California legislature rejects governor’s proposed cuts to active transportation, intercity rail

California Governor Gavin Newsom does not want to prioritize public transportation and rail funding over highway funding. However, the CA state legislature disagrees. Sort of.

The legislature calls its plan a "responsible, balanced, and on-time budget plan." It addresses the administration's projected shortfall of about $45 billion next year and $30 billion in the following year, balancing the budget with $13 billion in total reserves in the second year.

The legislature's plan rejects [the governor's large funding cuts]. Instead of cutting the ATP by $600 million - which would basically have zeroed out upcoming Cycle 7 funding - the legislature proposes to fund it from the State Highway Account, an appropriate source for it.

In terms of public transit, the Governor had proposed delaying $2.1 billion for the Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program (TIRCP) from 2021-22 to later years, and cutting it by $148 million.

Emphasis is mine there. Taking money away from highway expansions is definitely a good thing. However, both the governor and the legislature have agreed to delay $1.7 billion in rail and zero-emissions transit funding. (The governor wants to cut it altogether.)

Here are some ways the legislature and governor agree:

Both the Governor and the legislature include modest increases to the Intercity Passenger Rail Program, which supports operating costs for three major rail corridors (the Capitol Corridor, the San Joaquin line, and the Los Angeles – San Diego – San Luis Obispo Rail Corridor (LOSSAN). All three are facing shortfalls due to COVID-induced declines in ridership, and want to restore service to grow ridership numbers.

Both budget plans also retain funding for the vehicle weight safety study called for by A.B. 251. That bill requires the California Transportation Commission to convene a task force to study the relationship between vehicle weight and injuries to vulnerable road users and degradation to roads, as well as the costs and benefits of imposing a passenger vehicle weight fee.

My emphasis for those quotes. California's intercity passenger rail is a joke so more funding is definitely good. It's also valuable that the state will be studying the impact between heavy vehicles and pedestrian death, although it's worth nothing that this has been studied extensively already: heavy cars kill people. I see why the state would want their own study to calculate how they should react to road wear though.

One detail that is still not completely clear is the overall effect on the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. It has been averaging $4.2 billion annually, and growing. Questions remain about the efficacy of the cap-and-trade program itself, and there are concerns about relying on it as a funding source, but for now it remains an important source of funds for climate programs.

About 65 percent of the GGRF is "continuously appropriated" to existing programs, including the California High-Speed Rail Program (25 percent), the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program (20 percent), the TIRCP (10 percent), low carbon transit operations (5 percent), and the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Program (5 percent), with $200 million continuously appropriated for forest health and wildfire prevention activities. That leaves about 30 percent of the remainder as "discretionary funding."

I think the state should "go all in on inter-city rail," especially high-speed rail, but I understand that there are competing forces for that kind of funding. I still think highway expansion funding needs to be completely reallocated to rail expansion funding.