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The San Diego Association of Governments — the lead planning agency for local transportation infrastructure — has an obligation under state law to pursue changes that decrease the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to Earth’s climate emergency. But SANDAG also has an obligation to promote a robust debate about its plans as it seeks public support for any massive undertaking. Without such support, it risks massive backlash. This is true of any government body, but especially one like SANDAG whose previous, now retired leader was assailed for deceiving residents for years about how many projects it could fund and complete.
Unfortunately, SANDAG’s board and executive director, Hasan Ikhrata, do not appear to have grasped the need for public buy-in. The agency is aggressively pursuing a plan to generate $34 billion from driver mileage fees by 2050 to help fund an ambitious $160 billion to sharply expand rail, bus and other types of transportation. Transportation planners increasingly see charging drivers for how much they use government roads as inevitable because a sharp increase in electric vehicles and a steady improvement in miles per gallon is limiting revenue from gasoline taxes. Not all drivers share that view.
User fees are an appropriate way to have the public pay for what governments provide — if they are fair. But San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones made a powerful point when she said, “Usually, when you pay a user fee, it’s to pay for what you’re actually using. What’s being proposed by SANDAG is using the fee to pay for a new mass transit system.”
Yes, planners may be right that mileage fees are inevitable. Yes, of course, the climate emergency is going to require government leaders to make difficult, unpopular decisions. But that shouldn’t require them to make decisions that ignore reality.
Which brings us to the centerpiece of SANDAG’s $160 billion transportation plan: its call to build 200 hundred miles of high-speed tracks and a dozen new train stations to sharply increase the attractiveness of using public transit. This has an obvious surface appeal. But advocates need to be honest: The circumstances that enabled the Bay Area Rapid Transit system to be built fairly rapidly beginning in 1964 — uncrowded suburbs and broad public support for an ambitious project— simply do not exist today in San Diego County.
Construction of the scale that SANDAG envisions would be hugely disruptive and would face massive community opposition. And such NIMBYism would be completely justified by cost overruns and delays of the state’s high-speed rail fiasco. Thirteen years after state voters gave it the go-ahead, the project is still at least four years away from having tracks that move people from one place to another. That’s primarily because of ferocious opposition to state efforts to seize land to build the tracks in the Central Valley. It is a fantasy to think such opposition wouldn’t be even more intense in San Diego County, where land is far more costly.
SANDAG is at the beginning of a long process, and it needs to involve the public to the fullest extent possible. It will take public comment through July 30, then study environmental impacts before its board votes on a plan by year’s end. Voters could consider a tax increase in 2022. That leaves plenty of time for SANDAG to explain its basis for confidence that residents would support a mileage fee and a costly high-speed rail system — and for leaders like San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and Board of Supervisors Chairman Nathan Fletcher to speak up.
As California’s housing crisis illustrates, it’s hard to get even small projects built. Assuming that 200 miles of new rail tracks can be added in a rich, populous part of the state isn’t credible. It’s incredible.
"Opinion" - Google News
June 26, 2021 at 08:05AM
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Opinion: SANDAG needs public buy-in for its bold plans. And honesty about whether they are realistic. - The San Diego Union-Tribune
"Opinion" - Google News
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