California Looks at Transportation Funding

Thanks to voters who have raised taxes on themselves to fund transportation projects, California can expect to benefit from a robust capital program in the years to come. But the degree to which mass transit and rail will play a major role remains a subject of lively debate among industry pundits.

Dan Richard, outgoing chair of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, made a continuing case for the $77-billion project currently under construction in the Central Valley to attendees of a conference last month, “The Future of Transportation,” at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.

“The problem here is a lack of imagination,” not funding, he said. “We are going to have 50 million people living in California off an infrastructure that was built when there were 15 million.”

Richard reflected on lessons learned from the controversial project. For example, “We wrote engineering goals into the bond measure, and the standards became the basis for lawsuits,” said Richard. “Transit is really a land-use issue, and we had no authority over land use.”

Roadwork Ahead

High-speed rail or not, there will be plenty of other transportation work in the years ahead. The California Dept. of Transportation is rolling out a $54-billion, 10-year program, buoyed by a recent successful gas tax increase that adds $2 billion, said Laurie Berman, Caltrans director. About 65% will be for state of good repair, and the rest for new construction, she said.

Stephen Mikesell, who authored a book on the old and new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridges, cautioned against unrealistic initial cost estimates and making political vs. technical decisions on megaprojects. Noting the new Bay Bridge, he said, “it’s hard to believe people misjudged the cost by 650%.”

Michael Dukakis, former governor of Massachusetts and unsuccessful Democratic candidate for president in 1988, reflected on his involvement in creating the T subway in Boston.

Noting its current terrible on-time performance and a 1-mile gap between two stations, unaddressed because of a lack of funding, he asked, “What the hell is wrong with us?”

Aileen Cho, ENR's senior transportation editor, is a native of Los Angeles and recovering New Yorker. She studied English and theater at Occidental College, where a reporter teaching the one existing journalism course encouraged her to apply for the LA Times Minority Editing Training Program. Her journalism training led to her first stories about transportation, working as a cub reporter with the Greenwich Time. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times. Many of her experiences with engineers and contractors have inspired material for her alternative theater productions way, way off Broadway. For ENR, Aileen has traveled the world, clambering over bridges in China, touring an airport in Abu Dhabi and descending into dark subway tunnels in New York City. She is a regular at transportation conferences, where she finds that airport and mass transit engineers really know how to have fun. Aileen is always eager to hop on another flight because there are so many interesting projects and people, and she gets tired of throwing her cats off her computer in her home office in Long Beach, California. She is a very conflicted Mets/Dodgers fan.

Post a comment to this article

How can you make AI work for your team? Unlock new levels of collaboration by leveraging AI to accelerate contract negotiations, mitigate risks, and streamline project preparation and execution. In this webinar, hear first-hand how industry pros improved negotiation outcomes, resolved sticking points faster, and aligned their teams for project success.