O.C. Transit Planners Seek Clinton Road Map : Transportation: County officials wait to see how the new Administration will approach funding and policy.

As the Clinton Administration discusses plans to relieve harried commuters and rebuild roads, bridges, bus fleets and rail systems, Orange County transportation officials hope the new bureaucrats will keep in mind a simple homily.

Money is nice. But it isn’t everything.

While Clinton watchers in Little Rock and Washington trade the latest rumors about the billions that would flow from a short-term stimulus package or longer-range investments in public works, local officials would be disappointed if the new Administration’s transportation planning ends there.

“The key thing is whether there is a shift . . . to deal with (mass) transit and moving people more effectively,” said Stan Oftelie, chief executive officer of the Orange County Transportation Authority. The OCTA is the county’s principal transportation planning agency and operates its 739 public buses, which serve 48 million passengers a year.

“Money is wonderful,” Oftelie said. But he and other local officials said that it simply will not solve all of the nation’s transportation problems.

They are especially interested in the resolution of several federal issues that affect local transit. Those issues include a conflict between the Clean Air Act and the 1991 transportation legislation, which has implications for John Wayne Airport and highway construction; the use of federal funds for day-to-day operations of mass transit; and research into high-tech methods to solve transportation problems.

The new Administration’s attitude toward mass transit is especially important, Oftelie said, because Orange County is making plans to move forward with development of the first 20 miles of what ultimately could become a 47-mile light rail system linking many of the county’s urban centers. The project is expected to cost $2 billion.

Congress took a major step toward embracing mass transit in 1991, when it approved a massive reorganization of federal aid programs for transportation. Formally entitled the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, the law is known to bureaucrats by its acronym--ISTEA.

Among the most serious difficulties facing local transportation planners is the looming conflict between contradictory provisions of ISTEA and the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act.

“This is clearly a train wreck coming,” said Francis B. Francois, executive director of the American Assn. of State Highway and Transportation Officials. “This is the year when the Clean Air Act and ISTEA collide.”

The problem is that the federal government so far has failed to reconcile the two laws’ competing visions of how to reduce traffic congestion and attendant air pollution in heavily polluted areas, such as Southern California.

Some local officials believe that the best way to reduce the number of private autos on local freeways--and the exhaust those cars produce--is to spend money on additional freeway lanes that would be reserved for car pools or buses. In fact, ISTEA requires states and local governments to adopt plans to improve congestion and traffic management, plans in which busway and car-pool lane construction would likely play an important rule.

Adding car-pool and bus lanes is a key element of Orange County’s congestion-reducing strategy.

But the clean air law empowers the Environmental Protection Agency to limit new road construction in seriously polluted regions and allows private groups to file suit if they disagree with EPA decisions. And that has created a bureaucratic quandary that remains unresolved.

“In a smog basin like we have here in Southern California, what kind of rules are going to be applied?” Oftelie asked. “We’d like to have a more definitive discussion of it so we don’t have policy gridlock.”

The Clean Air Act also has implications for Orange County air travel, said Courtney C. Wiercioch, John Wayne Airport’s manager for government and community relations.

To implement requirements of the Clean Air Act, Wiercioch said, the South Coast Air Quality Management District is considering regulations that would, among other things, require airport workers to tow planes from runways to the airport’s main terminal.

Towing would reduce jet exhaust on the ground, but it also could interfere with flight departures and considerably slow airport operations, Wiercioch said. One question, she said, is which agency will have ultimate authority to decide what to do--the Federal Aviation Administration, or the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We recognize that aircraft generate emissions,” Wiercioch said, “but it is our hope there will be a balance between regulations and the ability to provide desired services.”

One of the mass transit issues facing policy-makers is the extent to which the new Administration will permit local agencies to use federal aid to pay for day-to-day operations of bus fleets and rail systems.

ISTEA provides for an 80% federal reimbursement for capital improvements for transit systems--acquisition of new buses or rail cars or construction of new rail lines. But it limits reimbursement for operating expenses to 50%.

“Transit operating funds is an issue for us, particularly two and three years out,” Oftelie said. A coalition of California transit officials has recommended that Clinton’s newly named Secretary of Transportation, Federico F. Pena, consider removing the 50% cap, at least temporarily, until the national economy improves.

Such a move, which would likely require congressional approval, would not increase total transit spending but would give local transit agencies greater authority to allocate the federal aid available to them.

On another front, Oftelie and others are looking to the new Administration for leadership in transportation research--developing high-tech solutions to the problems of people-moving.

Although ISTEA included special programs to speed development of high-speed rail transportation, electric cars and so-called “intelligent vehicles” and “smart highways,” many in the transportation community questioned the Bush Administration’s commitment to those projects since many were not fully funded.

“We’re doing a lot of work now with technology on the freeways,” said Oftelie. He said he hopes that under the Clinton Administration, the federal government will do more research. Later on, establishing traffic operations centers for surface streets could yield even greater benefits. “A real simple thing, timing and coordination of traffic lights, is very expensive and very difficult,” he said. Technical improvements that would lower the cost of such work would have tremendous appeal to the public, he said.

The 1991 transportation legislation gave states and local governments much more flexibility to spend highway funds on rail and bus programs. But transportation watchdog groups have complained that the federal government’s historic bias in favor of building roads over rails remains entrenched.

That attitude is shown in the funding levels of the new legislation, they say. While the law authorized $20.4 billion for highways and $5.4 billion for mass transit in the fiscal year that began last Oct. 1, Congress actually appropriated only 88% of the authorized money for roads and 70% for transit.

If transportation spending rises under the Clinton Administration, Orange County officials say they certainly would not turn down millions in new federal aid to begin work on the light rail system. Nor would they refuse money to help build the planned, $800-million San Joaquin Hills toll road.