Southern California’s draft Regional Transportation Plan for 2035 is getting closer to release, now scheduled for December 6. As it happens, the Bay Area and San Diego are also updating their long-range plans, and a comparison is instructive.
The Southern California plan, being prepared by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), would spend a total of $545 billion (yes, billion) between now and 2035 on a combination of transportation projects, including maintenance of the existing system. It cannot have escaped your notice that the existing streets and freeways could use just a tad more maintenance. Indeed, 40% of the expenditures would go to operations and maintenance, while 50% (over $250 billion) would go to capital projects.
Very roughly (since the figures are still in draft form), a little less than half of this capital money would be devoted to highway improvements, with the remainder divided fairly evenly among public transit improvements, goods movement improvements, and something called High-Speed Regional Transport, which could be a magnetic-levitation train or another type of technology to carry people quickly across our vast region. (Remember we’re talking about 2035 here.)
Before I turn to the other regions, let me mention a few ways in which all this matters to us here in Long Beach. Bottom line, we get some benefits, and we pay for them in a few different ways. The highway improvements will include freeways and major streets in and around our city, which we all use. Our own 710 Freeway will get funds for capacity enhancements, and even a tunnel to connect the North end, near Pasadena, to I-210. If you ride transit, and I hope you do, you will see service improvements, like additional rapid-bus service with signal priority and limited stops (like the Long Beach Transit ZAP buses).
Long Beachers could pay for some of these improvements through higher gas taxes (if lawmakers act) and maybe even through tolls. However, if there are tolls on 710, they would be just for trucks at this point, except for the tunnel. But this shows why we need to be aware of and involved in the planning process! One other point FYI: in case you think the federal government can come in and pay for all our roadways, think again; the share of federal funding in this draft plan is just 8% of the total.
In San Diego, a plan being developed by SANDAG (that’s right, the San Diego Association of Governments) would spend $57 billion between now and 2030. Their plan covers just the one county, in contrast to the six covered by SCAG. SANDAG has been (arguably) more aggressive than our region in adopting toll roads and proposing new ones – for auto drivers, not just for trucks. Press coverage of the San Diego plan highlighted the effects of all this investment on travel times for motorists. (Keep in mind that a similar share of San Diego expenditures are likely going for maintenance, as in our area.) One benchmark drive to downtown San Diego, which takes 66 minutes on average now, would take 77 minutes in 2030 with the expenditure of the planned funds – and 81 minutes, just four minutes more, if there were no further improvements on that route beyond those already underway. (Because SCAG’s draft plan has not been released yet, similar performance data for our region’s investments are not complete – but I’ll come back to report on them later when they are.)
Now to the Bay Area, where the Metropolitan Transportation Commission is in the early stages of developing a 2035 plan. The Bay Area is already a much more transit-oriented region than Southern California, including regional rail and ferry service. It’s my understanding that over half the plan expenditures would go to beefing up the transit systems even more. The plan is being designed to meet some ambitious performance goals: for example, to reduce traffic delay to 20% below today’s levels by 2035, or to reduce the emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2 to 40% below 1990 levels by 2035. SCAG’s plan has a different, and not always comparable, set of performance measures.
The bottom, bottom line? Plans such as these may seem “far out” in terms of their timelines and maybe even in terms of their content, but they determine the framework and funding levels for a very fundamental element of our way of life: the transportation system. It’s worth paying attention!