Posted on 01/07/2006 10:47:04 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Despite a population boom forecast for California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hopes to keep traffic gridlock from worsening - and even improve it from today's levels - with his $107 billion transportation plan, officials said Friday.
The governor's ambitious proposal for highways and freight-moving projects - which would be funded, in part, by voter-approved bonds - is unprecedented in a region where commuters spend 93 hours a year idling in traffic. It would add 750 highway miles, 550 miles of car-pool lanes and 600 miles of commuter rail.
"We think we can make a significant improvement over today's levels for the motorists in California," said Sunne Wright McPeak, the administration's secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing Agency. "Our goal is to reduce congestion below today's level and still accommodate the increase in growth."
And while transit officials in Los Angeles County hailed the administration's plans for improving freeways and rebuilding the state's crumbling infrastructure, they also blasted the plan for ignoring mass transit - projects they say are critical to reducing congestion.
They were especially disappointed the state's working list of projects didn't include money for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's Wilshire Boulevard subway, the Westside's Exposition light-rail train or the San Fernando Valley's promised extensions to the Orange Line.
"I appreciate and agree with his vision for dealing with the state's infrastructure problems. I'm disappointed in his transportation element; there's no transit," said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who also sits on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board.
"Part of the reason we have traffic congestion is that people have no alternative but to use their cars. If we don't address the mass-transit alternative issue, we can't solve the traffic problem.
"My hope is the Legislature will fill in where the governor's proposal has fallen short."
Schwarzenegger's transportation proposal is part of a sweeping $222 billion public-works project outlined Thursday night in his State of the State speech. Both the Senate and the Assembly are considering their own bond proposals that would include funding for transportation.
"We welcome the conversation we're about to have," said Vincent Duffy, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, who presented his own infrastructure bond proposal Friday. "We're going to take a long, hard look at this stuff."
Under Schwarzenegger's plan, Los Angeles County would get more than $1.2 billion for a range of highway and freight projects - including a car-pool lane on the northbound San Diego Freeway between the Westside and the San Fernando Valley, the biggest single highway project on the governor's list.
But controversy is already mounting for the projects the governor wants to fund and the amount of revenue going to each region.
Los Angeles County, for example, would get almost as much as the Central Valley, for which the governor proposes $1 billion to expand Highway 99.
McPeak said the project list is "not set in stone" and that the MTA and other local transportation commissions will be able to offer their choices in public hearings before the California Transportation Commission slated for fall, presuming voters approve the bonds this summer.
But she warns that the governor's list includes projects that could be done quickest and give the biggest bang for the buck at reducing traffic. Any substitutions - like Villaraigosa's subway, for example - would have to do the same.
The only new transit project for Los Angeles is $290 million for more rail tracks on the crowded line Metrolink shares with freight trains east from Union Station.
McPeak said mass-transit projects didn't make the governor's list because they don't capture enough riders unless they're coupled with housing developments, and they take longer than the 10-year plan to build.
"There's not, right now, that much room for (that) kind of transit."
Funding for the governor's projects would come from the $12 billion in bonds, which would have to repaid from the state's general fund, and other sources.
But he has also proposed toll roads that could be built privately by firms that could collect fees, which has drawn mixed reaction.
Assemblywoman Jenny Oropeza, D-Carson, who chairs the Transportation Committee, is open to tolls for trucks or freight, but not for commuters.
"She hates the idea of the toll roads for regular passenger vehicles. She thinks they're elitist and don't help working people," said her spokesman, Ray Sotero.
But Villaraigosa, who chairs the MTA, is willing to consider tolls on cars.
"It's something we're willing to consider if it's something we think would be beneficial for us," said his spokesman, Darrell Ryan.
Key to the governor's transportation plan is a ballot measure that would prevent the Legislature from diverting gas-tax revenue that is supposed to be earmarked for transportation projects.
Mark Pisano, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments - the group that just gave traffic a failing grade in its annual report - said the governor can achieve his bold goal of reducing traffic congestion if he couples highway and transit construction with new land-use patterns.
Pisano is confident the governor is just as interested in the kind of mixed-use, high-density housing along transit corridors SCAG believes are key to reducing traffic.
"These (transportation) projects are absolutely important, but without a modification of development patterns ... you can't get to today's levels of congestion," he said. "You have to deal with the development patterns and the housing in order to achieve that."
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Here are some of the Southern California transportation projects proposed in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $222 billion infrastructure plan, which includes $107 billion for transportation:
Highways
Car-pool lane on northbound 405 (Westside to Valley): $350 million
Car-pool lanes on I-10, La Puente to Diamond Bar: $280 million
Improvements to I-5 interchange at Carmenita Road: $100 million
Various smaller projects from auxiliary lanes to freeway connectors on I-5, I-10, the 405 and State Routes 91 and 60 across Southern California: $280 million
Transit
Add railroad track to ease congestion on the line that Metrolink, Amtrak and freight trains share from Union Station to the east: $290 million
Alternative transportation options
Bike/pedestrian/park-and-ride facilities statewide: $200 million
The urban bits of California long ago exceeded the density required to make rail transit sucessful. In the long run, that's the more cost-effective option.
Over 100 billion spent every year and 200 billion not enought.
What happened to the previous funds?
To expand freeways, how much to take private property to expand roads or install train rails.
Arnie won't get relected. Back to the movies and terminator 12 soon in the works.
The Kennedy plan won't work here.
the money spent yearly?
mostly it goes to education, entitlements and paying off the debt accumulated that was borrowed to pay for the rest of what it gets spent on., and into pension plans and benefits that are rivaled by none.
Oh, did I mention illegal aliens?
Californains don't want mass transit. We want bigger, better, safer highways. Arnold is right, the pork-project seeking transit advocates are wrong.
Rail transit is a leftist's pipe dream.
Unless you live within a block of the rail station and work within a block of the rail station, you'll face an incredible travel time.
Most people need to make a number of public transportation connections to get to the places they need to go, and God forbid they should need to travel out during the day to another location.
Rail transit is a big-government rat hole, favored most my the unioins that build them and the unions that will control them once operational.
In the 1960s California's leaders spent money on infrastructure. The planed ahead for the next fifty years. Our leaders in the current generation have utterly failed to do so.
Freeways must be expanded. If we don't large urban centers are going to grind to a halt. Who does that help?
Rights of way can be a problem, no doubt. Double decking and creating soft medians that can facilitate more lanes being available to drive time traffic could go a long way towards helping.
I will also say that demanding semi-trucks stay off the freeways during peak commuting hours would go a long way toward helping in the short term.
By freeing up traffic, we will also be freeing up commerce. Freeways are a major factor in the ability of business to operate in the major urban centers.
Californians pay out incredible sums of taxes on gasoline. Those funds have been absconded for decades, to pay for other budget items. It's time that practice was put to an end, we pull our heads out of our -----, and build for the future.
As for bonds, man I'd avoid them like the plague. We need to get our credit rating back into the best position before we tackle any of this.
This state must cut spending across the board. We have misappropriated funds for far too long. We need to reassess our priorities, cut unnecessary bloat and get our house in order.
Then build infrastructure.
I cannot stress enough that $70 billion dollars in bond, some saying it will actually be more like $200 billion, is an idea that should be DOA until we implement some manner of fiscal conservency.
I do believe that expanding our roads in the urban centers will be a major boon to business, and that will help pay for the construction. Still, we are spending far too much on far to many leftist pipe dreams.
Trains are one of those pipe dreams, I'm not going to use or be willing to pay for.
Arnold is right, the pork-project seeking transit advocates are wrong.
Agreed. Name one thing Arnold did tochange it?
Course arnold is not all to blame, No republican in congress has either. Maybe Tom but no on else.
Our leaders in the current generation have utterly failed to do so.
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it bears repeating.
and not even term limits has done much to stem that trend.
Another thing that truly amazes me, is that one of the worst transportation problems in the state (the So Cal urban traffic jam) is being shut out in total on the first round of planned spending.
In the Los Angeles Freeway system, not one new regular traffic lane is planned. The 101 gets a shoulder expansion, and one other freeway gets a new diamond lane. Pitiful...
For an interesting exercise, count the number of Democrats quoted in the article, then try to find anyone quoted as complaining about the amount of mass transit spending who isn't a Democrat.
Well... okay... maybe that's too easy.
While I hear you and agree, it sure is interesting the example 'our side' has set in D.C. All that has done is make the waters merky when we wish to claim we'll do better if placed in charge. Who could make that claim in this environment? That's why Washington's example has been so pitiful.
The current crop of equally selfcentered, provincial minded, legislators will support those requests in committee, never once considering that state infrastruce is designed to meet intercity/intercounty needs, not intracity/intracounty needs.
State-wide, general obligation bonds, used for transporation, are intended to get out-of-town folks through a metropolitan area and on to the region. There are not intended to get local folks around a metropolitan area more comfortably. Local governments can obligate local taxpayers for those transportation improvements.
We need roads, not more light rail, or heavy rail for that matter. It is a realy eye opener to go into the surronding states and see how their roads are kept in repair and then look at CA roads. We need to start spending our tax money on what it was meant to be spent on. Until the people of the blue areas wake up and realize what they are doing to the state by voting in the Dimwits we will continue to have bad and inadequate roads.
The dems will never let Arnold do what he wants now, not after they defeated his propositions.
Yes you do. But those issues need to be raised with your municipal and county governments. They still have some property tax revenue left.
The alternative is to put toll booths on local on-ramps and let local commuters underwrite their abuse of the statewide infrastructure. This abuse is most obvious during the 10pm shift change in the LA basin. The diamond lanes are empty while single occupant vechicles wildly challenge each other for dominance at 80 to 90 mph in a crowded melee.
Spend our tax money for what it was designed for, not on favorite projects of the Dimwits. Cut spending and the most important thing is we need to elect conservatives, until that happens CA will continue to slide down the crapper. As for locals building roads, I am not taxed on gas locally, nor are property taxes(which should be shit canned by the way) meant to fund roads. I pay the taxes for roads now, I want them to used for roads. Enough said. Have a good weekend.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
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