Bonding California to a Greater Future : Three Propositions to Get the State Moving Again

Most Southern California commuters will have no choice if their freeways choke up tomorrow morning. Even if they reach offramps, surface streets are seldom clear.

But down the road, commuters will have many more choices if enough of them vote Tuesday for Propositions 111, 108 and 116.

A Yes vote on 111 will be a vote for the kinds of “smart streets” that would make surface streets more commuter friendly when freeways freeze up. It will let more cars move faster and run cleaner, cutting down on smog. Trucks grinding in and out of the Port of Long Beach will hold fewer commuters hostage on the freeway if the propositions pass. A Yes vote would help finance two car-pool lanes in each direction on state Highway 91 to speed things up near the border between Riverside and Orange counties. A Yes vote on all three propositions will channel money to the Los Angeles Metro Rail, to light- rail lines in San Diego and other parts of the region and to improvements to rail-commuter systems both north and south. The Nimitz Freeway in Oakland collapsed during the 1989 earthquake and killed 42 people, because highway engineers could not afford a seismic study that would have warned that the elevated road could not survive such a quake. Funds would be available to make that tragic sequence less likely in the future.

This is not a matter of magic, but of money. For years, the state of California, which once prided itself on the best freeway system in the nation, has spent less money per capita on transportation systems than any other state or all but one state, depending on which surveys you look at.

Altogether, the propositions would provide $18.5 billion over the next decade to make up for at least some of the lost time. Five billion dollars would come from bond issues largely devoted to rail systems, projects that grow in importance as Southern California bears down in its battle for clean air. How important are they? A commuter on a trolley or a subway car leaves only one-eighth the trail of pollution left by a commuter riding alone in an automobile. Other projects to break up traffic jams would come from raising the tax on gasoline from 9 cents to 18 cents a gallon over a period of five years.

Proposition 111 will serve California in one other important way. Under existing law, the state budget can rise from year to year only by as much as the national consumer price index goes up. This has acted less as a ceiling than a straitjacket on budgets for crucial public services such as health and education. Proposition 111 introduces a ceiling based on annual increases in per capita income. The ceiling would still be there; the straitjacket would not.

These propositions have nothing to do with Sacramento’s current budget problems. California needs the transportation projects they would finance regardless of the condition of the state budget. Without them, California will be denied the mobility it needs to cope with massive growth, not just in its economy but in its transportation networks. We again urge a Yes vote on Propositions 111, 108 and 116.

STATE GAS TAXES WASH.: 22 ORE.: 18 IDA.: 18 CALIF.: 9 NEV.: 18 UTAH: 19 COLO.: 20 ARIZ: 17 N.M.: 16.2

Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy