transportation funding sources and uses

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Transportation in Sacramento County comes from a number of sources: federal, state, regional and local. The federal government is the big player in our national and regional transportation system, but has little role in local streets and roads. The state has a large role in national and regional transportation, partly with it own money and partly as a conduit for federal money. The regional Metropolitan Planning Agency, Sacramento Area Council of Governments in our case, does not contribute any funds, but does have a say in how a portion of the federal and state funds are allocated. Sacramento County has a role in the transportation system at all levels, national, regional, and local, and contributes through the Measure A sales tax. Some cities within the county contribute to projects, and much of what little maintenance is done is funding by the cities.

Some readers are saying whoa! There is a lot more detail to the story than this. Yes, there is. What I am doing at the moment is painting with a broad brush for common citizens who might have input on the proposed Measure B sales tax for transportation.

So, where does it go?

  • Federal funds reserve 10% for transit, and almost all the rest goes to highway construction projects. Though the federal government has said it wants to see a more multi-modal transportation system, they are giving money to the states with almost no strings attached and the states are spending it on highway construction. A recent effort to hold states more accountable is toothless.
  • State funds from Proposition 1B and other sources go to construction, transit, a little maintenance, and tiny amounts to the Active Transportation Program. 75% of the money is passed through to the MPOs and regional transportation agencies, but in such a way that most of the decisions are at the regional level are for the same, mostly construction and some other. Again, the state has said it wants to see a more multi-modal system, but funding decisions still strongly favor highways.
  • Regional funds are allocated largely based on requests from the counties and cities for projects, and most of the projects requested are highway construction and arterial expansion. Again, the MPOs have said they want a more multi-modal system, but the funds continue to go largely to cars.
  • County funds are primarily from the transportation sales tax Measure A. Most of these funds were allocated to new construction, with 1/3 for transit and almost none to maintenance and walking and bicycling. The nature of the sales tax measure, approved in 1988 and updated in 2004, is a 30-year term and a list of projects that can only be significantly changed by a new ballot measure.

Here are some links on transportation funding in California:

  • Transportation Funding, Institute for Local Government, undated but may be somewhat out of date
  • Transportation Funding in California, Caltrans, 2014
  • If you search for “transportation funding California” you will find a lot more information. Please realize that some of these web sites and documents are from road building industry groups, so put just as skeptical an eye on those as you do my posts!

transportation sales tax decision tomorrow

Dan Allison1 Comment

A critical decision on whether to place a new sales tax measure for transportation on the November ballot will be made tomorrow, Thursday, April 28, by the Sacramento Transportation Authority. I ask that you attend and let the SacTA know what you think, and why. The meeting starts at 2:30PM in the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors Chambers at 700 H Street in Sacramento. The agenda and agenda packet are available at: http://www.sacta.org/c_calendar.html.

I’ve written in the past about transportation funding, and will provide you some more background information between now and tomorrow that may help you form a position on Measure B, but for right now, let me summarize what I see as the negatives.

  1. The 30-year measure is far too long. To say the we know today what the county will need in 30 years is simple hubris. Just today a different vision for the streetcar was released than one year ago. How can we know 30 years from now what we will need? Yet the Transportation Expenditure Plan associated with the ballot measure would lock in projects for 30 years.
  2. There is a claim that this measure is balanced, because it includes some projects for all the entities in the county, and provides some for fix-it-first, transit capital and operations, and walking and bicycling via complete streets projects. What is not mentioned by the measure supporters is that the majority of other transportation funding goes to building new roads, not to these things, so our funding pattern is already severely out of balance. Our taxes and fees have long gone to building new roads, and almost none to creating a transportation system that works for all. If this were the sole funding for transportation, the mix might make some sense, but given the overall funding picture, this measure would just continue the imbalance.
  3. The measure devotes significant funds to two new road projects, the Capital Southeast Connector and widening of the Capital City Freeway, as well as a number of smaller but expensive freeway interchanges. All of these have unacceptable impacts on greenhouse gas reduction because they will in fact increase vehicle miles driven (VMT) rather than reducing it. It is called induced demand, and it is a well known effect.
  4. Our roadways are in such horrible condition because transportation planners and engineers, and the politicians that support them, have continued to devote our transportation funds to building new roads rather than keeping the ones we have in repair. It is time now to spend every tax dollar that we spend on roads on fixing what we have, and not building yet more than we will fail to maintain.

More to come!

Central city car-free workers

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And here is the last of the three census-related maps, before I move on to other topics. This one shows the percentage of workers who are car-free (zero motor vehicles owned). Again, the 95814 zip code nails it, at 18.4%, and 95811 is close behind at 14.5%. Yes, I’m one of them.

The near suburbs also show moderate car-free percentages, probably in this case due to low income as much as choice. College (Los Rios and Sac State) students, if they are working, probably also contribute in the near suburbs. Not surprisingly, the distant suburbs have almost no one car-free. Those people are locked into the driving life by the place they have chosen to live.

It is important to remember these percentages are of workers, people who are working somewhere. They do not include people too young to work, people who have retired, or just people not working. If those people are included, the car-free rates would be much, much higher. These people are just as entitled to transportation expenditures as car drivers, but our transportation systems is set up to give them crumbs rather than a fair share.

On the other hand, there large numbers of people in the distant suburbs who have three or more cars per worker. Not per family, but per worker. The 95615 zip code (Courtland) tops the list with 54% having three or more cars, but other zip codes are close behind. Yow!

Again, the Sacramento County map (car-free) is available.

Sacramento-central-car-free

 

Central city commute times

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Here is the second map generated from American Community Survey data, this one showing average commute times by zip code. Nothing surprising here, the central city still compares well with other areas of the county, but there are some interesting patterns in the Sacramento County map (commute time), such as the northeast county in which I’m guessing people are commuting to Roseville rather than downtown, and therefore have reasonable commute times.

Sacramento-central-commute-time

If I were looking at commute times for surrounding counties, I suspect the average commute times would be significantly longer, since many people are commuting into employment centers such as downtown, Roseville, and Folsom. I have to admit that my own commute is long, 30 minutes to 90 minutes depending on where I’m working in the eastern suburbs. But I’d much rather be on a bike for 90 minutes than in a car for 20 minutes. I use transit at times, but for most trips it is either the same or longer to my work destination, so I use it mostly on horrible weather days and when I need to get work done on the way there or the way home.

Since this map doesn’t require much explanation, I’ll say more about census data. The American Community Survey has some very complex questions, such as whether you departed for work between 6:00AM and 6:30AM, but it can’t seem to find the bandwidth for some simple but very useful questions such as “Is your commute multi-modal? What percentage?” A person can only answer in one category: car/truck/van, bicycling, walking, transit, or other. If a trip is 51% transit and 49% bicycling, it shows up as an entirely transit trip. If a person drives 15 minutes to a parking garage and then walks 10 minutes to work, it shows up as an entirely driving trip. A number of people have suggested that this single mode constraint over-emphasizes the mode share for driving and therefore underemphasizes walking, bicycling and transit.

I will be looking at the National Household Travel Survey, last completed in 2009, to see how it compares to the American Community Survey. There is also a California Household Travel Survey, which looked at things is a much more detailed manner, but did not provide anywhere near the coverage of a census, sampling only typical parts of the state in detail.

How do central city people get to work?

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Many central city residents have claimed recently that they can’t get to work if there isn’t parking both at their residence and at their work. I was curious just how central city folks do get to work, so I delved into census data (more about that below the graphic).

Turns out a lot of central city residents don’t drive to work. In 95814 (where I live) and 95811, about 56% use privately owned vehicles (POV = car/truck/van), but the other 44% walk, bicycle, use transit, or work from home. That is remarkable! When you think about how much attention and money we devote to those who drive, it eye-opening. Other areas near the central city have high active and transit use, but it falls off rapidly in most of the suburbs (but not all). The map below zeroes in on the central city. The Sacramento County Privately Owned Vehicles (POV) Commute is also available.

Sacramento-central-commute

 

 

So, where does this information come from? The American Community Survey, 2014 version, which has estimated data covering a five year period. The report from which I extracted the data is S0801, Commuting Characteristics by Sex. The field mapped above is HC01_EST_VC03, which is “Total; Estimate; MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION TO WORK – Car, truck, or van.” I think the symbology (colors) I used represent what I’m trying communicate – green is good, red is bad.

It took quite some time to find the fields I was looking for, and the search tool does not make it easy (http://factfinder.census.gov/). Then it took some time to figure out how to extract the data fields I wanted and dispose of those I did not. And then it took a LOT of time to figure out how to get ArcGIS ArcMap to match the zip coded commuting data with the county’s zip code map. Turns out that Excel does not properly label the data type of a field, so either the zip code was a number, which didn’t match the text in the zip code layer, or the rest of the data was text, which could not be symbolized properly. I had to use Apple Numbers to create an export format that retained the correct field type. But now that I know how to do this, I’ll have some more maps to share soon.

 

Irrational thinking about parking

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This week Sacramento News and Review’s Streetalk (not available online as far as I can tell) interviewed five people in midtown about parking meter hours. Facebook also has had a number of posts about parking in the central city. I am amazed that seemingly intelligent people have such fuzzy thinking about parking. Just as with driving, it engenders thoughts that have no grounding in reality, but if anything, parking is a stronger influence. Despite what many people think, free parking is not guaranteed in either the constitution or the bible. (Cheap gas is, though, look it up. – I’m joking.)

First, let me say that I don’t believe the parking changes are solely due to an effort to pay off the city indebtedness for the arena, but I also don’t deny that the arena has driven the pace of the changes and has city officials (elected and staff) drooling over the income. But let’s look rationally at some of the benefits.

People complain that later hours will reduce the amount of parking available. In fact, it is quite likely to have the opposite effect. The reason there is “no parking” in the central city is not because it is priced too high or the hours too long, but because it is priced too low and the hours too short. When people have free parking, whether during the day or the evening, they do several things: 1) they drive when they don’t need to (they often could walk, bicycle or use transit) because that choice is subsidized by free parking; 2) they stay longer in the parking spots because there is no cost of doing so; 3) they don’t carpool when they could; and 4) they don’t plan out trips so that they can maximize efficiency, rather they make trips on the spur of the moment. That drive to get coffee, for example.

The key factor that determines whether parking works for people is turnover. If there aren’t any parking spaces open, it is because metered spots are priced too low and free parking is given away for, well, free. Metered parking, if the pricing is either dynamic or increased to reflect demand, guarantees there will be open spots. Open spots mean that people won’t have to circle the block(s). I live at 16th & O, and I see a lot of drivers circling and circling, just looking for that one close spot. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an open spot, would you not rather be eating or drinking or listening to music or hanging out with friends, than circling the block? Or even better, if you must drive, park further away and get in some of your daily physical activity.

I can’t resist replying to each of the interviewees:

  • Christina: Why will it be a major inconvenience? Is that something you said because you’d heard other people say it?
  • Beth: “It would inhibit people using this area…” Why? Do people not go to work because they have to pay for parking? Why would they not do the things in the evening they want to do, and pay for parking? Most evening activities are not low budget, no matter what you are doing, and parking fees are not going to be a significant part of that. With a $25 dinner and $20 in drinks (or more), parking fees are just not that big a deal.
  • Vanessa: The reason it is so hard for you to find parking (if it really is) is that parking is underpriced and therefore overused. You can use the new SacPark app to extend your time, if you wish, or just park in a garage and walk to work. What a concept!
  • Kayla: If you can’t be away from your car, then perhaps you should move out. But, how about giving up your car and having a better life? “…my free spaces…”? I always wondered whose free spaces those are, and now I know, they belong to you. Not.
  • Tavares: Midtown is popular because of the culture and opportunity, not because of free parking. People will continue coming, and fortunately they will be able to find parking because there will be some metered spots open and they won’t have to circle the block, wasting time and gas.
  • Montha: “…coins in my pocket…? Are you telling me you don’t have a credit card? Most parking has been converted to single space smart meters that accept credit cards, and the kiosks also accept credit cards. Are you telling me you don’t have a smart phone? The SacPark app allows you to easily pay for your parking without a single coin in your pocket.

Yes, I’m pretty unsympathetic. I live car-free in midtown, and in part I live here because I can have a great life and be car-free. My main complaint about parking is that 10-20% of my rent goes to subsidizing free parking spots for other residents in the apartment complex. I’d have an even greater life if I had that as disposable income to enjoy midtown even more.

This issue has caused me to look into the census characteristic of the central city residents, and I’ll have more posts on that soon.

News summary 2016-03-27

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