There <i> Is</i> Money for Mass Transit, but It Isn’t Readily Accessible

Why can’t Orange County come up with some money for mass transit?

Just about every driver in the county has asked that question at some point. But few have heard the answer, perhaps because the only time most of us ask it is when we’re alone in our cars, creeping along a crowded freeway at all of 7 m.p.h. Or commiserating at a back-yard barbecue with a bunch of friends who aren’t exactly transportation experts.

But next time the question comes up, you’ll be ready because Life on Wheels will now reveal to you the mysterious and intricate answer.

Why can’t we come up with money for mass transit? We can. And we did. Thanks to a 1971 state law, the county has accumulated $110 million in mass transit funds. We just can’t spend it.

We can, however, spend the interest it earns: about $12 million a year. But not on mass transit.

Instead, thanks to another state law passed in 1985 just for Orange County, we are permitted to use that $12 million to improve existing streets and freeways.

It all started with the Transportation Development Act in 1971. The act required that in counties with populations of more than 500,000, about 4 cents of every dollar collected in sales tax be set aside for transit projects, explains Debbie Christner, an administrative analyst with the Orange County Transportation Commission. Christner and her boss, OCTC Director Stanley T. Oftelie, both speak fluent bureaucratese and were able to translate this tale for us.

Most of the TDA money, as it’s called, goes to keep buses running; here, that means the Orange County Transit District, with a tiny piece for the Laguna Beach Municipal Transit lines. A little piece is used for bikeways, and some of it goes for overall administration.

Each year there is money left over, and by 1984, that spare change had added up to $85 million. But because of a technicality, our money was in limbo, until and unless we could come up with enough from somewhere else to actually build a mass transit system. Now $85 million might buy quite a few groceries, but you don’t go shopping for subways or rail systems unless you’ve got billions in the bank.

So in 1984, the OCTC tried to raise the remainder with a ballot proposal for a 1% increase in sales tax. The money would have funded, among other projects, a 38-mile light rail system. But voters said no, and the $85 million continued to gather dust--and interest. Plans for the rail system were filed away.

The frustrated folks at OCTC decided to ask the state if they could at least use the interest on those inaccessible millions to do something, however small, to solve some of those problems.

Enter Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim), who sits on the state Senate Transportation Committee.

At OCTC’s request, in 1985 Seymour quietly shepherded a bill through the Legislature establishing the Orange County Unified Transportation Trust, “the largest no-tax-increase-involved transportation fund source in California,” according to Oftelie.

The interest on the untouchable money--$9 million back then, currently about $12 million--goes into the transportation trust. From there, it is funneled to specific projects, half on surface streets, half on freeways.

The trust-funded projects range from small street resurfacing jobs to extra lanes on local freeways, according to Christner.

Meanwhile, the principal was increased this year from $85 million to $110 million. The OCTC has replaced its light rail plan with a more reachable goal: a 19.4-mile system of transit ways for the Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and Orange freeways.

“It’s like a separated car-pool lane for buses, van pools and car pools,” Christner says. The first phase of that project, covering 5.4 miles on the Santa Ana Freeway, “will probably be coming in at around $100 million.”

Assuming that the idea gets all the necessary approvals, the OCTC might be able to start spending some of its frozen funds on the project within the next 3 years.

Inventory Time

Get a pencil and pad and go to your car. Make a list of EVERYTHING in it, from your proof of insurance card to your jack to that bag of petrified french fries, and send it to us. The list, not the stuff.

Looking for Mr. Goodwrench

A good auto mechanic can be nearly as important to Southern California drivers as a family doctor. A bad one can leave you veritably crippled. If you have a favorite auto mechanic, tell us. If all you have are horror stories, we would like to hear those too.

Oldies but Goodies

We are looking for a few good cars, veteran vehicles that barely batted a headlight when their odometers rolled over the 100,000-mile mark. They may be on their second engine or their fourth set of brakes, but their owners aren’t about to part with them, no matter how many pretty new models pass them on the street. If you and your car have a successful long-term relationship, let us know how and why you have avoided the trade-in lot.

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