Quote:
Originally Posted by SDfan
Calling what happened a win for NC/EC is a bit of a stretch, and no one working the politics of this has said that. If anything it was a token giveaway ("oh no, we have to plan for highways we don't have funding for to begin with and will likely be scraped when the state comes back and says these projects only increase VMT...no stop, don't fund highway project plans with money from other highway project plans")
Is it a waste of money and staff time? Yes. Does that mean that the greater regional movement toward a more balanced transportation system has stalled? Absolutely not.
I get the funding argument, 2/3rds is a tough threshold. But I think SANDAG is counting on the state to lower the threshold to 55% (failed this year, but it'll be back) and/or the political climate to change in San Diego (KF is on his way out and it's only looking blue from here on out). 2022/2024 will be a whole new world for SANDAG.
SD and CV put on some good kabuki theater last meeting, they'll likely keep it up to make the parochials feel like they still run the show until it's too late.
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I'm working the politics of this and I said it. Although in truth my involvement is mostly tangential.
All politics is theater, but this isn't quite kabuki. And the best proof of that are the potential consequences of this action.
I've already spoken on how this action could effect development at NAVWAR, so let me instead clarify what it means when people say "this is a waste of money". SANDAG is next to broke right now. This money, the money they have right now, that's all they'll have till they can bring up a ballot measure in 2022 (MTS is already planning a ballot measure in 2020 and there's worries that trying to do both right after one another with degrade voter enthusiasm). SANDAG can't even afford to study alternatives until that tax increase passes with the voters. When you add on the 1-2 years for design and engineering, and 2-3 years for environmental, you can see that the absolutely earliest a potential project not on this list could break ground is in the latter part of the coming decade.
So this is effectively ceding any chance of building new transit in North/East County for most of the 2020s. Note that Sacramento can't stop this, they can deny approval to the regional transportation plan and prevent SANDAG from getting outside money for these projects, but SANDAG can spend as much of its own money on CEQA studies of highway expansions (and not on transit) as it damn well pleases. That means close to another decade of auto-centric suburban development, the results of which will mean it will be even harder to transition to transit oriented urban development than today.
Of course then there's the effects this has on the regional plan itself. There's no question that the 67 and 78 expansions need to be included now, Ikahara would almost certainly be fired if he goes against the board in such a direct fashion (and then his replacement would put them in anyway). To compensate for these VMT inducing projects he has to find a way to increase transit ridership, which means spending more money on transit project, money that SANDAG doesn't really... have. That leave Ikahara two options: either send an extremely aggressive transit tax hike to the voters in 2022, or push those expensive transit projects off into the future and assume that SANDAG will find the money somehow.
The latter was how the previous regional plan worked, SANDAG included three new trolley lines in the 2040-2050 range despite there being no funding identified for them, more or less assuming (hoping?) voters would approve a transit tax sometime later. Ikahara has repeatedly said he considered that practice unethical, and his whole point of redoing the regional plan was to create something that wouldn't keep dodging the issue of VMT/GHG using paper projects that likely won't ever be built. But the temptation will be very, very great to do exactly that rather than trying to slap voters with transit taxes 6-7x higher right off the bat.
And then if Sacramento does indeed throw out the regional transportation plan after it's presented to them in 2021 because of that, as Ikahara at least believes is likely, then SANDAG can either try to litigate or start all over again. Litigation takes 2-3 years, a new plan takes ~2 years (during which SANDAG can't raise outside money unless Sacramento gives us an out like they did this year), and during either it would be a bad idea to go to the voters with a proposed transit tax. So now we're looking at adding an additional 3-5 years before SANDAG is on stable footing, assuming we don't just repeat this process all over again, and North/East County probably won't see a lick of new transit until the 2030s.
Just two more notes:
-Express lanes, like the ones that were just deleted from the budget, can decrease VMT. Because you can meter them to control flow, you can ensure buses in those lanes don't get stuck in traffic. Can't do that with HOV lanes, which makes them useless for transit.
-The 2/3rds threshold is laid out by Prop 13, it's part of the CA constitution. Can't be changed without a statewide vote.