Transportation Funding

The Presidio Parkway/Doyle Drive project will move into the second phase of construction early next year, but planners are already touting a unique public-private partnership, or P3 in their shorthand, which they say forges a new model for delivering massive infrastructure projects for less money and greater financial oversight.

I thought voters would find a "yes" vote for Proposition 22 to be an easy decision.

Aging infrastructure across the country has become an enormous safety risk. It’s also becoming an economic hazard.

Unlike every other transit agency in the Bay Area, BART was able to stanch the economic bleeding over the past year and realize a modest operational surplus at the end of FY 2010 in June. The agency doesn't have a warm and fuzzy feeling, however, and Board President James Fang has asked staff to present additional revenue generating measures at tomorrow's board meeting.

The long-term impacts to transportation funding as a result of the Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) civil rights compliance probe of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) won't be clear for some time, but the action by the federal administration has transportation policy circles buzzing. Experts in civil rights and regional planning policy couldn't point to another instance of a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) like the MTC being required to submit to similar scrutiny from the FTA, while social justice advocates felt vindicated for their longstanding contention of discrimination in transportation funding.

The Federal Transit Administration has increased the likelihood the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the Bay Area's regional transportation planning and funding body, will undergo a full civil rights investigation after it sent a letter last week [PDF] insisting the MTC turn over documents detailing its protocols for monitoring civil rights practices of the government agencies and private groups it gives federal money. Civil rights and transportation advocates are confident the MTC doesn't have those protocols in place and argue the FTA investigation will show a pattern of discriminatory funding of transportation projects in the Bay Area that dates back decades.

BART has once again bucked the trend of financial pain among other Bay Area transit operators by realizing a budget surplus at the end of fiscal year 2010, in large part due to strong sales tax receipts in the fourth quarter. In a letter to the BART Board yesterday [PDF], General Manager Dorothy Dugger outlined the projected $4 million surplus, though she offered no recommendation for how to spend it or whether to save it.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today that Muni will restore 61 percent of the service it cut in May, or about 178,781 service hours, after identifying about $15 million in funding sources and "operational savings," which involves scaling back stand-by hours, or non-driving time, for operators.

An Oakland judge granted a temporary injunction late this afternoon that prevents AC Transit from unilaterally imposing its last, best and final offer on the agency's 1,100 bus drivers, saying it not only has the potential to cause harm to the operators and their families, but to the agency's 236,000 riders.