Transit agency makes yearly lobbying expedition east

During its annual lobbying trip to Washington, D.C., the Solano Transportation Authority Board of Directors urged the county’s representatives in Congress to put money back in the federal Highway Trust Fund.

If that funding isn’t restored by June, the massive Interstate 80, Interstate 680 and California Highway 12 interchange — a seven-part construction project near Fairfield — can’t be finished, Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson said.

Nor, she said, will California Highway 12 in Jameson Canyon be widened as planned.

Each year, the authority’s board, of which Patterson is a member, travels to Washington to lobby for transportation and transit funding.

On this trip, board members reminded California’s members of the U.S. Senate and House that Interstate 80 is the corridor between San Francisco and Oakland and the state capital, Sacramento, as well as Travis Air Force Base and multiple cities in between.

That makes I-80 one of California’s four priority trade corridors, and the second busiest in the state. About 150,000 cars travel I-80 each day, and it has the third-highest truck volume in the San Francisco Bay Area at between 10,000 and 12,000 a day.

The STA board contends that without improvements in the next few years, the area could see 60-percent gridlock during peak commute hours, especially the 26 miles between Vallejo and Vacaville, which could start seeing stop-and-go traffic because of congestion.

Without federal funding, Patterson said, work on such major projects as the interchange near Fairfield “would come to a halt.”

Patterson said the board worked “as a unit,” but at times individual members had specific roles to play.

She said she spoke to officials about the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act, usually shortened to the MAP-21 Act, the two-year transportation reauthorization bill that became effective Oct. 1, 2012.

The act funds surface transportation programs for $105 billion for fiscal years 2013 and 2014, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

But the STA has contended the original MAP-21 Act transportation fund formula hasn’t worked for Solano County.

The board has expressed hope that Congress would identify long-term, user-based funding as a successor to MAP-21, making discretionary programs available for high-priority transit and highway projects and restoring funding for bus programs.

“Clarifying with staff our concerns about MAP-21 decisions” was an important goal of the trip, Patterson said.

“Transit funding has been cut drastically,” she said, and she stressed that money should be restored to “pre-Map-21 levels.”

Another point was that SolTrans, the bus system that serves Vallejo and Benicia, should be available to all riders, and funding that system shouldn’t based “on some formula,” she said.

Patterson said another issue important to Solano County is the Tiger VI grant for the Fairfield-Vacaville Intermodal Station, of which STA is co-applicant. She said the station would provide 200,000 residents access to the Capitol Corridor passenger rail service and create 500 construction jobs, in addition to positions that could be created by businesses and operations opening nearby.

Patterson said the STA board flew to Washington on Monday morning and members were in “solid meetings” until they returned at midnight Wednesday. The trip caused her to miss Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
Osby Davis, Vallejo mayor and STA chairperson, accompanied Patterson on the trip. Also traveling to meet federal officials were Dixon Mayor Jack Batchelor, Rio Vista Vice Mayor Constance Boulware and Fairfield Mayor Harry Price.

They met with Tyler Rushforth, counsel for the Majority Staff (Democrat) Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works; Kyle Chapman, legislative aide to U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; Staff Director Murphie Barrett and Counsel Shant Boyajian of the Majority Staff (Republican) House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure (Highways and Transit); Staff Director Jim Kolb of the Minority Staff (Democrat) House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure; Rachel Johnson, legislative aide to Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs (Transit); Therese McMillan, Federal Transit Administration deputy administrator; and the California members of the House who represent Solano County, U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, and U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, D-Fairfield.

The STA Board “made a compelling case” for such causes as the Tiger VI funding and described the need to assure the Highway Trust Fund receives money “in a sustainable way,” Patterson said.

But she said she is worried that it’s a case of kicking the can, “only there’s no can.”

It’s possible that only small amounts of federal funding may be directed toward the transportation projects that will do Solano County any good, she said.

And she’s concerned that funding may be money taken away from another accounts, rather than through such moves as increasing the gasoline tax, which she noted hasn’t been raised since 1992.

She said most businesses aren’t operating at their old 1992 rates, and pointed out the gasoline tax “isn’t doing the job.”

Furthermore, people are driving fewer miles and vehicles are getting better gas mileage, reducing tax revenues, Patterson said.

She said other options include adding a surcharge on fossil fuels or using calculations of miles traveled and applying cap-and-trade formulas, “because without good systems, we’re wasting fuel.”

However, this is an election year, she noted, and candidates may not want to risk their campaigns on actions that may not resonate with voters in their home districts.

“My advice is to follow the primary, and see how they go,” Patterson said. Either Congress will find a sustainable way to fund transportation and transit, she said, “or we’ll be limping along.”