Posted on 01/22/2006 9:54:14 AM PST by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO – After decades of watching traffic thicken and clog, frustrated California motorists caught in yet another jam might use the idle time to rework an old adage:
Nothing is certain except death and taxes – and more traffic congestion.
But as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pushes his plan to spend $223 billion during the next 10 years on public works projects – nearly half on transportation – he's making a bold statement.
The governor contends that despite continued population growth in California, his transportation plan would reduce traffic congestion well below current levels.
"Traffic does not have to keep getting worse," Schwarzenegger said in his State of the State address Jan. 5. "It can get better."
He said traffic delays can be reduced if, along with several smaller projects, the state adds 1,200 miles of new highway and high-occupancy-vehicle lanes in congested areas, as well as an additional 600 miles of mass transit.
A briefing paper for the governor's Strategic Growth Plan projects that if current population trends and transit spending levels continue, congestion will increase 35 percent during the next 10 years.
In sharp contrast, the governor's proposal is projected to reduce traffic congestion by 18.7 percent compared with current levels, as measured by daily hours of delay.
A turnaround in congestion of this scope – from one-third more to one-fifth less – would be a dramatic reversal for California, which has some of the highest levels of congestion in the nation.
Traffic congestion in San Diego ranks eighth in the United States among urban areas based on travel time and 12th based on delay per traveler, according to the Texas Transportation Institute.
The amount of congestion relief estimated in the governor's proposal might be unprecedented in modern times for a large urban area with a growing population.
"Nothing comes to mind right offhand," said Jim Reed, transportation program director for the National Conference of State Legislatures, when asked if any urban areas in other states have cut congestion by that amount.
Reed said that in the past, even "the most aggressive" congestion-relief projects have tended to be either outstripped by population growth or have attracted drivers from other routes who want to save time.
"It's the 'If you build it, they will come' theory," he said.
A researcher at the Texas Transportation Institute, which compiles widely used national data on congestion, said targeted transportation spending significantly reduced congestion in Houston and Phoenix, but only for about a decade.
"The lesson I take away from that is you can reduce congestion over some period of time, but it's very difficult to sustain that," said Tim Lomax, research engineer for the institute in College Station, Texas.
California has something of a mixed reputation when it comes to transportation. Caltrans engineers are credited with using technology to squeeze more use out of the state's highways, but funding for transportation continues to lag in some areas.
"They have been a real leader in getting more efficiency out of the existing systems," Lomax said. "They have really led the country in that respect, in a lot of technology."
Schwarzenegger's proposal would spend $3.3 billion on what transportation engineers call Intelligent Transportation Systems, basically the use of electronic communications to improve traffic flow.
Many such improvements are already in place: metering flow onto freeways, timing traffic signals, installing signs to give motorists information about travel time and alternative routes, managing traffic at accidents.
California also is adding lanes to freeways by using median strips and widening roadways to the edge of the right of way. To help manage commutes, movable concrete barriers can add lanes in one direction and reduce them in the other.
But where California falls short is in funding. In 2004, California's spending on transportation was $137 per capita, compared with a national average of $218, according to The Road Information Program.
California ranked 49th out of all states in funding, ahead only of New Hampshire. The data do not include funding from local governments, said Frank Moretti of TRIP, a research group in Washington, D.C.
In recent years, local sales taxes for transportation have become increasingly important. San Diego voters approved a 40-year extension of a half-cent sales tax for transportation in November 2004.
As the state has struggled with a chronic deficit for the past five years, about $2.7 billion has been shifted from various transportation funds to help balance the state budget, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.
State transportation funding for the San Diego area has been limited for the past 15 years, said Gary Gallegos, executive director of the San Diego Association of Governments, a regional planning agency.
He said most of the additional funding during the 1990s went toward strengthening bridges to better withstand earthquakes, and then came the big state budget deficit.
"In recent years, the state hasn't been keeping up," Gallegos said. "They have been investing less."
The main source of new transportation funds in Schwarzenegger's proposal would come from $12 billion in bonds, which voters would be asked to approve in two $6 billion installments.
About $620 million of the bond money is earmarked for the San Diego area, including funding for several projects to improve traffic flow on Interstates 5, 15, 805 and 905.
"The projects are very consistent with what we thought would make the biggest differences for motorists in San Diego," Gallegos said.
If all the projects are completed in the next 25 years, traffic congestion in some areas could be reduced below current levels, according to estimates in a long-range transit plan adopted by SANDAG.
But the reductions in congestion cited by Gallegos under the SANDAG plan are well short of the projections in the governor's plan.
Asked what criteria were used to make the projections in Schwarzenegger's plan, Caltrans spokesman David Anderson sent this response:
"Historic trends in congestion growth were considered, current real-time freeway congestion information, congestion monitoring reports and regional travel models."
Legislative hearings on parts of the governor's proposal are scheduled to begin this week. Negotiators will face the difficult task of resolving a number of conflicts before any or all of the plan can be placed on the ballot.
The time required for trips on San Diego highways during peak periods has increased in the past two decades. For example, traveling at peak periods added about 1 1/2 minutes to a 17-minute trip in 1982 and about seven minutes in 2003. The percentages below represent the increase in travel time for trips during peak periods compared with free-flow conditions (60 mph on highways, 35 mph on main roads).
2003 | 1982
San Diego | 41 percent | 6 percent
Average | 37 percent | 12 percent
(85 urban areas nationwide)
Los Angeles | 75 percent | 30 percent
It's way past time to expand Highway 99.
HOV lanes actually INCREASE congestion, not reduce it. And it's one thing to build mass transit, but it's another thing to get people to use it. Commuters have adjusted to congestion. With cell phones and Blackberries, the car is now just an extension of the office. Why sit with strangers (some who may be dangerous or sick), when you can conduct business and listen to CD's alone and in the comfort of your car?
He'd be better off spending a fraction of that $223 billion on reducing the amount of vehicles on the streets. Without illegals, the commute would be a breeze.
Dump the Austrian liberal and replace him with a conservative governance.
…about $2.7 billion has been shifted from various transportation funds to help balance the state budget……funds in Schwarzenegger's proposal would come from $12 billion in bonds…
Let me see if I get this straight. We have money earmarked for transportation but we keep taking it to balance the budget. The solution is to issue more bonds? Why don’t we just quit using transportation funds to balance the budget?
Doesn’t matter. To borrow a phrase, build the extra lanes, we’ll scratch off the diamonds later.
And the sooner the better.
Unique concept, huh? This new trend toward using bonds to fund non-capital, ongoing expenses is becoming quite the rage. Road repair and maintenance should be coming from existing taxes. Building new infrastructure is legitimate, but only if maintenance is affordable.
In reading some of the stuff on the Strategic Growth Plan, I noted that some of the Bond funds would be set aside and used to maintain the project for a specified time period after it was built. In other words, they will borrow more funds than they need to build it, and then use that excess to supplement ongoing spending requirements. What happens after the bond funds run out? That would be like taking out a mortgage for your house at 120% of its value so you could afford to pay the water bill and the gardener. The fact that some of these bills are being carried by our Republican legislators is even more disgusting.
The degree of abuse to future General Fund expenditures depends on the bonding vehicle. This practice, termed front loading, utilizing general obligation bonds, is abusive in that it masks the ongoing expense of the infrastructure implemented. The same practice however, when utilizing revenue bonds, is less deleterious if the state does not later supplement projected income revenue that the proposed infrastructure failed to generate.
Neither application of front loading is meaningful to California since its governance refuses to utilize long range projections. Long range financial forecasting is tricky in government whose acceptable accounting practices differ widely from the private sector, controlled by IRS and CFTB code, but the chief reason for its rejection is that long range forecasting shines a bright light on contemporary, financial expediencies commonly termed smoke and mirrors.
Thanks, Amerigomag. I need to read them again.
(I also need to take notes, as I now don't remember which proposal I was reading of, nor the source, lol).
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