Road Plan is a Dead End

Imagine that the transportation bond measure on Tuesday’s ballot, Proposition 1B, signifies a return to the golden era of California, when the state’s future was on the drawing board.

This is the dream the measure’s backers, including legislators, local officials and the coterie around Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, would like us to believe. In its endorsement of the proposition, one newspaper crowed that "for the first time in nearly 50 years, California is on the brink of building for the future."

Yet in reality, the proposal offers mere crumbs compared to the scale of effort that can solve California’s transportation problems. Although the measure is probably better than doing next to nothing, the public should understand that it is a far cry from the innovative thinking that helped transform the Golden State into one of the most advanced economies in the world.

For one thing, the $39 billion price tag is far less than meets the eye. When projected interest costs are figured in, the total investment shrinks to $20 billion. This doesn’t come close to reversing California’s slide toward total transportation gridlock by 2030. A recent Reason Foundation report estimates it would take more than $100 billion to relieve the road congestion in just Los Angeles and the Bay Area. And that wouldn’t touch the transportation needs of growing regions like greater Sacramento, the Central Valley and the Inland Empire.

Besides being woefully inadequate, Prop. 1B reflects a lack of imagination. Much of the bond would be wasted on politically correct but ultimately inefficient public transit projects, such as the vastly underutilized light rail systems in car-dominated cities such as Sacramento and San Jose. Perhaps even more would be expended on Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s vainglorious $5 billion "subway to the sea" boondoggle, the largest beneficiaries of which are likely to be the lawyers battling community opposition and real estate speculators hot to develop along the proposed new route.

It would make more sense to use transit funding on affordable, adjustable, bus rapid transit systems, such as the Orange Line now operating successfully in the San Fernando Valley, and on improving other bus systems, which serve most of California’s nonautomotive commuters.

But instead of focusing on basic needs, the bonds on the ballot seem destined to continue our current pattern of transportation triage, which, although far better than allowing the patient to expire entirely, will not cure its long-term ills.

Congestion delays in California are estimated to waste more than 530,000 hours per year. Traffic problems are one of the main reasons why businesses -- in Silicon Valley and elsewhere -- seek to relocate. A lack of means to get residents in and out of neighborhoods like Watts in Los Angeles, notes one recent UCLA study, particularly hurts poor people, who find their employment options sharply limited.

Equally urgent are problems with transporting goods. Despite our identification with the virtual, wireless economy, California remains remarkably dependent on some fairly basic industries, such as agriculture, manufacturing and trade, for about a quarter of its gross domestic product. These unsexy industries -- which also feed service, construction and other sectors -- all require some plain-Jane infrastructure: roads, bridges, rail crossings, electrical transmission lines and other basics.

Yet with the exception of the flood prevention levee bonds in Prop. 1E, the proposals on Tuesday’s ballot don’t shore up these economic foundations.

Over time, the unwillingness of the state to invest in basic systems could prove ruinous -- not, perhaps, to venture capitalists who can cash in on a "YouTube" or a "MySpace", or to top dealmakers in Hollywood, but to California’s working class residents.

The Los Angeles-Long Beach trade complex, the world’s third largest port system, accounts for as much as 20 percent of the region’s total employment, much of it in highly paid, blue-collar jobs. Unionized longshoremen, beneficiaries of the nation’s soaring international trade, represent one of the best paid groups of blue-collar workers. Lack of investment in the port is inspiring new competitors abroad and at home, including backers of a proposed major port in Baja California, which could siphon blue collar jobs out of the country.

There is nothing contemplated in California to enhance the mobility of goods and people that even approaches the investments planned in places like Texas and Virginia. The Lone Star State -- arguably our biggest rival on this continent for jobs and investment -- plans to spend billions more than California to perfect a system of super highways that will help make the state’s emerging urban crescent, covering Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio, into a more efficient competitor.

If California state finances can’t handle it, another way out of our statewide traffic problem is to take a bold step that is already being taken in Australia, France, Canada and other developed countries: tapping private capital to construct transportation projects. This kind of investment is becoming increasingly common in American states, too. Money is widely available from numerous sources, particularly Australia. Chinese, Japanese and other foreign capital could free up state money that could then be spent on other public transportation projects.

Private investment -- supported by user fees and tolls -- could help relieve our worst traffic nightmares, add to our economic growth, and reduce pollution and energy use. Visualize, for example, what could be accomplished if the state allowed private companies, operating under government scrutiny, to build a system of truck tollways to help retain the competitive position of ports such as Oakland, Los Angeles and Long Beach, while taking trucks and tractor-trailers off the freeways and onto roads where they would burn less fuel and spew less greenhouse gas.

So, forget pork-barrel projects that won’t even relieve the problems of the present. The new Wish List can include smart things, like truck tollways and bus rapid transit lines, that will enhance the lives of future generations of Californians. That’s how we can recapture California’s historic role as the land of the future.