Regional Measure 3 (RM3) is a regional transportation fundraising measure that will be on the June 5 ballot. If it passes it would result in bridge toll increases of up to $3 and raise an estimated $4.45 billion to be used for transportation projects and operations throughout the Bay Area.
RM3 would provide funding for a number of transportation improvements such as the purchase of new BART, Muni and other transit vehicles and the long-awaited 1.3-mile extension of Caltrain’s 78-mile long commuter rail service into downtown San Francisco. Unfortunately many of RM3’s other projects are of much lower priority.
However, the merit or lack thereof of the RM3 projects is not the main issue. What matters most is how well those administering this huge fund would spend the money. In the recent past, Bay Area agencies have often squandered much of the transportation funding to come under their control, by either diverting it from voter-approved uses to other uses or by simply wasting it: Examples include:
- Alameda County Measure B funds voted on in 1986 were diverted from the planned upgrading of Hayward’s Mission and Foothill Boulevards to pay for a new Interstate 280 bypass freeway. This diversion was subsequently blocked by courts, which deemed it in violation of Measure B.
- San Francisco Proposition A funds, voted on in 2014 to make various Muni improvements, have reportedly been squirreled away to pay for anticipated central subway cost overruns.
- In 1986 and 2014, Alameda County voters approved $120 million for transit improvements in the Dumbarton Transit Corridor between Redwood City and Fremont. There is a plan to divert most or all of the funds remaining in the Dumbarton budget to the building of a new highway in Union City.
- There have been many other Bay Area instances of large project cost overruns and long delayed completion dates.
In an effort to avoid a repeat of past mistakes, the Bay Area Transportation Working Group (BATWG) has tried without success to get the financial backers of RM3 to tell us about the RM3 program and how it would be managed and administrated. Here are the basic questions:
- The dollar amounts assigned to some RM3 projects look quite high. What would happen to surpluses? What guarantee is there that surplus funds won’t be misdirected or wasted?
- Some of the projects on the list would be ready for immediate construction; others would take years to get to that point. What guarantee is there that the funds allocated to the later projects would still be there when needed?
- How would project cost overruns be paid for? What guarantee is there that early project overruns wouldn’t eat up the funds earmarked for later projects?
- In view of the sketchy project descriptions in California Senate Bill 595, which often include escape clauses such as “including but not limited to,” what guarantee is there that the money authorized for a particular improvement project would be spent on that improvement?
- Are the thirty-five RM3 capital projects described in SB595 part of an overall regional plan designed to materially lower vehicle miles traveled, reduce traffic congestion and strengthen the region’s rail and other public transit networks? Or, as has been charged, are they merely a disjointed hodgepodge of parochial and Caltrans projects cherry-picked to please special interests around the region?
Clear answers to these questions should be provided before anyone is called upon to vote for RM3.
Gerald Cauthen, of Oakland, a former senior engineering manager and transportation vice president with Parsons Brinckerhoff and with more than 30 years’ experience in Bay Area transportation projects and issues, is the BATWG’s chair and co-founder.