Highway 50’s mounting risks expose Caltrans’ refusal to answer questions | Opinion
The morning of Thanksgiving — which also happened to be my birthday — I got on Highway 50 to head up to Orangevale and see friends before my family’s dinner.
Merging carefully into the chaos of the highway’s never-ending construction work, I gave the other cars plenty of room. The stretch of roadway between Watt Avenue and Interstate 5 has created the perfect storm of uneasy, overconfident or negligent drivers, with the added obstacles of shifting construction hazards.
So there I was, toodling along in the No. 2 lane, when suddenly, the far left lane came to an abrupt merge, and without any signage to warn drivers. I was in the exact wrong place and slammed on my brakes. The Escalade next to me — which appeared poised to take off my whole driver’s side — barely squeaked by.
Another crash averted, but only by the skin of my teeth. (Or perhaps by the rubber on my tires?)
Unfortunately, not everyone has emerged unscathed, or even alive, from the tangle of lanes and arbitrarily shifting guardrails that have comprised a large section of Highway 50 since 2021. Just how many people have died or crashed in this Gordian knot of traffic?
It’s hard to say, because no one will talk about it.
It’s not just that the California Department of Transportation won’t talk about how many people have died — and it’s been far too many — but countless times during construction projects over the years, Caltrans officials have outright ignored or refused to answer simple, direct questions from journalists and the families of victims.
Caltrans has repeatedly refused to answer the questions of Bee transportation reporter Ariane Lange, including this one from last year about a low-priority project on I-80 that suddenly received a $100 million grant:
“Caltrans did not respond to the six questions The Bee asked about this story last week, including one question about the pavement rehabilitation and another about (a) complaint,” Lange wrote.
Another article earlier this year on California’s sinking Highway 37 garnered this lackluster response:
“The Sacramento Bee sent a summary of this story to Caltrans’ spokespeople and posed two questions about how the current project would account for the highway sinking as well as aging nearby levees,” wrote Lange. “After requesting a three-day extension to reply, a spokesperson for the agency did not answer either of the questions.”
When CalMatters recently did an investigation into the dramatically rising death toll on California roads, Steve Gordon, director of the California DMV (and a Gov. Gavin Newsom appointee) wouldn’t even talk to their reporters.
And it’s not just journalists, Caltrans won’t answer direct questions from elected officials, either.
Abridged recently found that rejected concrete had contributed to the delays in Highway 50’s construction, which has increased costs and time; a local assemblyman said Caltrans had never mentioned the issue to him when he inquired officially.
“In multiple meetings I have had with Caltrans over the past two years, not once was … concrete mentioned as a reason for project delays,” Assemblymember Josh Hoover, R-Folsom, said in a statement. “It is unacceptable that this information has been withheld from the public and the Legislature.”
For far too long, Caltrans has acted with impunity, spending millions in public dollars with little public accountability.
When government authorities are not required to answer to the public, they do not feel obliged to answer. It’s clear to all Californians — and especially to those who must brave the labyrinth of lanes on Highway 50 every day — that Caltrans must be made to answer; if not to the public, then perhaps in an official investigation, to those we have elected.
This story was originally published December 13, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
