County Board of Supervisors: No help for transit?

San Diego County’s public-transportation agencies are hurting—the state’s cut all transit assistance for the next five years to close the budget gap and the sales-tax revenue that help pay for transit operations is down. There have been a couple of proposals to help “bail out” (for lack of a better term) the Metropolitan Transit System and the North County Transit District. One idea is re-allocating TransNet money (the voter-approved half-cent sales tax that funds transportation-related projects); another idea is to use some of the money the county’s Air Pollution Control District gets from vehicle license fees, the argument being that if people get out of their cars and onto buses and trolleys, it’ll help curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Tomorrow (Tuesday), the County Board of Supervisors, sitting as the board of the Air Pollution Control District, plans to oppose every source of transit funding that’s been proposed so far. The subject of their resolution is “Keep the TransNet Promise!” Here’s the text:

1. Oppose the transfer of Transnet highway and local street and road dollars to transit operations.

2. Oppose changes to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding allocations approved on March 27, 2009 by the SANDAG Board of Directors for capital infrastructure projects.

3. Oppose changes to TransNet allocations to local governments approved on March 27, 2009 by the SANDAG Board of Directors that were based on an exchange with Economic Stimulus funds received by SANDAG.

4. Oppose utilizing Air Pollution Control District’s Vehicle License Fee (VLF) funding for the purpose of funding transit operations.

5. Direct the Chief Administrative Officer to draft a letter for signature by the Chairwoman and Vice Chairwoman to the Executive Director and Board Members of the San Diego Association of Governments reflecting the actions included in this Board Action.

According to a memo signed by supervisors Dianne Jacob and Pam Slater-Price, “The Board supports transit. However, only 3.3 percent of commuters use transit now.” The memo outlines why they oppose a transit bail out: basically, because the money’s already going to fund other things.

As far as saying that only 3.3 percent of commuters use transit, that’s incorrect. According to a study released by the San Diego Association of Governments last week, 12 percent of adults living in the San Diego region rely solely on public transportation to get around. Forty-eight percent of folks surveyed reported taking public transit within the last year.

Addendum: More accurate would be to say that the 3.3 percent number is likely incorrect. The SANDAG study did not, of course, take into account every commuter in the county, but was based on a sampling of commuters. Anecdotally I’ve heard that 3 percent is the number of total commuter trips via public transit (as opposed to the percentage of commuters themselves). I’ll see if SANDAG has the specific numbers.