What Biden's Infrastructure Plan Means For San Diego

Speaker 1: 00:00 Last week, president Joe Biden unveiled his $2 trillion proposal for infrastructure it's meant to boost the economy as it emerges from the pandemic recession, but it's also pitched as a chance to invest in sustainable transportation with hundreds of billions of dollars for mass transit and electric vehicles that may sound familiar. San Diego county's transportation planning agency SANDAG is also seeking to boost spending on trains and buses. Joining me to discuss what could be in this plane for San Diego is a Assan CRADA executive director of SANDAG Hassan. Welcome to the program. First I'd like to ask for your reaction to the president's infrastructure proposal. What about it stuck out to you? Speaker 2: 00:41 Well, uh, it's bold and it's needed. Uh, I think, uh, we we've been waiting for a while for a national strategy for investment in infrastructure, as you know, uh, and, and you and I spoke about before we were ahead of the curve in San Diego, we wanted that bold vision, um, uh, to be here in the San Diego region. And I think as a region, we're well positioned to compete nationally, uh, for the stimulus and I hope it takes place and it's approved and signed by the president. So we could get, go get to work, Speaker 1: 01:17 Eric and job's plan as this bill is officially called includes $85 billion to improve public transit across the country. How much would San Diego County expect to receive from that? If this bill is passed, how do these dollars typically get to districts? Speaker 2: 01:32 Yeah, well, uh, there is two ways, uh, they can, they, you usually have two ways to distribute it. One is by formula based on population and too competitive. And I think in this case, I believe they're going to be a hybrid model. Uh, we can't compete well. Uh, as you know, we've been talking about extensive expansion of our transit systems, uh, depend whether they're gonna require that the project be shovel-ready or not. Uh, but, uh, if they also gonna fund a project in the environmental and, and, and, and design, but we believe we are positioned better than any region, probably in the country. Speaker 1: 02:11 What types of new public transit infrastructure is SANDAG planning right now? And how much of those are? Speaker 2: 02:17 Well, there is about a total $1.9 billion project in the San Diego region that are shovel-ready as some of them we'll get into, um, next generation rabbit. Some was improvement gestation, some would double tracking in the Los Ang, Canada at noon, some tunnels. Those are shovel-ready and there's about $1.9 billion of them are already about 119 projects altogether in terms of the mega projects, uh, like for example, the purple line, uh, that the blue line, the configuration of the whole fast high speed underground system. And some of them are not really not, but we'll be shovel-ready in a couple of years if we did the local funding. Uh, so I think it depends how the funding is pulled out. We believe we are ready to compete now, which I would read your project, but also compete in a couple of years for projects that are gonna reshape and reimagine the future of transit in the region. Speaker 1: 03:18 Biden's plan also includes $80 billion for inter-city rail, like Amtrak, where could SANDAG use that money? Speaker 2: 03:27 I mean, obviously we have the second business corridor in the country here called the Lausanne corridor, Los Angeles, San Lucas corridor that goes from San Diego. Although it's San Louis Obispo, as you know, this character is a lifeline for passenger movement and for goods moment, again, the second busiest in the country after the Northeast corridor, we believe this we are ready. And more than that video, we are actually very appropriate for a national funding, cause this is a character of national significance. So we think the Los Angeles that is going to get significant federal funding, uh, to make this character a, you know, a, a real high-speed, uh, fast, uh, service. For example, right now it's live from San Diego to Los Angeles, takes about an hour and 30 minutes. That could be, uh, reduced to less than two hours. If we double track, we straighten the character, the Miramar cave, and we move the track of the plus. So we think Lausanne is going to do really well competing. National Speaker 1: 04:32 Biden wants to spend about $115 billion on roads and bridges, but the emphasis is meant to be on fixing them before making them wider to accommodate more cars. Is this the right approach? Speaker 2: 04:44 Absolutely. Uh, and, and that was our approach and our five big moves, uh, not a single mile of expansion, but a huge opportunity to add capacity to our highway system by pricing, doing improvement. And I think that's what, what, uh, our president's plan is consistent with what we've been saying over the last two years, Speaker 1: 05:06 SANDAG is considering some kind of local tax measure to fund a lot of the projects and its next transportation plan. Now, if this bill ultimately passes Congress, do you expect that SANDAG would still need that local revenue or could the federal government just make that unnecessary? Speaker 2: 05:24 Uh, usually you're more likely to compete for federal state dollars. If you have local dollars on the table, that has been the case. That's why SANDAG was successful in competing in the past. I expect the same thing to move forward again. So we expect the region to need local revenues and these local revenues will bring almost two and a half dollars to every dollar of every local dollar. So it's a good deal for San Diego. Actually Speaker 1: 05:50 You've said many times before that some of the highway widening projects that SANDAG has had in its planning documents for many years simply won't happen because they are in conflict with the state's goal of reducing car travel in greenhouse gas emissions. When will we know exactly which of these highway projects are on the chopping block Speaker 2: 06:10 By June? Uh, we are releasing the draft regional transportation plan and you're going to see clearly that, uh, no highway expansion project will move forward in this plan. As a staff recommendation goes without the board goes with it is yet to be seen, but by June, uh, you on your, uh, your, your listeners is going to see a very detailed list. It was a project that's going to move forward and none of them will be a highway expansion. There will be a highway capacity increases by pricing some by using shoulders for priority for buses. And carpoolers by actually taking some existing infrastructure, combining it with, with, uh, with the new ones to, to price two lanes like we did advise 16, but you shouldn't have to at long, in two months, you're going to see that Speaker 1: 07:02 Most people in San Diego County still drive nowadays, why should we not be investing our infrastructure dollars in ways that make driving better and more convenient? Wouldn't that help the most people Speaker 2: 07:12 Just adding lanes is never going to be solving, uh, the traffic problems, but managing congestion sort of pricing and other mechanism is the latent demand kicks in when you add capacity. So therefore I don't believe it's the right strategy to start thinking, expanding even so 90%, 90% of us drive and we'll continue to drive probably. But having said that we have an obligation to make sure whether, whether we drive or take transit, we have real options to do it and not always go. Uh, when you have congestion set aside the land, because that doesn't work. That strategy didn't work. When Houston built at 26 lane freeway, that became one of the most congested in the country. After a few months at the open, it doesn't work. Just adding blends, simply doesn't work. Speaker 1: 08:02 I've been speaking with Hassan and CRADA executive director of Sandeck Hassan. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Speaker 2: 08:08 I really do appreciate you and your reporting. Thank you very much, Andrew.