CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS PROPOSITIONS : Tax Measure Takes New Transit Planning Tack

If California voters approve Proposition 111 in June, billions of dollars will be generated for new transportation projects from the Oregon state line to the Mexican border over the next 10 years, Gov. George Deukmejian and other supporters of the measure say.

Proposition 111 would double the state gasoline tax over a five-year period, increase truck fees and raise the legal limit on state spending. It also would lead to dramatic changes in state transportation planning, officials of the California Department of Transportation contend.

However, as a $5-million campaign gets under way to promote Proposition 111 and a companion measure, Proposition 108, the emphasis is on what the new money would buy.

Teams of advocates are fanning out across the state, offering rosy promises of new projects if the two ballot measures pass and predicting a bleak, traffic-choked future if they do not.

In Los Angeles, they talk of building an interchange on Highway 101 at Valley Circle in the San Fernando Valley (cost: $25.7 million); of building an interchange connecting routes 60 and 71, near Pomona ($42 million), and of widening the Simi Valley Freeway ($10.3 million).

Orange County residents are being told that the new state money is needed to ensure completion of the massive $1.9-billion Santa Ana Freeway widening project. In San Bernardino County, some of the new money would be used to build California 30, a long-awaited east-west link with Los Angeles County.

In San Diego County, the sales teams are saying passage of Propositions 108 and 111 would mean construction of an interchange between Interstate 5 and California 56, near Del Mar; upgrading California 76, near Oceanside, to a four-lane expressway; and starting the Interstate 15-40th Street Freeway, among about $225 million worth of projects.

Assembly Transportation Committee staff members have estimated that Los Angeles County would receive about $4.5 billion of the estimated $18.5 billion in new revenue that would be generated statewide over the next 10 years. (Of that, $15.5 billion would come from increases in gasoline and diesel fuel taxes and truck weight fees, the rest from passage of three $1-billion rail bond issues in 1990, 1992 and 1994.)

However, supporters are careful not to mention that passage of Proposition 111 might lead to construction of such controversial projects as the extension of the Long Beach Freeway through the city of South Pasadena. That $470-million freeway link does not appear on the Caltrans list of projects that would definitely be completed but does appear on a list of “possible candidates” for Proposition 111 funding.

State officials warn that Propositions 108 and 111 offer a last chance to relieve the traffic congestion that is making life miserable in and around California’s major cities.

“We have a window of opportunity to do something about the transportation crisis that’s coming closer to more and more peoples’ doorsteps,” Caltrans Director Robert K. Best said in a recent interview.

Failure to pass the ballot measures means that needed transportation improvements would be delayed 10 to 12 years or longer, said Pete Hathaway, deputy director for finance of the California Transportation Commission.

However, certain major projects like the 18-mile Century Freeway and light-rail project between Los Angeles International Airport and Norwalk ($375 million in remaining costs) almost certainly would be completed, although they might be delayed if Proposition 111 fails and no other source of funding appears.

The congestion crisis has been building for a long time, as the California Transportation Commission’s 1989 report to the Legislature made clear:

* Between 1966 and 1986, California’s population increased by 42%; personal income, adjusted for inflation, by 103%; the total state budget, adjusted for inflation, by 130%; but state transportation spending, after inflation, declined by 35%.

* The 1989 consumer price index was 325% higher than in 1965, but revenue from the state gasoline tax (now 9 cents per gallon) has increased only 30% since 1966.

* Since 1966, the number of vehicles in California has nearly doubled, and miles traveled on state highways have increased by 129%, but state highway construction spending has dropped to only 45% of 1966 levels.

* California now ranks last among the 50 states in per capita spending for transportation, while only four states have a lower gasoline tax.

As a result of these and other factors, the commission found, traffic congestion has been growing by 15% to 20% a year in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas; stop-and-go driving conditions exist on 60% of the state’s urban freeways; and congestion delays amount to about 400,000 hours per day, at an annual cost in lost work time of more than $500 million.

The problem has become so serious that Deukmejian has abandoned his no-new-taxes approach and is leading the effort to gain voter approval of Propositions 108 and 111.

“Freeway gridlock dirties our air,” the governor said in a recent statewide radio talk. “It diminishes our quality of life. And it hurts our ability to create good-paying jobs for your children, because businesses will be forced to pack up and move out of our state, unless we take bold action now.”

As vital as the new money is, the change in state transportation planning that would be triggered by passage of the propositions, especially 111, is equally important, Best said.

“For many years we have been designing projects to capture the revenue that was available,” he said, which mostly has been Federal Interstate Highway money. “Now we’re trying to turn that around and match the money with the project.”

The new approach is best seen in the $3 billion that would be spent on a new “flexible congestion relief” program, in which Caltrans engineers and local transportation planners would seek alternatives to building more freeway lanes.

“We’ll go in and look at all the ways congestion can be relieved in a particular situation,” Best said. “It might be transit (bus or rail). It might be ride-sharing or improving the traffic signal system or upgrading the arterial roads that parallel the freeway. Or it might be that expanding freeway capacity is the best way to go.”

Allan H. Hendrix, chief of program development for Caltrans, said: “This is an acknowledgement that you can’t solve congestion just with highway solutions.”

This new emphasis on flexibility pleases legislators who have criticized Caltrans in the past for trying to solve all congestion problems by building freeways or adding freeway lanes.

“We’re trying to change Caltrans from a highway department to an agency that looks at all the possible solutions to traffic congestion problems,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee.

Local transportation officials also seem to be pleased by the new approach.

“This can’t help but improve the way we’ve been making decisions,” said Mike Hoffacker, executive director of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments. “The change will be gradual, but over the next few years I think you’ll see the projects that are competing for state dollars will be the projects that are most effective in dealing with traffic congestion and air quality.”

In Los Angeles, the new flexibility might mean more money for projects like the Santa Monica Freeway “smart corridor,” where a sophisticated, computerized system will tell drivers whether to remain on the freeway or switch to less crowded arterial streets.

Or it could mean more money to extend the El Monte Busway to the Ontario Airport or to add a bus and car-pool lane to the San Diego Freeway, between Los Angeles International Airport and the Orange County line.

In Orange County, Caltrans District Director Keith McKean said, flexibility might mean that planners would decide to improve the traffic signal system on streets running parallel to the Garden Grove Freeway, instead of adding lanes to the jam-packed freeway itself.

In San Diego, the decision might be to relieve congestion by building extensions of the city’s successful light-rail system, instead of new freeways, said Lee Hultgren, director of transportation for the San Diego Assn. of Governments.

If the plan works, decisions like this all over the state will be made by Caltrans and by transportation planners for cities, counties and regional agencies.

“We can’t design everything in Sacramento,” Best said. “We need to have a program where state and local players come together to produce the best possible transportation plan. . . . We need to go beyond just cooperation (with local agencies) and have true integration.”

He conceded that this would be a new and difficult role for Caltrans, which has a history of concentrating on highways and also has been accustomed to getting its way, more often than not, in disputes with local officials.

“We have to get rid of the turf-guarding and all of that,” Best said. “And the way you do it is with money. . . . That’s why the new revenue is so crucial.”

If Propositions 108 and 111--especially 111--fail, next year’s Caltrans budget “will be a disaster,” Best said. “Every unit in the department will be cut or frozen.”

The budget would be cut by at least $300 million in 1991-92, he said, because Caltrans would eliminate all outside contracting and would begin to trim its own engineering staff.

Earthquake retrofitting will continue, financed by the special quarter-cent increase in the state sales tax that Deukmejian and the Legislature approved after last October’s Bay Area quake.

Except for that, “basically, what we become is a maintenance and safety operation,” said Caltrans spokesman Jim Drago, with little spending on anything else.

PROP. 111: THE FINANCES Supporters of Proposition 111 on the June ballot say billions of dollars would be generated for new transportation projects if the measure passes. Where the money would come from: 1: $13 billion, over 10 years, from a 9-cent increase in the state gasoline tax and diesel fuel tax--a 5-cent hike to take effect Aug. 1, 1990, with an additional 1-cent-per-gallon increase on Jan. 1 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1994. 2: $2 billion from increased truck weight fees, for trucks over 4,000 pounds. 3: $500 million from sales tax revenue that would result from the fuel tax increases. 4: $3 billion from three separate general obligation bond issues for urban transit, commuter rail and intercity rail projects--a $1-billion bond issue on June 5, 1990, another in November, 1992, and a third in November, 1994. How the money would be spent: $3.5 billion to complete projects the state Transportation Commission has approved but has no money to build. $3 billion for urban transit, commuter rail and intercity rail projects (if the three bond issues pass). $3 billion for “flexible congestion relief,” which could include rail lines, busways, arterialstreet improvements, better traffic signal systems, bike paths and many other possibilities, as well as new roads. $3 billion in direct state payments to counties and cities for local road improvements. $2 billion for state-local “partnerships”; this money can be used for a variety of transportation purposes but cities and counties would be required to pay 50% of the project cost. $1.25 billion for the Interregional Road System, connecting important economic centers in rural parts of the state. $1 billion for “traffic system management”--such things as ramp meters, computerized traffic signal systems and television surveillance of crowded highways and freeways. $1 billion for maintenance and rehabilitation of state highways. (This is in addition to the revenue being generated by the special quarter-cent state sales tax increase for earthquake repairs). $500 million for transit operations or construction. $150 million for sound walls. $100 million for freeway landscaping.