SANDAG RTP 2050 vote last week
Steve Goetsch
Solana Beach Mayor Lesa Heebner, a voting member of the SANDAG Board of Directors, sent this communication to several of us in the San Diego environmental movement.
She gave me permission to share it with member of Citizens Against Freeway Expansion. Mayor Heebner explains her vote on the SANDAG RTP 2050 plan last week and offers
some words of encourgagement to those of us who are committed to the principles of sustainability, greenhouse gas reduction and cleaning up our air.
Here is her communication, just the way we received it:
I want to thank you all for showing up in droves and speaking with such passion and knowledge at the 2050 RTP Hearing last week. You did indeed change the course of the discussion the Board had. And I hope you continue to show up at SANDAG Board and Committee meetings and keep us to the promises made in the final motion. If you don’t know this, please note that the final motion (language attached) that we passed included language that was as close to a concession that the RTP missed the mark as was possible, and committed SANDAG to addressing many of the shortfalls in the RTP!
The biggest help we received in getting this concession was from the CA Air Resources Board (CARB) itself. During their September Hearing their Staff and Board members expressed many of the same concerns you, the Attorney General and I had. Because of pressure from CARB and because of the work of Move San Diego and other groups as well as some Board members who spent a lot of time speaking with the leadership and the Exec Dir of SANDAG, CARB’s requests worked their way into the final motion that committed the Board to address the backsliding and VMT issues during the next two to four years.
It was because of the final promises made to address both the backsliding of GHG reductions after 2035 and the paltry reductions in VMT over the life of the plan, that I voted ‘Yes’. As was noted in your email threads, I did ask you all to continue to come to the meetings and hold the Board’s feet to the fire to keep these promises. They are now memorialized and the Board must work over the next 4 years to decrease VMT and increase GHG reductions.
Of course it would have been nice to see more transit projects done sooner, yet it's important to acknowledge that 45 cents on every dollar is being spent on Transit which is more than any previous RTP. And the reason there are more transit projects in the later years is because we get more overall money in later years, yet we will see improvements on the Trolley line, a doubling of double-tracked Coaster miles and the Mid Coast transit project in the UTC area this decade. This is a significant step in the right direction.
Would I have liked to see the 10/50 Plan put in place instead? Of course! But I just don't see that it is realistic. I recall asking early on in the RTP process about doing what LA was doing with their 10/30 plan…building 30 years worth of Transit in 10 years…so was very open to the proposed 10/50 plan. The accurate but unfortunate response is that we don't have the money to do this. Let me explain:
As you might already know, the RTP must identify "reasonably expected" revenue sources to build what's in the plan. These revenue sources come from local revenues (Transnet), State revenues and Federal revenues.
It doesn't all come in at one time so spending it has to be planned out in the RTP by decade. The Federal dollars in the near term are pretty secure; those in the second, third and fourth decades are very much at risk given the mess we face in Congress and the House's plan for the Transportation Bill. We know the State is broke and has already eliminated billions in Transit dollars.
So we have the local portion of money to look to: Transnet. IF the Board were to reconsider Transnet's allocation, remember that is only a fraction of the total $214 billion in the 2050 RTP plan. If it is reviewed (and it should be reviewed in light of the subsequent passage of the game-changing AB32 and SB375), it is unlikely that the Board would vote for ALL the money to go to Transit (recall that 1/3 goes to local roads ie filling potholes and other local maintenance needs so local council members aren’t likely to give that up), but even if it did, we still could not build 50 years of transit in 10 years.
Next, we have an additional hurdle of the planning and permitting stages for all transportation projects—transit and freeway alike. There is now no streamlining of the permitting, and I'm not sure we would want that. I'm a CEQA fan, and although I don't know enough about NEPA, I like that they review the plans for negative impacts and demand mitigation.
My conclusion, based on the above facts, is that we cannot do the 10/50 plan as much as I would love it to be done.
Finally, there has been some talk in these email threads about how I don’t follow up on requests to the Board to meet Executive Order S-3-05. The reason is that it has been made clear time and again to the individual who brings this up that the Executive Order (EO) is #1, not law but rather provides a direction for State agencies under the direction of the Governor to strive for, #2 SANDAG’s RTP is required to meet CARB’s targets, not the EO, and #3, as a recent report by the CA Energy Commission concludes, the way to meet those EO targets is thru the “de-carbonization of electricity supplies and fuels, and major improvements in energy efficiency.” These are NOT the purview of SANDAG. SANDAG deals with transportation and related land use as their tools. Nevertheless, Staff modeled what it would look like if SANDAG did make the transportation and land use changes (again, the only areas they have authority over) that would meet the EO. It would require mowing down a few cities and having most people move to the urban core. I don’t think that’s gonna happen. I hope we can put this one to rest!
My intention in writing this email is to clarify my Yes vote as I know it surprised some of you and make sure you all know about the final motion--which addressed many of my concerns--committed us to. I do hope you will continue to participate as the Board really needs your input. Believe it or not, some members do not believe in climate change. Feel free to contact me if you wish further dialogue on this topic.
All best regards,
Lesa
Lesa Heebner, Mayor
City of Solana Beach
SANDAG Board member, Executive Committee member and Regional Planning Committee member