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It’s the preliminary stage of preparation for the resurfacing and restriping of that street between North Wilmot and North Country Club roads.

is to eventually have one lane going each way instead of the current two, a center turn lane, new sidewalks and bike lanes. In short, it’s going on what’s called a ““ — slimming down the traffic lanes to allow for more uses.

Or, in the view of the Legislature’s GOP majority, on East Fifth Street, Tucson is driving a hammer and sickle straight into the heart of Arizona.

For some time, legislative Republicans have been conspiracizing about the demonic motivations behind moves like road diets or other efforts to reduce the use of cars. They’ll use buzzwords like ““ , and to fearmonger about efforts to get people to drive less and bike or take the bus more.

Now, though, they’re shoe-horning their fearmongering about transportation alternatives into simpler and more salable packaging: Marxism. Efforts to reduce carbon emissions and make streets safer for people who aren’t just driving cars — that, my friends, is .

You know it’s true, because Anthony Kern said it. That’s Sen. Anthony Kern, who in 2014, when he worked as a code enforcement officer in El Mirage, for lying to his supervisor. He , when he attended the protests at the U.S. Capitol on the ridiculous basis the presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump — a claim he still makes.

Kern has worked with a similarly inclined GOP senator, Jake Hoffman, to enshrine the supremacy of cars into state law. But instead of calling it car supremacy, they describe it as a sort of natural law of transportation, and anything else as social engineering or Marxism.

Never mind that it took social engineering to turn Arizona into a car-dependent state in the first place.

Kern’s first effort along these lines is . It would prohibit any “public entity from spending public monies to promote, advocate or plan for, or become a member of an association or organization that promotes, advocates or plans for”:

— Reducing or limiting travel by airplane;

— Limiting the increase of the average global temperature or producing or adopting a climate action plan;

— Reducing or replacing motor vehicle travel with walking, biking or public transit;

— And, the crowd-pleasing topper: “furthering Marxist ideologies, including stakeholder capitalism.”

Any voter in the state would be able to sue the government entity, including state universities, that spends money on these activities. The city of Tucson would be immediately exposed to liability for and doing things like a road diet on East Fifth Street. In fact, they would be stopped from carrying out such initiatives.

Kern explained during a hearing Feb. 7, “There is a move in our country to bring in Marxism, to bring in anti-God, pro-Marxist ideology, anti-freedom, anti-Constitution.”

Dear reader, this is not true, although I know it’s hard to believe that Kern is telling an untruth. There is not a move in our country to bring in Marxism. But there is a move in our country to label anything that right-wingers don’t like as “Marxist” or “Communist”

This holds especially true for efforts to limit the warming of our climate, particularly by committing the sacrilege of reducing the number of cars on the road or the miles driven. of greenhouse gases.

The senators from the sprawl of suburban Phoenix practically choke when they contemplate something so awful as alternatives to cars. They can’t imagine a place that is not dependent on car travel.

That’s how we ended up last week with Hoffman pushing through a Senate committee an attempt to kill off any state effort at reducing greenhouse gases or even to study intercity rail between Phoenix and Tucson. These were introduced as amendments to the bill that would fund the state’s transportation department.

In other words, the state transportation department will only be funded, under these amendments, if it refuses to participate in any further study of intercity rail, stops considering carbon reduction, and rejects any efforts at road diets.

The self-satisfied Hoffman and Kern asserted that the majority of Arizonans don’t want intercity rail. In reality, they don’t know. What they do know is a love of cars and cars alone.

“I love gas-guzzling trucks. I love gas-guzzling cars. I like older vehicles that smoke,” Kern said, apparently pleased that he was violating liberals’ values.

Hoffman added: “The reality is people love automobiles, and we should be prioritizing modes of transportation that serve the best interest of the majority of commuters.”

The truth is: We do prioritize cars. Working on roads and the ease of car travel is most of what transportation departments do. Effectively, they subsidize car travel with these efforts.

But increasingly, there is recognition not just of the polluting and warming effects of vehicle emissions, but also of their negative health impacts and other harms. A life of commuting 30-45 minutes to and from a job , or for the environment.

Nevertheless, spending money on an alternative to this isolating and polluting way of life is despised “social engineering” to Hoffman, and Marxism to Kern.

The truth is, we need to try alternatives. There were at least 95 deaths on roads within Tucson city limits last year, 39 of them people who were in cars, not pedestrians, cyclists or motorcyclists. Statewide, in 2022 — the last year for which data was available — there were 1,294 deaths from vehicle collisions.

Weather data show Tucson and Phoenix were the third- and fourth-fastest-warming cities in the United States over the past 48 years, Climate Central reported in November. These are good reasons to look for alternatives to cars.

Small efforts at reducing car dependency, like the road diet on East Fifth Street, are worthwhile experiments. They shouldn’t be blocked by bullies wedded to the status quo and crying Marxism.