California Transportation Chief Gives Gloomy Forecast

'No new-capacity transportation projects in the state next year'

By Paul Napolitano

ONTARIO -- The executive director of the California Transportation Commission kicked off the first meeting of the new Inland Empire chapter of the Women's Transportation Seminar on April 25 with "some bad news."

"We're in a transportation crisis in California," Diane C. Eidam told about 125 attendees at a luncheon held at the Ontario Convention Center.

Eidam's dour remarks centered on the loss of $3 billion in transportation funding since 2001.

The CTC is responsible for the programming and allocating of funds for the construction of highway, passenger rail and transit improvements throughout California.

WTS is an international organization dedicated to the professional advancement of women in transportation. It has more than 3,400 men and women members.

About 69 percent of state voters in 2002 approved Proposition 42, the Transportation Congestion Improvement Act, which required that, effective July 1, 2003, revenues from state sales and use taxes on the sale of motor vehicle fuel be used for transportation purposes as provided by law until June 30, 2008.

Eidam said a clause in the legislation has allowed the siphoning of Prop. 42 funds to pay for state budget overruns.

Three years ago, the state's transportation plan was to spend $5.4 billion in new capacity projects, but now that money has to be delayed for two years, Eidam said.

"In 2006, we will have to delay that spending by another two years, and half of those projects (from 2002) could fall off the table," added Eidam, who spent 23 years in Marysville working for Caltrans District 3 before being tapped for the CTC post.

Officials of the Riverside County Transportation Commission and two district directors of the California Department of Transportation, as well as representatives of engineering firms in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, attended the midday meeting.

"I was depressed," Michelle A. Jones, president and principal engineer of Temecula-based Entech Consulting Group, said about Eidam's comments.

Jones said she has been able to keep her small environmental and construction management business afloat by ramping up business in her native state of Washington.

In Seattle, the major transit program - funded by a gas tax ballot measure - is called Sound Transit, which includes development of about 24 mi. of light-rail between the city center and the southern edge.

"Washington passed a gas tax to fund the light-rail program," Jones said.

Eidam said that in California funding options now being floated are public/private partnerships to fund transportation projects as well as securing more funding at the federal level.

"We still have giant hurdles ahead of us," she added.