News, Views and Analysis from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments
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
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 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
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