Transportation Funding Needs Green Light in Sacramento

by Gary Toebben

In his State of the State address in January, Gov. Jerry Brown once again called on the Legislature to find a solution to California’s funding gap for highways, bridges and transit. The funding shortfall for the basic transportation needs of our state is getting worse every day and our businesses, residents and visitors are grumbling. 

While lower gas prices are good for consumers and today's automobiles are built to get more miles per gallon, the result is less revenue from state gas taxes that provide the lion’s share of funding for our transportation infrastructure. As a result, California, which once had a highway system that was the envy of the world, now has $59 billion in deferred infrastructure maintenance.

This problem moved from the abstract to the concrete two weeks ago when the California Transportation Commission sent a letter to the state legislature announcing $750 million in transportation project cuts in the five-year State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP). These cuts mean no new projects for the upcoming STIP, and projects already programmed will be delayed or eliminated completely. Locally, L.A. County Metro is expected to lose about $120 million that would have helped widen State Route 138, build a new pedestrian bridge to connect the Burbank Airport with the Metrolink station and buy light rail cars.

Despite Gov. Brown’s calling of a special session on transportation funding last summer, we’ve moved into the 2016 legislative term with little progress or urgency. In January, Assemblymember Jim Frazier, Chair of the Assembly Committee on Transportation, proposed AB 1591 to provide $7 billion in annual transportation funding for road maintenance and rehabilitation and trade corridor improvements. This legislation would increase gas taxes and registration fees, restore revenue from truck weight fees and allocate more existing cap and trade funds to transportation. We urge the legislature to use this bill to spur urgency and action.

California is tens of billions of dollars short in essential funding to maintain our roads, highways and bridges. Just like delaying the repair of a leaking roof, the longer we put off a solution, the higher the price tag rises. We encourage legislators and the public to consider new ideas, such as the vehicle miles traveled pilot program currently being tested, but that program is years from implementation and we have a crisis now. Our state needs stable funding that cities, counties, businesses and residents can count on today. Voters and legislative leaders, it is time for action. 

And that’s The Business Perspective.