Road, Transit Plans Fall Victim to Lack of Funds

Route 304, running from the San Marcos-Escondido area along backcountry roads directly to the coast at Cardiff, has been on the transit map for six years now. And for six years it has been blue-penciled out of existence.

This year the bus route seemed a certainty right up until a few days of the North County Transit District’s final budget vote. Then Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed some already-approved transit funds in a tit-for-tat spat with the Legislature and Route 304 headed back to the bus barn for another year.

If a bus ever runs the San Marcos-San Dieguito shortcut, it will be filled with Palomar College students who now must make the time-consuming detour through Oceanside and Vista when they commute by bus.

The need for Route 304 is there.

The money is not.

“This year it was almost there, right up to the last minute,” said Mike Gillespie, NTCD spokesman. “Surveys show it would be a high ridership route. But then the governor vetoed a $1.4-million chunk of transit funds at the last minute, and there it went.”

The fate of Route 304 is the fate of most new transportation projects. They end up on the cutting-room floor when mushrooming maintenance and operating costs eat up traditional funding sources for San Diego County roads, freeways, streets and public transit systems.

Transportation officials say the future level of traffic congestion in San Diego County will be decided by how much money can be raised to keep the road system and public transportation system abreast of the county’s rapid (about 45,000 people a year) population growth.

The 9-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax now levied by both the state and federal governments trickles down to pay for the most pressing needs of highway and street repairs and maintenance. A quarter-cent share of the state sales tax revenues goes exclusively for bus, trolley and dial-a-ride systems. But neither sales nor gasoline tax revenues are growing at a rate to keep up with the San Diego County population growth and the even more rapid rate of increase in traffic here. New projects--roads, bus routes, trolley lines--are blue-pencilled annually, postponed to future years again and again, because the money isn’t there.

In San Diego County, district officials for the state Department of Transportation illustrate their plight with a drawing showing six sacks of money representing estimated funding for state and federal road projects through 1991. From a plump $160.8-million sack representing Caltrans’ local spending program for 1985-86, the moneybags shrink to a pint-sized $12.6 million in anticipated 1990-91 funding.

The projected budget for 1990 amounts to only 10% of local spending in 1985-86 and less than Caltrans spent locally on highway maintenance alone in 1980-81.

State and federal highway funds are being channeled into an all-out race to finish the interstate system before the federal program is phased out in 1990, Caltrans spokesman Jim Larson explained. Because the San Diego-area interstate system--5, 8, 15 and 805--is virtually complete, San Diego’s share of road-building monies is being detoured to other areas, such as Sacramento, where gaping holes exist in the federal highway network.

William Dotson, district Caltrans director, warns that during these coming lean funding years, San Diego freeways will increasingly become stop-and-go, unless a new source of funding is found.

“If population growth continues as forecast, by 1995 San Diego County will become the third most congested county in the state, approaching Orange County, which trails only Los Angeles,” Dotson said. “The San Diego freeway system will have 900 lane-miles of congestion--four times as much as today.”

To complete San Diego County’s highway system, Dotson estimated, will require $1 billion of the $1.2 billion that a half-cent transportation sales tax could raise countywide in 10 years. San Diego Assn. of Governments (Sandag) board members, representing nearly all of the county’s road building and transit agencies, plan to place that half-cent sales tax issue before county voters in November, 1987.

On the plus side, completion of the state highway system countywide could save $2.7 billion in gasoline costs alone over the next 20 years--an impressive profit for a billion-dollar local investment.

Orphans in the region’s transportation network are the local city streets and county roads, which, according to Sandag, are 6,363 miles long and $2.4 billion short of funding over the next 20 years. A poll of city and county engineers compiled a $3.7-billion list of road maintenance and construction needs over the 1986-2005 period. Revenues estimated for the two-decade period total only $1.3 billion.

Sandag was chosen as the lead agency for the half-cent local sales tax ballot issue because the regional planning organization is not a taxing agency and therefore not bound by Proposition 13 restrictions that require two-thirds approval for tax measures. The local transportation sales tax measure, originally scheduled for the upcoming Nov. 4 election, will require only majority approval and will be designed to offer something for everyone--from a bridge in Bonsall to a South Bay freeway. Even the tiniest town--Del Mar--will receive a token amount for pothole repairs and such.

The transportation tax proposal was delayed until the November, 1987, election because of the many statewide issues crowding the coming November ballot and because another local proposal to levy a half-cent sales tax to finance courtroom and jail construction will be voted on this fall. Sharing the November ballot with a jail tax would be “like sitting next to a skunk,” a transportation planner commented.

Even with more than a year’s lead time, backers of the transportation sales tax will have to use every political ploy available to persuade voters to tax themselves. A recent poll shows that 54% of voters favor the measure, but that margin is too close for confidence.

Lessons can be learned from winners and losers of other elections on local transportation tax issues, Lee Hultgren, Sandag director of transportation, pointed out. The winners--Los Angeles County, Santa Clara County, Phoenix--spelled out the specifics to the voters: “Here’s what you will get for you tax money,” Hultgren explained. Two of the three winners--Santa Clara County and Phoenix--put a time limit on their tax levy, an idea that the San Diego County transportation tax proposal will adopt. The local ballot issue provides that the half-cent sales tax will expire in 20 years.

Of the losing tax measures, Orange County’s 1984 attempt to raise $5 billion through a 1-cent sales tax over 10 years is most disconcerting to San Diego transportation tax proponents because it closely parallels San Diego’s proposal for a half-cent, 20-year local sales tax. The Orange County measure was defeated resoundingly. Only 29.8% of the voters said yes to the proposal to finance countywide improvements in Orange County highways, local roads and transit systems despite a $2-million campaign by supporters of the tax.

Hultgren said that the Orange County defeat can be blamed partly on a strong voter distrust of local elected officials plus a conviction by anti-growth forces that the proposed highway and transit improvements would be growth-inducing. In northern Orange County, he pointed out, voters felt they would be paying for improvements in the rapidly growing southern part of the county.

Whether similar dissension will arise in the coming year to defeat San Diego’s local transportation tax measure is unclear, Sandag officials said. What is clear is the need to tap a local source of funds for transportation now that traditional state and federal transit funds are drying up.

Mike Zdon, Sandag transportation planner, summed up the situation succinctly:

“I think San Diego is in a very good position at this point. . . . We’ve got a good freeway system, a light rail (trolley) system, some ride-sharing programs that have a strong base. So it all depends on what happens from here on in. The choice of the future is now. We either do something to retain our quality of life or we are doomed to play catch-up, and that is hard to do. We can’t rely on the state or federal government to bail us out.”

Some of the best arguments for passage of the sales tax measure next year may not be generated from the anticipated $1-million promotional campaign or the dedicated efforts of volunteer groups supporting the transportation measure. Many a San Diego motorist may decide to cast a favorable vote after waiting through three traffic signal cycles before inching through the intersection at Rosecrans Street and Midway Drive, or after creeping along in the freeway fast lane at 15 m.p.h. during the morning commute.

And, in the mind of North County Transit’s Gillespie, the proposed local sales tax measure may be the only means to get the Route 304 bus on the road.