Tag: representation

tolling authority at SacTA

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

At the Sacramento Transportation Authority (SacTA) board meeting today, SACOG gave a presentation on the tolling authority and governance, as part of agenda 9, Receive Information on the creation of the Capital Area Regional Tolling Authority (CARTA) and the Yolo 80 Managed Lane Project and provide direction as appropriate. The two presentations, one by SACOG staff and the other by Executive Director Kevin Bewsey on possible SacTA role, are available: SACOG, SacTA role. SACOG estimated in the current MTP/SCS (not the update being worked on) that about 70% of the expected tolled lanes will be in Sacramento County. See map at bottom.

In my public comment, I spoke on these points, similar to the points I’d also made at the SACOG Transportation Committee meeting:

  • Support creation of regional tolling JPA
  • Support governance options with one Caltrans voting member, but not two
  • Support inclusion of Sacramento Transportation Authority as the Sac county agency
  • Tolling advances user pays concept, which transportation advocates support
  • If the JPA had been in place, Fix50 project would have had toll lanes rather than HOV: HOV lanes don’t work for management because they are routinely violated
  • Support does not indicate that I support adding lanes in Yolo, but if lanes are added, they should be tolled
  • Questions about JPA membership, board members and voting are probably best answered by proportional representation based on tolled lane miles rather than county representation, which is more consistent with citizen representation; this would also entice counties to add or convert tolled lanes so they could be part of the process and benefits
  • Conversion of HOV lanes and general purpose lanes to tolled lanes will be required in the future to maintain our very expensive highway system, so this is a start

Brian Abbanat of YoloTD also spoke.

Several board members spoke, and to summarize and paraphrase their comments:

  • Rich Desmond and Eric Guerra supported a lanes miles voting idea
  • Karina Talamantes expressed concern but seemed satisfied by the answers
  • Bret Daniels expressed the standard ‘I don’t want to pay anything’ and tolling is for rich Tesla people
  • Phil Serna asked about safety of adjacent lanes, SACOG responded that safety can be part of the infrastructure and/or tolling design; I don’t think the idea of separation on the causeway has come up before; also asked about detection and enforcement
  • Eric Guerra said benefit or presentation is raising awareness
  • Patrick Hume actually said that eventually we will need to toll not just lanes but entire facilities

Overall, the concerns of the board were mainly that Sacramento County be treated equitably in terms of tolled projects, design of tolls, and distribution of toll revenue; several people also commented that the focus on excess revenue may be premature since it isn’t clear that there will be excess revenue, and some of it is already dedicated to mitigation measures.

Kevin Bewsey presented on SacTA’s role in the JPA, including how votes would be handled.

Though no motion was made on the issue, nor any vote taken, the consensus of the board seems to be:

  • Support for creation of the JPA
  • Support for creating tolled lanes in Sacramento County
  • Yes to SacTA being the agency for Sacramento County
  • Yes to appointing members of the SacTA board to the JPA board, probably with one county representative and one city representative (under the staff recommended governance structure, SACOG would appoint another from its own board, and from Sacramento County or a city within)
  • Concern about the governance model treatment of Sacramento County, and concern about a voting methodology that is equitable for Sacramento County, but willingness to allow some uncertainty here for the time being (the voting document created by SACOG was not presented, but was discussed since several SacTA board members are also SACOG board members)
map of potential tolled lanes in the SACOG region
map of potential tolled lanes in the SACOG region

Note: I am unsure of the source of this map. It was referred to as being in the 2020 SCS, but I don’t find it there. Apologies for the low resolution, it was extracted from the SACOG presentation today, not from an original source.

For additional posts on managed lanes in general, this regional tolling authority, and the Yolo 80 project, see category ‘managed lanes‘.

tolling authority at SACOG Transportation

Dan Allison1 Comment

The proposal for a tolling authority JPA for the Sacramento region came before a special meeting the SACOG Transportation Committee yesterday. Agenda item 2 was to recommend to the SACOG Board that the JPA effort move forward, and that was passed after a whole lot of information and even more discussion. The reason for it coming back is that several options for governance membership are now included, which were not available in December. The tolling authority would be called Capital Area Regional Tolling Authority (CARTA). The meeting can be viewed on YouTube, and the supporting documents are available from SACOG.

presentation page on tolling JPA governance options
presentation page on tolling JPA governance options

For reasons that were not clear to me, SACOG staff added an addendum to the item at the last minute, Evaluation of Voting Options, about how votes might be allocated on use of excess revenue. At least one-third of the meeting time was taken up by discussing this issue, though it was not to be voted on, and is not even relevant in the near future. It will be years before there is any excess revenue to be spent, there will not likely be a large amount of excess revenue, and there is already a long list of mitigations to be funded by excess revenue that are part of the Yolo 80 project. Just when the committee was ready to move on from this topic, SACOG staff brought it up again. Argh!

It is typical of government councils or boards, when composed of more than one government agency, to spend an absurd amount of time haggling over membership. The situation is created when these boards adopt a one-member/one-vote policy, where the vote of each member weighs equally with each other. This sounds like representative government, analogous to one-person/one-vote that our democracy is founded on (with the exception of the US Senate, of course). But it is NOT analogous, and it is NOT representative. Smaller agencies have an outsized affect on the outcome, which is the case of transportation related boards means that smaller cities and rural areas have a much larger voice than they would have if voting were population weighted. We recognize this in creating city council districts, supervisor district, legislative districts, and US House of Representative districts, where each district has an approximately equal number of people. And it is why we do redistricting, so that this balance is maintained over time as population shifts. But for some reason, when it comes to transportation, the usual solution is to give each entity the same voice. I believe this is wrong. In most cases, voting should be population weighted.

In the case of the tolling authority, however, I believe that membership and voting should be weighted by tolled lane miles. This means that initially, only Yolo County, through YoloTD, would have that voice, and other counties would gain that voice over time as they added tolled lane miles. It would make sense to add membership and voting rights at the beginning of construction, not at opening of the toll facility, since decisions about tolling amounts, discounts or exceptions, and hours would start to be made at that point. Since Sacramento County has the largest number of freeways likely to be eventually tolled, it would end up with the highest membership and weighted voting, but not at this time.

Caltrans spend an inordinate amount of time in the meeting defending their right to one or two voting memberships. They had a long list of expertise they could provide, though when challenged to put a dollar value on in-kind or contracted work, was flummoxed. Though both Caltrans District 3 denied it, it was pretty clear to me that they had their eye on excess revenue for future capacity expansion projects. Caltrans has never really had to justify its work or existence to anyone, and when challenged to do so, is quite inept at it.

I spoke at the meeting, the only member of the public to do so. My points were:

  • Support creation of regional tolling JPA
  • Support governance options with one Caltrans voting member, not two
  • Support inclusion of Sacramento Transportation Authority as Sac county agency
  • Voting options for excess revenue can be deferred because there likely won’t be any for a while
  • Tolling advances user pays concept, which transportation advocates support
  • HOV lanes don’t work for management because they are routinely violated
  • Support does not indicate that I support adding lanes in Yolo, but if lanes are added, they should be tolled

For additional posts on managed lanes in general, this regional tolling authority, and the Yolo 80 project, see category ‘managed lanes‘.