Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Amtrak on Tuesday tapped the administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration to lead the national passenger railroad for a year.
Joseph Boardman succeeds Chief Executive Alex Kummant, who resigned Nov. 14 after two years marked by significant growth in ridership and revenue.
How 5 other counties got votes studied
By Scott Hadly
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Reading voters’ lips and how they cast their ballots on new taxes don’t always synch, and that disparity may give Ventura County transportation officials hope.
Local voters have twice rejected a county sales tax to pay for fixing roads and improving mass transit.
But despite the dismal economy and an aversion to taxes, voters elsewhere in the state on Nov. 4 approved local transportation sales taxes in at least five counties, garnering the more than two-thirds necessary to pass tax measures.
As officials begin the first stages of what will likely be a two-year effort to pass a similar measure here, they are looking at how voters across the state cast their ballots.
“I was up until 1 a.m. looking at returns,” said Darren Kettle, executive director of the Ventura County Transportation Commission.
The bad economy did not preclude support for local sales tax as long as voters knew what they were going to get and had a chance to weigh in on what kind of projects would be funded, said Kettle.
Voters also see the relationship between infrastructure improvements and improvements in the economy, he said.
That takes time and is part of the reason the effort locally has a two-year timeline. It will give transportation officials time to hear from voters and identify their top transportation priorities.
“Transportation is one of the top two or three public policy priorities for people,” Kettle said. “It’s a massive problem. Voters have said it’s so big we need to fix it.”
A half-cent transportation sales tax here would raise about $65 million, and, according to Kettle, help the county compete for state and federal transportation funding. Increasingly, local jurisdictions that can’t match or contribute to state or federal funding for infrastructure projects get put at the end of the line, said Kettle.
Learned from failed effort
In two counties, Santa Barbara and Imperial, the margin of victory on the sales tax was big, hovering around 80 percent.
“We got the fourth-largest majority of any transportation sales tax initiative,” said Greg Hart, of the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, which worked to get the measure passed.
At a presentation last week, Hart said backers of their measure learned from a failed effort in 2006 to focus what they were asking voters to support and to involve as many people as possible in deciding how the money would be used.
“That included seeking out active opponents of (the 2006 measure),” Hart said.
The measure raises about $35 million a year for transportation in Santa Barbara County. Hart believes pledging that the money would be directly used to help widen the congested Highway 101 played a role in it passing.
Even in counties where tax measures were shot down – Monterey and Stanislaus – they failed by very slim margins.
It was the third time voters in Monterey rejected a transportation sales tax.
“What’s interesting is that in those sub-regions that are being hit by foreclosures and the bad economy, they still almost pulled this thing out,” Kettle said.
But Kettle also noted that in Santa Barbara County, voters were being asked to support renewal of an existing transportation sales tax measure.
Kettle paid special attention to how neighboring Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties voted.
Both counties have a transportation tax, and voters reaffirmed their support of the taxes, although it took Santa Barbara two tries to pass its renewal.
Worthwhile to ask third time
With Imperial’s recent passage of a local tax, there are now 20 so-called “self-help” counties in the state. They are called that because a local sales tax generates money for roads and mass transportation.
Ventura County voters have twice rejected similar transportation measures, but as state and federal money dries up for transportation, local officials say it’s worthwhile to ask a third time.
According to commission members, the county is the largest in the state without a local transportation sales tax.
In October, members of the Ventura County Transportation Commission approved hiring the firm California Strategies, a Sacramento-based lobbying and consulting firm that has been involved with the successful passage of at least five local transportation measures in the past six years.
The firm has already had some preliminary meetings with local government and business officials.
©2008 Ventura County Star
Interesting Viewpoint, CRN would like to know what you think?
Published on Sunday, November 16, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
by Harvey Wasserman
Bail out General Motors? The people who murdered our mass transit system?
First let them remake what they destroyed.
GM responded to the 1970s gas crisis by handing over the American market to energy-efficient Toyota and Honda.
GM met the rise of the hybrids with “light trucks.”
GM built a small electric car, leased a pilot fleet to consumers who loved it, and then forcibly confiscated and trashed them all.
GM now wants to market a $40,000 electric Volt that looks like a cross between a Hummer and a Cadillac and will do nothing to meet the Solartopian needs of a green-powered Earth.
CoastalRailNow’s advocacy for commuter rail between Oxnard and Goleta must be on the right track. Recent media coverage about the increasing ridership on Amtrak and Metrolink serves to show how people are rediscovering rail for their regional transportation needs.
By John Hughes and Angela Greiling Keane
Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) — Refurbished high-speed trains and spruced-up stations may greet Amtrak commuters from Boston to Washington as the U.S. passenger railroad gains support from frequent-rider Joe Biden in President-Elect Barack Obama’s administration.
By Scott Hadly
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Photo by Jason Redmond
Gwen Larson, left, and Lillian Jarrett, both of La Mirada, play cards with Muriel Unruh of Buena Park as they ride Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner to visit their friend in Santa Maria. Amtrak had more than 2.7 million train passengers in July.
Photo by Jason Redmond
The Pacific Surfliner stops at Simi Valley en route to Los Angeles and San Diego. The Pacific Surfliner is sometimes so full that there’s standing room only.
With rising gas prices and the high cost of air travel, more and more people are heeding the call of “all aboard.”
In July, Amtrak had more than 2.7 million train passengers, the most in a single month in the company’s 37-year history.
Some lines, including the Pacific Surfliner, which runs through Ventura County, are sometimes so full that there’s standing room only.
David L. Gunn, former Amtrak president: “We are hitting some really important physical and environmental walls as far as what we can do. If you look at the highway network, particularly in urban areas, it is full. You can’t solve problems like this as you did in former years by adding lanes.”3:51 p.m., Feb. 27, 2006–David L. Gunn, former Amtrak president, said that there is a big problem with rail and other transportations systems in America, and that a lot will have to be done to fix the problem.
Gunn made his remarks during a talk, “The Future of Rail Transportation in America,” as part of a “Building Inter-Metropolitan Rail Corridors” forum held Feb. 21 at Clayton Hall on UD’s Laird Campus.
Sponsored by the Institute for Public Administration in the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy, the event was cosponsored by the National Corridors Initiative, with support from the Delaware Department of Transportation and WILMAPCO.
“We are losing mobility for freight and passenger service in this country at a fairly alarming rate,” Gunn said. “All you have to do is look at the statistics. Demand is growing and the physical plant is inadequate, whether you are talking about highway, rail, or even air.”
Gunn, a resident of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, previously headed transit systems in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Toronto. He currently is an adjunct scholar at the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative think tank located in Washington.
Although he was fired by Amtrak’s board of directors in November because of his opposition to an idea backed by the Bush administration to split the Northeast Corridor, he joked that he believed his Canadian citizenship helped keep him out of political scrapes for as long as possible.
“When I was working at Amtrak, people used to ask me what my politics were, and whether I was a Republican, a Democrat or an independent,” Gunn said. “I used to say ‘Tory.’ It saved me for a while, but it finally caught up with me.”
In assessing the current state of transportation systems in America, Gunn said he believes that such systems suffer from a shortage of capital investments for maintenance and expansion purposes.
“We are hitting some really important physical and environmental walls as far as what we can do,” Gunn said. “If you look at the highway network, particularly in urban areas, it is full. You can’t solve problems like this as you did in former years by adding lanes.”
Another component of the transportation system problem, Gunn said, is that, with few exceptions, these systems are powered by petroleum and therefore subject to market pressures of supply and demand.
“ China and the Third World countries are becoming the First World, and the demand for oil is going through the roof,” Gunn said. “Oil is a finite resource, and oil production is eventually going to peak. When that happens, the market will create enormous dislocations.”
Gunn said that America’s transportation infrastructure is built on government dollars, and that the money currently being spent on this infrastructure is inadequate.
Another concern facing transportation planners and directors, Gunn said, is that transportation modes are interrelated. Investment in one mode, such as air or rail, affects investment in other modes.
“We are coming to a point where we will have to make some tough decisions in order to get the biggest bang for the buck,” Gunn said. “The transportation policy industry and policymaking sector is just not working, and is in trouble.”
While cities and states realized that they could not just stand by and let their transit systems go under, the federal government has failed to get the same message, Gunn said.
Fixing Amtrak
Gunn said that while there is arguably a lot wrong with Amtrak, there also is a lot right with the system.
“Amtrak was not set up to promote passenger rail service in this country. It was set up to save the freight rail system from going bankrupt and destroying the railroads,” Gunn said. “Something went wrong. What went wrong was that passengers started to come back and governments from states like California said, ‘We need this thing.’”
Among the changes that are needed to improve the rail system in America are reform of the Railway Labor Act and empowering states with money and decision-making ability to address their individual transportation situations, Gunn said.
The Railway Labor Act of 1926 was a major piece of labor legislation passed by Congress. At the time, it applied to what was then the most important piece of transportation infrastructure in the country, the railroads. The act was amended in 1936 to cover the airline industry.
“When you are talking about creating operating efficiency, you had better include changing work rules or you are never going to get away with it,” Gunn said. “I’m not trying to imply that we should drive our employees into low-paying jobs. What we need is an environment where you pay people well, but use them efficiently.”
Besides reforming the Railway Labor Act, Gunn said that federal money has to be made available for funding passenger rail service, and that railroad retirement benefits eventually must be phased out and moved over to the Social Security System.
“The federal government needs to give the states the power and the capital funding to let them make their own decisions, and this is not happening,” Gunn said. “The states are the ones that have to solve the problems.”
Destroying Amtrak without dealing with railroad retirement and the Railway Labor Act or improving capital funding will not solve long-term transit problems and would also result in the loss of a lot of highly skilled Amtrak employees, Gunn said.
“Amtrak has some really good people and has the only positive train control systems [integrates command, control, communications, and information systems for controlling train movements with safety] in this country that work,” Gunn said. “If you destroy that, you will have to pay a pretty penny to get it back.”
While acknowledging that both Amtrak and the railway system in general have some serious problems to deal with, Gunn said he believes that the urgency of the situation may eventually produce a workable solution.
“The good news is that the need for something creative to happen is so great that I’m not sure that the powers-that-be in Washington, D.C., can resist it,” Gunn said. “Eventually, the market is going to demand some solutions to these problems. Hopefully we will be able to carry that out.”
Article by Jerry Rhodes
Photos by Duane Perry
Santa Barbara News-Press, 9/26/05
Voice From Santa Barbara; Dennis Story
Lewis Mumford had an innate ability to articulate the obvious. He was not an academic, yet was considered one of the world’s foremost experts on cities, architecture and the impact of technology on civilization.
He authored more than 30 books, and in 1923 was one of the founders of the Regional Planning Association of America. Mr. Mumford also wrote many essays, one of which was delivered to a Washington, D.C., American Institute of Architects group in 1965. Titled “The New World Promise,” this passage resonated with me: “What kind of half-baked planning has deliberately broken down our efficient many-sided transportation network, based on the pedestrian, the railroad, the motorbus, and the private motorcar, in favor of a space-wasting, city-destroying system of mono-transportation, based on the private motorcar alone?”
That balance of modes sounds like the spirit of what 101 In Motion was meant to do. A comment I heard early on in the process was how solutions would be about moving people, not cars. We’re now suffering from that lack of balance, but things are changing.
Metrolink built a 400-plus-mile commuter rail system in Southern California, using joint powers authority between five counties, in two years.
Oxnard to Goleta, the most practical route for the proposed commuter rail service, is just 43 miles. Amtrak operates daily inter-city service on this corridor, but not at peak or commuter hours. With already-planned-for improvements to the rail infrastructure completed, an Oxnard-to-Goleta commuter rail service could be up and running as soon as the necessary negotiations and agreements with the required entities are completed. Remember, five counties sat down at the table to create Metrolink in two years. Oxnard to Goleta traverses only two counties.
This commuter rail service, with three trains north in the morning and returning south in the afternoon, has the potential to relieve congestion on the 101 corridor immediately. With the 101 improvement projects slated to begin in the next year, and last 10 years, a commuter rail service would be just in time to avoid the added congestion caused by the construction.
Widening the 101 to the Ventura County line will take another 10 years of road construction, for a total of 20 years — and when it’s done, it’ll be obsolete. At least that’s what the experts say. Remember, the next problem will be what to do north of Milpas Street, and the added traffic on the newly widened 101 will impact the existing six-lane section, as well as adjacent surface streets. 101 In Motion also explores the need to widen the 101 north of Milpas to eight lanes. 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 101 In Motion’s estimate of three to five years for completion would not face the inflationary pressures road costs would.
Since the 101 In Motion rail consultant chose to calculate commuter rail costs using new trainsets and seemingly unnecessary improvements, another consultant has estimated the service could be accomplished for $45 million-$50 million.
Next year, county voters will decide whether to reauthorize Measure D. This half-cent sales tax for transportation projects is needed to fund widening 101, commuter rail, and other transit solutions. A two-thirds vote is needed for passage, and it’s important for there to be a near-term solution to 101 congestion, which commuter rail can provide.
So now you see what we’re all facing, and why it’s imperative that commuter rail service begin ASAP.
Dennis Story is chair of CoastalRailNow.org.
Santa Barbara Independent, 6/2/05
By Nick Welsh
Commuter train advocates were thrilled to learn that a commuter rail component has been included in three of the final four solutions to the region’s mounting traffic woes identified by the politically powerful Santa Barbara County Association of Governments (SBCAG). However, those same rail advocates groused that the recent SBCAG report on commuter rail understated its benefits and overstated its costs.
Two of SBCAG’s final four solutions included combinations of commuter rail, freeway widening, and expanded express bus service. One option looked at commuter rail as the first best option to get South Coast commuters out of peak-hour gridlock, while a second option looked primarily to freeway widening. The party line consensus among politicians and bureaucrats enmeshed in this issue is that no one solution can do the trick; nor is there enough money available to get the job done. To simply widen the freeway would cost the most – $600 million – while adding train service alone would be the cheapest solution at about $100 million. According to SBCAG’s consultants, as many as 900 motorists could be taken off the road if two trains left Oxnard for Goleta early each morning and returned home in the evening.
The critical mass needed to achieve some relief, according to SBCAG, is 1,800. Commuter rail advocate Alex Pujo, of Coalition for Sustainable Transportation (COAST), along with rail-friendly City Council candidate Grant House argued that two additional trains are not enough. By running three trains, said Pujo and House, up to 1,200 motorists could be dissuaded from driving to and from work alone. “The formula is simple: increase frequency and you increase riders,” House said. He also argued that by purchasing used trains and used-train cars, the $100 million estimated price tag could be significantly reduced. Pujo argued that unlike freeway widening – which would require 10 years of construction – commuter rail can be up and running relatively soon. “We can do it in two years,” said Pujo. “If it only took Metrolink two freakin’ years to be built, we can do it here.”
Commuter rail systems in other communities have met with mixed results – one glaring problem has been insufficient transit from train depot to job site. But House noted that 76 percent of the employees commuting from Ventura to Goleta work for large employers who’ve already committed to providing such transit services themselves or working in conjunction with other employers to do so. House noted that Caltrans is poised to begin 10 years – and $36 million – worth of freeway improvements between Milpas Street and Carpinteria next year. “I don’t think people realize what that means for congestion,” House said. “We need some alternative in place now, if not sooner.”
Paying for much of these improvements will be Measure D funding – a half-cent sales tax Santa Barbarans voted to impose upon themselves in 1989 to pay for traffic improvements. Measure D expires in 2009, and already the politicos and policy wonks are bracing for the fight of their lives as they place it on the 2006 ballot for renewal. “The question is not how much we can get from Measure D, but if we can pass it at all,” cautioned House. That’s because this time, unlike in 1989, it will need a two-thirds majority to pass. Thus far, Pujo said, road and freeway improvements have consumed 90 percent of Measure D’s funds. “If you build for cars, you get more cars,” he said.
This time around, Pujo, House, and other alternative transit advocates will push much harder for a bigger slice of the pie. Without their support, they reckon, Measure D won’t succeed. But even with it, they concede, it won’t be enough.
Santa Barbara News-Press, 5/29/05
By MELINDA BURNS, NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER
Agency narrows down freeway solutions to four
It will take commuter trains, freeway widening and $700 million to untangle the traffic jams on Highway 101 through the South Coast for the next 25 years, according to a new regional report.
After more than a year of study, the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, a regional transportation agency, has come up with four solutions for South Coast freeway congestion, down from 34 options it was considering last year.
The report says that two commuter trains traveling at rush hour between Oxnard and Goleta would be the cheapest “fix,” with a price tag of about $100 million. But trains alone won’t get the traffic moving.
A $600 million highway widening project by itself won’t work either, the report shows, and that’s with six lanes south of Milpas Street and eight lanes through much of Goleta , reserving the new lanes for carpools and buses.
Earlier proposals for ferries, busways, monorail and restriping have been rejected. Still on the table is a “train-only” option, a “widening-only” option, and two “train-and-lane” options, including one that would build ramp-to-ramp lanes north of Milpas instead of full lanes.
All four solutions would include doubling the express bus service to the North County , where more and more South Coast employees are choosing to live.
The 13-member association — five county supervisors and one council member from each of the county’s eight cities — is expected to choose one package of solutions in the fall. That solution will likely appear on a countywide ballot in November 2006 as part of the renewal of Measure D, a half-cent increase in the sales tax for roads, highways and mass transportation. In an era when California funding for roads and mass transportation lags behind the national average, it will be increasingly up to the locals to foot the bill.
“This is a big, big decision for our South Coast ,” said Jonny Wallis, who represents Goleta on the association board and serves on its 101 steering committee. “We need to make sure the method chosen will work and we have the capacity to pay for it.”
Only one of the four solutions still under consideration — a commuter train plus additional freeway lanes from the Ventura County line to Los Carneros Road — would totally relieve the congestion that is forecast on the 101 by 2030, the association’s report shows.
Right now, 15,000 commuters from Ventura drive the 101 to southern Santa Barbara County daily, and another 10,000 drive in from the North County . That’s in addition to more than 100,000 South Coast residents who crowd onto 101 during the rush hour. The result is miles of slow-and-go traffic and an afternoon rush hour that spans two hours.
By 2030, association studies show, Santa Barbara County’s South Coast population will increase by 32,000 people; jobs will increase by 39,000, and an additional 10,000 commuters will be coming here.
“We’ve got this tidal wave problem coming,” said Gregg Hart, an association spokesman and a former Santa Barbara councilman. “We need both a lane and a train, just to stay even.”
Highway widening, Mr. Hart said, is clearly for the long term: it would take at least 10 years of construction to widen 101 through the South Coast .
That’s why some decision-makers, including county Supervisor Salud Carbajal, who represents eastern Santa Barbara and Montecito, Summerland and Carpinteria on the association’s 101 steering committee, are turning their attention to cheaper, speedier fixes.
“In the short term, there’s no money for expanding the freeway, even if it were the No. 1 solution,” he said. “We need to focus on rail and raise our transit system to another level. We need to offer incentives for employers to help commuters get on a bus. There are some things we can do that are very simple.”
Rail advocates such as Grant House, a Santa Barbara planning commissioner who is running for City Council, believe a commuter train service could be up and running within five years. Extra lanes on 101, these critics say, would just bring more cars and more congestion to the freeway and downtown streets and parking lots.
“We need some relief and we need it as soon as possible,” Mr. Grant said. “We have to understand that the freeways will fill themselves back up again, no matter what you do to them.”
But highway advocates, including Councilman Gregory Gandrud of Carpinteria, are equally adamant that 101 expansion must begin immediately, even if it means borrowing the money and contracting out the construction. The new lanes could be high-occupancy toll lanes, called HOT lanes, and their revenues could pay back the loans, Mr. Gandrud said.
“I want them built sooner rather than later,” he said. “HOT lanes are a self-rationing method. If you want to drive at peak periods, you have to pay. Commuter rail, as romantic as that sounds, is not going to relieve congestion on the highway. People would have no way to get from home to the train and no way to get from the train to the office. What about stopping at day care or the laundry? There’s no flexibility.”
Supervisor Brooks Firestone, who represents the Santa Ynez Valley and Isla Vista on the association’s 101 steering committee, said he supports both commuter rail and highway widening.
“It’s very expensive, but it’s expensive not to do it. I just don’t think we have a choice. We simply have a need to be in the modern world.”
Census data from 2000 shows that 70 percent of county residents drive alone to work — lower than the national average of 76 percent, but high, nonetheless. According to the association’s 101 report, if just 1,800 South Coast drivers traveling alone could be persuaded to get to work some other way, the rush-hour traffic would begin moving briskly along at 65 miles per hour.
Would 1,800 people be willing to carpool, take the train or ride an express bus? Would the public be willing to pay for a wider freeway?
“It’s inevitable and common sense,” said Buellton Mayor Russ Hicks, another steering committee member. “People are going to have to realize they’ve got to get to those three lanes south of Milpas. But I’m not one who buys in to this four-lane thing in the Goleta area.”
Ms. Wallis said, “In Goleta, some people feel that freeway expansion is growth-inducing, while some feel that freeway improvement is necessary to alleviate current and future impacts. It’s on both sides of the aisle.”
The price tag for 101 widening is high because it covers the entire 20-mile stretch from the Ventura County line to Los Carneros Road . The 101 report shows that if the freeway is widened to six lanes south of Milpas, it also eventually must be widened in some fashion through Santa Barbara and Goleta, where there are presently six lanes — or the bottleneck at Milpas will simply move north.
Extra lanes for the South Coast 101 have been on the books for more than 20 years. In the early 1990s, the community rejected a six-lane proposal south of Milpas and opted for a scaled-down version.
The “operational improvements,” as they are called, will cost $36 million. They include some new ramp-to-ramp lanes, an additional southbound lane between Milpas and Cabrillo Boulevard , a bikeway at Ortega Hill in Summerland and a freeway undercrossing to the Eastside. These projects represent the first phase of 101 widening, and it has taken more than 10 years to design and review them. To fill a gap in state funding, the association will use Measure D funds this September to break ground on the first one, the bikeway and ramp-to-ramp lane at Ortega Hill.
Jack Overall, a member of the Montecito Association who sits on an advisory committee to the Association of Governments, says support for highway widening will depend on whether the public is convinced there are no alternatives.
“You start pushing eight lanes through the middle of Santa Barbara , and it’s disruptive and enormously expensive,” Mr. Overall said. “The idea of having that kind of construction going on for years through this community is not something anybody would voluntarily choose.”
The Santa Barbara County Association of Governments has identified four options for dealing with congestion on Highway 101 between Ventura and Santa Barbara :
Proposal: Add commuter rail — two trains at rush hour from Oxnard to Goleta .
Cost: $103 million
Proposal: Add commuter rail and one lane in each direction from the Ventura County line to Patterson Avenue , and reserve the new lanes for carpools, vanpools and buses. Add ramp-to-ramp lanes along southbound 101 between Carrillo and Garden streets and along northbound 101 between Fairview Avenue and Los Carneros Road .
Cost: $611-719 million
Proposal: Add commuter rail and one lane in each direction from the Ventura County line to Milpas Street , and reserve the new lanes for carpools, vanpools and buses. Drivers traveling alone in the new lanes could be charged a toll. North of Milpas to Los Carneros Road in Goleta , widen the freeway with periodic ramp-to-ramp lanes in both directions.
Cost: $506 million to $576 million
Proposal: Add one general-purpose lane in each direction from the Ventura County line to Goleta , for a total of six lanes south of Milpas Street and eight lanes between Milpas and Patterson Avenue . Add ramp-to-ramp lanes along southbound 101 between Carrillo and Garden streets and along northbound 101 between Fairview Avenue and Los Carneros Road .
Cost: $548 million to $656 million
Source: Santa Barbara County Association of Governments