A San Luis Obispo County transportation plan looking to 2045 highlights a more than $2 billion funding shortfall for future road, highway, multi-modal, and public transit projects—and suggests a local revenue measure to help bridge the gap.
Updated every four years, the 2045 Regional Transportation Plan compiles all planned state, county, and city transportation projects in SLO County; factors in population, housing, and economic growth; and identifies priority projects and strategies for funding them.
The 2023 draft report—which anticipates 18,000 new homes, 17,000 new jobs, and 42,000 new residents by 2045—is currently out for public comment.
“We want to make a coordinated transportation system that works for current [residents], as well as future [residents],” said James Worthley, planning director for SLO Council of Governments (SLOCOG), the agency responsible for the region’s transportation planning.
Underscored in SLOCOG’s draft plan is the expected regionwide funding shortfall for transportation projects. While the county has more than $5 billion in anticipated project costs, it is estimating only about $3 billion in available funding.
“What we find is there’s over $2 billion of needs requests that we just can’t afford in the 23-year plan,” Worthley said. “It crosses all modes, all investment types, public transit, and active transportation. Each one of those categories asks for more money than there’s available money to spend. There are delays in projects … by decades because there’s not enough money.”
Worthley said that the first projects that go on the backburner due to a lack of funds are usually longer-range projects that haven’t already received some amount of funding already. He said the county is forgoing millions of dollars in transportation funds each year by not having a local revenue measure to support transportation, as state and federal grants often require localities to put up matching funds.
“What we’re missing out on is we don’t have that regional sales tax,” he said. “If we had that, easily we could see $1 billion in this timeframe coming back to the region. That probably is underestimating the amount because some of the dollars it could leverage further from state and federal funds.”
In 2016, SLO County voters narrowly rejected Measure J, a half-percent sales tax measure for transportation revenue. SLOCOG plans to conduct polling later this year to determine the electorate’s appetite for a possible half-percent sales tax measure in 2024.
“It really is putting us behind the eight ball,” Worthley said of the lack of local revenue, pointing to Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Santa Barbara counties’ success securing more transportation funds with their sales tax measures.
A steering committee for the 2045 Regional Transportation Plan also echoed that standpoint in a forward written for the draft report.
“Local governments must … either generate revenues to expand our system and maintain our investments or watch the system degrade and endanger the health, economy, welfare and safety of all San Luis Obispo County residents,” the committee wrote. “A new funding stream for transportation is needed that is not controlled by the state or federal government and is not tied to the antiquated gas tax.” Δ
This article appears in Feb 9-19, 2023.