Improving Transportation Could Be a Visionary Leader’s Ticket to Success
SACRAMENTO
Maybe the airlines with their incompetence and klutziness at security checkpoints are doing us a big favor. They’re prodding us into alternative modes of travel, at least in California.
Since Sept. 11, you can’t even take a fingernail clip on board a plane, or a small screwdriver to repair reading glasses when a lens falls out.
Lines are ludicrously long. And the other day, I had to stand in an extra line to be patted down and take my shoes off. My sin was forgetting to remove one ballpoint pen from a pocket. Buzzzz. No, I couldn’t go through again. “You only get one chance.”
I don’t care about the rationale. I’m also tired of walking around those scarecrows propped up in their camouflage National Guard uniforms with Arnold Schwarzenegger guns. Don’t want to hear about it.
I just want out of there. Any airport.
Suddenly, driving 400 miles in my own car--or even rented wheels--doesn’t seem so bad.
Fortunately, voters just passed Proposition 42, which will pump $36 billion from the gasoline sales tax into transportation projects over 20 years, mostly for major highways and local roads.
And it’s definitely time to revive reliable north-south train travel.
State Treasurer Phil Angelides and Sen. Jim Costa (D-Fresno) Tuesday proposed a $6-billion bond issue to help build a high-speed rail system between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Travel time: 2 1/2 hours, with a couple of stops in the San Joaquin Valley. Fare: $42. Project cost: $11 billion, with the federal government also kicking in.
The ultimate goal: A 700-mile system of 200-mph trains from Sacramento and the Bay Area to San Diego. Total cost: $25 billion.
“If we’d had a high-speed rail system after the terrorist attacks,” Costa notes, “thousands of passengers could have traveled without anxiety and inconvenience.”
It’s long past the time to rebuild California’s infrastructure--an uninspiring, bureaucratic word that means highways, rail, airports, water, classrooms ... All the stuff that used to make California No. 1.
We’re poking along on water, seemingly waiting for the next flood or drought. That shouldn’t take very long, given history.
Progress is being made on schools, generally, but we’re barely keeping ahead of population growth--and in some cities, not even doing that.
Passage in November 2000 of a ballot measure lowering the vote requirement for local school bonds from 67% to 55% has helped a lot. Since then, 86% of local bond proposals have passed--compared with roughly half before--raising $11.5 billion.
But the state’s matching-fund kitty is dry. So education interests are negotiating a proposed new state bond issue of roughly $13 billion for November.
That won’t go far either.
California’s infrastructure needs over the next 10 years have been estimated at around $175 billion--$117 billion for transportation, $42 billion for education (K-12 and college), $9 billion for adult and juvenile prisons and $7 billion for parks and other resources.
“Those numbers are pretty solid,” says Jesse Huff, former state finance director and current policy advisor for GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon. “They’re not pie in the sky or fanciful.”
Just once again, it would be uplifting to see a gubernatorial candidate run--a la Pat Brown--on the need to rebuild California. He could project substance, commitment, leadership.
“I’d be out there running on infrastructure as one of my key planks,” says veteran GOP strategist Ken Khachigian, a San Clemente lawyer. “I’d be busting [Gov.] Gray Davis’ chops ...
“The state is going to grow. You can’t let it grow and fall apart. It has become increasingly unlivable [in Southern California].”
Richard Riordan began his campaign speaking loftily of restoring California to No. 1. But he quickly detoured into other areas--like abortion rights. He planned to return to infrastructure in the general election. That was one of many miscalculations.
Simon mentions infrastructure daily and agrees that $175 billion is needed. But he says taxpayers can’t afford the entire bill. Entrepreneurs will have to be invited in to seek profit.
“Californians aren’t going to let Bill Simon turn this state into one giant New Jersey Turnpike,” responds Davis strategist Garry South. He adds: “Gray Davis has done more for infrastructure than any governor since Pat Brown.
“And incidentally, for all his trouble, Pat Brown got defeated running for a third term. Californians overwhelmingly voted him out of office.”
A Builder Brown today, however, might find a winning issue in promising voters he’d upgrade rail and roads to the point they could avoid in-state air travel.
