There's lots of legislation pending in California that will impact the way California grows and tries to address the global climate emergency. One of the most important decisions the legislature has to make is whether, when, and how to reauthorize the state's cap-and-trade program.

In short, the program charges the state's largest polluters a fee and uses the money generated to pay for programs to battle Climate Change and Global Warming. The program sunsets in 2030 unless the legislature and governor reauthorize it.

Today, StreetSmart talks with Zack Deutsch-Gross, the policy director of TransForm about the program and why the state shouldn't wait until the last second to reauthorize cap-and-trade. For more on the program you can listen to the podcast below, read a transcript of our discussion, or read this blog post Deutsch-Gross wrote for TransForm.

Damien Newton - So thanks for being here with us today. A lot of regular Streetsblog readers will be able to pick up our conversation right away. But just in case, why don't we start with a brief discussion of what is cap-and-trade and why it's important that we're talking about reauthorization of this program right now.

Zack Deutsch-Gross - Happy to be chatting with you today.

So for listeners who don't know, I work for an organization called TransForm. We work to reshape transportation and housing decision making in a way that centers community needs and combats the climate crisis. We've been doing this work for about 30 years, and that includes making sure that we have a viable cap-and-trade program that is investing in these fundamental priorities.

Cap-and-trade started off about two decades ago as a way to reduce carbon emissions. Apologies for those who this is familiar to, but it sets a cap on the amount of greenhouse gases that are being produced in the state and then sells the right to pollute in the form of allowances.

The state gets money from those allowances to reinvest in solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as infill affordable housing and public transportation.

Right now, today, the program generates about $4 billion dollars a year.

DN - How is that $4 billion dollars invested right now?

ZDG - About 60% of the program is continuously appropriated. That includes 25% to high speed rail, 20% to a program called "affordable housing, sustainable communities" which builds infill housing and supportive transportation infrastructure to reduce emissions.

The remaining 15% goes to two programs: the Transit Intercity and Inner City Rail Corridor Capital Program, and the "LCTOP," the Low Carbon Transit Operations Program, funding vital transit and housing needs that we know are strategic and necessary to reduce GHG emissions. The other 40% is appropriated discretionarily by the legislature to additional reduction programs, including wildfire prevention.

DN - The original program had a deadline on it which is coming up.

It's not tomorrow, but it's in a couple of years. So the state is now beginning to talk about what changes, if any, do we want to make as we reauthorize the program? It seems as though reauthorizing the program is a slam dunk, that it's going to happen.

Cap-and-trade has gotten some flack from the left and the right over the years. You've written about this, and the link to the blog post that you wrote will be included with the text that accompanies this podcast for people that want more. But how can the state reauthorize this to make it the best program possible?

ZDG - First, we need to reauthorize it. You know, the allowances that are sold every quarter are already dipping as there's uncertainty on the program. While it doesn't expire until 2030, reauthorization in this cycle of the legislature is really important to keep making progress on reducing our emissions and investing in vital programs.

TransForm's advocacy and our vision has three pillars.

One is supporting and maintaining these vital investments in affordable housing and sustainable transportation. The second is to add some flexibility to these transit programs.

Streetsblog listeners are familiar with transit agencies across the state that are facing fiscal cliffs. And so, we want some flexibility to make sure that we're not operating life-size model train sets.

The third is to reinvest and center environmental justice and frontline communities in the cap-and-trade program and GGRF, the greenhouse gas reduction fund, which funds these programs.

We know frontline communities are the ones bearing the cost of this pollution and the allowances are de facto permits to pollute. And so it's fundamental to TransForm and our allies, 50 organizations across the state, that have supported the principles we put together: we support and stand with EJ and frontline communities and their demands to make this program just, equitable, and help achieve our climate goals.

DN - On past episodes of StreetSmart, we had two people discussing high-speed rail. They looked at reauthorization of the cap-and-trade as a way to keep funding going for that project as there's federal uncertainty.

On another, we had Juan Matute, my old friend with UCLA, who was talking about the transit fiscal cliff and operations. The cliff is especially steep for the ones that are reliant on taxes more than they are farebox recovery.

He was talking about cap-and-trade as a possible way to help fill that in the long term need . Of course, there's also legislation to authorize ballot measures for more taxes and all sorts of different things going on to try and fix transit.

Is it possible for cap-and-trade to sort of fund those programs and these other programs that you were talking about and still center environmental justice? Or, are too many people putting too many hopes on it? Is it possible for this program to sort of be the stop gag that everyone's hoping it'll be?

ZDG - It is a great question. I think the answer is yes. And it is going to take more than just cap-and-trade to solve the climate crisis, to address the transportation needs in the CARB scoping plan, which says we need to double public transportation ridership.

That's double the investment. So cap-and-trade can't do everything. It can't be everything for everyone. But we see it as a vital step towards making these investments. And certainly, if we were to reduce the funding for transportation or housing through cap-and-trade, it would be detrimental to affordability and equity.

There is a solution. I would point to the California transportation budget, which continues to build and expand highways at the expense of vital transportation and active transit investments.

We see cap-and-trade and building partnerships between transportation, housing, environmental justice advocates as a way to get the best possible outcome for this program and also build the power necessary to take on the highway builders and the industry that wants to build highways through black and brown communities, wants to increase our emissions, and increase the cost of driving instead of investing in in transit, walking, biking and solutions we know communities need.

DN - Given the imminent rollback of the minimal federal environmental program protections and given the rollback…well the expected rollback of transit and transportation funding at the federal level… stuff is all almost definitely going to happen unless the courts step in. Does that change the calculus of what we should be doing when we talk about cap-and-trade or any sort of state funding?

Or has this been baked into the planning since the November election in how we have to plan how to do our state transportation funding?

ZDG - I think it absolutely increases the urgency. California needs to be a climate leader. It has historically been so, and it's increasingly necessary given the federal uncertainty.

Unfortunately, sometimes our elected leaders are more interested in recording podcasts than taking bold action.

DN - Hey, hey, hey, we're recording one now.

ZDG - You're right. Podcasts are great. They're a key part of the solution, but we need to be involved.

DN - I know what you're referring to. I wasn't actually offended.

ZDG - Good. Hopefully your listeners will too.But no, we need to do more. I think we can't rely on the federal government to solve California's transportation and housing needs.

We need to be showing that California is a model for a clean, green, thriving economy. And that starts with the cap-and-trade program that centers the communities most impacted by the climate crisis and invests in affordable housing and sustainable transportation that makes California more affordable and accessible for everyone.

DN - So there has been legislation introduced to reauthorize the cap-and-trade program.

Do you have any sort of feeling on whether this is legislation that's going to be moving this session, if this is something that's a placeholder?

You've made the case that there's no such thing as doing it too early, especially as uncertainty around the long term future of the program might reduce the amount of money it brings in in the short term.

But is there the political will at the moment to really bring this up as a discussion, or is it something that's probably going to wait until we have a new governor?

ZDG - We think cap-and-trade needs to move, if not in 2025, then in 2026. And in part, that's because, again, we're already seeing the auction revenues dip due to uncertainty.

There are two bills in the legislature, AB 1207, which is Assemblymember Jackie Irwin, who's the chair of the Assembly cap-and-trade Working Group, and SB 840, which is by Senator Limon, chair of the Senate Climate Working Group.

And those are the bills we see as the way to drive the cap-and-trade discussion forward in the legislature, that will become the bones of a reauthorized program. So we've been meeting with both assembly members and senators on those working groups to share our priorities and drive home the urgency for the legislation to move forward.

Given the fires and the devastation that that's caused, that set some of these conversations back a little bit, but on the whole, the legislature does understand the urgency of moving the reauthorizing of cap-and-trade.

DN - A big part of the legislative discussion this year is going to be talking about recovery and the wildfires, but I'm unsure how that impacts other legislation that we want to see moving. When I look at the legislative list that TransForm has out and the ones that CalBike has out, the ones that other groups have out, it looks like there's just a massive list of bills, most of which look pretty good.

But like with the legislature having to contend with everything else and the political reality that next year we're going to be in a governor's race, it's hard to figure out what is and isn't going to move and what is and isn't Newsom going to be willing to sign.

Which is why I was wondering if there's going to be the push behind it. But I guess we're at a bit of a wait and see.

ZDG - The reality is the climate crisis is here. And so we need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. If we're just reacting to the next set of climate devastation, which will come and continue to come, we can't take the proactive steps we need to invest in the systems and programs that are going to help mitigate the climate crisis and combat the climate crisis and lower emissions.

So there's a real challenge for advocates, for our elected leaders to be able to address the crises that folks are facing. And again, including like the affordability crisis in California right now, but also take bold steps.

And they're all related, right? These crises and our solutions are all connected to, but the climate crisis and the world we need we need to build.

DN - Is there anything else you would like to say, anything we didn't touch on or anything you really want to just rehammer to draw attention to the urgency of cap-and-trade reauthorization?

ZDG - I would leave listeners with the understanding that housing and transportation are the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions and the highest household expenses for Californians.

They're also key to addressing the climate crisis. And a lot of our laws and policies to streamline housing production are premised on high quality transit. So we need to be thinking of these issues as intersectional, that housing and transportation are key solutions to the climate crisis.

That takes investment and that takes political will. And if we don't start with building that political will, particularly with the communities who have been most impacted, we're not going to see the real change we need.

The thing I draw hope from is the power building across coalitions and multi-sector power building that we're doing around cap-and-trade and and throughout the state to address the climate crisis and advance affordability and equity for all Californians.

Episode 4 of the StreetSmart podcast features Monica Mallon and a discussion of the VTA strike in Silicon Valley.

If you're not familiar with Mallon, she is a one-person advocacy machine focused on transit in the Bay Area Peninsula, specifically the VTA. When bus drivers and rail operators were on strike Mallon documented the various ways she commuted to and from the office on foot, Caltrain and even Amtrak for a series of social media videos. My favorite is this one, where she walks for 14.3 miles. But it was this one earlier in the strike that caught the attention of the local media.

A court order has put VTA workers back on the job, but they are still working without a contract. In this podcast, we discuss what Mallon thinks will happen next in the strike, what she hopes people learn by watching her videos, and why it's important that people get involved in the issues they care about.

You can follow Mallon on Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, and BlueSky. You can catchup on her video series on the strike (or any other transit issue) at any of her channels.

DN - As mentioned in the pre-show, I'm here today with Monica Mallon, who is an independent advocate. But if you are writing about VTA, covering the strike or anything else, I don't know how you do it without talking to her.

Thank you for being here today.

MM - Thanks so much for having me.

DN - We are hoping to get this podcast up today, but you never know how things are going to work editorially. We are recording on April 3rd of 2025. I only use this specific date because things move fast in a strike environment and if we don't get this up quickly, things may have changed.

So if things have, it's my fault as a podcast editor, not "us" the interviewer and interviewee.

Why don't we start with what is the current state of the strike? They are not physically striking because of the court order, but there is not an agreement either.

So where does that sort of leave VTA service at the moment?

MM - It's very much up in the air right now. ATU members are working without a contract and full service was restored earlier today. So all bus service and all light rail service (are currently running.)

But, they're working without a contract. So it is a little bit of this middle ground situation. And then there's also the appeal. I'm So we'll have to see.

DN - Right. And the appeal is an appeal of the court order that they have to go back to work. It's not an appeal of anything else. The negotiations are happening separately from the legal appeals.

MM - Yes. So there's been a lot of discussion about the negotiations as well. APU is saying VTA isn't coming to the table. VTA is saying APU isn't coming to the table. So there's a lot of back and forth there. But, hopefully those talks are able to continue soon.

DN - I know VTA reached out to the governor's office to help mediate. It would seem that if both sides are posturing that the other one won't come to the table, that maybe a third party mediator would be useful. At least you'd have someone to say, "Hey, we were here and this is who did and didn't show up."

We haven't had a transit strike like that down here in Southern California, but it seems like we have a teacher strike every three years and in those both sides always claim the other isn't willing to negotiate.

MM - Yeah, it seems pretty common. And I think it would be really helpful to have some sort of third party there to mediate and also just be able to show who's the one that's not coming to the table and also just to help resolve the issue quickly.

DN - I find it odd that when there's a strike going on to that the agency that's being struck against is, regardless of whether or not they are in the right or in the wrong in the negotiations,in an odd place because most of the time they talk about how great their workers are and how essential they are.

And then all of a sudden they're having to argue about the dental program.

The flip side of it is the union members usually are very proud of their jobs at whatever agencies where they work.

Has the strike rhetoric gotten ugly or uglier than you think might be necessary?

MM - There's always been a lot of conflict between VTA and ATU. They're always kind of coming after each other a little bit here and there. But I guess on the VTA side, there has been a little bit more aggression from VTA, because they're trying to get ATU to accept the offers that are on the table.

But I haven't really seen anything that's too out of the ordinary. If anything, I felt like the strike was pretty quiet and I didn't see a lot of coverage of it. I didn't see business leaders and political leaders speaking up about it…especially on the rider impact side. I don't think there was really anything in those first few days that was said about riders really at all from anyone other than what I was saying or just random riders that were being interviewed by the news.

DN - I was about to say that I only really saw the local Bay Area news coverage which was: here's a press conference from VTA, here's a press conference from ATU, here's a person who was stuck out in the rain.

And the person being interviewed in the rain is saying, "I don't care. I just want to get on the bus." It's not hard to find someone that feels that way when they have to walk in the rain.

But, you did something interesting and unique. You chronicled your own trips to work online during the strike.

Once you had to walk 11 miles each way?

MM - Yeah, I walked 11 miles home a couple of times.

Once it was partially raining, it was really windy. It was not like the perfect California weather a lot of the time.

And when the strike happened, I knew that I could take the easy way out and do what everybody else is doing and just use ride shares or get rides from people, but I decided to showcase what actual riders were going through and highlight the more difficult aspects of the strike and what it's actually like if, you're completely without transit and not using ride shares or getting rides from people or renting a car or something like that.

It was a really interesting experience. I was trying all these different things: walking a bit and taking Amtrak, and walking a bit and taking Caltrain. And then sometimes even just walking the whole distance home and documenting it and showing that it's so much more difficult to get around when you don't have access to transit.

It's pretty easy to do these commutes on a bus or on a train. But when you're walking, it can take, in my case, three and a half hours.

DN - That was one of the useful things (about her video series) because as people are looking at things from a statewide position, they hear there's a transit strike in the Silicon Valley and everyone's taking rideshare. But there's a lot of VTA riders…it's a hundred thousand passengers a day…and not all of them are choice riders.

Probably, the majority of them aren't.

And so the impacts of what that strike for them is being shown in these short videos that you put and edited together. Links to some of them are going to be in the text that accompanies this podcast at Streetsblog California and wherever else it is that people are downloading this from.

If people want to watch those videos, you are showing what the impact was. You show going on for the people that are transit dependent and not to hop in a rideshare…or do you guys have Waymo? Could you take a Waymo?

MM - I think Waymo actually just started here, but it wasn't fully ready in those earlier days of the strike. But I guess that's probably something that people might use these days.

DN - (laughing) First trip's free. So that's the time to use it, right?

MM - (laughing) Yeah, yeah.

DN - Ok, but you said it was you decided to do these because you wanted to show people…you wanted to humanize what the strike is for the people that were impacted, for transit riders.

MM - It was one of those moments whereI thought, "What if I just actually showed what it's like when there's no transit to show why transit's essential?"

Even during the pandemic, we did have transit running. Here, I could tell the story that there are people that are essential workers that need to get where they need to go. And, we're able to tell that story.

But this is just a situation where there's absolutely no service at all…not even the Sunday schedule or reduced service. People were really scrambling to get around because with VTA, most riders don't own cars.

Most riders aren't choice riders.

A lot of riders are young and don't have a lot of options.

I was hearing…because I was documenting my struggles and what I was going through…I was hearing a lot of other people were walking as well or just spending hundreds of dollars a day on rideshare.

Especially in the earlier days, people didn't think the strike would last very long. So they were calling out of work or not showing up to school.

But as it started to drag into the second week, I think people had to really figure out what to do. You just can't miss that much work and expect to keep your job at that point.

DN - So as we mentioned, they're working without a contract right now.

What do you see as sort of the best case scenario going forward? Because VTA is basically saying that they can't afford the contract that the ATU transit workers are demanding.

And ATU is saying it doesn't make financial sense for us not to get what we're demanding for our workers to be able to maintain a healthy quality of life in the area that they're servicing.

What do you see as the sort of end game for this? I mean, at some point they have to reach an agreement.

MM - There really needs to be some compromise.

There's truth to what both sides are saying, but the reality is the federal government isn't providing operations funding and we have to live within our means. Something has to give, whether it's cutting service or raising fares, if we want to increase the salary.

Like there has to be a balance of all that. And the budget does have to balance without getting federal operations funding because that's just not something that's not feasible right now.

The board doesn't really want to use all the reserves and bet on that to provide the raise, and keep the service, and not raise fares.

It's not possible to give everybody what they want. So there has to be some sort of balance and compromise and everyone is going to need to give a little bit at some point.

DN - Senator Wiener is pushing to get more money put in the state budget (for transit operations.) Is there any thought on a short-term continuation and then see where things look a year from now? There's also been talk of a transit fund ballot measure in the Bay Area, I know VTA would get some of that.

Or is everyone just trying to get the negotiations done and we'll just see what happens down the road with these other measures?

MM - They probably want to solve this problem first. At least on the board side, they want to solve it in a way that's going to be sustainable for VTA's future without expecting any additional funding. Because I know that there's this feeling that things are really difficult at the federal level and tax measures aren't pulling very well right now. They want to make sure that they're not getting themselves into this deep hole and then slashing service.

We all know how that sort of thing goes and that's happened a number of times at VTA which is why VTA already has lower service levels compared to other agencies in the Bay Area.

There's a lot of concern there…just trying to figure out some sort of balance that allows them to move forward for the time being and then potentially look at new revenue sources later on in the future.

DN - Is there anything you would like to say or add that maybe we haven't covered on or something you'd really like to emphasize about the strike or VTA or a transit service in the Valley or pretty much anything at all that you just want to shout out?

MM - It was just this really interesting experience where we got to see what life was like without transit for an extended period of time. As a rider and advocate, it made me a lot more grateful for the service that we had and just how easy it can be to just hop on the bus and get where you need to go compared to what I was doing during the strike, which was at times walking three and a half hours home.

I just remember that first day when I was able to get on the bus, even though I didn't have the light rail, which is what I normally use.

It was still so much faster and I was just grateful to be on a nice warm and dry bus going home. It just really was something that made me appreciate what we have.

It also showed how important it is to keep speaking up for transit. I was working a full-time in-person job while this was happening, but I still took every opportunity to advocate for myself and advocate for other riders.

DN - You take the time to advocate for yourself and other riders while having jobs that were not "transit advocate" for a big chunk of your adult life and you deserve a ton of credit for that.

I was telling you off camera, I was talking to a person at Transform who's the subject of our next podcast. When I mentioned that we were doing something on VTA, the first thing he said was, "You got to talk to Monica." And I was like, "Yes, that's good. That's who I'm talking to." There's a lot of people that see you as the VTA advocate, the go-to VTA person.

And this has mostly been volunteer work over the years. I think you mentioned once or twice you've had some gigs with some of the advocacy groups, but for the most part, this has just been something you're passionate about.

MM - I've mostly just been doing it completely for free because it's something that I really care about and I hope the other advocates out there know that.

If you feel like there's not a lot of advocacy in an area, you can just step up and become that person. You're going to learn a lot through the process and figure out how to do things and figure out what works best. I've certainly learned a lot over the years. and I didn't start at the place that I'm at now where everybody kind of knows who I am. There's a lot of people that respect my work. And it certainly took time to build a platform and to build expertise and credibility and all those things and relationships with reporters and things like that.

But anyone can do it. You can do it while you're working a full-time in person job.

It's about having the passion and the drive for it and just finding those little opportunities where you can tell a good story like the one that I was able to tell during the strike.

DN - Thank you for everything you do. And thank you for joining us today. Again, links to all of your social media and some of the highlights from the past month or so are going to be available in the text that accompanies this podcast. But it's just at MonicaMallon on the Twitter X site.

MM - Yeah.

DN - That's where I follow you. Are you on Blue Sky or Instagram or any of those other ones?

MM - Yeah, pretty much on everything as MonicaMallon and then the TikTok where I was documenting everything is at TakeTransit.

DN - Taketransit?

MM - Yeah.

DN - That's ironic because…you weren't taking transit.

Thank you again for everything that you do and for being with us today. And I am sure we'll talk soon, although hopefully not about this. Hopefully this will just get worked out.

The StreetSmart podcast returns with an episode where we discuss how transit agencies can best fight global warming by encouraging more people to ride transit and by eliminating freeway widenings. This episode's guest is Bryn Moncelsi, the Deputy Director of Climate Resolve.

The interview is divided into two parts. First, we discuss how transit agencies often overlook one of the most basic ways that transit can be made more comfortable and attractive for all riders

The second part of the podcast goes more into policy. We discuss LA Metro's dual role as transit agency and highway expander. It was only recently, after a push by advocates, that Metro started admitting in its own reports (read Streetsblog coverage of said report here) the damaging role of freeway expansion in L.A. County has had the region's efforts to battle global warming.

Catchup on past episodes of StreetSmart here.

Transcript:

Damien Newton

I'm here with Bryn Moncelsi, the Deputy Director of Climate Resolve. We are going to be talking about climate change. And one of the ways we can fight climate change and improve transportation together is by encouraging people to ride transit.

And you've done some studies and work on that topic. So first off, thank you for being here with us today. I think this is your first time on any of our podcasts which is surprising because we've crossed paths many times over the decades.

Bryn Moncelsi

Thanks for having me.

I think that might be right. So good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Damien

Transportation and climate change are obviously big issues.

One of the things we wanted to talk about is things that transit agencies can be doing to make their services more appealing, because obviously every person that rides transit is a person that's not riding in a car or driving a car.

So let's talk a little bit about transportation and climate change and some of the work that you guys are doing right now at Climate Resolve.

Bryn

Thanks. Yes, I thought we could start out by talking about how days are getting hotter, extreme heat waves are becoming more extreme and and longer, more intense.

And when that happens, it's maybe harder to convince people to get outside of their own private air-conditioned bubble cars and want to be out waiting for the bus, or walking to the bus stop.

But it just becomes all the more crucial that we make our sidewalks and our bus stops a little more inviting, a little more hospitable to people out there in their urban environment.

We love street trees and want to see all the street trees out there. But also at bus stops, there's a lot of opportunity to get more bus shelters out there.

Who doesn't love a good bus shelter?

Damien

Now, and this is an issue that's been ongoing, at least in the city of Los Angeles, where I live.

I actually remember a piece, one of Sahra Sulaiman's first pieces with us, and she's been with us for a dozen years now, was called Desperately Seeking Shade. And it included a photo essay of South LA and people standing out in extreme heat ah with no shade around them waiting for the bus.

Is that a barrier? Just the inability to find a comfortable place to wait for the bus?

Bryn

Yeah, and it's something that really became on our radar back when we were doing a lot of organizing in the EnviroMetro Coalition, and we were conducting our equity survey where we looked at what transit dependent folks really want to prioritize investments in.

That's what led us towards caring about frequency, and reliability of the bus network, but also bus shelters as really, really important, in what affects people's quality of life. We're finding stories of people who would not go to school, not go to work if it was a really hot day and they just couldn't bring themselves to go out there in that heat.

So it is a really important thing that affects people's transportation choices…and their health, frankly.

Damien

I have a bus stop right outside the house I live in. It's a Big Blue Bus stop, and for those that aren't from the area, that's Santa Monica's bus service. I live in LA, but I have a Santa Monica bus stop outside my house.

But anecdotally, I've seen over the past couple of years a big decrease in the number of people that use that bus stop. And it wasn't until I started taking my notes for this conversation a couple of weeks ago that I realized that the dip in me seeing people standing there was because the big tree that's also right in front of my house was cut down a couple years ago.

Like in my head, I had assumed ridership never recovered from COVID. But the bus stop is really used by UCLA students. There's lots of apartments around me that are full UCLA students. But I think the drop is because the tree is gone. The UCLA students are still here.

Bryn

When we want to talk about bus shelter provision, I'd say there's kind of two areas we could break it down as. It's like, where are we putting bus shelters? And so we were doing a lot of advocacy there when the City of LA redid their contract for how the ad agency that was responsible for installing these bus shelters decides where to place them. And it used to be driven by where they could generate the most ad revenue. And so in 2020, when they redid the contract for those bus shelters, we were really proud to get integrated heat equity metrics into the system.

So rather than add revenue driving where these bus shelters would go, it was then ridership and heat exposure to target. The goal was within five years, we'd have 3000 new shelters and at least 75% of all trips and transfers would be protected by bus shelters.

So, location is a really strong equity driver. But then what you're talking about, too, is the quality …what do these bus shelters consist of because there can be big disparities there, too. Whether you've got a tiny sliver of shade that ends up in the middle of the road where people aren't actually trying to wait for the bus, or if you have a more functional shelter that has features that serve the people who want to be there waiting for the bus.

So some of what we've done in more recent years has been engaging with bus riders about what sort of features they would like to see in their bus shelters. What is their ideal bus shelter?

We've come up with designs and worked on renderings to get those visions out there. And so, it's things like having different angles of shade so that depending on where in the sky the sun is, you're directing shade to the sidewalk where people are trying to wait.

We've done designs around bench types so that you can accommodate bodies of all shapes and sizes. Things like security buttons and lighting are really important to people, especially taking trips later at night to make them feel safe.

And then the hardest thing to troubleshoot has been trying to integrate hydration stations into bus shelters, too, so people can get a refreshing drink of water while they're waiting.

Damien

We're talking about L.A. because this is more local for both of us. But this is not an L.A. issue that bus shelters are not what we would hope they would be. This is, at best, a statewide issue, probably a national issue. It's the type of infrastructure that America hasn't completely invested in as much as some of the European and South American countries that we compare ourselves to.

Bryn

We've had a little bit of a shifting the buck, pointing the other way because, at least in our region, our largest transit service provider, Metro, is not the one that then has jurisdiction over the sidewalks.

So, there's a little bit of pointing to the cities that it's their responsibility. And no one is quite stepping up and owning that as their mandate.

Damien

You mentioned the goal of 3000 more bus shelters. Do we know how they're doing as far as reaching that goal or a promise?

Bryn

It's been a slow start. The LA City's budget shortfalls have led to some hiring gaps and hiring freezes that have been getting in the way of getting some of the permit approvals. But, I have a lot of faith in the vendor that has the new contract. They've been doing a lot of good design work, engineering work, kind of trying to make it as smooth as possible to get the approvals and get going.

So our latest advocacy on that front is to try to lift some of the hiring freezes and get those staff positions filled so that that bus shelter program can start moving.

Damien

We mentioned there's lots of different levels of bus shelters for people in Los Angeles. The sombritas made the news a couple years ago as a "budget way" to try and do bus shelters.

They got panned by the press. Is it worth trying to do something in an area where there's nothing, even if it's not the ideal situation? Or do you think this is something where we should be waiting until we can do an investment for an integrated shelter?

Bryn

We're pushing for higher quality bus shelters. You get what you pay for. We saw some attempts of putting just umbrellas stuck in the back of benches and those disappeared pretty quickly. When you give communities lower quality investments, it gets vandalized, it disappears. It's not there to serve needs for very long.

Damien

And I think you mentioned that there was a lot of outreach you were doing and that the company that's going to be putting the shelters is doing. And I wanted to echo the importance of doing that. People that follow Streetsblog in LA may know I've been the Santa Monica Next editor for a couple years. And they put in a bunch of new bus shelters with these like tiny little chairs and these cool looking shades. And it was supposed to be this cool modern design. And everybody on the West side made fun of them.

And the city council wondered, "How could this happen? We're supposed to be the standard. These are supposed to be the best bus shelters ever."

If you went back and looked at the city council hearings from when they approved the design, the same council members that were losing their stack were the ones that voted to approve the shelters.

Literally, it was the same people. We could track their votes. To be fair, they probably didn't remember. It was a couple years later. I don't think that they were intentionally doing that. But people can see something in a rendering and it might look cool to them. But then the people that are actually riding the bus just have a different experience and different expectations for what the shelters will look like.

I'm guessing that's something that you guys see all the time as you do this. You have people that really want to design something that looks cool. Unless you have people that ride the bus and know what the sun is like at a certain time of day at a shelter, you end up with a design that might look cool from the street, but isn't practical for the people using it.

Bryn

We've really been trying to center that rider experience and get designs that are responding to real needs and not just kind of what looks cool, but what can actually make people's commute…make people's transit riding experience better.

Damien

So talking about LA Metro, we had a second topic we wanted to talk about with them, unless there was something else we wanted to hit on bus shelters.

Bryn

No, we can move on, but the main point is we're trying to make transit a better quality experience so we can entice more people to choose that as their daily transportation option.

Damien

A lot of the mainstream press will focus on two things when they talk about transit: safety perceptions and fares, and sometimes maybe the reliability of schedule.

And Metro does pretty well with reliability of schedule. So we don't hear that one very much down in LA…at least not as much as some other transit agencies.

So the rider experience is important. It's supposed to be, I feel like if I say fun, people are going to take it the wrong way, but it's supposed to be an enjoyable experience to be on transit. And that starts from the moment you leave your house, the first mile, last mile, the wait at the stop and when you get off the bus or train

Bryn

Yeah, there's a Danish planner, a famous urban planner, named Jan Gehl, and he has this phrase that says that transportation should feel like a good party that you don't necessarily want to end.

So I think, you know, solving for like the fastest time getting from point A to B doesn't always need to be the guiding light if you can make it a more enjoyable experience.

And I know that's part of why I choose riding on the bus. I feel like those little interactions with people around you in the community just kind of brightens my day. It's a nice way to start and end the work day.

Damien

It's been almost 20 years since I moved here and it's still very strange for me that the transit agency and the people that are in charge of the highway expansions are the same people. I mean, obviously not the same engineer sitting at his desk at Metro, but the same organization.

Metro and vehicle miles traveled has been a big coverage for Joe Linton at Streetsblog LA. this is We're going to again talk about the LA thing, but this is not a phenomenon that is unique to Los Angeles throughout California, um where you have long range plans that um even in an era where we really understand how climate change and the number of miles one travels in a car are connected, we still have agencies that have transit right in their name um that are doing projects that increase VMT.

Bryn

To some extent it does kind of sometimes feel like the left hand is not talking to the right hand. You have folks at Metro whose main job was to make traffic flow smoothly on highways. And they were looking at a range of "solutions", which I'm doing in air quotes, being limited to investments you could make on that highway system rather than thinking of the bigger picture.

If we invest in other modes and try to reduce the number of vehicles and driving that's happening on those highways, that's ultimately the more sustainable, feasible option in a region with a growing population that's trying to achieve greater density, we need to achieve that mode shift.

But so there's been some needed focus, and I will give credit where credit's due to Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins for doing some org chart reorganization, making sure the highway team was brought under the larger multimodal planning team.

So, there are some more interactions there for planning for all modes and not in their separate silos. But in this day and age, you'd think we would have turned the page already and not see highway widening as an option that's in our playbook. But, unfortunately, there are still enough of these legacy dinosaur projects that were thought of a long time ago and are just hard to erase off the books.

So there's still some advocacy on that front, of trying to stop the pouring fuel on the fire that's happening in the highway widening camp that could make it a lot more possible for us to achieve some of the the road reconfigurations, the dedicated bus lanes, the bike lanes if we create more space for our other modes out there.

Damien

My job before I moved to California and started Streetsblog LA was I worked for a group on the East Coast called the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. I was their New Jersey person.

Ironically, a large part of my job was driving around the state because the places I was going to One of my bosses, the former executive director who was now a consultant, used to say, "There's no such thing as a defeated highway project. They're only delayed indefinitely, at best."

We used to sort of roll our eyes at her defeatism. And then right after I moved out here in 2008, the project that I was most proud of having defeated, we defeated it by getting it defunded, was a right highway widening right through protected forest lands in Northwest New Jersey.

And it was funded by the Obama stimulus, which funded "shovel ready projects." And even though the towns that were along the route didn't want it anymore…it was jobs and stimulus… and that damn widening happened anyway.

In California that's not as true. That massive 710 widening, where they were so desperate to do it, they were going to dig a tunnel under Pasadena for a couple of years. That's not happening. Now they're even selling off the land around it.

So it's not as true here, but I always get nervous when I see these highway projects on the books that are quote unquote defeated. They're still out there somewhere.

Bryn

It's still happening. It's piecemeal. It's like a little bit here, a little bit there. I see it as death by a thousand cuts. We are still adding lane miles to the state highway system.

Caltrans released a report last Friday with a five year look back at the number of lane miles that were added to the system and buildings that were destroyed or relocated. It's still happening. We can't quite claim that we've learned all our lessons there.

I want to bring it back to Metro and the increased focus they've started to have on some of the VMT increasing projects that are in their portfolio.

Back in 2019 when they last did their climate action plan…I should mention that I have the honor of chairing Metro's Sustainability Council. And so we get to work pretty closely with staff as they're doing draft analyses and reports and this climate action plan was no exception to that.

And so when we were looking at an earlier draft of that climate action plan, it did not include the highway expansion projects. It was only looking at all the good stuff they're doing by expanding transit service to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

We raised a red flag there. We said, "This is not the full picture. You gotta be looking at both sides of the ledger and also accounting for the projects that Metro continues to fund that are increasing VMT."

And to Metro's credit, they took it on. They decided, "It's time we start facing the facts and not turn a blind eye to that and realize the impact we're having."

I'd credit that as kind of a first step in the right direction.

It kept evolving as we were increasing the board's knowledge and getting more awareness of the negative impacts, the VMT increasing impacts, that these highway projects were having. Then it was last year when the Metro board adopted a new set of VMT reduction targets.

In the books, the official target is a 15% reduction in daily VMT, which if people are familiar with the Air Resources Board scoping plan, you'll know that we need to be getting to a 25% reduction to meet our state climate goals.

Damien

I was about to say, that sounds low to me, based on the numbers I've been hearing, but okay.

Bryn

They also set a stretch goal. Their climate action stretch goal is a 27% reduction. We need to keep getting them to think about what's not included yet in those targets, which is just taking highway expansion projects off the table.

What they've looked at so far is just mitigating the impacts, but if you're still adding VMT and then decreasing it elsewhere, it's still hard to get to that total reduction that that we really do need to be getting to.

Damien

In San Diego, I know a couple of times that the SANDAG, their regional planning organization, will pass these long range plans that have all these great transit projects and other things in it, but those are a little bit down the road.

We're just going to do the highway widenings first.

This isn't just a San Diego thing, though. This is something that we've seen around the state where there are these regional long-range plans that over 30 years pencil out to be pretty good.

But it just so happens that all the bad stuff's the first five years..

Bryn

There's some truth to that. I have a bone to pick with some of our long range planning, too. There's this like black box model that things go into and magically pricing our roads is what kind of makes it all pencil out at the end and shows that we can meet our targets.

But yet, like congestion pricing. I don't know. It doesn't seem to be moving too quickly. So it feels a little bit like a tech fix. Like someday we'll implement this and then we don't need to worry as much about what our infrastructure investments are looking like in the meantime.

Damien

Did you almost bring up congestion pricing?

Bryn

Did I? But we can't call it by that name. We got to...

Damien

No, no, that's a New York thing. When Mayor Villaragosa had that plan to densify downtown Los Angeles and for some reason decided to call it "Manhattanizing Los Angeles." So immediately the entire region hated it before we even heard what any of it was.

Can't say congestion pricing. Yeah. But there's been some interesting studies for that with the West Side. And I think the variable price variable pricing toll lanes or HOV lanes, I can't even remember what we call them here, um had some ah interesting results like where they've been tried in Orange County and little bit farther out from downtown L.A.

Bryn

Yeah, and something we're trying to raise some awareness about, too. There's a pretty persistent myth out there that it's not allowed to convert general purpose highway lanes into managed lanes, either HOV or HOT toll lanes.

But I'm here to tell you it's a myth. We've gotten Caltrans legal to do some analysis showing that it's both feasible and somewhat straightforward.

I think that that myth out there persists and kind of keeps leading agencies to think that their only option is to widen roads. And really, there are better ways to price and manage how those lanes are used.

So, we don't need to keep just widening, widening, widening, but we can find smarter ways to use the existing infrastructure and get some higher quality other options out there as well.

Damien

Back at the Tri-State Transportation campaign before she was the bike queen of New York City, ah Jeanette Sada Khan actually sat on our board of directors.

Everyone remembers that she closed some streets to cars, she helped create this great bike network, but she was actually also a very big proponent of congestion pricing in New York.

I cut my teeth on urban planning with this idea that congestion pricing is not something to be scared of, no matter what term we use to define it.

When they wanted to widen the Garden State Parkway, one of the two big toll roads in New Jersey, our messaging was, "Okay, but if we do it, we should do congestion pricing because if you price it correctly, there will always be a congestion-free alternative. You'll never have to widen the Garden State Parkway again."

And this messaging actually worked. People were excited about it. They ended up not widening the Parkway because in the end, the toll revenue wasn't going to pencil out. But before people knew what congestion pricing was and what it meant, just that argument that "there will always be a congestion-free alternative and we'll never have to pay for a widening again" worked.

It is true. If you price it correctly, there will always be the option to skip congestion. And I understand the Lexus lanes argument, which I haven't heard in a long time because I don't think people drive Lexuses anymore. We'd have to call them like Tesla lanes now or something.

But I understand the argument but if there's not a congestion free option then there's not one for anyone regardless. If the money is going into transportation, improving bus not just reliability and e-buses but also perhaps bus shelters and their bus riding experience these are these can be wins for everybody.

Bryn

Well, we've had such a disparity for so many decades now in what our transportation funding goes towards. It's been both at the federal level and at the state level. It's been on average like an 80 percent 20 split, 80 percent going towards supporting people driving alone in their cars.

For some time, part of the justification behind that was that a lot of our state money was coming from the gas tax. And so they were seeing it as the people who are taxed need to benefit from what the funds go towards.

And there was kind of a narrow view of how car drivers could benefit, right?

Damien

Yeah.

Bryn

Instead of seeing the possibilities for them with mode shift and in having options out there; it was seen as, "We just need to make it easier, smoother for people to drive."

We have an opportunity ahead of us as we start to shift away from the gas tax. I see it in the VMT mitigation world as well in thinking of how funds that are dedicated for transportation for car oriented projects can then start to be more expansive in serving other modes as well.

Damien

All Well, we are starting to push up against our time limit and I'm actually a little late on saying this. I usually say it at the 25 minute mark, but I just heard the word "congestion" and thought this is my opportunity to talk about my favorite topic that none of my friends outside of the transportation world agree with me on.

Maybe they'll listen to the podcast.

BUT…is there anything you would like to cover as we start to approach our time limit? Any other thoughts you'd like to add on any of the topics we covered today or or anything else?

Bryn Moncelsi

It's been a real pleasure and I've become a true believer that there are modes that feel a lot better to take than driving in a car alone.

If you're someone out there who's felt that road rage maybe there's something else better for you. It's on us to create those better options.

So it motivates me every day and I appreciate you taking the time and yeah, and covering these important topics.

Damien

Thank you for the time today. This is our fourth of our Streetsblog California podcast we've ever done. So you're in our first five.

I guess you'll get a certificate down the road or something. But thank you again for being here with us today. And I'm sure there will be plenty of chances to talk as time goes on. So thank you.

Brym

Thanks, Damien. Take care.

This week's StreetSmart brings in not one, but two experts on California High-Speed Rail

Joining me are Adriana Rizzo and Roger Rudick.

Adriana Rizzo is with Californians for Electric Rail, a non-profit advocacy group that is "dedicated to connecting transit advocates and railfans with environmentalists, unions, good government advocates, and other supporters of environmentally-friendly, union-made, cost-effective rail."

Roger, hopefully you know.

Also, a quick programming note. These first three episodes were a sort of "proof of concept" and feature a auarter of people that are very much in the Streetsblog family (a board member, a past board chair, an editor and a three-time contributor). We're using these episodes to get listed on the podcast distributors including itunes and to book more guests. We'll be on hiautus for a week or so and we'll be back with a weekly schedule of podcasts.

If you have any ideas for future podcasts, either topics or guests, feel free to reach out to [email protected].

Past Episodes:

"Demystifying the CTC with Jeanie Ward-Waller," here.

"State of Tranasit Funding in California with Juan Matute," here.

Transcript:

Damien Newton

So as mentioned in the pre-show, I'm Damian Newton. I'm here with Roger Rudick of Streets Blog San Francisco and Adriana Rizzo of Californians for Electric Rail. I'm going to note here, we are recording the audio, but I can see them and they both just wave to me.

So hi.

Roger Rudick

Hi.

Adriana Rizzo

Hello.

Damien

So today we are talking about high-speed rail. It's a big issue that we cover a lot at Streetsblog California. Roger's with us, even though he's the Streetsblog San Francisco editor, because he's done a lot of that coverage over the years. But let's just start off with the basics.

In some of the pieces that I was working on earlier this week, I saw Republicans saying, not a single track has been laid yet. But that's not true, if I understand….

Roger

I mean the Caltrain electrification project and the upgrades to Caltrain did involve adding some tracks here and there.

Adriana

You could actually ride a high-speed rail already if you ride electric Caltrain, I would argue.

Roger

Yeah.

Adriana

That's one of the early success stories of California high-speed rail.

Roger

That's a totally valid argument, yeah.

Adriana

They've already had a 54% increase in ridership, you know a lot better service. They're saving money on diesel fuel. They're paying less for energy than they were before that. So, caltrain electrification wouldn't have happened without that funding from California high-speed rail. That's a huge success story already, but second of all construction has been underway on 119 miles of right of way in the Central Valley between a little north of Madera and Turlock.

So, that is the majority, but not quite all of the initial operating segment, which will be from Merced to Bakersfield. And they've been building dozens of bridges, a viaduct…a lot of intense construction on this project. And they've actually recently switched the track lane phase a couple of weeks as of a couple of weeks ago.

Roger

I think one of the things the Republicans or the people making those arguments, so I'll assume they're being genuine about it, failed to understand is: what Adriana was just describing is the hard part. Building those viaducts, clearing the right-of-way. One of the things that you don't see, unless you're specifically looking for it, is there are just you know mile after mile after mile of area that's been acquired, graded, and tamped down and just made ready for tracks.

So you know now they've established the railhead, which is just the terminology for where they're going to start, you know building the tracks and alerting them.

After that, it's basically a giant robot that puts the tracks down. And then when that's done, another robot goes through and starts putting up electrification poles. I mean, there's a lot of humans involved, obviously, but a lot of this is automated, and it's sort of the easier part. So, to say they haven't laid tracks is just not true in a literal sense. But the major track work is just getting underway, and it's also not the major challenge here.

Adriana

If you travel through the Central Valley, you will see there's quite a lot of structures that involve heavy engineering. Sometimes people say, "Oh, why do they have to build all that stuff? It's flat?"

Well, it's like there's all of these rivers and other features and roads and other features that you need to do to build some kind of structure to run a train over.

The Central Valley segment is going to be entirely grade separated, which is really important if you want to actually run a train at 200 miles an hour. If you're running it, if it's not grade separated, you get cars or freight trains crossing into your right of way. That's really dangerous to have something going at 200 miles an hour. They might not be able to stop in time.

All of this stuff that they're building is really important for having a grade-separated route that can actually run at 200 miles an hour. You can contrast that with Brightline West, which gets a lot of praise for being cheaper, allegedly, than California high-speed rail. That's running in a freeway median.

With the grades that they have on that Freeway median, they are not going to be able to run at maximum speed for that entire time between LA and Vegas. And there are a lot of disadvantages to not doing it the way you know California is doing it.

Roger

I think it's important to point out they've also made a lot of comparisons to the original Brightline in Florida and talked about how much cheaper that supposedly is. But Brightline in Florida, while it seems like it's a great service, is not high-speed rail.

They took a diesel locomotive, coupled it to some train cars, and you know the diesel has a nice fancy front and nice paint and everything, and it looks like a beautiful train…but It's not high-speed rail. It's just not going really much faster than the stuff that we already run in the state. So those cost comparisons are kind of absurd. And, as Adriana pointed out, that you Bright Line West, they're building in the middle of a freeway. So the grade separations and everything are done already, which, as I mentioned, are the hard part.

I'm weird about this, but I like to travel on the slower trains sometimes, so I do take Amtrak to the Central Valley pretty regularly.

Adriana

Me too.

Roger

And you see a whole lot of the construction out the windows of the high-speed rail project. And there's actually points where you see these big viaducts that go over the Amtrak tracks, because you've got to have everything separated.

Roger

There just can't be anything in the way. And when you go, as I have, on true high-speed sets and or systems in Europe…I've been on the one in France…I've been through the tunnel more times than I can remember. I've been on high speed rail in Germany and Belgium and in Japan…

There's no interference with the tracks. The tracks are fenced in. They're isolated. There's no grade crossings. And to be fair to the High Speed Rail Authority, a hell of a lot of the work that they've had to do and pay for wasn't actually technically about the trains. It was about the highways that they have to reconfigure to get over the tracks.

And in a lot of cases, what started as a smaller two-lane road in the Central Valley, they built it up to more multi-lane roads, more Caltrans freeways.

I've seen a bunch of these crossovers. And somehow that ends up on the ledger of the High Speed Rail Authority, which I don't truly understand. But that's sort of the way we're doing it in this state.

Adriana

I could speak a little bit about why exactly is a high-speed rail authority paying for these gold-plated highways that are along the road.

There's a couple of reasons. One of them is the local design standards.

So California high-speed rail has had to adhere to local design standards in every county or local government that does…in a lot of cases are requiring these roads that are built to go 65 miles an hour. To grow capacity when they're really questionable whether that's really needed. You would hope you'd be able to override or have its own set of statewide design standards for these roads.

The second reason is local permitting.

California high-speed rail needs local cities and utilities to provide construction permits for them to start building. Many cities in the Central Valley have used this to extract different concessions from California high-speed rail, including building all these roads and and and whatnot for them.

If the high-speed rail authority were able to self-certify, to issue its own construction permits, or if the cities were required to issue permits unless there was some sort of obvious violation, then we would be able to avoid a lot of these expensive roads that we're paying for with rail money.

Roger

So bottom line, it could have been done a lot more cheaply. That's part of the reason it's been so expensive is a lot of stuff that has to do very little with actually running a train or building a track.

The other reason it's been so expensive is that it's often misreported that the original cost estimate was something like $32 billion dollars back in 2008. I think it was 45.

Nonetheless, the cost estimates have more than doubled.

A lot of that is because of the reasons we were just discussing. But you know good luck trying to do any kind of a major project where every time the congressional majority changes or the president changes, suddenly all your funds are being cut off or even attempts are being made to pull back that you have to fight.

That greatly increases cost. I don't think you can exaggerate how ridiculous that is.

If you had given the high-speed rail authority the 45 billion that it wanted in 2008, would it have finished it for 45 billion? Probably not. California doesn't seem to be able to get anything done on cost and on budget.

Would it have ended up going up two times the price or two and a half times the price? No. A lot of that is attributed to just the political games that keep getting played with the high-speed rail authority, which, as you know you know, we've written a ton about over the years.

Adriana

Additionally, I also like to mention that those additional cost estimates were made before all the design work had been complete, and we still haven't even completed all the design work for the entire system, just for the Central Valley portion. Those cost estimates were probably not very realistic to begin with. ah There's a lot that can change in the process, but a lot in the cost that depends on specific aspects of the design process.

Adriana

And this was exacerbated by some of these political conditions, as Roger was saying. So they were forced to start construction due to federal funding deadlines in the Obama era before they had finished design. And this led to a lot of change orders where they had to go back and change all their contracts, redo a lot of what they said they were going to initially do, and have already committed funding to after because the design changed because they just started building and started work before it was done. A lot of other countries approve the funding after things are fully designed, and then you can have a lot less uncertainty about your costs.

Damien

This is one of the things that comes up a lot when people are bad mouthing the project because obviously voters in 2008 approved a bond for high speed rail. We always say,"This has been voter approved." The counter argument is, "voters didn't really know what it was going to cost."

Roger

But all the subsequent polling has still shown that if you put it back on the ballot it would pass, which is why I think the opponents don't want it put back on the ballot…or at least I've never seen a serious effort to do it. All the polling has shown it, you know a small majority still supporting the work. So that argument really is pretty vacuous.

Damien

I wrote a piece for Streetsblog LA…I can't remember if we've done one for Streetsblog California over the years…where I actually went and looked at the candidates for office that made "high speed rail stinks" part of their campaign.

We looked at how they did in elections. And the answer is pretty poorly. No seats have ever been flipped over high-speed rail as an issue that I could find.

Maybe there's something farther away from LA.

Roger

Their election managers didn't read the polling, obviously.

Damien

But down here, if you listen to the radio or read the newspaper, which has been getting better, but you know, the LA Times has been the la one of the loudest cheerleaders against the project…So, if you read the newspaper or listen to any sort of political show, even some of the left leaning ones, it sounds like this is a giant political loser, but I have never actually seen it lose.

Roger

You're right. And actually, if you go to other countries and look at the history of their high-speed rail projects, and I'm including the original, I guess it's the Tokyo Osaka Shinkansen line in the 1960s, they went through a lot of this too. The challenges they faced were much greater because at the time high-speed rail was unproven.

We have an advantage if we're building something that's standard around the world. We have the disadvantage that we've never done it before. I think that moving forward things will go more smoothly, once there's a minimum operating segment, the Central Valley segment is running, that people will, the naysayers will, melt away. We do haveCaltrain running, and that doesn't seem to have had much effect on a lot of the naysayers.

Damien

Well, but it's only been running since September. It's only running up in the Bay area. Caltrain was previously existing. I've seen zero coverage of Caltrain outside of the expansion, outside of, well, Streetsblog, train magazines, and a few of the smaller publications up in the Bay. I haven't even seen it in the Chronicle or anything like that.

Roger

Fair enough. Fair enough.

Adriana, to remind me where they are right now, but they've got bids out for high speed rail equipment, or they're they're shopping for it, or what's what's the status for now?

Adriana

Yeah, and they put out a request per purchase for the rolling stock backfill trains. I believe they've selected a vendor and they've shown some preliminary design ideas of what the trains are going to look like.

Roger

Oh yeah, that I know they've done. Yeah, the interiors, but are they looking at TGV or a German train?

I think it's probably going to be one of the other.

Adriana

So they've selected Siemens as a vendor.

Roger

Siemens OK. As soon as they're able, I would hope that they could do some kind of a new stunt.

You could call it and just get one of those train sets. If they have to drag it out to the capturing quarter, but bring it into one of the cities where people can take a look at it. um And work with Amtrak to get some discounts so people can get out to the Central Valley and experience it.

It's really important to make it tangible. You know, that said, I wonder if anyone's ever done any research about how many people in California have actually ridden one of these systems while on holiday somewhere or on a business trip?

I have noticed that the opposition has changed. It used to be "high-speed rail has worked in other countries, but it's not going to work here for some mysterious reason." Now they're making the argument that "High-speed rail would be great. California is just not capable of building it."

I don't think that argument is going to work because they are building it. In a few years, there's actually going to be some trains running.

I think the state has to be mindful on continuing or doing a better job of communicating with the voters of California and the taxpayers, the people who are actually paying for this, so that they don't get bought up or or buy into the narrative that was promulgated by the LA Times for so long…a lot of which was nonsensical.

The writer, who shall not be named, was quoting farmers who didn't want the tracks going through their property and didn't want to lose their property. Sometimes homeowners, famously on the Peninsula, NIMBYs…but he was quoting them as experts or not even naming them and never mentioning, "Oh, yeah, this person lives a few feet from the tracks or this person is going to lose some of their land."

And that's where that narrative came from. It just got repeated over and over and over again by television and other broadcasters who just didn't check to make sure that the articles that they were referencing were valid, and a lot of the times they weren't.

Streetsblog wrote a bunch of pieces pulling those stories apart. It actually wasn't challenging to do. I mean, you just had to find out who this person they're quoting. I remember a story that the LA Times ran claiming that the High Speed Rail Authority wasn't paying farmers for their land when they used eminent domain.

It was total garbage.

It's just utter nonsense. It was made up. The LA Times ran a lot of stories like that. I'll totally stand by that accusation if anybody wants to challenge it.

Adriana

This has become a bigger issue. It's almost like a symbol. It's like high-speed rail is this mirror for your views on California. Right wingers really love to hold this up as this example of blue state incompetence. California is a failed state, that sort of thing. But a lot of those arguments don't have a lot of teeth once you dig into the details.

Once the project is complete, it's really going to be a great example of California pride, a really shining example of the best that our state has to offer. But it has become this almost culture war issue to attack California on. We've seen that with some of the political opponents of high-speed rail. So recently, it has been congressional Republicans who have vowed to defund high-speed rail, Kevin Kiley is spearheading that.

More recently, some California Republicans have introduced bills to basically get rid of all of the state funding for it and redirect that to highways, which is absolutely despicable.

Roger

Well, not as despicable as claiming that it was about fighting the LA fires, which was just revolting and really just gross.

Adriana

That's true. Yeah. Yeah.

I think hopefully those state level attacks won't get too far. But I do think we are in trouble right now in terms of the federal funding, given the Trump administration. Elon Musk has long been an opponent of California high-speed rail.

He launched his completely vaporware hyperloop idea in order to just distract the media from supporting high-speed rail. He's continued to attack it through his quasi-governmental doge office. There is a very real threat of the current administration taking and axing the federal funding for this project.

Roger

And by the way, that Hyperloop nonsense, the Hyperloop scam…the original paper that Elon Musk wrote, the white paper, um there were some...

Damien

Do you think Elon Musk really wrote it?

Roger

Huh?

Damien

Do you think Elon Musk actually wrote it?

Roger

You may have, I don't know, but...

Damien

Because on one hand, it's nonsense, so maybe.

Roger

But it was supposed to float on a cushion of air like a hockey puck was what he claimed. There were some NASA engineers who looked into that. And I remember when I read it…I'm not a physicist, but that doesn't really make a lot of sense that that would work. A hockey puck is very, very light. A heavy thing is not. I don't understand how that would work. Is he talking about a hovercraft and a vacuum? How would that work?

And sure enough, it wouldn't. Some NASA engineers looked into it and wrote a paper and it would just sit there in the tube and be unable to move. So, it was definitely a con from the beginning. But now we have him "helping to run the country." And he's certainly got his sights on it. I would say the response from the state should be, "Okay, you want to turn this into a big political football? Let's get it finished."

If the trains start running and we're able to finish the thing, the opposition is gone. There were opponents to the English Channel link in the UK. There were, as I mentioned, opponents in Japan. Once these systems get going, they'll become part of your society, part of your fabric, part of your everyday life.

So anyway, you know my recommendation for the state is you know is kind of to write off Washington because I just don't think we're going to get any love from them about pretty much anything. And we have such a huge economy. There's absolutely no reason we can't finish this thing ourselves.

Adriana

Prior to the Biden administration, the majority of the funding was actually coming from the cap-and-trade.

The bipartisan infrastructure law provided $3.3 billion dollars for the project, which was a big big infusion of funds. But it has been primarily state funded. That's going to be the way forward. And the ap-and-trade program is getting reauthorized later this year. So that's going to be an important moment, too, that could be make or break for the future of California High-Speed Rail, I think.

One thing I was not able to find out any more detailed info about…I'm wondering if you do, Roger, has all of that bipartisan infrastructure law money has already been spent or allocated because Trump is currently impounding like all of unspent bipartisan infrastructure law money and refusing to send it out to states. So that could be another potential issue for high speed rail.

Roger

I think it's been allocated, but do they get it secured in an escrow account that they'll be able to access or is there some way for Trump to claw it back? I know he tried to do that in his first term and was unsuccessful.

Fortunately, we seem to have a surplus in the state budget. We seem willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on freeway expansions. It's not like we can't just move forward. And cap-and-trade has obviously been pivotal, but I really wish they would work on some new legislation to fund the entire state rail plan that would include money for bridging the Tehachapis…getting high speed rail into the L.A. basin.

But, Gavin Newsom has been supportive at times and kind of lukewarm at others. If it is going to be a political football, I wish the state would focus on trying to win that game.

Damien

Well, I mean, it's more or less than a couple of weeks after when the state released its electrification plan, that rail electrification plan to Great Ballyhoo, and obviously the fires happened.

Adriana

Yeah.

Damien

So that's going to take some of the air out of the thing, but I haven't heard it mentioned outside of conversations I've had about either this particular episode of this podcast ah or other conversations internally.

Adriana

So the News Administration did put out a press release for its release and they tied that to a kind of big photo op media event that they did around the beginning of the track lane phase in the Central Valley. So I wouldn't say that it's been totally ignored, but yeah, agreed.

I do think it would be nice to see more energy around the state rail plan outside of our very niche transit communities because it's really ambitious, it's really transformative, and it's going to bring benefits to every part of the state. I think we should all be talking about more but maybe let's talk a little bit about what's in the state rail plan because it does very much tie to high speed rail.

Damien

That was the last bullet point on our outline, so this is excellent timing.

Adriana

States are required to release, starting the Obama administration, states were required or suggested to release these state rail plans, talking about the rail infrastructure. Our last one was in 2018. The latest state rail plan calls for this ah statewide integrated rail network with a lot more service than we currently have.

Adriana

And it's all a large portion, and about 1,500 miles of it will be electrified. That's the goal. So California High-Speed Rail is the spine of this. These other projects are building off of California High-Speed Rail in some way.

We've got Metrolink electrification that's in the state rail plant.

They've got a new high speed rail line to Arizona that's in the state rail plan. We're talking about Capitol Corridor electrification, a second Transbay tube that's going to connect Caltrain to the East Bay.

There's a lot of big ambitious investments in here, and they really only make sense if you do high-speed rail.

Roger

The spine of the system. That's how it's been sold since the beginning with the idea being that all of these other lines will feed into it.

And that follows the European models that you have, especially the ones I'm most familiar with, the French model where you have built the first spine between Paris and Lyon.

Most of their lines were electrified outside of that area already. So they were able to have trains slow down and continue to other cities in the country. And then they built new high-speed lines as they went. And that's a great model for California. Unfortunately, we're 100 years behind. And we don't really have mainline electrification except the Caltrain corridor now. So the state rail plan is aspirational and it's great.

I hope Adriana knows more about this, but getting a fix on getting this actually funded, so it becomes a project.

Adriana

Part of the state for and part of the state rail Caltrans has indicated a commitment to to take a more active role in planning and coordinating for regional projects. They've already sort of taken on some role for Link 21. There was a bill that passed last year that incurred that incentive by the man to take more of a role with the low sand corridor that remains to be seen what they've actually done there.

And, you know, I think if there's a lot of really good reforms in this bill that are basically moving towards Caltrans taking on a lot of the capacity planning capacity, a lot of the project management for the for implementing the state rail plan, which would be really good.

Roger

How about building it? Forget about planning it. Why not have Caltrans build it? That's what I keep asking.

Adriana

I agree, they should,.

Roger

We are talking about fundamental transportation. We're not talking about making ice cream cones here. We're talking about moving people around.

Adriana

Yeah, totally with you there, Roger, but I think there's a step in the right direction at least.

Roger

I'm spending so much time dealing with Caltrans about adding bike lanes to state highways that go through cities and things like that. It's frustrating because you hear a lot of stuff about, oh yeah, we'll get involved or not.

Adriana

We talk a lot of time about a just transition for Caltrans engineers. A lot of these people have skills building freeway interchanges and whatever that could easily translate to building viaducts for rail or things like that.

We'd really like to see some of those folks get moved towards projects that are good for the environment rather than building highways.

Damien

We're hitting the end of our time limit here. Is there anything you guys want to add sort of as closing thoughts? But I interrupted you. So why don't you say what you were going to say, and then we'll do closing thoughts.

Adriana

I was just going to talk a little bit more about some of the benefits we're already seeing from high speed rail and then other stuff that we could see if we continue in the short term, if we continue to invest in that. So we've already talked about Caltrain electrification. There's also the 1300 jobs that have been created from building the Central Valley segment, which is pretty substantial.

And then another thing is Link Union Station, which is what LA has chosen to use their high-speed rail funding for, which will allow free running at Union Station.

So what that means is that once that's done, you'll be able to have a single seat ride from like the San Fernando Valley to Irvine or from you know Riverside to Glendale or something like that. And it's going to make MetroLink run a lot better.

Roger

On the other hand, sorry to interrupt, but Metrolink could be doing that now. They would just have to reverse the trains. It would take a little bit longer, but Amtrak does that on the Los Angeles corridor.

Adriana

Yeah, but I think there are some issues with the capacity and some and the design of the station that would make that challenging.

Roger

Of course, Union Station needs to straighten out. it's ah just asking those tracks to do a lot more than they can do right now in that configuration.

Adriana

We need some leadership from Metrolink in Southern California for Metrolink electrification. The state rail, the high-speed rail plan, calls for the electrification from Burbank to Anaheim, where it's going to share tracks just like Caltrain does.

If We had some commitments from SoCal electeds, we could very easily start doing that very soon before they even finished the tunnel work, just to get some immediate benefit from that and make it easier to help the LA section going.

Roger

Yeah, I should have been working on that when Caltrain and everybody in Northern California was lobbying…just just don't complain when the majority of the funds are going to Northern California.

Damien

Well, you know, we'll get around to it. We got a lot to worry about when it comes. You know, we got a lot going on. We have the rail out to the San Gabriel Valley thing. I mean, we're very busy.

Roger

Uh-huh. Okay. I wasn't picking on LA as a whole. I was picking on Metrolink and things that are related. At least that was my intention.

All I know is Metrolink is running a hydrogen train thing way out in Riverside, right? And every time I talk to anyone from Metrolink over the years and decades, actually, at this point, and brought up electrification, I always got poo-pooed.

Damien

The only reason we're using hydrogen is we never quite figured out how to bottle rainbow energy like we had hoped.

Adriana

LA Metro is doing a lot of very ambitious rail expansion, like rail and subway, light rail, subway expansions, but Metrolink is a very troubled agency with a very dysfunctional governance structure, I would say, and they're really not empowered to do much of anything right now.

Damien

No, I think I think that's fair. Juan and I were talking about this on our second podcast.

I just took the train to Oceanside the other day. The amount of trains I would have had to take to actually go to Carlsbad, my final destination, was difficult even though Metrolink has an Oceanside stop and a Carlsbad stop.

Roger

And the San Diego coaster, which is the Metrolink for San Diego, but for whatever reason, it's not the same agency.

They're not aligned and the train will pull in and pull out two minutes before you could have made the transfer and it's just it's…

Damien

I mean, usually I don't like talking at the same time as someone else in the podcast, but as we are both talking at the same time, it exemplified the confusion of how difficult it was.

Adriana

The state rail plan does talk about this issue. And they do, they call for statewide schedules that align to maximize transfers across all systems, which is, really, really great.

To make that happen, it's going to need some kind of governance reform. Californians for Electric Rail put out a white paper in the beginning of 2024, calling for the Coaster and SurfLiner to be consolidated, management for those to and to be consolidated under one agency.

Whether it's a regional regional agency or whether Caltrans ultimately takes control of all state agencies, either way you're going to need some kind of consolidation of governance to get this greater level of coordination in terms of fares and schedules that riders really need.

Damien

On that note, we drifted into local rail, but it does all tie in. In the end, I think I'm going to say thank you both for being here. We'll probably touch base again a little later on in the year when we have an idea of what the legislature is or isn't doing on high-speed rail.

But thank you both for being here today. We went a little over, but it was ah it was fun talking to you both.

Adriana

Great. Yeah. you too. Thanks so much, Damien.

Welcome to the second episde of the Streetsblog California podcast, StreetSmart. In this podcast, I'll be talking to experts about various topics, policies, programs, and people that I'll be covering as part of the beat at Streetsblog California.

Our guest in this episode is Juan Matute, the Deputy Director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, a contributor to Streetsblog's sister publication Santa Monica Next and one of the foremost experts on transportation, land use, and how technology can be used to enhance transportation systems.

Transit funding in California is in a strange place at the start of 2025, with federal priorities having shifted away from promoting alternatives to driving gasoline powered vehicles and with the long-term impact of COVID-19 on transit operations still somewhat unclear. Matute cuts through a lot of the confusion in this podcast to explainw where the state is and what the governor, legislature, and cities can do to maintain and improve transit operations.

Damien Newton

Thanks for being here today.

Juan Matute

It's nice to be here. Thank you, Damien.

00:10.28

Damien

So we are talking transit, as I mentioned in the intro. Every transit agency in the state seems to have some sort of different major funding issue. A lot of this stuff started during COVID. A lot of it has been structural for years going forward. The example I used in sort of our pre-show conversation was Foothill Transit out in San Gabriel Valley. If you talk to them, they say they're good. They're funded for now. They're able to do their e-bus expansion, all that sort of stuff.

But if you read any headlines from the Bay Area, it sounds like every other agency is planning to close tomorrow unless something happens. um So can you sort of explain what's going on with the overall transit funding picture? And maybe we'll get into some more specifics, depending what our time looks like.

Juan

Yeah, so in California, transit operations get most of their funding from local tax sources and from fares of people who write them. And so the availability of local tax sources and the farebox recovery ratio, so the percentage of fare revenues as a fair revenues as a percentage of operations, vary throughout the state.

So we're speaking in Los Angeles County, which has four half-cent sales taxes for transportation, which bring a great deal of funding for transit operations for LA Metro, Foothill Transit, Long Beach Transit.

And that allowed those agencies to have fairly low fares prior to the pandemic and fairly low farebox recovery ratios. An agency like LA Metro or Big Blue Bus or Long Beach Transit or Foothill Transit was reliant on fares to cover, let's call it between 17% and 25% of its operating costs. It's lower now than during the pandemic, but that is a percentage of revenue that's relatively low and easier to make up through other sources. So the state has come in and given a lot of money to transit agencies.

That's in contrast with agencies like Metrolink, BART or Caltrain, which prior to the pandemic were reliant on fares and other directly generated sources of revenues :advertising, rentals, park and ride is a big one for these commuter rails.

But those are all really related to ridership, either first order or second order effects. Their recovery ratios prior to the pandemic were around 47%. Caltrain was exceeding 75%. So that meant that they weren't as reliant on tax subsidies for operations, but they were also much more sensitive than some of these other agencies with lower farebox recoveries to ah changes in ridership affecting their bottom lines, which is what we're seeing ah with Caltrain, BART, Metrolink,and even San Francisco Muni.

Damien

Now, Muni, though, is mostly buses. Because when I first looked at this, I saw a lot of the agencies that were struggling were rail. As you mentioned, Metrolink is a commuter rail down in LA County. Caltrain, I mean, they've got "train" right in the name. So even if you're not familiar, Muni is, I believe, mostly buses. but ah So it's not really a mode issue. It's how much is funded by taxes and how much is funded by fares.

Juan

Yeah, it's not a mode issue. I mean, Muni ahas some light rail, even a street, and even a cable car.

They're one of the most diverse rail agencies in terms of different types of rail that they offer.

But, San Francisco Muni has more local support, was re less reliant on fares prior to the pandemic, but is also having challenges because Muni would pick up trips going into the central business district of San Francisco from Caltrain and BART, which are also having the ridership challenges. So that's kind of how they're entangled in the current decline.

Damien

So you have a spiral effect there too. If the agencies that are supplying people for long distance trips for your local trip are not seeing ridership, then you're also going to see a decrease in your own ridership. I guess that makes sense if you think about it.

So let's talk a little bit though about possible solutions. We covered in Streetsblog California last week and in the podcast with Jeanie earlier this week, that a lot of environmental groups are hot on this issue and they are encouraging the governor and the legislature to do something about it.

But, is there something the governor and the legislature can do about it? The governor has been preaching…I don't want to say austerity…but his budgets have been lean on climate issues since his climate budget a couple of years ago when there was a big surplus. Is there a chance the state's going to sort of come riding to the rescue for transit operations?

Juan

It's very unlikely.

There are a lot of possibilities that doesn't require billions of dollars raining from the state and there was maybe a glimmer of hope in 2024 so that if the state suddenly came into money that transit operations would be a major expenditure ah from that money.

I haven't looked at the latest…well the LAO fiscal update isn't out yet. ah So there may be some money, but I think it's now clear that that money is going to disaster response and recovery. That has jumped in line in terms of need and priority. And so the state, um while it may be able to shore up some of the agencies, so I think we'll have to look towards ah the many, many opportunities for non-fiscal assistance for California's transit agencies.

Damien

Now, what does that look like? It sounds to me like non-fiscal aid would be that they would be reducing service, or is there something I'm missing?

Juan

I've been part of ah about a year's worth of conversations from stakeholders across the state as part of this California Transit Transformation Task Force that was stood up in response to SB 125, which was a funding measure that brought a lot of extra funding to California transit agencies, which they could use for operating or capital support.

That group has identified a number of measures that could really help transit agencies. So if you think of what costs money, it's driver operators, vehicle maintenance, and then large capital projects. Those end up being big chunks of money.

So for the operator side, it is possible to, and there has been prior state legislation to, exempt ah bus lanes and other bus priority projects from CEQA, but the state could look to go a step further.

We are seeing these lines in some of the data that is available on these routes actually. These facilities have recurrent congestion that slows buses during peak hours. People are spending another 30%, 40% of time on that bus. And that's delaying everybody. It's taking longer. But it's actually having a cost on operations where the transit agency needs to pay that operator an extra 30%, 50% for that run because that bus is stuck in traffic.

So moving towards faster implementation of transit priority bus lanes, transit signal priority, queue jumps, etc. would be a way to actually reduce the cost of providing a given level of transit service. It also allows agencies to think more about what types of capital projects that they may want to pursue in the future.

Damien

I was and was going to ask about that because that's been a common theme in the past couple of weeks or months since the election. What can California be doing with its own capital dollars, not the ones it's reliant on from the federal government to to improve things on the ground, not just for transit agencies, but to reduce car dependency. The letter last week was talking about how we know we may not have a partner on electric vehicles anymore. Since that was a big part of our climate plan, ah how much of our climate plan do we have to change?

So, let's take that thought and tie it into what you were just talking about with capital.

Juan

Yeah. Well, the idea is doing more with less. So, well I'll set aside the issue of electrification of transit fleets for a second.

Right now, many of the new rail projects, not all, but many of the new rail projects being pursued in this state for billions of dollars would be more cost effective (and pretty much as operationally identical in terms of the number of people, how frequently it runs, and how fast the vehicles can go) as bus rapid transit projects.

There's a preference for light rail projects because the minimum design standard for a light rail project usually includes some sort of grade or or physical separation, so lane exclusivity, if not grade separation, but there are often grade separations and intersections….

Damien

….Yeah, light rail's generally faster than the yards.

Juan

Light rail is generally faster, but that's usually as a result of design choices.

If we were to make more light rail style design choices for lane exclusivity, for preemption…even for targeted grade separation for bus rapid transit. Now, bus rapid transit that would score well on the ITDP's a bus rapid transit index (a group that basically offers scores to bus rapid transit facilities.)

And the US usually gets poor scores because anytime we're redesigning the streets, considerations about accommodating existing automobile traffic usually take priority over the idea of having a well-designed, higher functioning, high efficiency, a higher capacity ah transit system. And so because of those political choices, we end up with a choices between various watered-down BRT project that maybe is going to take us long to build as a rail line because of community opposition and a more expensive light rail project that would serve the same number of people.

There's been many of these in California's history. The Van Ness BRT was one of them for many years, but that was actually constructed and was quite successful. In San Francisco, Muni is loving having that facility.

Another example is the the Pasadena to North Hollywood Bus Rapid Transit, which has encountered opposition from multiple cities and has been and designed to the point where it will not be as effective as a transit service in the future ah because people were concerned about impacts to vehicle users, both those driving and also to a certain extent parking.

Agencies are forced with this like long slog for a sub-optimal BRT project versus maybe finding three, four, or five times the money as needed for light rail, where they think they'll get more lane exclusivity and preemption, but perhaps not.

I think that there should be a third choice, which is like a high-quality, cost-effective bus rapid transit project where you could, instead of finding five times the money, you could roll out five times the network route length. Rather than fighting over which area of LA gets the next right light rail line or which area of San Diego or Fresno or Sacramento is getting the next light rail line, you can move forward with more high quality bus rapid transit lines at the same time, rather than just fighting on a piecemeal basis.

Damien

So while we're talking about capital improvements, we can talk about the "T word" because President Trump's impact on transit in the state is going to be real, a although probably not as much operations because that we don't get operations money from the federal government, but we do get capital money, i.e. new electric buses or i.e. funding to build those ah BRT lines or those light rail lines.

As we look at things, we probably don't have as good a federal partner as we had two weeks ago. But what is it? Do you have any forecast this early on on what that means for the state's capital projects?

Juan

So rural transit and paratransit to get state or federal funding for operations…I'll be looking towards those. I have been made aware of through work, an executive order that includes um stopping programs associated with accessibility. I'm a bit concerned that that will be defined in a way that means reducing federal support for the paratransit service that offers access to people with disabilities. But we'll see how that plays out within the industry. I know that there's sometimes ambiguity and interpretation of these types of executive orders.

I think there is a concern for service now that primarily obtains its operating funding from the federal government: rural and accessible services. California can flex a lot of its money, so we have a very large state with the most state motor vehicle fuel tax revenues of any other state by a function of our size or demand for petroleum and then also ah the share of the cost that is the percentage of tax or excise tax and other fees.

Damien

Cap and Trade….

Juan

So there's money there and there are ways to flex that money. It's not as straightforward as just saying, "I'm going to take this dollar from this pot and put it in that pot." Some pots may be that straightforward, but there are other things that the state could do and say, "Hey, you know this is an incentive that we're um you know including for certain types of projects."

There's ways for the state to flex its existing money. In California, we have very low property taxes and higher income and sales taxes, and that's how the state operates. Very low property taxes as a percentage of both assessed valuation and then assessed valuations are limited.

There has not been a lot of momentum in the past on the idea that a new transit line or an existing transit line ah would be able to collect some revenue from property owners who benefit from increases in accessibility from that transit line. This is a version of value capture finance, which is the method by which a lot of the highly successful transit systems in Asia fund their capital and operations.

There may be opportunities legislatively to say, "hey, we are rebuilding these neighborhoods with a lot of transit oriented development as a result of a lot of our climate and housing affordability and multimodal policies." They all point in the direction of increased densities and reduced parking for new developments near transit.

What the state could do is say, "We're going to give transit agencies or counties or other some other entity the ability to assess an additional fee or collect an incremental growth in property tax revenues from the area around a major transit stop," which is a legal definition in California. That would help to fund capital operations maintenance of that line. So that's a possibility that does not rely on federal money at all. It's a state choice.

Damien

If you were to, I don't know if it's possible to describe the outlook for transit and transit riders in the state, and say," this is good news for transit riders or this is bad news for transit riders" because so many systems are experiencing different things and there's so many different ways that transit agencies are funded.

Juan

It's a big diverse state and a lot going on. And so there's it's really hard to characterize transit in California with a one-size-fits-all approach.

So that doesn't happen.

Well, it does happen constantly, but it doesn't happen effectively.

Damien

Right, it's hard to do well.

Juan

It's hard to do well.

So, ridership is a challenge. Ridership, a lot of our systems have been oriented towards commutes because a lot of transportation planning has been oriented towards central business district commutes for 30, 40 past years.

Damien

But, this is true of the whole world for the most part.

Juan

What?

Damien

This is true of the whole world of the most part, that transit has been built around getting people to and from work. And you'll have separate lines or separate stops that are for something else. But for the most part, transit has been a get to work sort of thing.

Maybe in the largest cities, you'll have other stuff ah you built around.

Juan

Well, yeah, but Caltrain has different commuting markets. And so going from the peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, going up and down that peninsula, there's a lot of really expensive housing and really successful companies all the way from San Francisco down to San Jose.

That means that the workers And the residents in that area are often higher income, well statistically higher income than other areas in California. And so that's a different transit market even than just any standard metro line, where you still have the commuter rail dynamics, where it may be more professional workers that are going into the CBD, a more upper middle class connecting from the suburbs.

But Caltrain has that in a more ah greater extreme. We'rein a period of economic uncertainty. There just seems to be a lot of uncertainty associated with how policy changes will have an effect both the actions of government, but also the macro economy.

Frankly, one of the roles that transit provides is providing affordable mobility for people who would otherwise not be able to be mobile. Transit agencies can see more riders during a recession or periods of higher unemployment. In that way, it's kind of a social safety net that ensures that people are still able to get around to their doctors appointments, check-ins, even if they get a new job, even if they aren't able to make payments on their cars. And we've seen how the used car market skyrocketed during COVID. It's gone but back down a bit. But cars are still fairly expensive to acquire and maintain versus what they were 10 years ago. And so transit's there as a safety net to catch.

Those will be priced out of driving themselves or having every adult in a household driving themselves. And that could help increase transit ridership in a way that makes us really grateful for having the transit system exist because it is functioning as a safety net, allowing people to still get around and access opportunities, social, economic, educational, health, whatever.

Other changes that might affect ridership is if there's a federal executive order about return to office, so working in person.

Damien

Yeah, that's true.

Juan

If that has some downstream effects on private employment, state employment, other forms of employment. I know there have been trends ah for return to office, but I don't know if people will look at what the federal government has done and you may see more infrequent commutes or more frequent commutes into central business areas as a result, which would also be a transit market.

And so there are ways that ridership could go up as a result of the uncertainty and some of the things we're seeing in a way that helps some of these other agencies that rely on Farebox recovery ratio, or that really accentuates the need for having transit service as part of a mobility safety net in California. And in that case, there would be more political interest in doing some of the things I mentioned earlier in this conversation to make sure that transit can succeed, even if there's not tons of money raining for the federal government.

Damien

All right. Well, we are closing in on the end of our time. So do you have any closing thoughts for us or should I go right into our outro, as we like to call it?

Juan

Transit is public space and it's becoming more excludable as a result of some state changes that allow transit agencies to prevent people from coming onto their systems based on the history. But all public space is pretty much managed through both government and social norms and expectations. Everybody can do their part by just riding transit and using it for their mobility. If you haven't been on transit for a while and you're somebody who's more concerned about what you've been hearing…I've been riding transit with my family during the peak of the pandemic but even just last weekend to get around. I don't find it unsafe. I don't find it too disorderly. It's always a little bit disorderly. So I'd encourage people to get it back out there and try it if they haven't in a while.

Damien

All right. Well, thank you so much for your time today. You are our second guest. So everyone is probably mentally comparing you to Jeannie right now…our third guest, our third guest will get away from that. People will stop doing those comparisons, but thank you.

Juan

No, I'm looking forward to listening to Jeanie's, which I will already have done when the listeners listen to this one.

Damien

Well, thank you again. We'll talk to you probably this summer when some of the legislation's moving.

Juan

Okay, that's good.

Welcome to the first edition of the Streetsblog California podcast, StreetSmart. In this podcast, I'll be talking to experts about various topics, policies, programs, and people that I'll be covering as part of the beat at Streetsblog California.

Our guest in the first episode is Jeanie Ward-Waller, who is currently the interim director with Climate Plan and the Director of Transportation Advocacy with Fearless Advocacy. Of course, her work throughout the years at Caltrans, Calbike, and the Safe Routes to Schools National Partnership has been regularly covered at Streetsblog.

Today, we discuss the California Transportation Commission, the appointed state board that reviews and approves billions of dollars in grants every year. Ward-Waller explains how the board works (and doesn't work), and what to expect at their long, two-day meetings. It just so happens that one of those long meetings is this Thursday and Friday.

Our second podcast, that looks at the funding picture for transit agencies statewide in the COVID-Recovery and Trump eras will feature UCLA researcher Juan Matute and will be live in one week.

A transcript of the interview can be found below.

Damien Newton

So welcome to the inaugural podcast of our first StreetsBlog California podcast, which we're calling Street Smart. At least we still are as of the recording.

Jeanie Ward-Waller

Woo hoo!

Damien Newton

Sometimes we change at the last minute here, but right now we're calling it Street Smart.

Jeanie Ward-Waller

Awesome.

Damien Newton

And the yeah again, if you haven't read any of our introduction pieces: the concept for this is we're going to, as the new StreetsBlog editor comes in, they usually do lots of calls to catch up and find out information that maybe isn't widely publicly known or just even find out things about people or organizations that aren't as widely covered outside of Streets Blog. We thought, "wouldn't it be cool if we did those meetings and recorded them so that anyone that reads Streetsblog could listen to them or read them. So this is our first one of those and we brought a Streetsblog celebrity for it to make sure that you listen to at least the first one. So welcome Jeannie Ward-Waller.

Jeanie Ward-Waller

Thank you so much, Damien. I'm really excited to be your inaugural guest.

Damien Newton

Inaugural guests on past podcasts that we've done include a newly elected council member and in our San Gabriel Valley it was a mayor. So…I guess you should run for office soon.

Jeanie Ward-Waller

That's right. Feeling lucky!

Damien Newton

So, our topic for today is the California Transportation Commission. Streetsblog has covered it in depth in the past, and for a long time we were one of the only news outlets that covered it.

Although, weirdly, in the past couple years Politico's started covering it, which has been cool. But since this is sort of our beat, and because it's a committee that doesn't get a lot of widespread publication coverage or radio coverage, we thought we would start by explaining what is the CTC to people just joining in.

The plan is for this podcast to be going up on Monday the 27th and they happen to be having a meeting on the 30th and 31st of January in just a couple days. So anyone Googling CTC will see this podcast and then they can learn all about it.

Jeanie Ward-Waller

Very cool.

Damien Newton

So why don't we just start out with the basics? What is the California Transportation Commission and why should people care what it does?

Jeanie Ward-Waller

Great question. And again, thank you for inviting me on to StreetSmart. Very excited to be here. So The CTC is a little known transportation agency at the state level that has a really outsized impact on transportation funding in the state of California.

It is a commission. It's a board. Members are appointed. There's 11 voting members. Nine of them are appointed by the governor. Two are appointed by the legislature, one from each house.

And then there are also two ex-officio members which are the two transportation chairs in the legislature. So it's a fairly small group, but know they are essentially responsible for allocating, we call it programming, or sort of promising awarding funding to transportation projects in the state… primarily state funds.

They also have an oversight responsibility for federal funds…really, really big programs like Caltrans State Highway Operation and Protection Program, which we lovingly refer to as the SHOPP program, which is funded to the tune of about $5 billion a year. CTC approves SHOPP projects, and they also have responsibility for oversight on Caltrans work with those funds. They have a pretty small staff…about 30 staff.

But, they have a huge responsibility because they literally allocate billions and billions of dollars in every single meeting.

They meet six times a year. And their responsibility is really significant.

So the wonkiest wonks of state transportation advocacy tune into every meeting. We regularly have policy items and funding programs that we have comments on. But it's not a space that gets a lot of participation by just general members of the public because they are, as I said, a small commission that hasn't gotten a lot of attention other than from Streetsblog.

Of course, Melanie religiously watched commission meetings for her whole time and was really great at covering it. So just appreciate Streetsblog so much for ah for being the lens into.

Damien Newton

I made my Zoom reservations today for those meetings, so I'm ready.

Jeanie Ward-Waller

Yes. Get them on your calendar now…

But yeah, the meetings are long. I think most of their meetings are scheduled to run a day and a half. So it takes some endurance to stay on and hear all of the decisions that they're making at every meeting.

Damien Newton

A lot of times when people hear about transportation grants they assume it's from Caltrans, or the state agency.

Do the Caltrans like grant programs have to be approved by the CTC or are they separate, or sometimes both.

Jeanie Ward-Waller

Not all of them.

Caltrans does have a few programs that they're responsible for awarding and managing and administering. Many are in CTCs per view. And then, some can be awarded by the federal government. The federal government has their own set of discretionary programs. Caltrans helps to manage the funds because they have a fiduciary responsibility that's given to them, sort of delegated to them by the federal government.

Even at the regional level, MPO (metropolitan planning organizations) also have their own sets of grant programs. So there's grants that can come from agencies all over the place. But, CTC has some of the big, really important ones. Streetsblog often talks about the Active Transportation Program. That's a beloved program that advocates have been pushing for a long time to get more funding.

And that is in CTC's responsibility to award and administer, although they lean on Caltrans staff to provide quite a bit of support for that program too.

Damien Newton

The last podcast I recorded was actually Melanie's goodbye podcast. And in it, she mentioned that CTC gets really annoyed with her because she uses the term "rubber stamp" for a lot of the proposals that come through. And when you describe the makeup of the board where you have nine people appointed by the governor and only two people appointed by something else, is the reality that we see a lot of things just sort of rubber stamped as to whatever the governor wants? Like how often will you have governor appointees arguing with each other?

Jeanie Ward-Waller

Not often.

I think it's fair criticism from Melanie and part of the frustration, frankly, from the advocacy community that we do feel like there's rarely real honest discourse and dialogue and questioning of projects once they get to a commission meeting.

One of the rare really high profile examples that actually even the LA Times covered was about a year ago at their, was their January meeting a year ago when Commissioner Joe Liu raised some really important questions about a big project that was getting funding from the the Trade Corridor Improvement Program, which is one of those big grant programs that CTC awards. And he had some legitimate questions about the environmental impacts, air quality assessment, traffic analysis that Caltrans and the sponsoring agency, which is the San Bernardino County Transportation Agency did not receive well. And Joe really took a lot of flack and unfortunately, was not reappointed after that meeting. That was his last meeting.

And a couple of others agreed with Joe: Commissioner Lugo and Commissioner Grisby. At the prior meeting, they had sort of agreed with Joe and said, "hey, let's not allocate funds to this project now and bring it back in January and get some of these questions answered that Joe was raising." And that kind of discord and split vote is extremely rare at CTC. By the time the projects get to CTC, they really feel baked. It's too late for dialogue. From an advocate perspective, that's really concerning because we feel like that kind of scrutiny should happen in public. It should happen at a public meeting. And because transportation is so hard to influence at the early steps of project development. We don't necessarily have a view into what's happening with that project. The decision making, the environmental analysis…Environmental documents are thousands of pages long. No average member of the public, or even us as professional advocates, have the time and the capacity to dig through and read all the details and it's super technical.

So we would like CTC commissioners to bring some of those hard questions to a public meeting and have those discussions in public, but it rarely happens and I think it's been discouraged. From what I understand, CTC really wants those meetings to be very cordial and have agreement amongst the group at least publicly so it's a frustration for us for sure.

10:18.73

Damien Newton

To build off that question and the frustration you're expressing, how much does it matter then who the commissioners are? Because I know several years ago when Tamika Butler was first appointed, there was celebration because it was breaking up sort of the monopoly in several senses that had dominated the CTC.

And she stepped down under some conflict of interest concerns because she was working for a transportation consulting firm at the time. But I mean, I know there's some really good people on it right now. But does it matter that much if the rubber stamp mentality and cordiality is so important?

Jeanie Ward-Waller

Absolutely.

I absolutely think it matters. And from the perspective of the coalition that I work with, we continue to do the work to organize and identify good people who have expertise, who bring a different perspective that would be willing to serve on the commission. So, we actually just sent a letter to the governor's office recently with with some more recommendations of," hey, these are good people that um represent different parts of the state that aren't maybe aren't represented on the commission at the moment that are willing to serve and are really interested in serving on CTC and providing it input to the decisions."

So, we're not deterred, but I think um it's challenging. The change that I have seen over the last several years with having more diverse perspectives on the CTC, equity being maybe one of the biggest and most important, that are now often centered in discussion. It's not always like a real deep dive on what are the equity impacts of a particular project but they talk about equity a lot in the reports that they get and the introductory statements and the agencies that come and present to CTC. Equity is very much becoming part of the dialogue.

And hopefully that is going to have an impact over time. But it takes a long time to change these systems. So I think we're still waiting to see that then become deeper in the analysis and the discussion around projects and around funding allocations. like How are those things influenced by um by all of the dialogue and all of the discussion and time that's spent talking about equity?

I don't know if that's a partial answer to your question, but I think it has made a real difference to bring new perspectives to the commissioners that are actually sitting on the dais. But it's not totally changed um the process and some of the bigger concerns about funding allocations that ah we would like to see.

Damien Newton

No, I think it was important to address that because I realized the rubber stamp question might have sounded too discouraging to people after I listened to the answer, which I've heard before, versions of it from you and Melanie before.

But as I was listening, I thought, "I don't want to make it sound like we're telling advocates not to be involved, that it's just a rubber stamp anyway."

Jeanie Ward-Waller

It takes a long time to change. Changing the culture, changing the folks in the decision making structure, all of these things are like steps in the right direction.

I do feel like we're getting to an important tipping point in some of the bigger decision making and I'm hopeful. I'm not deterred and certainly the folks that I work with, we continue to show up, we continue to advocate really strongly at CTC and and continue to try to shift the perspectives on the board.

Damien Newton

So, you mentioned active transportation, which is a program we've covered a lot that's administered by the CTC. It seems that the biggest issue people have with this program, the biggest negative issue I should say, that people have with this program, is that it's too popular and there's never enough money for it.

But that's not really something the CTC can do anything about. If anything, the CTC has actually been asking for more money for this program because it's so popular.

14:31.39

Jeanie Ward-Waller

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. We were very pleased, and I want to commend the CTC in a big way, for putting the active transportation program at the very top of their list of priorities in their annual report to the legislature this year. So they are asking, in pretty clear terms, that the legislature put more money for ATP in this year's budget and also start to look at a longer term solution that would try to solve the problem of not enough funding to this program year over year into the future.

Damien Newton

You're talking about a dedicated funding stream, like a certain percentage of this tax pays for the ATP every year.

Jeanie Ward-Waller

And ATP does have a dedicated funding stream now. There is a base funding allocation that's continuously appropriated, that's state and federal transportation dollars. But the base funding has never met the need, right? Every single cycle of ATP has been oversubscribed by many times. And then we saw a one-time augmentation of general funds three years ago when there was a big budget surplus and the governor did his "big climate budget."

But that funding has unfortunately been clawed back each of the last two years. And the clawback has actually ended up eroding the base funding because CTC had programmed that whole one-time allocation, which was a billion dollars. They promised that money to projects. And so actually, as the money's been pulled back from the one-time allocation, they've had to use the base funding to meet the promises that they've already made.

And so this last cycle, and I think Melanie covered this pretty well, the cycle that was just awarded in December, a month ago, um there was only $84 million dollars available statewide and they received two and a half billion dollars in applications. So it was oversubscribed by 30 times and they could have funded hundreds of projects. At least several dozen that scored really highly. Instead they finished ninth in the statewide competition.

So 300 applications, many dozens that were great, scored well, and…they funded nine. To just even think of the wasted resource that goes into all of those cities and counties preparing applications, preparing these projects and applying…it costs a lot of money because they often hire consultants.

This year has put it into more stark relief than ever before. There's more ATP projects out there to fund than frankly even the highway projects that applied to the big two highway programs "congested quarters" and "trade quarters" programs. Those two programs received the same amount of applications in terms of dollar amount.

The demand just grows every year for ATP. It's not like we're meeting the need and we're just going to be done at some point funding active transportation. The applications of ATP grow every single grand cycle. So demand is just increasing for these kinds of projects. They're so popular.

Damien Newton

When LADOT cut its local slow streets program and eliminated it, I remember testifying or writing a letter to them basically saying, "I don't know why you would ever consider cutting this program. In my neighborhood, the most conservative estimate is that it had 80% approval when we did our surveys. and the neighborhood association, which didn't like it, really pushed people to vote against it.

So I'm pretty sure that the 80% is actually low.

Like, why would you ever cut this program? It's got like apple pie approval ratings. And I feel like it's the same thing for ATP. Everybody loves the program. Why wouldn't you be desperately trying to find ways to put more money into it?

Because it's just a program that makes people happy.

Jeanie Ward-Waller

It's a great point and I'm hopeful that that's actually the way the legislature is going to feel that way this year. We've been making the rounds as a coalition, educating members about this program and also just reminding them of the great projects that have been funded in their districts.We get really positive response. Since it's CTC's top priority, the chair of the Senate Transportation Committee showed up to CTC last month and said, "I really care about this. I want to make this one of my top priorities." We're hopeful that this is the year that we really do break through and get more funding for this program.

But I totally agree with you. I've been involved in this program since its inception in 2012. That was the year I moved to Sacramento and started working in transportation. And so it in some ways feels like my heart is with this program and I've seen it come so far.

And now that we have 10 years of history of projects that have been funded out of this program, we've funded projects in every district all over the state. So many communities have benefited.

So, we have a strong constituency that supports this program now.

Damien Newton

This program is part of what was included in a letter that you and 60 plus other advocacy groups sent to the CTC and a couple other boards this week that made the case that now is the time to be investing in active transportation and progressive housing policies, and transit operations.

The federal government's lack of support for electric car programs in the next couple of years is going to mean that the state is going to struggle to meet its climate goals on a system that's built around expanding electric vehicles.

Jeanie Ward-Waller

I think the president made it very clear on his first day with all those executive orders that he has no commitment to addressing climate change. Equity is not a priority, right? They've canceled all DEI initiatives in the federal government, which I think is gonna have a really big impact on some of the most exciting programs that came out of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the last federal transportation bill that was enacted under the Biden administration.

Programs like Reconnecting Communities, there was one called Neighborhood Access and Equity, Safe Streets for All. There were a whole slew of programs, carbon reduction programs, new discretionary programs that were created and awarded by Buttigieg as transportation secretary that are dedicated to climate and equity safety for all modes, right? Not just , people in vehicles.

Given the statements and the initial orders from the Trump administration, we can anticipate that like most of those programs will go away. um And that's really unfortunate because all of those goals were very aligned with our priorities in California.

What our letter said is we want the state government to be the backstop for this stuff. If we lose a partner at the federal level in these efforts, we need to actually push harder at the state level and and the regional and local level in California on these things that we know we really care about that are California's values.

We're really encouraging CTC, Caltrans, the Air Resources Board, they do our climate planning and they're also the agency that regulates vehicle emissions, and then also HCD, which is the housing and community development department. They of course are responsible for our housing policy. Where we build housing is super important and influences the transportation and the climate goals significantly.

We think there's a lot that is in the state's control. And we really encourage the state to step it up, especially over the next four years when we may backslide. We may really backslide electric vehicles. I mean, our ah regulatory power may be diminished, but also things like the EV incentives, investment in EV charging that we've gotten from the federal government.

If a lot of that goes away, the state's going to have to make up for that. And one way we can make up for it is, frankly, by trying harder to reduce driving by providing people alternatives to not driving. That can be another way that we move further on our climate goals without needing federal support and on the electrification side of things.

Damien Newton

So since this is a concept podcast where people can come and listen to it whenever we tried to keep the things that were too specific to what's happening at this moment towards the end.

So since we're at the end-ish, why don't we talk about, is there anything really exciting on the CTC agenda that'll be at the end of the week that this podcast is being first podcasted?

Jeanie Ward-Waller

So this letter that you and I were just talking about… our advocacy coalition will certainly be showing up at the CTC meeting next week to make sure that commissioners saw our letter, understand our recommendations, and feel some urgency to respond and to take some leadership in these areas. So that's one that's one thing that you'll definitely hear.

In addition to that, again this is where I get turned into a super transportation wonk, there are a couple of planning documents that Caltrans and CTC are going to be presenting on that are policy items on their agenda. So, we'll certainly have comments. There will be other places on the agenda where we'll have some comments to make.

One is in support of a bill that we worked on last year, SB 960, which was authored by Senator Weiner. This is one that requires Caltrans when they are doing SHOPP projects, they have to build complete streets and transit priority everywhere where those needs are identified in planning documents.

25:49.49

Jeanie Ward-Waller

So um so that, the plan is called the state highway, um sorry, ah system management plan.

So that's one of the items that we'll definitely be tuning in to to hear from Caltrans on, what are they thinking for their next update to that plan, and how are they going to be incorporating complete streets and transit priority as SB 960 requires? So pretty wonky, but exciting for those of us who have worked on his policies and been deep in the weeds. We're anxious to see progress.

Damien Newton

All right, well, we're already up against our time limit. Doesn't it feel like we just started? I bet people that are listening are going to be like, how could they be approaching a half hour already?

Jeanie Ward-Waller

It's just so riveting.

Damien Newton

Yeah, yeah my broadcast expertise says definitely pick on your content at the end of every at the end of every podcast.

It makes you relatable.

But, future topics are going to be just as wonky. So if you enjoyed this, the next one's probably going to be ah about a week and a half from now. And we're going to be talking specifically about the state of transit funding.

Certainly there will be some Trump in that as well. But we're going to be talking about some different agencies and what's going on and what the state can and can't do on this issue over the next couple of years.

Jeanie Ward-Waller

Awesome Yeah.

Damien Newton

Like, what do transit agencies need to be doing in a broad sense in your post lockdown era, which we're still in and probably will consider ourselves in for several, several years is work from home is still a thing ah because we're not in Northern Virginia or DC. So work from home is still a thing. And how does all that change everything? Anyway, though, thank you for being here today.

Jeanie Ward-Waller

So important. Thank you so much, Damien. The stuff is super wonky, but it's also so important. So thank you for diving in deeply and for...

Damien Newton

Yeah, I'm definitely going to tell Juan Matute. He has to listen to this and match your energy for the next podcast.

Jeanie Ward-Waller

Good luck.