Wednesday, October 26, 2005 The Santa Barbara Association of Governments (SBCAG) and Ventura County Transportation Commission (VCTC) meet at 1 p.m. Wednesday at Carpinteria City Hall, 5775 Carpinteria Ave., to discuss the commuter rail portion of the 101 In Motion “Final Package” that was just approved by SBCAG last Thursday 10/20. Supporters, especially those commuters who would be users of this service are urged to be there to let the elected officials know there is support for this service. CoastalRailNow has been working hard to make commuter rail from Oxnard to Goleta a reality, and we’re one step closer. Thanks to the many hundreds of you who have sent in postcards and worked so hard to get the word out for this much needed option to the transportation infrastructure. Let’s keep up the momentum we have and get this train into the station.

Ventura County Star 10/20/2005
By Charles Levin, clevin@VenturaCountyStar.com

The Santa Barbara County Association of Governments unanimously approved a tentative plan today to remedy gridlocked traffic on Highway 101 that would call for widening the freeway and launching a commuter rail system.
The plan still requires further study, a source of funding and more approvals later.
It calls for a commuter line between Goleta and Camarillo and expanding the 101 from two to three lanes in each direction from Milpas Street in Santa Barbara to the Ventura County line.
About 16,000 motorists a day drive from Ventura County to work in Santa Barbara and Goleta. High housing costs in southern Santa Barbara County have forced droves of middle-income families to buy homes in Ventura and Oxnard. Many, however, still drive north for work.

Ventura County transportation officials have been skeptical about the proposal, citing costs, demand for riders and whether Union Pacific would lease its tracks for a commuter rail line. The Santa Barbara government association and Ventura County Transportation Commission meet at 1 p.m. Wednesday at Carpinteria City Hall, 5775 Carpinteria Ave., to discuss the rail plan.
Santa Barbara County politics, however, may also influence any future commitment to rail. A preliminary study pegged startup costs at $79 million with operating costs running about $6.1 million a year. Widening the freeway would cost about $400 million, said Gregg Hart, spokesman for the Santa Barbara government association.

Santa Barbara County transportation officials have said that Ventura County would have to share some funding for rail. But part of those costs would come from Santa Barbara County’s transportation tax, which is up for renewal in 2006.
Despite Thursday’s unanimous vote, some panel members seemed worried that voters could reject the tax measure because some of those dollars would pay for a rail line to largely benefit Ventura County residents.

A preliminary study shows that up to 900 riders would use the train by 2030. “That’s not going to take a whole lot of people off 101,” Santa Barbara County Supervisor Joe Centeno, who represents the Santa Maria Valley, said after the hearing.

But Supervisor Susan Rose, who represents south Santa Barbara County, said rail would benefit the whole county. “And I think we have to move on forward on it,” she said, citing her upbringing on the East Coast, where commuter rail is a way of life.

Speakers split along similar lines. Some urged a vote for the plan because it would reduce gridlock and benefit local employers. Others threatened to defeat the tax measure next year unless rail was taken out of the package.
Seventy percent of voters countywide said they would approve a rail line, according to polling by the Santa Barbara government association. But the numbers split along regional lines, with 79 percent support in the south county, such as Santa Barbara and Goleta, and as low as 49 percent in Santa Maria.

Several Carpinteria officials say the plan does not make good fiscal sense. “To spend that much money to help so few people is ridiculous,” Carpinteria Councilman Gregory Gandrud said after the vote.

But Santa Barbara rail advocate Dennis Story said the plan works by merging rail with a freeway widening proposal. “It’s not like you can do this and not that,” Story said, adding that later studies will show higher ridership projections.

Santa Barbara association government officials urged approval of the plan. Widening the freeway will take five years to get permits and 10 years to build, Hart said later. Getting the rail line up and running would take only five years, he said.

Santa Barbara News Press, 9/26/05

From the price tag to care for and repair the extra lane over the next 20 years to the costs to the environment from air pollution, these expenses don’t appear as part of the operational costs of a wider 101.

101 In Motion is the catchy name that government officials have given to their effort to figure out how to reduce the gridlock on the South Coast’s highway.

But behind the smooth-sounding label is a process filled with politics and bureaucracy, with people from groups that many residents never have even heard of making decisions, from the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments to the Highway 101 stakeholder and technical advisory committees.

These last two committees will meet this evening to review their “evolving consensus” of what to do about the 101’s traffic problems. On top of this list are adding a carpool lane in both directions south of Milpas Street to the county line and adding commuter rail service between Camarillo and Goleta.

It’s terrific that rail so far appears to be getting its proper due — but we can’t help but agree with rail advocates who worry that commuter trains will only get lip service when it comes to funding.

What guarantees are there that the powers that be pushing a widening of 101 to three lanes aren’t just humoring mass transit advocates? What guarantees are there that money collected from county sales taxes and other sources won’t end up going to pay for more freeway asphalt rather than more environmentally friendly alternatives?

The lack of such assurances is one reason the News-Press opposes the extension of a half-cent sales tax known as Measure D. This tax for transportation and mass transit programs will expire in 2009, with a vote to reauthorize it scheduled for November 2006.

But the record of past spending of Measure D money — such as the short changing of bus service in Santa Barbara — doesn’t indicate mass transit will get its rightful share in the decades to come.

As for the 101, we are concerned about the way decision-makers and their consultants are framing the costs for rail service and a highway widening.

Notes rail advocate Dennis Story in a commentary on Page A11: “With widening south of Milpas estimated at $700 million-plus, I wonder what widening north of Milpas would cost? There are no estimates that I’ve seen. Also remember that road estimates are computed in 2005 dollars. What do you suppose it might total when completed 20 years from now? Commuter rail at $79 million looks like a bargain, and with the 101 In Motion’s estimate of 3-5 years for completion, would not face the inflationary pressures that road costs would.”

Mr. Story is right. But the cost estimates of a widening project also are under-estimated for other reasons as well. From the price tag to care for and repair the extra lane over the next 20 years to the costs to the environment from air pollution, these expenses don’t appear as part of the operational costs of a wider 101.

Yet when it comes to rail service, people backing a 101 widening are quick to tack on operating expenses for the next 20 years onto the start-up capital costs for a train service.

The ECP (www.sbecp.org) released its 2005 South Coast Community Survey and revealed some exciting trends in public opinion.

“Adding commuter trains (63%) and widening Highway 101 (61%) are the public’s top two priorities for transportation spending.”

That statement applies to the entire South Coast. The survey also looked at four subregions: Goleta, Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, and a blend of unincorporated areas of the county (such as eastern Goleta Valley,
Isla Vista, Montecito, Mission Canyon, and the Las Positas Valley). There were interesting distinctions among the subregions as well. Goleta and the unincorporated areas tracked the entire South Coast very closely while Santa Barbara included commuter rail (64%) in the top 2 priorities more frequently than freeway widening (58%). Carpinteria preferred the opposite, 75% mentioned widening and 64% mentioned commuter rail.

(Source: ECP 2005 Community Survey)

Most people associate widening 101 with widening only south of Milpas, and we know that widening south of Milpas requires some form of widening north of Milpas (see our Myths page). We wonder how respondents from Santa Barbara and Goleta would have responded if the location and extent of freeway widening were part of the possible answer. Instead of “Widening Highway 101″, it might have been “Widening 101 from Paterson to the Ventura County line”. SBCAG’s 101 In Motion is not looking at any packages that widen the freeway south of Milpas and not north of Milpas.

Nevertheless, the survey demonstrates strong public support for commuter rail. When we started CoastalRailNow.org two years ago, we doubt that public opinion was so strongly in favor of commuter rail. Commuter rail is now seen as at least as viable as freeway widening overall and in most subregions, and we hope we’ve had something to do with educating the public as to the benefits and feasibility of commuter rail.

There is more. We are very encouraged to see such strong support for other non-automobile transportation options. In fact, if “adding commuter trains”, “building bike paths”, and “improving the bus system” are combined into a non-automobile category and “widening highway 101″, “improving local streets”, and “building parking lots” are combined into an automobile category, a clear picture emerges.

(Source: COAST, based on ECP 2005 Community Survey)

Overall, South Coast respondents mentioned non-automobile solutions (54% of mentions) more frequently than automobile solutions (41% of mentions) when asked for their top two transportation priorities. Even Carpinteria, which tends to favor freeway widening, just beats the sampling error (±4.9%) with the most mentions going to non-automobile solutions. This finding echoes what SBCAG’s 101 In Motion (www.sbcag.org, www.101inmotion.com) public outreach also found: the South Coast wants alternatives to the automobile and commuter rail is chief among them.

We were also heartened to see very strong support for Measure D re-authorization. Support was well in excess of the two thirds vote it will take to re-authorize the half-cent sales tax that goes for local transportation projects. Measure D funding will be critical to the success of commuter rail in our area. A vote of the people is planned for 2006.

“Extending the existing, half-cent sales tax to pay for transportation projects is favored by 75% of the public.”

(Source: ECP 2005 Community Survey)

We’d like to thank the good people at ECP for thier hard work shedding light on the important issue of transportation.

COAST surveyed 34 employers representing over 12,000 employees with the Coastal Housing Partnership (www.coastalhousing.org), and UCSB separately. We were excited to find that a large majority of employees worked for employers who are willing to help connect “the last mile” from the train station to the workplace. (April, 2005)

Download the PDF here: DFR – Commuter Rail Assessment 3_30_05.pdf

The TAG, SAC, and SCSPC all agreed on four final packages of transportation solutions for our region. Three of the four include commuter rail and the best performance in terms of congestion relief comes from packages that combine commuter rail with HOV, HOT, and/or auxiliary lanes on 101. Read the staff report here:

www.sbcag.org/Meetings/SCSPC/2005/April/Item4.pdf

At the 12/16/04 meeting of the Santa Barbara City Planning Commission, Caltrans agreed to study what it would entail to provide commuter service during the many 101 construction projects working their way through the approval and funding process, and then report the findings to the city. In addition, Warren Weber, chief for Caltrans’ Division of Rail, agreed to convene a meeting early next year to talk about rail.

“We will put together all the players to see what can be done,” Mr. Weber said.

CoastalRailNow.org has been making its presence felt in Downtown Ventura at the Saturday farmer’s market. We have had a presence there since July 17, 2004. Since then we’ve gathered over 100 new contacts and distributed hundreds of postcards, brochures, and bumper stickers.

The strong interest caught the eye of the Ventura County Star, see the August 18, 2004 article in In The News.

At SBCAG’s July 15, 2004 board meeting the board was presented with a report detailing steps that should be taken to solve regional problems such as the jobs/housing imbalance and the freeway congestion that goes along with it. We were very pleased with the following recommendation and we hope the SBCAG Board will pursue the recommendations in the report.

“Congestion Relief Policy #1: Initiate discussions between Ventura Council of Governments and Santa Barbara County Association of Governments to jointly pursue state and federal funding of inter-county transit and passenger rail enhancements, and other near-term transportation improvements that facilitate inter-county travel during peak and off-peak periods.”

http://www.sbcag.org/PDFs/publications/FinalReport081604-complete.pdf