Commentary : Sizing Up Transportation Riddle

This is a most challenging time to be joining the Orange County Transportation Commission. So much is in the works for solving our traffic problems. Yet, never has the need been greater, nor the situation appeared bleaker, to many citizens.

As traffic congestion grows more pervasive, the public becomes more desperate for relief. It is unfortunately true that all of the efforts to meet the challenge have not yet turned the tide. New ways of getting traffic to flow must be invented. But, when a crisis is upon us, conventional methods are not enough.

I come to the job as member-at-large of the Orange County commission with a background in Washington, D.C., as a member of the President’s Citizens Advisory Commission on Transportation Quality and in Sacramento, as undersecretary of the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency.

Yet, I am impressed that we in Orange County are embarking upon our own unique traffic solutions. As the newest member of Orange County’s transportation policymaking team, I heartily endorse the concepts of advance funding from developers, toll roads, creating “super streets,” car-pooling and flextime incentives, a discretionary trust fund to force the state’s road-building agenda, signal coordination and traffic management plans.

There are other traffic considerations that I am going to evaluate:

Growth management is one. The idea is to provide a breather by slowing growth so that we can catch up with our traffic needs. We need to consider not whether this is popular but whether it will work. Where will the money come from and how shall it be done?

We need to get a better handle on the regional and cross-jurisdictional traffic impacts of local land use decisions. Should some regional entity be given the power to override locally elected decision makers ?

What can be done to match affordable housing with jobs? Can we afford the continued creation of long-distance commutes?

Is there a need for a county sales tax increase to augment state and federal gasoline taxes or is there a better way to go?

We need long-term transit planning. How far do we go with a transit-way-car-pool lane combination? Should we opt for something like the 40 daily commuter trains up and down the San Francisco peninsula? Will light rail eventually make sense?

These are big questions, and clearly not the sole jurisdiction of OCTC. Answers have to come from city councils, the county Board of Supervisors, transit operators and, most important, from the community.

It is my plan to meet with a broad range of community people and groups to gain a feel for opinions on traffic and related growth and land-use issues. It is already clear that I need to do all I can to make certain Caltrans can deliver on the promise to improve Orange County freeways and state highways.

If our freeways don’t flow, no part of the road network can work. The surface streets bog down. Our freeways are the linchpin to maintaining our “quality of life.”

Great strides have been made in the battle to upgrade Orange County freeways and Caltrans’ expenditure on project improvements in Orange County has risen from $5 million last fiscal year to $60 million this year. And $120 million is programmed next year.

Work is under way on the 55 and I-405 freeways and planned on a massive scale for the I-5. The first commitment of money into a new freeway, the San Joaquin Hills Corridor project, is a positive step. Meanwhile, the commission is pushing to advance work on the 57,91,22 and the I-5 farther south.

The OCTC is chipping in money to supplement Caltrans’ engineering staff and is buying consulting services for project processing. These are extraordinary measures.

But, the fact is, our infrastructure financing and delivery problem is so immense nationally and statewide, and Orange County is so impacted by what happens elsewhere, that we do not entirely control our own destiny. Large problems still exist:

Caltrans can’t step up its program anywhere until it gets out from under the Gann limit on state government spending. The so-called Gann II measure on the June ballot would solve that.

And we must pass a short-term transportation bond issue--one that can be retired in a few years without piling up large debt service costs. Gov. George Deukmejian has a proposal to do this.

I plan to work for each of these measures and urge all county residents to lend their support. The OCTC and everyone else must do all that we can to achieve traffic solutions. We must rebuild confidence that the shackles of traffic need not always be with us. A time of crisis will breed innovation. Whatever problems arise in the decades ahead, traffic will get better. Somehow, working together, we’ll find a way to make it happen.