BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 680
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Date of Hearing: April 15, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION
Bonnie Lowenthal, Chair
AB 680 (Salas) - As Amended: March 19, 2013
SUBJECT : Transportation: interregional road system
SUMMARY : Adds State Highway Route (SR) 43 to the list of
eligible interregional and intercounty highway routes, thereby
making projects on the route eligible for the use of specific
funds.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Establishes the state highway system through a listing and
description of portions and segments of the state's regional
and interregional roads that are owned and operated by the
Department of Transportation (Caltrans). A "state highway" is
defined as any roadway that is acquired, laid out,
constructed, improved, or maintained as a state highway
pursuant to constitutional or legislative authorization.
2)Further defines the interregional road system as a subset of
the state highway system.
3)Requires certain transportation funds be made available for
transportation capital improvement projects and be programmed
and expended in specified amounts for interregional and
regional improvements.
4)Directs the allocation of funds for transportation capital
improvement as follows:
a) Twenty-five percent for interregional improvements; and,
b) Seventy-five percent for regional improvements.
5)Of the 25% of funds for interregional improvements, 60% of
these funds must be used for improvements on highways
identified in statute as part of the interregional road system
and that are outside the boundaries of an urban area and for
intercity rail improvements; the remaining 40% of funds made
available to the state for work on other state highways must
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be distributed 40% to northern California counties and 60% to
southern California counties.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : The state highway system serves a diverse range of
needs for the interregional movement of people and goods between
rural and highly urbanized areas. While all state routes are
important, the interstate system, interregional road system
routes, and other major freeway trade corridors form a
transportation network that is most critical to interregional
mobility and connectivity statewide. Together, these routes
carry over 80 percent of the total vehicle miles travelled
annually on the state highway system.
The interregional road system is statutorily defined as a series
of 93 interregional state highway routes, outside the urbanized
areas, that provide access to, and links between, the state's
economic centers, major recreation areas, and urban and rural
regions. According to Caltrans guidelines, interregional road
system routes are intended to provide the following service:
1)Carry a major portion of the trips entering, traveling
through, or leaving the state.
2)Serve corridors of substantial statewide, interstate, and
international significance.
3)Connect all metropolitan areas and those urban areas with
population concentrations over 2,500 and all county seats not
otherwise served.
4)Serve those agricultural, natural resource areas, public-owned
recreational areas, and other travel generators of statewide
or major regional importance not otherwise served.
Within the interregional road system, there is a sub-set of 34
high emphasis routes consisting of most of the interstate
highways and ten non-interstate focus routes. The ten focus
routes represent the most critical interregional corridors that
are the state's highest priority for upgrading, often to
freeway-expressway standards, or making other substantial
improvements to two-lane facilities where topography or other
constrains preclude further capacity expansion or upgrading to
full freeway or expressway standards.
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Of the 50,000 or so lane-miles in the state highway system,
about 34,000 lane-miles make up the legislatively designated
interregional road system. About 24,000 lane-miles in this
system are categorized as high emphasis or focus routes. In a
2011 needs assessment report issued by the California
Transportation Commission, the commission asserts, "This
interregional system is not fully constructed to
freeway/expressway standards, and it should remain as a high
funding priority in order to bring the system up to those
standards."
Money to provide such improvements, however, is woefully
limited. Funding identified for interregional routes in the
2012 Interregional Transportation Improvement Program (ITIP) is
about $1.1 billion over the next five years. This level of
funding is well below that needed to address the preservation
and expansion needs of the system.
SR 43 is located in the central San Joaquin Valley and traverses
the area in a north-south direction. Agriculture is the most
dominant land use along highway corridor. The route is
primarily rural with the exception of segments located within
the cities of Wasco, Shafter, and Selma and on the outer fringes
of Corcoran and Hanford. The highway often experiences a high
volume of truck traffic with several segments experiencing
counts as high as 30 to 40% of total traffic volume.
This bill's sponsor, Kings County Association of Governments
(KCAG), emphasizes that commuters use SR 43 from Fresno and
Corcoran and Wasco to get to two state prisons that are located
on SR 43. Furthermore, the sponsor notes that, in times of
accidents on SR 99, SR 43 is used as an alternate route and is
easily overwhelmed with traffic.
In its 2011 Regional Transportation Plan, KCAG identifies the
need to make improvements on SR 43, noting with frustration
that, "One problem is that not all routes are eligible for
[ITIP] funds. Many of Kings County's highest priority projects
are not eligible for the [ITIP] funds because they are
considered to be local projects, or are on routes that are not
on the interregional system."
AB 680 would add SR 43 to the statutorily defined interregional
road system, thereby making it eligible to receive funding from
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funds directed to high-priority routes. In theory, adding SR 43
to the list of eligible routes in an already-severely
constrained program would increase the competition for funds
amongst other interregional routes. In practice, it is doubtful
that SR 43 will rise to the level of a high emphasis route or
focus route in the foreseeable future and, consequently, may not
present any real competition for these limited funds.
Previous legislation: SB 532 (Cogdill), Chapter 189, Statutes
of 2009, added a segment of SR 108 to the interregional road
system so that an alternative project on the route could be
funded in lieu of the previously programmed Oakdale Bypass
project.
AB 2143 (Para) of 2006, would have added SR 43 to the
interregional road system. That bill failed passage on the
Senate floor.
SB 532 (Torlakson) Chapter 598, Statutes of 2003, added a
portion of SR 84 and all of SR 239 to the interregional road
system.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
None on file
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Janet Dawson / TRANS. / (916) 319-2093