HIGHLIGHTS:
LOBBY ORGANIZES 'CALIFORNIA COMMUTER ALLIANCE'
ENERGY CRISIS THREATENS TRANSPORTATION FUNDING
FRESNO EYES TRANSPORTATION SALES TAX RENEWAL 

PLUS:
VALLEY RESIDENTS ENVISION MORE WALKABLE FUTURE
QUOTABLE
STATE BRIEFS 

STATE ROAD LOBBY ORGANIZES 'CALIFORNIA COMMUTER ALLIANCE'; NEW PRO-HIGHWAY CAMPAIGN IN THE WORKS

A powerful coalition of road builders and construction contractors calling themselves the 'California Commuter Alliance' are pouring thousands of dollars into campaigns in the Bay Area and Sacramento to stifle new transit plans and boost highway spending as both regions prepare their long range transportation plans. The campaign kicked off in February with a litany of radio and newspaper ads blaming 'paid anti-highway activists' for slashing road funding, forcing people onto transit and "pouring billions into a network of buses that will have to sit in traffic alongside your car." It also uses a widely circulated but erroneous statistic that claims highway capacity has grown only 8 percent statewide since 1975. That number includes only state-owned highways, including many local two lane state roads but missing many county-owned expressways and arterials, further complicated by the fact that the state relinquishes hundreds of miles of roadways each year to local government control. Since 1984, major arterial and freeway capacity in California's metro areas has grown by 24 percent while population has grown by 28 percent according to more reliable annual report published by the Texas Transportation Institute.

Critics of the Alliance charge that not only is their message out of touch with the general public (76 percent of Bay Area residents in a recent poll support significant transit funding increases versus just 36 percent favoring new highways), but that their stated goal of securing more road and bridge repair funding is misleading since most of their members lobby primarily for new construction projects. The Alliance for Jobs specifically excluded local street and road maintenance from their demand for a minimum expenditure of 40 percent on capital projects as part of Alameda County's recently approved Measure B transportation sales tax package.

The Alliance's ad campaign is also strikingly similar to those being unveiled in other several other regions of the country. In Atlanta, the Georgia Highway Contractors Association is funding a controversial campaign blaming environmental groups for the region's miserable air quality and loss of federal highway funds. "Environmentalists are telling us how to live our lives, preventing us from driving cars and forcing us to live downtown," says one of the Atlanta television ads. That line, accompanied by several images of Latinos and African- Americans boarding a city bus, has drawn sharp attacks from several civil rights and social justice groups. The coordination of the pro-highway ad campaigns in key regions throughout the U.S. is thought to be part of a larger lobbying strategy by national road construction groups aimed at convincing President Bush to roll back air quality laws and environmental protections on federally funded transportation projects.

For more information about the California Commuter Alliance visit http://www.rebuildca.org or call the Alliance at 510.452.1661.
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ENERGY CRISIS THREATENS TRANSPORTATION FUNDING PROPOSALS, EVEN AS FIRST MEASURE PASSES KEY COMMITTEE

As the state's escalating energy crisis threatens both the political ambitions of California Governor Gray Davis as well as the rapidly shrinking budget surplus, several major transportation funding proposals that will rely on the provision of general revenues from the state sales tax are facing an even steeper uphill climb. AB227, SB829, ACA9, AB1020 and AB321 all seek to provide new transportation funding through the diversion of the state sales tax on gasoline or new car sales from the general fund into transportation programs (see CTR v02n02).

Despite increasingly strong signals from the administration that any bills tapping into the general fund will fail to receive the governor's signature, AB227 (Longville) was approved by the Assembly Transportation Committee by a unanimous 17-0 vote on March 19th. The dwindling budget surplus makes passage of any of the major transportation funding proposals virtually impossible this year, and may mean several of the various bill sponsors would look to place initiatives on the November 2002 ballot.

To follow each of the individual legislative proposals, subscribe to regular bill updates available free of charge at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov . Also visit http://www.transact.org/ca/state_leg.htm  STPP's updated analysis throughout the 2001 session.
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ON HEELS OF BAY AREA VICTORIES, FRESNO COUNTY NEXT TO EYE RENEWAL OF TRANSPORTATION SALES TAX

After two stunning victories last November where both Alameda and Santa Clara counties easily surpassed the seemingly impossible two-thirds vote threshold, Fresno County is preparing to renew their own transportation sales tax as early as November 2002. Though not expiring until 2007, local officials are hoping to begin what they acknowledge may be several attempts at winning the needed 67 percent voter approval for a package of projects that may look a lot different from the one 58 percent of county voters approved in 1986. Still widely known as 'Measure C', the original half cent sales tax increase has raised $686 million to help construct a massive regional highway network originally envisioned in the 1950s connecting the City of Fresno with its surrounding suburbs.

Yet times are changing in the San Joaquin Valley's biggest metro area, evidenced by such efforts as the Fresno Growth Alternatives Alliance, a partnership among the Chamber of Commerce, the Farm Bureau, the Business Council and others that have started to recognize importance of preserving nearby farmland and channeling future growth back towards cities and suburbs. The state's high speed rail proposal has also prompted the Fresno Council of Governments to demand a downtown station, contradicting the rail authority's recommendation of a stop five miles west of the city in what's now prime farmland. The first step in the reauthorization of the sales tax has been the formation of a 39-member steering committee including a broad cross section of community stakeholders, set to meet for the first time April 25th. Besides the debate over the funding split among transportation modes, the breakdown between the fast growing metro area versus outlying towns and rural regions may also prove to be equally contentious.

For more information visit http://www.fresnocog.com  or contact Kevin Hall at the Fresno County Transportation and Land Use Coalition: hallmos@aol.com .
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CENTRAL VALLEY RESIDENTS ENVISION MORE WALKABLE FUTURE

At a series of three STPP-sponsored town hall meetings held in the Central Valley in early March, residents, planners and local elected officials came together to develop strategies for making their towns friendlier to pedestrians. National walkable communities expert Dan Burden hosted a series of neighborhood walking tours by day, followed by town hall-style meetings in the evening to discuss results from the audits and broader visions for more walkable streets. Burden used digital photos of local streetscapes and intersections and conveyed potential retrofit ideas by dropping in images of new crosswalks, street trees, roundabouts, on-street parking and bike lanes for the evening town hall audiences.

"It allows us to imagine it differently and see exactly what a truly pedestrian-friendly environment would look like," said Fresno City Councilmember Brian Calhoun. Panels of local elected officials, traffic engineers, planners and citizen advocates provided reactions to Burden's presentations in each of the three town hall meetings, and audience members followed with their own recommendations for local pedestrian safety strategies. Ideas included a pedestrian safety set aside in Fresno County's upcoming transportation sales tax measure, a new walkable community funding program in the Stanislaus County regional transportation plan and an expansion of Sacramento's neighborhood traffic calming program.

To find out more about the Central Valley pedestrian safety forums contact STPP's Trinh Nguyen at 916.447.8880 or Julie Rosenberg at 415.956.7835. 
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Sharp drop in road building expected VTA 
to focus instead on mass transit

By Gary Richards Mercury News

It's the end of the road in Santa Clara County.

After two decades of building more than 20 miles of new roadway every year, the Valley Transportation Authority is planning an average of just over one mile of fresh pavement annually between 2006 and 2036.

"The era of building brand new highways is probably over, here and everywhere else,'' said Steve Heminger of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. "We can still expand bottlenecks and try to squeeze more capacity out of our current roads, but there's only so much you can do.''

So the VTA is shifting its emphasis to mass transit. Of the more than $8 billion that is expected to flow into the county over 30 years, three of every four dollars is anticipated to go to BART, light rail, buses and expanding Caltrain service. What's left over is earmarked for roadways at the moment.
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STATE BRIEFS 

New U.S. Census numbers for California released at the end of March validated that the state had become majority-minority for the first time since the mid-nineteenth century, joining New Mexico and Hawaii; census figures also showed San Benito, Placer and Madera counties growing the fastest through the 1990s with population increases of 45%, 44% and 40% respectively (SF Chron 3/30)...

The Bush administration ignored a March 8th deadline to allow Mexican trucks full access to U.S. highways, ostensibly violating NAFTA and several other agreements that promised resolution on the issue; a ruling is still expected sometime soon and is expected to be highly controversial particularly in border states like California (AP 3/9)...

The Transportation Agency for Monterey County (TAMC) approved a $500,000 appropriation for a new Caltrain extension south from Gilroy into Salinas; the funds will be used to match capital money contained in the Governor's transportation plan, local officials hope to initiate new service by August 2003 (Salinas Californian 3/29)...

An $11 million donation by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation will help plans for the new UC Merced campus move forward through the purchase of 7300 acres on an alternative site one and a half miles away from the originally proposed location that had been plagued by environmental issues including the presence of vernal pools and the endangered fairy shrimp; the campus is now proposed for the site of the Merced Hills Golf Course northeast of Merced (Mod Bee 3/20)

The US Environmental Protection Agency gave a thumbs down to a Bay Area plan to meet federal air quality goals in late March, citing an excessive number of violations of standards for ozone pollution; a coalition of environmental and social justice groups filed suit in a US District Court urging the EPA to reject the plan, regional agencies now have until June to resubmit (SF Chron 3/22)...
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