Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ratified last night the laws (ABX8 6 and ABX8 9) that eliminate the gas tax, which included stipulations on transit funding, and replace it with an excise tax. Despite the removal of the transit funding mechanisms in the gas tax, these bills ensure that transit operators have steady funding for operations by using the sales tax on diesel to replenish the State Transit Assistance Fund (STA).

The governor had declined to sign the transit operation funding bills that transit advocates and lawmakers crafted to match his own budget proposal. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom last week decried the news that the governor hadn't signed the bills as a "back-breaker" for Muni and said that by signing the bills, Schwarzenegger would have been a "transit hero, at least for the week, until there are other cuts the next week."

"We see this as making great progress toward establishing stable and reliable transit operating funding," said California Transit Association (CTA) Spokesperson Jeff Wagner. "While it eliminates sources of funding that transit should have been getting, it will create a source of funding that will provide transit with far more than it has been getting, on average."

According to the CTA, the laws signed by Schwarzenegger will establish a baseline of $350 million each year for transit operations starting in 2012, with allocations projected to reach $400 million in 2016-17 and $500 million in 2020-21. Compare that with the average annual STA allocation of $258.5 million over the last five years and $189.9 million over the last ten years and operators could see light at the end of a long tunnel of state transit raids.

In San Francisco, the MTA would receive $36 million both this fiscal year and next -- not enough to fix the projected deficit of $50 million next year, but certainly a welcome shot in the arm. MTA staff and the agency's Board are still evaluating the impact of the windfall on the current budget year, including whether to use the funds to partially or fully stave off planned 10 percent service cuts.

"While Monday's action by the Governor does not restore all of the revenue we have lost from the state in recent years, the funding will clearly help us provide more reliable transit service to our customers," said MTA Executive Director Nat Ford. "We thank the State Legislature and in particular State Senator Leland Yee, State Senator Mark Leno, Assemblywoman Fiona Ma and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano for their support."

Not everyone sees the move as beneficial and some transit advocates are concerned that the state can continue to raid the new transit funds from the sales tax on diesel just as it had done with the gas tax.

"I'm concerned that we're losing the few legal protections that offered hope that we would actually start seeing some of that money," TransForm's Carli Paine told Streetsblog recently, referring to the voter-mandated transit funding streams that were attached to the gas tax. "All we have left is the governor's and legislators' word that some money will go to transit, but they haven't been good on their word."

Air pollution over the Inland Empire. Photo: DanDC/Flickr

(Editor's note: This is the first of two stories by Streetsblog LA Editor Damien Newton on efforts to delay implementation of California's groundbreaking climate legislation.)

In 2006, the California Legislature passed, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed, Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32), a landmark law that requires the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. 

The legislation was the first of its kind in the United States and set a precedent numerous states have followed subsequently. For transportation reformers and environmentalists, AB 32 is important legislation that could still be a "game changer" in the way California thinks about transportation.

Thanks to a coalition of pro-business Republicans and the oil industry, however, there is a strong push to place a measure on this fall’s ballot to postpone the implementation of AB 32 objectives. Critics of the climate bill cite the current economic crisis as a valid reason to delay trying to clean California’s air. Assuming opponents of AB 32 can gather a minimum of 433,971 valid signatures to qualify their measure for the November ballot, voters will be asked to vote to "delay" the implementation of AB 32 until the state unemployment level dips below 5.5%.

While former Gubernatorial candidate and current Congressman Tom McClintock and Assemblyman Dan Logue, the figureheads in the anti-AB 32 campaign, aren’t members of the oil lobby, a recent New York Times article revealed that oil giants Tesoro and Valero have funded the anti-AB 32 measure on the ballot. Neither firm will either confirm or deny their involvement.

Steven Maviglio, of Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs took exception to the idea that AB 32 is bad for the economy, saying the new ballot measure would be the culprit in damaging the bottom line, particularly in the clean technology field. "This initiative would destroy the clean energy economy," he said. "There's more than $5 billion in venture capital, 3,000 businesses and 45,000 people employed in Clean Tech. This would take a wrecking ball to the only flourishing part of the economy."

Mavigilio also pointed out that delaying or overturning AB 32 would be bad for supporters of alternative transportation. "AB 32 is the catalyst for a lot of smart growth planning and anti-pollution efforts. This could derail any effort to have a smarter, less polluting transportation system."

Environmentalists concerned about the push-back from the oil industry were joined by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who commented last week on the ballot initiative via press release:

We are currently in the midst of a global climate change crisis that is not only a threat to our environment, but our economic and job markets as well.  Here in California, we have always been leaders and activists and I am deeply proud that we have taken aggressive steps to combat climate change head-on with environmental initiatives and legislation such as AB 32...

...We cannot afford to lose sight of the progress we have made because large, out-of-state companies are more interested in lining their pockets with profits than protecting our environment.

For his part, Governor Schwarzenegger hasn't spoken on the link between Texas oil companies and California environmental policy, but the state does have plenty of ammunition available to fight critics of its greenhouse gas limits.  The California Climate Change Portal hosts a series of fact sheets about the level of emissions created in California and the economic benefits of converting to a cleaner economy. You can read other opinions debunking what some term the McClintock/Logue effort at Calitics.

Meanwhile, Valero was named one of the worst polluters in the United States and was forced to pay $711 million in environmental fines in 2005 alone.

"Once again, the governor offers shell games instead of solutions, and transit riders in California again suffer the consequences," said Joshua Shaw, the Executive Director of the California Transit Association (CTA). "The governor wants to disguise this as some sort of tax relief for families. What about the thousands of families who depend on public transit to get to work or to go out and buy food to put on their tables, the kids who need transit to get to school, or the elderly and disabled persons who rely on transit to access medical services? I guess they don't count."

The budget scheme defies a state Supreme Court ruling that declared the governor's continued raids on public transit funds illegal. Rather than adhere to the ruling, the governor proposes to eliminate the state sales tax on gas and replace it with an excise tax. "Instead of diverting money from the Public Transportation Account (PTA)," the CTA said in a press release, "the proposal would remove the funding stream that is supposed to flow into the PTA in the first place, effectively eliminating state funding for transit."

And according to the governor's budget document, the result is "an overall decrease in taxes on motorists of about five cents per gallon." So, drivers get a break while transit riders get a slap in the face.

"The governor doesn't seem to be able to make the connection between 21st century priorities...and a suitable 21st century approach to funding transportation needs," said Shaw.

Legislators Could Block Proposal

There might be some hope, though, according the CTA's Jeff Wagner. He said he finds it hard to believe the Legislature would buy into the scheme because it "ultimately becomes a tax increase that doesn't fund new services but pays off bond debt." And, Democratic legislators have already expressed vehement opposition to the "tough times" budget, designed to deal with a $20 billion deficit. It also calls for steep cuts in education, health care, social services and environmental programs.

"With regard to the bulk of the budget proposal, I have one reaction: You've got to be kidding," Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) told the LA Times.

Assemblymember Mike Eng listens to testimony at a recent hearing on public transit. Photo: Eng's Office

"The governor's scheme on the tax swap proposal is going to mean far, far less money for transit, basically gut money for transit, and hurt local governments," said Eng, who is also concerned about how further transit cuts would affect people who live in transit-oriented housing and air quality.

"We are seeing more and more working families that want to grow up in an era in which their children can breath more pure air and not have to deal with a lot of the illnesses and upper-respiratory diseases that they went through. And when you remove transit it results in unhealthier air quality and people may die. It's an issue of life and death," said Eng.

Eng said he was still reviewing the budget plan and planned to get input from constituents, and claimed many of his Democratic colleagues support transit and that it ranks near the top of the list of concerns among their constituents.

Considering the Legislature didn't block the governor's previous proposals to slash transit funding, however, it remains questionable whether legislators will go to bat for transit this time around. The CTA, however, remains optimistic.

"There are those in the Legislature who get it, and we look forward to working with them to give this proposal the rejection it deserves," said Shaw.

Photo: Justin Short, Office of the Governor

The Governor's proposal would eliminate the sales tax on gasoline and replace it with an excise tax, in the process eliminating an enormous transit funding mechanism and making it cheaper to drive.

In a state where nearly half of all CO2 pollution comes from private cars, and despite national trends toward fewer cars on the road, the governor said nothing about providing affordable and reliable transit options. Instead of supporting proven greener transportation, he quoted from a recent Time Magazine article heralding California's innovative spirit in clean tech energy:

(California) is still a dream state. In fact, the pioneering megastate…is still the cutting edge of the American future -- economically, environmentally, demographically, culturally, and maybe politically. It is the greenest and the most diverse state, the most globalized…when the world is heading in all those directions. It's also an unparalleled engine of innovation, the mecca of high tech, biotech and now clean tech.

"The governor's silence on transit in the State of the State highlights his lack of commitment to creating a robust economy in California that meets the vision of the governor's proclaimed belief in the Green Economy," said Nick Caston of TransForm, a smart growth and transit advocacy organization. "The Governor's rhetoric has in the past ignored his destructive policies taking transit services from our communities."

Incentives that make driving more desirable and cut into transit funding are a double whammy that imperils many of California's new carbon-reduction and anti-sprawl legislation, said Erin Steva, transportation advocate for the California Public Interest Research Group.

"California already has the worst congestion in the country," she said. "California often has led the way on numerous issues, including climate change.  If we’re going to see through those improvements, it needs to include transit.  The leading cause of global warming emissions in this state is transportation and it is the segment that is growing most quickly." 

Rather than cut funding from more efficient modes, she said, "We need to put our money where our mouth is."

Photo: pbo31

"This project will reduce local traffic congestion while creating nearly 6,000 jobs for California – and is a solid investment in the future of the Bay Area’s transportation infrastructure," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

Of the estimated $420 million needed to complete the job, $11 million would come from the Proposition 1B transportation bond passed in 2006, as well as $197.7 million the state secured through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The balance for the project would be made up of local and regional funding.

The governor adopted the fourth bore project as part of his push to pass Prop 1B and at the time threatened to exempt the project from environmental review after a coalition of bicycle, pedestrian, and public transit advocates sued Caltrans for preparing an inadequate EIS. The exemption would have effectively nullified the lawsuit, so advocates settled with Caltrans last January, in the process securing nearly $6 million for bicycle and pedestrian improvements throughout the East Bay.

The settlement also added protections for construction impacts by requiring low
-sulfur fuels to reduce emissions from construction vehicles, reduced light 
pollution from construction activities, and reduced noise impacts on nearby
 residents, according to East Bay Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Robert Raburn, one of the coalition of litigants that sued Caltrans.

Raburn claimed the project benefits motorists over transit riders and argued that the money spent on this project should have gone to increasing transit capacity or adding another tube for BART under the bay.

"The only benefit of this project is for the reverse commute," said Raburn. "The Contra Costa resident that wants to get to the San Francisco Opera in a hurry will be able to blast right through."

Image: Caltrans

A spokesperson for Caltrans, Jeff Weiss, confirmed that the new tunnel will not add capacity in the peak direction, but will make non-peak traffic flow better, which is a priority for Caltrans.

"The non-peak direction has gotten to be more and more of a problem, particularly on the weekend. [Caltrans workers] have changed the middle bore up to 13 times on the weekend," said Weiss, describing a scenario where a Cal football game brings a great deal of traffic on a Saturday morning, followed by a concert at Oakland's Oracle Arena, requiring Caltrans to spend man hours altering the middle bore traffic flow.

Weiss also confirmed that the figure of 6,000 additional jobs created came from US DOT figures that estimate highway projects generate approximately 18,000 for every $1 billion spent. 

Raburn, who reluctantly admitted that "the ship has sailed on this project," still noted that the big loser will be BART riders:

There will be fewer people who pull off and ride BART. It's going to degrade BART's ridership, siphon off passengers who currently find BART to be a more convenient option. They need those passengers throughout the day, [especially] in the off-peak direction. That's money that goes right into BART's pocket and justifies their existence and enables them to fund more trains.

Image: CAHSRA

In a statement, the governor said, "Recovery Act funding for high-speed rail will go further and create more jobs in California than in any other state in the nation – because we have pledged to match it dollar-for-dollar." Using US DOT job creation numbers, the governor's office estimates that the full $4.7 billion would create 130,000 jobs throughout the state.  The dollar-for-dollar local match referred to in the statement would come from the $9.95 billion Proposition 1A bond voters approved in last year's election. Local, state, and national political representatives are rallying throughout the state today to show support for the ARRA request, with a regional event at San Jose's Diridon station.

According to a CAHSRA fact sheet, the $4.7 billion would be spent accordingly:

• $980 million for San Francisco to San Jose, including station improvements, grade separations, electrification and safety, and state-of-the-art "positive train control" in an upgraded, shared alignment with Caltrain.
• $466 million for Merced to Fresno, including right-of-way acquisition, grade-separations, utility relocation, environmental mitigation, earthwork, guideway structures and track.
• $2.18 billion for Los Angeles to Anaheim, including high-speed train facilities at Los Angeles Union Station, Norwalk Station and the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center; right-of-way acquisition, grade-separations, utility relocation, environmental mitigation, earthwork, guideway structures, tunneling, and track work.
  
• $819.5 million for Fresno to Bakersfield, including right-of-way acquisition, grade-separations, utility relocation, environmental mitigation, earthwork, guideway structures, track relocation and new track.
  
• $276.5 million for preliminary engineering and environmental work in all system segments including Los Angeles to San Diego via the Inland Empire, Los Angeles to Palmdale and Bakersfield, Sacramento to Merced and the Altamont Rail Corridor.
  

Photo: rhondawinter

The lead plaintiff in the case, the California Transit Association (CTA), which consists of transit operators throughout the state, was understandably thrilled with the decision.

“The ruling clearly states that the rip-offs are illegal,” said CTA Executive Director Joshua Shaw. “It says they’ve been illegal since before 2007, and it says that the definition of mass transportation that lawmakers have adopted since then to mask these diversions is illegal.”

The CTA said the decision is a 100 percent vindication of their case and if it stands, transit operators can expect to receive all of the funding from the PTA. A CTA spokesperson said a lower court ruling in 2008 had only been a partial victory that required the state to pay back about 35 percent of the funding it had taken from the PTA.

According to California Department of Finance Deputy Director H.D. Palmer, the governor plans to appeal to the State Supreme Court. "We continue to believe that the transfers that have been done in the past and will be done in the future are legal under the way the rules of the PTA are drafted," he said. When asked if he thought the Supreme Court would hear the case he replied, "absolutely."

What this means for local operators is that they will see no funding from the state in the next fiscal year and perhaps none until 2011, depending on the outcome of the case at the Supreme Court level.

MTA spokesperson Judson True applauded the ruling: "It reinforces what we've been saying for a long time -- the state should be funding transit aside from just bond measures." True said the MTA would have received $152 million over the past three years from the state if it weren't for the diversions. "We have tremendous unmet capital needs and operating challenges."

BART spokesperson Linton Johnson said his agency would have received $30 million last year without the diversions, though the MTC would have taken some off the top to reapportion to other transit operators in the region. "I don't expect that we'll see a dime anytime soon as a result of the ruling, and thus our transit funding will be held up yet again as the courts sort it all out."

AC Transit, which last year would have received $26 million before diversions, received $3 million. "In absolute money terms, the CTA ruling means nothing immediately but we view it as a  positive step," said spokesperson Clarence Johnson, who added that the state has diverted more than $100 million since 2000.

Christine Dunn, who speaks for SamTrans and Caltrain, was equally pessimistic that the ruling would net operating money any time soon. "The good news is that the decision affirms the public’s desire to fund transit. However, it would be unwise in these economic times to count on receiving additional funds from the state.  We will proceed with the budgets that have been approved by our board, but we would welcome the opportunity to adjust the budget to reflect additional revenue."

It's an organization put together by Govs. Ed Rendell (D-PA) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- men strongly committed to the idea that infrastructure investment is of critical importance for a nation's economic health, and should enjoy bipartisan support. A timely mission, given the deteriorating state of the country's infrastructure and economy, and the new threats posed by rising energy costs and global climate change.

The critical nature of the challenge was at front and center in a discussion held yesterday, co-hosted by BAF and the National Governors Association and featuring former legislators Dick Gephardt and Newt Gingrich as guest speakers.

Rendell and Bloomberg opened the session with a typical call to arms -- saying, simply, that we can wait no longer to act and invest boldly. Gephardt and Gingrich, by contrast, focused almost exclusively on the biggest challenge, and in many ways, the only one that matters: money, money, and money.

Both men are convinced that Americans can be persuaded to pay more for infrastructure investments provided that a few conditions are met. Namely, they'd need to be able to see progress (and quickly) and they'd have to feel confident that money wasn't being wasted through incompetence or political chicanery. The hard part is understanding how to get the government to satisfy these conditions.

The two men recommend simple (sounding) steps. The government should use a capital budget apart from the annual budget process (as do corporations), so that investments aren't counted in the same way as normal expenses. Mega-projects should be on the agenda -- surprisingly, to me at least, this came directly from arch-conservative Gingrich.

Big projects arouse public interest and pride, said the former Speaker, who had in mind for the country a basic rail network with trains traveling at 110 mph or more and a true high-speed, Mag-Lev, nationwide, best-in-the-world system on top of that.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, timid initial spending makes later spending more difficult, goes the thinking, by accomplishing too little to build corporate interest or public attention. Small things are easier to kill. Beyond that, proper incentive structures, decentralization of spending, and private sector involvement, among other things, should minimize waste and help to earn public confidence.

But that still leaves the question of where to find the necessary money. Both men indicated that user fees would have to enter the equation; Gephardt, in particular, singled out variable tolling as a necessary step. A gas tax increase, establishing a floor on the price at the pump, would help to fill out the coffers.

Both are good ideas, but difficult to implement in the real world. Under the best of circumstances, it would be a challenge to raise funds on this scale, however great the merits of the projects to be funded, and these are not the best of circumstances.

What's more, there is a chicken and egg problem to their strategy. Given public confidence in and excitement about spending, there will be a willingness to pay higher taxes. But spending at the appropriate scale can't be begun without a dedicated funding stream.

Given Congress' discomfort with the current deficit, it is impossible to move ambitiously without new taxes. And given the public's discomfort with Congress, it is impossible to get new taxes without some deficit-funded demonstration that the government can handle big investments wisely.

Which is why both Congress and the White House are moving forward cautiously on transportation investment -- there is no other option. As significant a change in direction as the Oberstar bill is, it isn't a revolution. It amends the previous order, but does not at all overthrow it. And the administration? Well, a two-year delay is just about the opposite of a bold push for action.

Mayor Newsom's ride of choice, via josmith94701 on Flickr

A website called Where's Gavin?, borrowing from the Where's Waldo? motif, is offering a free Muni FastPass and a round of drinks to the first person who snaps a photo of Newsom on Muni, though with a caveat that it has to be on a bus, light rail vehicle, or historic streetcar, not a cable car.

We’re looking for Mayor Gavin Newsom.  Have you seen him?  We know he talks a good game on Muni and transit in our fair city, the City and County of San Francisco. But why doesn’t he also walk the walk? His advocacy and leadership for Muni has been noticeably absent even though, deep in his heart, he must know that the truly green choice is non-car transportation.

Fun aside, I wanna know why a press savvy Mayor trying to cast himself as environmentally conscious would make incognito excursions on transit? That doesn't get you any press. New York City Mayor Bloomberg makes a habit of riding the subway and welcomes the press to follow him to get some "everyman billionaire straphanger" shots. Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates got some great coverage when he sold his car.

The obvious answer is that Mayor Newsom doesn't ride public transit.  Slumming it on overcrowded buses?  Ew.

"It was stationary," he said. "It's a technical point."

Newsom tried to excuse himself from the ride by swearing that he rode in 10 of the last 12 Bike to Work Day events and he said something about how he should be "compensated" for that (the Chronicle subsequently removed that quote from the blog post). 

Good luck out there snapping that incognito pic, Streetsbloggers. I wonder if he rocks a stache and trench coat? A bowler and a cane?

Once you've had that first round on the Where's Gavin? folks, second round is on me.

According to the California Transit Association, the governor wasn't finished.  An unexpected budget surplus created a lifeline for transit, and Schwarzenegger was there with the scissors to cut it. The revised budget proposal diverts another $336 million in transit-dedicated "spillover" revenue to instead cover transit bond debt service, which is by law a General Fund obligation.

Since the last time the state created estimates on gas tax revenue this winter, higher than expected revenue from the state's gas tax actually produced a surplus of several hundred million dollars. During the 2007 budget compromises, Schwarzenegger agreed that any spillover would be split 50-50 between the General Fund and the Public Transportation Account.  The P.T.A. can be used to fund either capital projects or to restore some of the state's now-missing operating funds.

However, yesterday Schwarzenegger ignored the agreement when he announced that the surplus is going to pay off bond debt and all of the $336 million was going to the general fund anyway before this budget maneuver.  Given the contempt the jet-setting Governor seems to have for public transit, it's hardly a surprise that he could "forget" an agreement reached two years ago, nor that he could find a new way to rob transit agencies of funds they've been promised for years.  According to the C.T.A., the state has diverted over $5 billion in transit funds over the last decade, $3 billion in the last two years alone.

"It's just more of the same from a governor whose disdain for public transit has by now been well-established," said a beleaguered Joshua W. Shaw, Executive Director of the California Transit Association. "Just when you think there's nothing left to take, he finds a way to dig the hole even deeper."

Newsom extolling the glories of EVs, from mayorgavinnewsom via Flickr

For his transportation platform, he leads with the right foot, making a strong link between transit improvements and climate change, job growth, and energy independence.

We must leave the era of the car behind and refocus our investment and energy on building smart, environmentally sustainable transit options

Creating robust mass transportation systems will connect our local and regional economies, create jobs, give Californians better affordable transit options and ease traffic congestion.

Amen, brother.  I couldn't have said it better and I hope all environmental and transportation advocates will hammer on those points this election cycle, namely that any candidate who claims green cred must embrace transit and that public transportation equals jobs. No governor serious about addressing climate change can stand by idly (or sit by in a hydrogen Hummer) as all state funding for transit is zeroed out and environmental review for highway projects is thwarted.  Any candidate for governor that wants my vote will immediately reverse the trend away from funding transit operations and widening highways.

So I'm sure the very first platform point will be a solution for restoring desperately needed transit operating money?  Hmm, not so much.  He leads with "innovative technology," claiming that he's modernized Muni with NextMuni and Translink. While it's important to give riders information and make their transfers more fluid, we learned in the kerfuffle over 311 work orders to MTA that more than 60 percent of total call volume to service were questions about bus and train schedules, which NextMuni provides for much less money.

Gav acted on this matter and came up with a cost-cutting solution, but only after Supervisor Bevan Dufty made it a priority.  In fact, if it weren't for Dufty, the matter of various agencies milking MTA for more than $83 million in work orders by 2010 would have slid by the wayside.  Gav didn't seem to have a problem with SFPD and 311 draining the monetary gains that Prop A afforded the MTA until the press picked up on it. 

Putting out fires is not my idea of visionary leadership. 

What Gav doesn't understand or doesn't want to admit is that Muni has a credibility problem that no amount of expensive efficiency plans and innovative technologies will fix.  It's terribly important to be sure that redundant and unnecessary service is eliminated and that Muni focuses its energy on the 80 percent of its ridership on the 15 most used lines, but when the agency faces $129 million in annual budget deficits, it can't even pay to implement its Transit Effectiveness Project, whenever that clears environmental review.  Muni needs money, plain and simple.  Every transit operator in the state needs money, so until you address this issue, I'm not taking your transit platform seriously.

Although he uses the good rhetoric quoted above, Gav offers no solutions for dealing with concerns of building  housing near transit, nor reducing driving to fight climate change. The state has two excellent bills on the books, AB 32 and SB 375, which in principle chart a course toward situating new homes near transit, toward reducing driving, and preventing sprawl.  As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said, reducing the amount Americans drive is one of the biggest challenges facing our nation.  US DOT Secretary Ray LaHood and HUD Secretary recently announced a joint effort to improve regional planning, reduce sprawl, and encourage transit-oriented development. 

California governors like to think of themselves as cutting edge nationally, so why is Newsom so far behind on one of the most fundamental environmental, transportation, and energy concerns facing this state?  Mobile sources are responsible for more that 40 percent of all the state's CO2.  This might not be so obvious when you're driving around in your 18 mpg hybrid truck here in San Francisco, but the smog downwind in Sacramento is unmistakable.  

As for pedestrian safety and amenities, quality public realm, bicycling, traffic calming, speeding, and a whole host of other issues we livable streets urbanists consider important: nada.  What instead is the solution to our problems meriting inclusion in two platforms?  Of course, it's electric vehicles!

Not to harp on an issue I've written about in more detail already, but I will steal a quotation from a commenter on the Carfreeliving listserv: "Yay, electric traffic jams!"

Photo by George Donnelly, via Flickr

While these temporary solutions will balance the spreadsheets for this year, the state's commitment to transit operations for the next five years will be a pittance and operators will continue to suffer.  Unless advocates can get on the same page and build a comprehensive coalition to call for more funding, elected officials like Governor Schwarzenegger will get away with pitching themselves as green politicians and then sabotaging one of the best ways to make our mobility more sustainable.

Unfortunately, advocates are not unified in their call for a commitment to transit.  Several hundred people have turned out at meetings about funding cuts, but those same numbers have not made it to Sacramento to lobby legislators for an affirmative change. Some of the groups will be spending their resources lobbying Washington for changes to the transportation act rather than dealing with the troubled situation at the state level.

"For me, part of it will be where the biggest opportunities are for organizing. There is some possibility for major transitions at the federal level," said CALPIRG's Emily Rusch, cautioning that transit constituency wasn't strong enough at the state level. "It will take some time before we can find more money from legislators or at the ballot."

Despite President Obama's apparent predilection for rail and some good rhetoric about the need to synchronize land use and transportation policy at a regional level, states are spending stimulus money on highway expansion.  Upending the status quo in Washington on transportation will be a monumental task. 

USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood said recently that the feds are in the business of funding capital and expansion projects, but not transit operations, which he characterized as a local issue.  Senator Barbara Boxer, who heads the Environment and Public Works Committee and will write the lion's share of the transportation act, was reported to support an amendment to the stimulus package that would have given highways an additional $50 billion.  Even Boxer's website is shameful, with Senator and global warming denier James Inhofe's specious global warming rants occupying space alongside an apparent environmentalist California Democrat.

If Transportation for America and other transit and environmental groups cannot get the federal government to make a sea change in its formula funding, Sacramento will be one of the last hopes to prevent further fare increases and service cuts.

TransForm recently opened an office in Sacramento with the goal of developing a transit funding coalition, which at the time of this writing has nearly one hundred members.  It's not clear how many of those groups signed on will do the heaving lifting when many of them have other issues that require general fund money.

Transform's Nick Caston sees the elimination of the STA as a blessing in disguise, asserting, "One of the few advantages for getting zeroed out is that we can start from scratch to come up with a better model. The STA was always considered "spillover" funding. Our target is a sustainable and predictable form of transportation funding."

Caston said that Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg had discussed setting up a select committee or task force in the upper house to identify a new source of transit funding.

A Sacramento source close to the negotiations, however, said that a transit funding select committee wouldn't get traction before the budget discussions this summer and even if it did afterward it would have trouble competing with other interests:

You can't discuss this at the state level without discussing it in the context of the general fund.  We have a tremendous problem with the State General Fund.  That's one of the issues the state transit advocates understand and have a hard time coming to terms with.  They're going up against public employee unions, prison guards, SEIU, etc.

While it should make sense to legislators that they won't meet the obligations set out in the AB 32 global warming and SB 375 anti-sprawl legislation recently passed if they continue to incentivize driving, none has come out in public linking transit funding to the state's purported environmental objectives.  Those politicians who suggest they are "green" by supporting alternative fuel or electric vehicles, but don't make a real commitment to transit are disingenuous at best.

"It's impossible to address a green agenda without funding transit operations," said Caston.

A controlled explosion from the filming of the TV series "Trauma," on a closed portion of I-280

"As we saw this weekend with the filming of the new TV series 'Trauma,' we can close a section of 280 and it doesn't back up all the way to San Bruno," said Mayor Newsom.  "I'm committed to actively looking for projects where we can transform our streets into public open space, especially in neighborhoods that have so little of it.  Show me another project that gives back more space to our great city than this."

Mayor Newsom painted a grand vision of a ribbon park in the footprint of the current freeway and said the city would rezone much of the area for residential development, much of which would be affordable housing, he claimed.  "Think Rock Creek Park for the next century," said Mayor Newsom.  "If New York City can convert an old rail line through Manhattan into the Highline Park, surely we can transform our outdated infrastructure into green space."

Caltrans' Kempton said that the agency had considered various freeways that underperformed their transportation function after the successful removal of segments of the Embarcadero Freeway and Central Freeway to Market Street, but said that they weren't seriously thinking about this section of I-280 until Mayor Newsom approached Governor Schwarzenegger late last year. 

"We've understood that it was possible to make changes to further segments of the Embarcadero Freeway," said Kempton, "but we didn't see it as a priority until Mayor Newsom made it so.  Now, we're only committing to study it, but we know the Obama administration is looking for innovative transportation projects, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are unspent federal stimulus funds from other states that we can apply for in six months, a year from now."

"Highway de-construction can be just as shovel-ready as highway re-construction," said Kempton.

Caltrans will study the freeway removal in two phases, the first from the 101 interchange to King Street, a 2.9 mile segment running through the Excelsior neighborhood and the new Mission Bay developments.  Phase 2, from 19th Avenue to the 101 interchange, would include the restoration of Islais Creek and the construction of greenways along each side, funding for which could come from federal Rails-to-Trails monies.   Kempton said Phase 2 was a distant possibility, but that the agency was amenable to "looking at all the possibilities."

Caltrain Director Scanlan said his agency was working with the Mayor to study options for putting Caltrain below grade through the park.  "With our application for stimulus funds for the electrification of Caltrain, we need take the opportunity to improve all aspects of the Peninsula Corridor," he said.

Advocates were very supportive of the project.  Tom Radulovich, Executive Director of Livable City said:

Removing I-280 and placing the rail line below grade will allow the SoMa street grid to connect to Mission Creek Channel, will connect Mission Bay to Showplace Square, and will connect the Mission Creek Greenway to the Mission Creek Channel Park.  I-280 dumps far too much traffic onto the SoMa street grid, and getting rid of I-280 will advance the community-based efforts to make SoMa's streets safer and more livable.

Jason Henderson, Assistant Professor of Geography at San Francisco State University, was more blunt:

It is wonderful that Caltrans is moving forward with this after fifty years of denial. It will liberate the people of the Excelsior from fifty years of being cut off from the rest of San Francisco, not to mention rid the area of excessive noise, soot, and toxins from all those solo commuters. It will also make the potential to redevelop around the Balboa Park BART station much easier and definitely more attractive.

"To think that this mayor could find inspiration in both Washington DC's Rock Creek Parkway and the long lost Burnham Plan for San Francisco to come up with such an innovative and literally groundbreaking concept!" said Chris Carlsson, founder of Shaping SF.  "What a pleasant surprise!"

SPUR Transportation Policy Director Dave Snyder, who had been briefed on the project before it was announced publicly, was supportive.  "With the downtown extension of Caltrain, I-280 becomes a superfluous transportation resource."

SPUR Policy Director Sarah Kurlinsky, who was at the press conference, said, "As we learned in the Market/Octavia planning process, we can extract a lot for affordable housing by using public land formerly occupied by freeways."

Caltrans said it hoped to complete the necessary studies by this fall. Kempton hinted that the precedent set by the state in relaxing CEQA requirements for highway projects slated for stimulus funding could bode well for an expedited timeline.  Mayor Newsom said this was a project he wanted to get started before he left office, which could be as soon 2010, if his nascent bid for governor is successful.

"This is the kind of bold thinking that we need in this city, and this state," said Mayor Newsom with a smile.

Happy April Fool's Day, Streetsblog Nation! But wouldn't it be nice?

Flickr photo: iandhd

TransForm's action alert calls on legislators to adhere to principals agreed upon by the MTC and generally considered best practice in California:

• Fix it first by maximizing funding for SHOPP: The independent Legislative Analyst’s Office has identified $1.5 billion in needs for projects to maintain the existing state highway system as part of the State Highway Operation and Protection Program. Federal DOT data shows that roadway maintenance and repair creates 9% more jobs than roadway and bridge expansion projects.
• Provide complete streets for all users: Stimulus projects should create complete streets, in order to improve the efficiency and safety of travel by motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, the disabled and transit users.
• Fund bicying and pedestrian infrastructure with TE dollars: The ARRA directs only 3% of funds to the Transportation Enhancement program. The state should instead use the traditional federal sub-allocation formula for transportation enhancements and direct 10% of all surface transportation recovery funding to TE. Bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure are key to giving people low-cost transportation options and result in local economic activity.
  

Traffic engineers are reluctant to give exclusive lanes to buses (or bikes) for fear of the impact on cars

The Pseudo-Science of LOS

There's a dirty little secret you should know about San Francisco: It's engineered first and foremost for automobility and will never be able to shed this bias if the traffic engineers are in the driver's seat wielding their traffic analysis tools like bibles. As long as the city continues prioritizing the use of transportation analysis known as Level of Service (LOS), you might as well burn our Transit First policy for warmth.

On the one hand, LOS is a very simple and blunt metric for understanding the speed that vehicles can move about the city. LOS measures the amount of vehicular delay at an intersection, with A through F grades assigned to increased delay. This measurement is taken during the peak 15 minutes of evening rush hour and if an intersection slips from LOS D to LOS E, traffic managers will try to mitigate the impact, which usually means widening the road, shrinking the sidewalks, removing crosswalks, softening turning angles, and adjusting signal timing to speed the movement of vehicles.

LOS delay from Highway Capacity Manual

Yet the result of relying on this poor methodology to shape the growth of cities has a profound affect on the politics of human mobility, privileging the movement of vehicles before the movement of anything else. Quite simply, LOS analysis has given us Phoenix and Atlanta, congestion and ever-longer commutes, and a whole host of ills that accompany reliance on the inefficient use of street space for our cars.

"I've been doing transit analyses in California for 20 years," said Jeffrey Tumlin, principal of Nelson Nygaard, a transportation and land use consulting firm. "In my practice the single greatest promoter of sprawl and the single greatest obstacle to transit oriented development (TOD) and infill development is the transportation analysis conventions under CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, LOS."

LOS has been used since the middle of the 20th century and has the weight of convention so thoroughly backing it up that it is one of the Traffic Ten Commandments, somewhere near the top. When the U.S. prioritized the expansion of roads everywhere and cities were seen merely as job centers to be driven to and from, LOS was the lubricant to facilitate the growth of suburban and exurban rings.

As San Franciscans began to see their city as a collection of neighborhoods, where livability and public space were more important that vehicle speeds on the streets, the political support for unfettered automobility declined and LOS became a target for reform.

"How can LOS have such a tremendous impact or power over shaping San Francisco and shaping cities when so much of LOS is anathema to cities?" asked Henderson.

The Clamor For Change

In the early 1990s, San Francisco bicycle advocates found out the hard way that any attempt to take space away from cars to give back to bikes (or transit and pedestrians) would be shut down by the engineers who asserted that such constriction of vehicular access violated the sacrosanct LOS rules, which, they were informed, were required under CEQA.

The advocates soon discovered that while CEQA requires that a project be analyzed for its significant environmental impacts the LOS "rule" was written after the fact by the state Office of Planning and Research (OPR).  It was an administrative guideline and didn't carry the force of CEQA law.

"The words 'traffic' or 'congestion' or 'parking' appear nowhere in the CEQA legislation of the 1970s," said Tumlin.  "The problem lies in the CEQA guidelines, issued administratively by the state OPR.  There are three lines in Appendix G, the environmental checklist...[that] were later adopted administratively by the executive branch of government."

Further, CEQA specifically delegates planning decisions to the local level. The adherence to LOS was a convention adopted by San Francisco and most other municipalities around the state to evaluate transportation impacts under CEQA, and over the course of nearly three decades its use had been upheld numerous times in court, but just as it had been adopted as a convention, advocates believed, so could it be overturned.

Subsequently, advocates spent years lobbying the Board of Supervisors to make changes to the rule, though with mixed results.  After the board finally called for a study of the impacts of LOS analysis, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA) issued a significant report (PDF) at the end of 2003, which asserted that "existing LOS measures and standards ostensibly favor preserving auto level of service at the expense of improving transit, bicycle, and pedestrian conditions" and argued that new measures of analysis besides LOS should be developed.

Within a couple years the Board of Supervisors was convinced that LOS analysis contravened San Francisco's Transit First policy and issued a resolution (PDF) stating that "automobile analysis alone is not an appropriate metric for assessing environmental impacts and for analyzing projects that may improve overall environmental quality in conformance with [the Transit First policy]."

Not long after the resolution was adopted in early 2006, advocates saw firsthand how low the interpretation of LOS could stoop, when Rob Anderson and his Coalition for Adequate Review (CAR, a suitable acronym) sued the city to prevent the Bicycle Plan from being implemented without the full environmental review process, banking his argument on the possible negative LOS implications of removing vehicle lanes to add bicycle lanes.

Though it might have seemed ludicrous to the lay observer that adding bike lanes would have a negative environmental impact, the rules of LOS dictated that it was so and the onus was on the city and the bicycle community to show in excruciating--and expensive--detail that promoting non-polluting transportation might significantly effect the environment.  But that's exactly what the injunction mandated and why San Francisco hasn't added even a brush stroke of paint to its roads to build out its bicycle plan for nearly three years.

Paradise LOSt (Part II): Turning Automobility on Its Head

Paradise LOSt (Part III): California's Revolutionary Plan to Overhaul Transportation Analysis

Flickr photo: cbcastro

In response to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's efforts to gut environmental regulations for highway projects in California, Democratic leaders in the Legislature have unveiled their own green economic stimulus plan.

The legislation by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass does not identify specific projects but "will accelerate over $2 billion in voter-approved infrastructure bond money aimed directly at investments in the emerging green economy." They said it would create about 40,000 new jobs.

 "What we're presenting today is a way to do economic stimulus, a way to put Californians back to work, where we are not compromising environmental regulations," said Bass. 

Here are some highlights from the handout: 

• Public Transit and Mobility: Help promote public transit and mobility by appropriating $800 million from Proposition 1B’s Public Transit Modernization, Improvement and Service Enhancement Account (PTMISEA) for ready-to-go capital projects.  Now is an ideal time to accelerate the expenditure of bond funds for public transit: ridership is at an all-time high in California, agencies have identified hundreds of ready-to-go projects, transit improves mobility without sacrificing air quality.  According to the California Transit Association (CTA), for every $1 billion invested in new transit capital projects, some 31,400 jobs are created and more than $3 billion in local economic activity is created.    
• Street and Pothole Repair: Create jobs fixing existing streets and repairing potholes.  These funds would be used to fill potholes, resurface crumbling neighborhood streets, and improve bike and pedestrian facilities.
• Green Urban Areas and Create Jobs: Implement urban tree planting projects that produce local community jobs and increase the livability of our communities.
  

Schwarzenegger, who claims to be a world leader fighting global warming but has consistently raided the public transit fund, recently sent a letter to President-elect Obama requesting federal stimulus money for a number of projects in California but it was loaded with a lot of rhetoric and few specifics.

Democrats also want to cut transit funds but their current proposal is not as draconian as Schwarzenegger's. They propose funding the State Transit Assistance (STA) fund at $150 million for the current fiscal year and on an ongoing basis while the governor wants to eliminate it entirely.

Steinberg and Bass said their legislation, if passed by both houses, would not direct money toward projects until the Legislature passes a budget.

“We appreciate that this plan shows that legislative leaders have smartly identified public transit as a crucial component of our transportation infrastructure.  We hope to see the same sense of urgency when it comes to establishing a stable source of state funding for day-to-day transit operations," said Jeff Wagner, the communictions director for the California Transit Association.

Governor Schwarzenegger sent a letter Tuesday to President-elect Obama encouraging massive expenditure in the federal stimulus package on a host of projects in California.  The letter comes a month after the governor and president-elect discussed the stimulus package in person:

When we met, I had identified $28 billion in infrastructure projects ready to break ground in California within the first 120 days of your administration.  I am writing to report that we now have nearly $44 billion in projects that are ready to start construction or place orders.

Schwarzenegger proposes spending $11 billion of the $44 billion "in investment in road, transit and rail construction."  But when pressed for a detailed project list, the governor's press office refused to elaborate and punted to regional officials.

The Municipal Transporation Commission (MTC), the Bay Area's transportation planning and federal fiscal conduit, was only slightly more forthcoming with specifics.  While the MTC confirmed it has a long list of projects, it would not elaborate on the specifics for fear the public would view the project wish list as a slate of promises.

MTC spokesman Randy Rentschler was clear most of the projects that could be built within 90-120 days of Obama's inauguration would be road maintenance repairs that would not significantly alter the long-term strategic vision for the region. 

"We could dig holes in the desert and they might contribute to the economic recovery," he said.  "But then you've got holes in the desert."

Will the fiscal stimulus plan be a bridge to the future, or a bridge to nowhere?

What really needs to be done, he argued, are projects similar to the scope and vision of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge.

"We can set the tone for transportation spending with the stimulus package, but the real debate will happen with the re-authorization of the transportation act" later this year, said Rentschler.

According to the MTC, the specific proposals for funding fall in three general categories, in no particular order:

1. Maintenance of local streets and roads
2. Investment and maintenance of the region's transit system
3. Investment in new transit and roadway projects (examples cited: bus-priority signalization and metering lights on freeways)

In lieu of official project documentation, Streetsblog San Francisco compiled a list of transit and street infrastructure projects (download the PDF) from the Bay Area cities associated with the Mainstreet Economic Recovery report, a project of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.  It adds up to $1.6 billion and more than 14,000 jobs.

Though some cities like Santa Clara and Fremont are not part of the Conference of Mayors, most of the big-ticket Bay Area transit items are included in the list, including funding for the new Transbay Terminal, MTA's Transit Effectiveness Program (TEP), BART to San Jose, and the electrification of Caltrain. 

Flickr Photos by: WarzauWynn and planetlight.