Read A Blog - Capitol Southeast Connector JPA - October Community Involvement.. What’s New?.. What’s New?.. Transitional Access..

I recently attended a tradeshow on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). This is an emerging field that has the potential to make a huge impact on how traffic is managed and how transportation impacts the environment.

Traditional traffic management is about moving from place to place, ideally as quickly as possible. That’s why there are freeway signs informing you of “congestion ahead” or letting you know the estimated amount of time to reach a particular off ramp. It’s also why there are intersection controls to control the flow of traffic.

Intelligent Transportation developers are looking to influence traffic patterns by providing information and trying to better distribute traffic on roadway systems. Future traffic management may soon be based on environmental issues, such as air quality and greenhouse gas emissions. The show was the first time I’ve seen the possibility of having intersections timed based on current levels of air quality or greenhouse gas emissions along a freeway or local roadway. It means that intersection timing wouldn’t be exclusively based on moving a certain number of vehicles in a certain amount of time, but on how those vehicles were impacting the environment in a particular area and how that impact could be affected by controlling the flow of vehicles.

I’ve said before that people have an ingrained desire for mobility, and that desire can’t be changed by restricting it. If travel is made more difficult, people may complain about it more but there is still a need to travel for work, school, errands and recreation. ITS planners are trying to improve the roadway system, irrespective of whether people think the system should be there or whether they think it encourages undesired growth in an area. The system is there because people use it. If efforts are made to softly influence people and reduce the impacts of travel, it may be possible to “have your cake and eat it too.”

It will be very interesting to see how these developments will change travel across the country, and what elements we may be able to incorporate into the Connector.

The last blog shared information about transportation issues facing our nation. However, we didn’t really delve into how funding decisions made by state and federal agencies affect our local transportation projects. There are big impacts, since local projects are predominantly funded from those larger “pots” of money.

A large portion of the funds for transportation projects comes from the federal government. The feds distribute those funds to state Departments of Transportation, which in turn disburse funds to local jurisdictions. That means individual States have a big say in which projects are funded and completed using federal money.

And that can lead to competition between state and local projects. Both states and local jurisdictions have their own transportation programs and both have claims to federal funds. But because there is never enough money to fund all of the projects that are planned, there are times when local projects don’t receive full funding. It is times like these, when money is tight at all levels, when local projects may suffer because State projects take precedence.

The Connector is in an interesting situation in terms of all of these funding decisions because it doesn’t really fall into a formal project “category.” As a large local capital project, it’s somewhat of an anomaly. There may be local projects that are a fraction of the size of the Connector, and state projects that are comparable in size, but there are almost no similar 35-mile local facilities.

Many large capital projects like the Connector are state projects that have a built-in force behind them, funding them and moving them forward. Because the Connector is a local project, it doesn’t have the high level of visibility that a state project would have with those making State funding decisions. That’s fine to a certain extent, since the majority of the initial project funding comes from local taxes, but presents challenges when we have to battle it out for higher-level funding. It means we have to be more creative to find the funding to complete the project—and that can be a very important challenge.

You may or may not be following the many transportation issues facing our nation. We all know there are local transportation issues, but decisions being made at the national level affect us too.

For instance, a new, six year transportation bill is being proposed by Congress. This bill has the potential to be significantly different than previous transportation bills. In this bill, there is an increased focus on environmentally-friendly and sustainable transportation. There are also elements of the bill that address transportation and land use efficiencies. It will be very interesting to see whether people embrace the bill and the changes it represents, or whether these elements will be diluted once special interests make their positions known.

Another issue facing the nation is the Federal Highway Trust Fund. Unless Congress adds billions of dollars over the next two years, all federal highway construction projects will come to a screeching halt. The process for funding the FHTF is broken because the fund’s primary and almost exclusive revenue source is the gasoline tax, which is no longer a good source of sustainable revenue. There are many reasons for that: increases in the miles per gallon (MPG) efficiencies of most vehicles; a reduction in driving due to higher gas prices; the introduction of alternative energies (electric, hydrogen and ethanol vehicles are not taxed at same rate); and recent increases in costs associated with transportation projects.

The biggest questions about transportation projects always center around funding and funding sources. As a nation, we face huge challenges, not only in road building, but also with transit and transit operations. It all takes money and the amounts increase every year. We are facing the possibility that even traditional programs will not secure funding. When even highway construction – the heart and soul of moving people around the country – faces funding challenges, we know we are in the midst of interesting and unusual times.

All of this affects us at the local level. We are facing budget cuts at the State level, which affects County and City funding just when federal funding is being cut. Fortunately the bulk of the Connector’s funding comes from Measure A, so we can thank the wisdom of voters a few years ago for the ability to continue finding a solution to help ease regional congestion.

More on transportation and relating funding issues in future entries. It’s a fascinating and ever-changing topic!

Everyone knows that getting any project, much less a major infrastructure project, from the initial stages through to approval is an extensive and complicated task. As the Connector moves forward, I’d like to highlight a few aspects of the process.

We will soon be moving into the scoping process, in preparation for the development of an Environmental Impact Report and an Environmental Impact Statement. Part of the scoping process is determining the alternative alignments that should be studied. An alternative can be defined as any combination of project elements (number of lanes, transit options, etc.) along with an alignment we would propose to be studied and approved.

Any alternative needs to be a sustainable project-not in the sense of being “green” or environmentally friendly, but in having all of the necessary components that would be needed to define the project and what potential environmental impacts would be. That includes determining the physical footprint of the alternative, which would be used to determine the types of environmental resources that may, directly or indirectly, be in conflict with it. And that helps frame the discussion of the details that would be required in order for that alternative to be built.

Alternatives were initially developed when SACOG started planning the Connector in 2005-2006. There are currently four alignment/route alternatives, and more will likely be developed in the community involvement process. The goal now is to define one or a small number of overall alternatives. There is a wide range of people involved to develop and provide feedback on alternatives: stakeholders, the community, resource agencies, Caltrans, local boards, member jurisdictions, staff, fellow support service agencies like emergency districts, transportation elements like RT and Paratransit, as well as interest groups like bicycle advocacy groups.

This alternative development part of the process will continue most likely until the end of the year, when the JPA Board selects the alternatives to be studied in the environmental documents. I encourage you to get involved in the scoping meetings that will be held later this summer and fall. Check our web site over the next few months for details about those meetings.