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Bye bye, $5 billion! Hello, gridlock?
September 11th, 2008, 7:00 am · 28 Comments · posted by Teri Sforza, Register staff writer
Measure M. The half-cent sales tax even Orange County can love.
In 2006, an overwhelming majority of local voters (69.7 percent!) heaved a breathless yes yes yes! at the ballot box, extending the transportation sales tax to 2041. (Do a quick calculation of how old you’ll be in 2041 by adding 33 to your current age; then weep.)
Bottom line: We hate traffic even more than we hate taxes. So we’re happy to pay about $34 or so per person, per year, to extend Measure M into our dotage and try to keep gridlock at bay.
Projections from 2005 said that Measure M would raise $24.3 billion for road and freeway projects through 2041.
THAT WAS THEN…THIS IS NOW
The economy was gangbusters in 2005. It’s not gangbusters anymore.
The latest projections say that Measure M will raise only $19.1 billion through 2041. A drop of $5.2 billion. Or more than 21 percent. One of every five dollars, gone.
“A significant drop,” notes Orange County Supervisor Bill Campbell on his home page (thanks to Campbell for posting the data). “It is primarily based upon a lower sales tax revenue starting point due to Orange County’s soft economy. It is also due to lower inflation expectations as predicted by staff at California State University, Fullerton.”
THINGS CHANGE
It’s not exactly news that the rosy projections bandied about before elections often get a reality check once the afterglow is gone. One of The Watchdog’s favorites is the Santa Ana Unified School District’s Measure C, a $145 million bond issue that promised 11 new elementary schools - and built only six.
Measure M, of course, has largely delivered on its promises (that wayward light rail project aside!), so it certainly won’t be a Measure C. As OCTA spokesman Joel Zlotnik said, when you’re planning 30 years out, things change.
Indeed. In 2006, one of the (very few) Measure M opponents said that even the communists only planned five years out!
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I just stopped by your blog and thought I would say hello. I like your site design. Looking forward to reading more down the road.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘0 which is not a hashcash value.
Ha, yes, and check out the community college bond measures and what they are buildng compared to what they promised to build. They claim it’s increasing costs but mostly it’s just extremely poor planning.
So what If we will have a possible 5 billion shortfall decades into the future.
That isnt an excuse to not do anything now. $3 a month is a pittence to pay.
Another worthless tax they just used the road money for pork projects and higher wages for supervisors and the supervisors assistants when they got the Measure M. money. Bonds are not free money they are paid back with interest.
The goverment has the tax money needed for taking care of the county infrastructure. The roads are neccessay to keeping business and tourism active and should rate at the top of importance behind police and firefighters and schools. Unfortunately, the government waste so much money on unimportant and non neccesaary spending that they do not take care of the roads. Even so, taxpayers try to keep helping by allowing higher taxes although no one can afford them. But even with those funds, the government diverts them to things like welfare (free money), free school, and free medical for illegal aliens. OC taxpayers can not fund two countries. If we made the illegal lawbreakers leave, we would have enough funds for all of our neccesities to keep OC a good place to live. Our school scores and performance would skyrocket too.
What is that - a 33 year projection? Assuming the economy stay’s the same for 33 years - when has that ever happened?
You pass a specific tax extension and before it even starts the OCTA chair is predicting insufficience.
About that “wayward” light rail - where’s that money? Money that was, is and continues to be collected specifically for a project that died miserably years ago.
What about that money Mr. Campbell?
Measure M has and will do great things for Orange County’s mobility. The leftover money from the scrapped CenterLine project is going to bolstering Metrolink commuter train service and doling out monies to individual cities for them to research how best to connect into the Metrolink spine.
The one thing that I didn’t foresee back in 2006 was the skyrocketing gas prices. I’m a little concerned that less than 1/4 of the bond will go towards sustainable transit investment. By now most (except maybe those in South County) would agree that widening and extending highways is not the answer to our congestion problems. Rather, it makes much more sense to better coordinate our land use with mixed use development, affordable housing closer to employment centers, and an improved transit infrastructure to provide more efficient mobility.
OCTA will be rolling out their version of BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) dubbed “BRAVO!” sometime next year, though I am somewhat doubtful it will have the ability to lure people away from their cars.
Stephen-
Orange County is already 90% built out. How do you propose we build mixed use development near employment centers?? There is employment all over the county and housing all over the county. People are going to drive to work no matter what, so we need to focus on improving roads and freeways.
It is primarily based upon a lower sales tax revenue starting point due to Orange County’s soft economy.
And the numbers will change when the economy changes…
… just another headline.
How about using some of that money for better planning and smarter implementation of resources.
Look at the new interchange at the Eastbound 22 freeway to the 5/57 freeway. The planners and designers of this interchanged apparently does not understand the way traffic flows through here.
It is still a bottleneck!!!! How smart are these planners???
They cram the majority of motorists on the Eastbound 22 to two lanes and in addition allow traffic from Bristol St. to mix into the chaos, how smart is that? All the while…the remaining Eastbound traffic heading towards the 55 freeway flows freely in three lanes (2 regular and 1 carpool).
If the planners understand the flow of traffic, they would have built an intersection where more lanes would be dedicated to the transition to the 5 and 57 freeways, instead of having the transitions be a secondary to the near empty Eastbound 22 to the 55.
The intersection is as bad today or worse than before. It looks great but it is not safer nor is it more efficient. Poor planning.
Just promise that you don’t wave this silly report at Los Angeles County. We really need our Measure M to pass this fall, and we’ve engineered it in a tighter way so that the majority of the money goes towards transit projects. Yes, less than half of the money will go towards road and freeway enhancements, which is fine, because there is no future in it for California. If we keep trying to grow along the same lines of the past 60 years, we will sufficate as a state economically, physically and morally.
I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you guys (yet), but we’re totally optimistic up north!
Sorry, I meant Measure R.
It is primarily based upon a lower sales tax revenue starting point due to Orange County’s soft economy.
And the numbers will change when the economy changes…
… just another headline.
Yet another reason to build a toll road…IT DOESN’T USE TAXPAYERS MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Maybe they should sell the old Redline easement they bought with Measure M money to the public to raise revenue.
I got some news for Cecil, if we made all the illegal lawbreakers leave California you would not need the measure M tax/bond in the first place, as for skyrocketing school scores and performance you’re correct however if the test scores went straight up the chart for 33 years with what their teaching the kids a bank teller/car hop could get a bond passed that would still pay the banker half the amount of the bond and pour a state of the art supper toll road/highway from sea to shining sea then all could use it to go to work in a green car if they ever finish building it, a better thing would be to first take back all the gas tax money you no the money that was supposed to fix the roads and the bond M cash and bid them ado.
Lets be honest after the price of gas doubled last year we got taxed for $5.00 per gal not 2.50 per gal they can spend that extra money on our roads and stop spending it on food, housing and medical for the illegals.
I know that about a 3rd of Measure M was allocated for mass transit projects and planning which was barely used because studies had shown that it was always under utilized and so there was no need for building more metro buses, light rail trains, and the like. However, because of the way Measure M was written, we cannot re-allocate that portion of the funds to urgently needed projects like the widening of freeways and maintenance/repairs of roads that the other 2/3s of Measure M was used for (and quite successfully utilized though, however).
And yes, we need to cut spending but in order to do that, we need to first not re-elect the same State Legislature year after year who are wasting the resources of this great state to line their own pockets and that of their lobbyists and friends. Voters need to open their eyes and realize that our state is going into the crapper.
VOTE THEM OUT!!!
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Liar Loan - Orange County is definitely built out, I’m not disputing that. But that is the problem: it’s built OUT but not built UP. We are sprawled out in a grid like fashion and not in corridors, which makes it very difficult to implement transit lines because they are only one dimensional.
It certainly isn’t popular in Orange County to build more dense and mixed use developments, but I think that might be the answer as we progress into the future. I think Arlington, VA is a prime example of smart planning along the Ballston corridor, but I may be comparing apples to oranges.
And I’m not an expert on illegal immigration, but it obviously is placing a substantial strain on our region as well. I’m just unsure how much of the blame should be placed on that.
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CaseClosed - Since the price of gas nearly hit $5/gallon, tax revenue actually went down because consumption went down. So far down that the highway trust fund is nearly broke now.
Matthew LA. Glad you are happy in LA. I think I will stay south. thankyouverymuch!
I think Stephen has a point. Southern California definitely has a car culture. Living here, and working way over there was attractive when there weren’t so many people. What was that, fifty years ago?
I’ve lived off mass transit in other cities where it didn’t even make sense to own a car. You could take the sub to anywhere. You have to drive to the rail stations here and they aren’t even located where you can do other things. If they are, the trains don’t run when things happen. I can’t believe I have to drive past a rail station in Orange County, to park near another one by the Staples Center or Angels Stadium to see an event.
I have studied many monorail mass transit routes available in Orange County. They include the areas beside flood channels and the medians of major streets as well as several suitable railroad rights of way. In many cases, the area beneeath the silent, smooth and swift monorails now being built in other nations are landscaped for riding and hiking trails and strip parks, all for 1/3rd the cost of noisy light rail and 1/10th the cost of subways.
New York has a massive subway system and yet has traffic congestion second only to Southern California’s Worst in the Nation rating.
Monorails can be operating (at a net profit) in three years from contract signing. Straddle-type (think Disney) monorails have a 100% safe record after carrying over One Billion passengers.
If you want to help persuade your political leaders to consider monorail contacct me at brianc.brroks@verizon.net.
How about developing some affordable, reliable, and flexible mass transit in the form of Express Bus Service on our OC Carpool lanes. Our current carpool HOV-2 system really does not work especially when we let people with non-driving passengers use the lane. I can’t see anything wrong with this idea. Sure, not everyone can take the bus AND there will be some walking involved but even if only 20% took the bus it would help everyone by reducing the demand for fuel, relieving gridlock, and reducing pollution.