California began the Interstate highway boom in the 1950s. No place in the world has more of a car-dominated culture than California.

But the elites who run the Golden State have a new solution to the epic traffic congestion problems in the state. Stop building roads. Folks, we are not kidding.

Toks Omishakin, secretary of the California State Transportation Agency, told the Los Angeles Times about why he and other greens halted a $6 billion initiative to build new lanes of highway on a snarled interstate section of Los Angeles. “That is the past,” Omishakin said. “We cannot do projects like that moving forward.”

Why not? Because of climate change.

This is a laughable government central-planning solution because almost no one in California uses public transit. More than 95% of the trips are by CAR.

So the progressives’ strategy to fight climate change is to force people out of their cars by making traffic congestion intolerable and pour billions more dollars into buses and rail systems that no one wants to ride.

Worst of all, this transportation strategy will actually make emissions worse because apparently no one told these climate warriors that traffic congestion INCREASES pollution and costs the California economy billions of dollars in lost time and output.

And now you know why millions of people are leaving the once-golden state.

Toks Omishakin