Transportation Funding

In a wide-ranging conversation at the TransForm/CalBike Equity Summit, Malcolm Dougherty kept right on saying things that advocates are not used to hearing from the director of Caltrans. He reiterated Caltrans' commitment to its goals of  tripling biking trips and doubling the number of walking trips in the state. He said that California is investing more in transit than it ever has before, and he even said there are freeways in the state “that may not be serving their original purpose” and maybe should be removed, using the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco as an example of the improvements that could bring.

Governor Brown issued his May revision of the state budget proposal, and in terms of transportation, it's pretty much the same story we told in January. That is, he proposes a variety of new revenues, including a “road improvement charge” and higher gas taxes, to fix California's transportation infrastructure.

Transportation funding in California has, as SBCA readers must know by now, reached a “crisis.” Shrinking gas tax revenues, combined with an increasing reliance on local sales taxes limited to specific transportation projects, have left our overbuilt and under-maintained highways, roads, and bridges without enough funds to keep them in a basic state of good repair.

Three California counties are considering transportation sales tax initiatives for the upcoming November ballot. Los Angeles Metro just announced its proposed expenditure plan today; Contra Costa is working on a draft proposal, and Santa Clara county has developed a scoresheet to help prioritize potential projects according to agreed-upon goals. Sacramento, Stanislaus, and San Francisco have made some noises about possible sales tax measures as well.

The California Bicycle Coalition, aka CalBike, continues to push for increasing funding for the Active Transportation Program, which currently receives $120 million per year. The bike coalition wants the state to add $100 million to the program, which sounds like a lot but is roughly one percent of the total transportation budget—even though bike and walking trips make up nearly 19 percent of all trips made in California. The state budget planning process, in which the two legislative houses and the governor negotiate a final budget by June, is one avenue for getting more funding.

George Runner, former California Senator, husband of current California Senator Sharon Runner, and current elected member of the California Board of Equalization, is doing his best to kill public transportation in the state.

The timing seems less than coincidental, announcing a cut in transportation funding days after announcing a pilot program to study road users' fees--but the message is just as stark. The State of California is running out of money to fund transportation.

Yesterday, the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), a national non-profit with state chapters throughout the country, released a report detailing the "12 biggest highway boondoggles" under study in the country. Not surprisingly, a California highway project made the list, the I-710 Tunnel Project in Los Angeles County.

The California Strategic Growth Council (SGC) agreed yesterday to award funding to eight projects that had been left out of the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities awards earlier this year.