News, Views and Analysis from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments
During this challenging time, BayREN Home+ program is helping families reduce energy bills while making their homes healthier and more comfortable this summer with an additional $1,000 to the $5,000 in rebates for energy efficiency upgrades. Read More
The New Yorker had a humorous take on President Trump's focus on building a wall between the United States and Mexico, while roads and bridges are left to go to pot across the country. Read More
Raising gas taxes for transportation improvements is not political problem, as long as voters know cash will go to fix roads and bridges, said the democrat expected to head the key House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Read More
Here’s more good news for transportation in California and the Bay Area:
Caltrans announced [last week] the recipients of $105 million in State of Good Repair (SGR) program funds from Senate Bill 1 (SB 1), money that will provide capital assistance to local governments and agencies to rehabilitate and modernize California’s existing local transit systems. This program has a specific goal of keeping transit systems in a state of good repair, including the purchase of new transit vehicles and maintenance and rehabilitation of transit facilities and vehicles.
This includes nearly $38 million for 29 projects across the Bay Area for Fiscal Year 2017-2018. This funding for Bay Area transportation is separate from the nearly $2 billion over 10 years in grant awards and grant recommendations for 23 Bay Area projects announced last month from SB 1 competitive grant programs.
Continue reading on to find out which Bay Area projects received funding. Read More
Last week was a big one for transportation in California, with the state announcing grant award recommendations or winners for four different programs funded by Senate Bill 1 (SB 1), the state’s landmark transportation funding law signed in 2017.
The nine-county Bay Area did very well. The region is currently on track to receive a total of $2 billion in funding over the next 10 years to support 23 critical Bay Area transportation projects. These projects range from a host of improvements along U.S. Highway 101, including Express Lanes and express buses through the heart of Silicon Valley and HOV Lanes through the Marin-Sonoma Narrows; a planned BART extension from San Jose to Santa Clara; new rail cars and capacity for SF Muni and BART; Caltrain electrification and expansion; increased frequency for trains along the Capitol Corridor; extending SMART to Larkspur and Windsor; express regional bus service in Solano County; plus improvements at the Port of Oakland, new clean zero-emission buses, and pedestrian projects, among many others.
Continue reading to find out more about the state's grant award recommendations and grant award winners and what it means for the Bay Area. Read More
Last month Congress approved a $1.3 trillion appropriations bill to fund the government for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018. In a departure from previous years, the budget included major boosts in funding for both defense and non-defense discretionary programs and also significantly increased investment in federal housing and transportation programs.
This post will provide summaries of major housing, transportation and other relevant provisions from the final FY 2018 spending bill; a chart comparing FY 2017 and FY 2018 funding levels; and analysis of California and/or Bay Area impacts for select housing and transportation programs. Continue reading on for more details. Read More
Last week a report was released detailing the dramatic progress made by California Climate Investments – the statewide initiative that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work – in supporting projects that are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening local economies, and improving public health and the environment across the state.
The California Climate Investment Annual Report to the Legislature for 2018, a joint effort produced by the California Air Resources Board and California Department of Finance, contains lots of good news for the state, and the Bay Area specifically:
More than $720 million in new funding last year went to projects that were either under way or completed across all of California’s 58 counties, a two-thirds increase in implemented investments. From rebates for electric cars to affordable housing units, completed projects totaled 75,000, including doubling the number of home energy efficiency installations and nearly tripling the number of trees planted….
Continue reading on for more details about the Cap-and-Trade system and for an overview of the Bay Area projects that received support through Cap-and-Trade proceeds. Read More
The MTC Commission today adopted an investment strategy for goods movement which will direct $3.8 billion over 10 years to 20 different projects in the Bay Area, with a particular focus on Interstate Corridors and the Port of Oakland in Alameda County.
Currently, almost $1 trillion in freight flows to, from or through Northern California every year and these flows are projected to double by 2040. The goods movement sector is crucial to the success of many other related industries and is a key component of the region’s economic strategy for increasing access to living-wage jobs that have low educational barriers to entry.
MTC and the Alameda County Transportation Commission (ACTC) adopted a Goods Movement Plan in 2016. The Goods Movement Investment Strategy will be a key component of implementing the plan and will confer many benefits for the region, including:
Read More1. Deliver projects that can improve mobility and economic vitality. The strategy will help implement projects and programs crucial to achieving Plan Bay Area 2040’s performance targets.
The stage is set for $386 million in federal funds to go to 180 transportation projects in 95 jurisdictions across all nine Bay Area Counties with last month's MTC commissioner approval of the One Bay Area Grant 2 (OBAG 2) County Program of Projects. OBAG 2, which also has a Regional Program, is the policy framework for MTC’s distribution of $862 million in federal Surface Transportation Program and Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program funds from Fiscal Years 2017-18 to 2021-2022.
In the below video, MTC’s Mallory Atkinson provides an overview of the program and highlights some key facts, figures and policy considerations as the OBAG 2 County Program moves ahead. Read More
According to the Participatory Budgeting Project, participatory budgeting (PB):
... is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. It enables taxpayers to work with government to make the budget decisions that affect their lives.
PB has been around internationally for some time and recently PB projects have been implemented locally on a limited scale in both Vallejo and Oakland. Since 2012, the City of Vallejo has engaged over 15,000 residents in allocating nearly $7 million for 25 local projects. In Oakland, over 1,200 residents of two City Council Districts helped decide how to spend nearly $800,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to benefit low-and moderate-income residents.
Here at MTC, staff are proposing to pilot PB projects through the next cycle of the Community-Based Transportation Planning (CBPT) Program, set to run from 2017-2021. Read More