Commentary : Transit Cohesion Needed, According to a View From Belly of the Beast

After sifting through myriad proposals touting the benefits of merging Orange County’s transportation agencies, I’ve reached one conclusion: Our county desperately needs to replace the Orange County Transportation Commission with a new policy board to oversee transportation planning well into the next century. And we need to do it fast.

What may seem odd about my suggestion is that I voted against a merger when the question was put to us on the committee designated to study the issue.

Why then, would I suggest creating a single board empowered with the authority to decide the county’s transportation future? Because that’s exactly what’s needed but what you won’t get by merging an operating agency with a planning/oversight agency.

To do the proper planning and coordination and oversee transportation is an all-consuming activity. There is no room for involvement in operating details. A new policy board should be looking at the larger picture of countywide and regional transportation programs.

A plan that will identify the need for an additional half-cent sales tax for transportation is being drafted by the Orange County Transportation Commission. Each city will evaluate the plan, as will many civic and county leaders. This plan will determine our mobility future for the next 20 years.

Out current lack of such a plan is one reason our traffic system is in such a mess.

There is nothing to tie local growth management decisions to a countywide transportation plan. That is what a new policy board should be doing, along with regional coordination, and frankly what the Orange County Transportation Commission should have been doing all along. If the panel’s members had been doing what they now have the legislative authority to do, there would be accountability and credibility with the taxpayer.

After the failure in 1984 of Orange County’s Proposition A, which would have increased the sales tax by 1 cent, work should have immediately begun on drafting a long-range transportation development plan.

The trouble with the current activity is that its motivation is money--which isn’t necessarily a bad way to proceed--but if we now had a plan that clearly spelled out the needs of the county, we would not be facing such a monumental sales job in convincing the voter that the well is dry.

Aside from the “what ifs,” we now have an opportunity to begin again. This new, aggressive, policy-setting board that I propose would have the responsibility for the 20-year master plan, including spelling out specific ride-sharing facilities such as commuter lanes and park-and-ride lots. The plan would be then updated annually.

All of the implementing agencies would look to the plan and seek guidance from this new board as they proceed with their projects. The present system is more akin to a piecemeal approach; no real coordination exists.

Which is why we need a new, strong authoritative policy-making board whose single objective is to carry out a master transportation plan for Orange County. Its voice must be loud enough to be heard in Sacramento and Washington. Otherwise we’re destined to remain a county whose projects sit in the “hold” pile, pretty much where they have been for the last 20 years.

If the Orange County Transit District were part of this new agency, I can assure you that all the county would have would be a bigger bus company with a different name. And when was the last time you heard state and federal legislators heeding the cries from a local transit agency? California has 66 such agencies.

After many years on the OCTD board, I know that what Orange County does not need is a larger board deciding and debating bus routes, drivers’ uniform colors, union grievances, group insurance plans, exhaust modifications or brake retarders. Hundreds of these items are placed before us each year; while they are surely not trivial items, their very inclusion on a policy board’s agenda would seriously dilute that board’s effectiveness and ability to present itself as a legitimate oversight agency.

Several weeks ago, a column appeared in The Times written by Gordon Fielding, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies for the University of California system, in which he reminded transportation commissions that in 1976 the Legislature granted them the authority to “solve problems like those we are facing in our urban areas today.”

Fielding singled out the Orange County Transportation Commission’s proposal to take control of the county’s transit operations, an action that he said would “divert attention from the fiscal planning and coordination roles that the Legislature intended.”

The coordination role is particularly important because a newly formed transportation authority would be the creator and keeper of the master plan and would also coordinate and set priorities for the operations of the transit district, just as it would oversee and ensure coordination with the county’s Environmental Management Assn., Caltrans, the Transportation Corridor Agencies and each city’s planning and public works division.

Our county has had enough of the present piecemeal approach. Orange County is in a horrific traffic mess today because development and growth weren’t tied to a long-range regional plan. Well, we learned the hard way. Now we can create a new transportation authority whose sole purpose is to avoid a repeat performance. And we should get on with it.