until the end of the year to approve their regional plan, the agency\u2019s transportation committee meeting at 9 a.m. Friday is the last opportunity for the public to make comments on the proposal.<\/p>\n

Gupta, who serves as executive director of the People\u2019s Platform of San Diego<\/a>, said he and Gilli plan to host another rally outside SANDAG\u2019s office at 8:30 a.m. Friday.<\/p>\n

According to KPBS<\/a>, SANDAG\u2019s regional plan expands highways in the county by adding 93 new miles of managed lanes \u2014 which are usually open to carpools, buses and cars that pay a toll \u2014 and by converting 259 miles of existing highway into managed lanes.<\/p>\n

Gupta explained that the regional plan doesn\u2019t reflect youth activists\u2019 priorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe current plan falls short,\u201d he said. \u201cIt proposes something around 300 miles of managed lanes, which are highway expansions masquerading as lane conversions and HOV lanes, and we know these things induce traffic demand. Our current public transit system doesn\u2019t work for youth or working riders that depend on it, and SANDAG isn\u2019t doing enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Gupta, the cost of building public transportation infrastructure dwarfs the price tag of increasing trolley frequency, which he said is often riders\u2019 top priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we build these massive projects, the cost of service compared to the cost of building these are so radically different,\u201d Gupta said. \u201cMTS estimated<\/a> it would be $4.2 million a year for seven-and-a-half-minute service on the Blue Line, and it was a $2.1 billion project<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carmel Valley resident and the co-leader of San Diego 350\u2019s Transportation Team<\/a>, Chris Roberts, 64, said the regional plan typically schedules infrastructure projects for completion far into the future \u2013 for instance in 2035 or 2050.<\/p>\n

According to Roberts, transit projects speak to young activists who rely less on cars, but these projects will not be completed anytime soon. Teens like Gilli and Gupta fighting for transit projects will be older than 40 when some of them open.<\/p>\n

Gilli said she is concerned that public transit projects \u2014 such as planned rapid bus routes \u2014 will take 25 years to complete. <\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the transit funding is not yet secured,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s relying on ballot measures that haven\u2019t been passed yet,\u201d adding that she would like SANDAG to prioritize public transit for funds they already have, instead of managed-lane highway expansions.<\/p>\n

Gupta said he grew up in New York City riding public transportation every day to school. When he moved to San Diego during the pandemic, he said he couldn\u2019t rely on transit because it took so long.<\/p>\n

Gupta said younger people benefit from robust public transportation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re the riders,\u201d Gupta said. \u201cHigh schoolers, college students, young workers \u2014 it\u2019s really a campaign led by people under the age of 25 who take the bus to school, ride the trolley to work or wait in the heat for an unreliable 929<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

He called the SANDAG plan is a \u201ccar-centric way of thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere really is change that needs to be made, and small changes can have a massive difference,\u201d Gupta said. \u201cSo things like changes that are less than 1% of the SANDAG budget can have a massive difference on transit riders.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Protesters KC Gupta (center left), Elena Gilli (center right) and Chris Roberts (far right) outside SANDAG\u2019s downtown office…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":72539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[13965,5229,50778,1582,276,36895,50779,50780,3549,50781,50782,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-72538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-activists","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-bishop-school","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-climate-action","14":"tag-la-jolla-high-school","15":"tag-regional-transportation-plan","16":"tag-san-diego","17":"tag-san-diego-association-of-goverments","18":"tag-sandag","19":"tag-sandiego","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114874067412593140","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}