As part of the process of developing a Transportation Expenditure Plan for the potential next transportation sales tax measure in Sacramento County, the Professional Advisory Group (PAG) members, which are the primarily the head of the transportation departments in each of the cities, the county and SacRT, made presentations to the Sacramento Transportation Authority (SacTA) board on ‘unmet needs’, and then provided their wish lists to the authority for inclusion in the projects list. This is not the final step. There is not enough money to fund all of these projects, even if ALL your tax money went to transportation, so not all these project will end up in the final proposal. But it is worth looking at to see the priorities of the agencies.
The document is a long table, not possible to reproduce in a blog post, so it is linked here so that you can download it and view it. Total Expenditures Requested From PAG for STA Potential Measure 10.11.19
The SacMoves coalition had requested that SacTA develop goals before the project list was developed, so that the agencies could then forward projects that met those goals. That has not happened. This doesn’t mean that the projects can’t be matched against goals, but since SacTA has not developed goals yet, and it is mid-way through the process, many advocates fear that the final project list will end up very much like the project list in the failed 2016 Measure B, which put most funds towards capacity expansion (new lanes, new roads, new interchanges) and too little to maintenance and to transit. There is a mythology that the measure failed because there wasn’t enough positive marketing, but STAR is on record that it failed in large part because it was the wrong list of projects.
Even in the last three years, it has become obvious to more and more voters, and even politicians, that we can’t keep doing what we used to do, and expect solutions to our issues. Every new lane, every new road, and every new interchange takes us further away from climate change goals, which are now embedded in state law. On the other hand, transit (operations and capital), walking and bicycling, and reasonable maintenance of the road network we have, brings us closer. When we build new road capacity, it induces more travel, as people live and work further away, and take more optional trips. Congestion is solved, not through expanding capacity, but through shifting trips from private vehicles to transit, walking, and bicycling.
We hope to provide some more detailed analysis of the requests over the next week. How much for maintenance (fix-it-first)? How much for complete streets? How much for expanded private vehicle capacity?
The next SacTA board meeting is Thursday, November 14, 1:30PM, at the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors board room.
Sacramento Transit Advocates and Riders (STAR) 