Keep Funding on Track

It’s been a rough month for mass transit in Ventura County:

* Just as storm after storm made freeways even more treacherous than usual, flooding closed the tracks between Moorpark and Camarillo, forcing 200 daily Metrolink riders back into their cars.

* Then a track fee dispute between the county and Union Pacific Railroad threatened to end Metrolink service west of Moorpark altogether. It may take the federal government to resolve that one.

* All this unfolded as the Ventura County Transportation Commission held its annual hearings to determine how much of next year’s state Transportation Development Act money to spend on mass transit, and how much it can justify spending on road maintenance.

It’s a good time to pause and remember that public transit is vital to Ventura County, and becoming more so every year. Already, buses, trains and shuttles reduce the pressure on our crowded streets and highways. They also make the world bigger and life richer for the old, the young, the disabled and others who cannot drive. And both of those functions will only become more important in the decades ahead.

It’s perverse that Metrolink service to the west county is imperiled just when it needs to be expanded, adding service to Montalvo and Ventura and more frequent trains throughout Ventura County. Instead the county finds itself being mugged by Union Pacific, which owns the tracks on which the commuter trains run.

The dispute is over the cost of a lease that allows Metrolink to use the 20-mile stretch between Camarillo and Oxnard. The VCTC maintains that a fair price is about $58,000 per year; Union Pacific wants $430,000. Negotiations have chugged along for almost a year.

The deadline for the two sides to agree is Saturday. Ventura County has asked the federal Surface Transportation Board to require Union Pacific to allow Metrolink trains to keep using the track. The board should order Union Pacific to keep that line open while negotiations continue. To allow cuts in Metrolink service now would be a bad move for mass transit in general, not just for western Ventura County.

Aside from the Metrolink crisis, this is a critical time for another reason. Each year the VCTC receives a chunk of money from the state under the 1971 California Transportation Development Act, millions of dollars specifically set aside for public transit projects. Those funds help pay for Metrolink, South Coast Area Transit buses and other mass transit efforts.

The loophole: If the VCTC determines that all reasonable needs for public transit are being met, the law allows the leftover cash to be spent on street and road projects--money that local officials have come to rely on when adopting their public works budgets.

This fiscal year Ventura County received more than $16 million; less than half was actually spent on public transit. Yet hearings last week in Camarillo and Ventura offered a dramatic reminder that many of the county’s transit needs remain woefully unmet.

“Transportation is vital to maintaining the free and independent spirit of our elderly people,” 75-year-old Arthur Kinne of Ventura told VCTC representatives at one hearing. The deadline for public comment is March 2.

It’s tempting for local officials to use that state money for street maintenance and other popular projects that would otherwise have to be paid for from the general fund. But the stated intent of the Transportation Development Act is this: “It is in the interest of the state that funds available for transit development be fully expended to meet the transit needs that exist in California.”

We encourage the VCTC to make sure it is doing everything it can to improve Ventura County’s transit systems before it agrees to let any of this money be spent on road repairs that could be funded from other sources.

And we encourage the commission to keep bargaining hard with Union Pacific. We’re on the right track for the future. All aboard!