California Transportation

In the next decade, California will need to invest more than $100 billion in its transportation system to cope with a burgeoning population and ease the congestion that has paralyzed its roads in the late 20th century, officials said Wednesday. Attempting for the first time to inventory California's transportation needs for the new century, state officials unveiled a list of road and rail projects that include everything from a major widening of Interstate 5 in Los Angeles to improvements to U.

Proposition 74, Gov. George Deukmejian's $1-billion transportation bond measure, was rejected in the June 7 primary election by a tiny margin of 355 votes out of more than 5.2 million cast, Secretary of State March Fong Eu announced Wednesday. The defeat of the proposition represents a serious setback for Deukmejian, who had proposed issuing $1 billion in bonds as the centerpiece of his plan to relieve traffic congestion and improve California's transportation network.

Gov. George Deukmejian declared Thursday that he accepts full blame for California's loss of a $4.4-billion federal atom smasher project, saying, "If it makes some people happy to blame the governor, I'll take the responsibility." But Deukmejian insisted that the loss of that project and others in recent months does not mean that California is losing its high technology advantage to competing states.

It is one of the most scenic highways in the world, a winding ribbon of asphalt wedged between the mountains and the sea. The stretch of California 1 at Big Sur cuts through dramatic landscape that has been celebrated by generations of writers. Poet Robinson Jeffers called the area "the greatest meeting of land and water in the world." Longtime Big Sur resident Henry Miller wrote, "This is the face of the Earth as the Creator intended it to look."

As state and local officials searched for lessons to be learned from the Bay Area earthquake, one stood out with stark clarity: California needs to develop a balanced transportation system and not continue to be almost completely dependent on the automobile. "Roads are what we know," said Robert K. Best, Caltrans director. "We really do have to start emphasizing things we don't know so well"--like trains, express buses and mass transit lines.

By turning back Proposition 156, a $1-billion rail bond measure, California voters prompted a far-reaching restructuring of the state's transportation improvement program that ironically could delay or stop scores of highway projects, state officials said Wednesday. Highways will be affected by the failure of a rail bond measure because the Legislature has mandated that state transportation projects be divided equitably throughout the state based on complicated fund-sharing formulas.

California Transportation Commission members expressed fears Wednesday that the "media hype" surrounding the collapse of Oakland's Nimitz Freeway may create so much political pressure for bridge safety that other programs will be sacrificed.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown announced his opposition Tuesday to Gov. George Deukmejian's new $2.3-billion bond proposal to improve California's transportation network and predicted that the plan will not pass the Legislature.

The good news is that commuters, Metrolink riders and bicyclists could benefit from $179 million worth of transportation projects approved Thursday by county officials. The not-so-good news is that these projects still need approval from several agencies, a process expected to take until mid-2001. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority selected 73 projects from 240 proposals, recommending improvements in communities from Palmdale to Catalina Island. Funding is from Gov.

Refusing to bow to a Democratic majority, Assembly Republicans said Wednesday they will unveil a strategy to rebuild California's transportation network by devoting part of future budget surpluses to road projects. Assembly GOP leader Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach) confirmed Wednesday that Republicans will offer lawmakers an alternative to Democratic proposals, which call for using voter-approved bonds and sales taxes to finance a multibillion-dollar transportation plan.