Richard Katz: Measure R Is County's Only Option to Move Los Angeles And Clean the Region's Air

Last month, MIR featured an interview with Assemblyman Mike Feuer regarding Measure R which proposes to raise the sales tax in Los Angeles by a half-cent to 8.75 percent to pay for mass transit and road projects. As a Metro boardmember and a prime proponent of Measure R, why is it needed?

Measure R represents a unique opportunity to transform L.A. County. It is a comprehensive plan, which is something we have been lacking for years. It addresses not only every corner of the county, but also all the various modes of transportation: rail, train, buses, carpool, and light rail. It allows local cities-by returning 15 percent of the money to them-to make their own transportation improvements, which could include signalization, left-hand turn lanes, and filling potholes. It has the potential to be transformative for the county.

We are doing this interview two weeks before the election. At this point, what should voters be focusing on regarding Measure R? What key provisions merit their attention?

First, I'm hoping that voters recognize that Measure R is a comprehensive plan. Second, that the local return money means that 15 cents on every dollar would come back to the city or the part of the county they live in. Third, we hope that they remember that when we improve mobility, we not only reduce congestion, but we also improve air quality. We don't have to be spending money in their backyard in order to get air quality and mobility benefits, but we do have to complete projects that impact the entire system. That's what Measure R does.

October's volatile stock market declined mid month by as much as 30 percent, depressing the economy and threatening jobs. In such an environment, how well do you expect Measure R to do November 4th?

Measure R continues to do well in the polls. Recognizing that we need a two-thirds vote, we're in that hunt and the voters have been supportive. Voters know that we have to make a local investment in infrastructure. What they like about Measure R is that the money is controlled locally. Sacramento can't rip it off. D.C. can't rip it off. It can only be spent by the MTA on transportation measures. The projects are outlined in the ballot measure, so people can look at that and know what it means for their neighborhood, what it means for their commute, and what this means for their quality of life.

In terms of the economy, Measure R would create 210,000 jobs over the life of the sales tax. Metro is investigating ways to front-load money for next year. In other words, what projects are underway? What projects can we start next year by using the sales tax and the anticipation of this revenue to put a couple billion dollars of construction on the streets of L.A. in the year 2009? With a couple billion dollars worth of construction activity, which has the greatest multiplier of public dollars you can spend, and it will do a lot to pull L.A. County and California out of this recession.

No transportation tax measure, or any bond in and of itself, can attract universal support. Talk a bit about the constituency in support of Measure R and those still reluctant to support it.

You're right that it's hard to make everyone happy, particularly in a county as big and diverse as L.A. But on this measure you have the environmental groups, the Sierra Club and others, supporting the same measure that the building trades are supporting. We have environmental groups, like the Clean Air Coalition, supporting a measure that is also supported by the L.A. Chamber of Commerce and the Valley Industry and Commerce Association. We have the Daily News, the L.A. Times, and the Daily Breeze all supporting this measure. That's a rather unique coalition in Los Angeles.

The folks that are not supporting it are doing so because they favor the old style pork barrel politics and didn't get some of their projects on the list. On that list are projects that move goods and people throughout this county. Fifty percent of the people who live in the San Gabriel Valley don't work in the San Gabriel Valley. Forty-nine percent of the people who live in Palmdale and Lancaster work outside of the North County. These are folks who benefit from improvements made to the system, even if they aren't made in their backyard. Unfortunately, some politicians don't understand that. But I think voters and motorists who make those long commutes do understand.

Much of California's recovery after the depression was through its public works projects and the generation of new, well paying jobs. Is one of the underlying benefits of Measure R, in addition to providing congestion relief, to create the kinds of jobs we're going to need to create as unemployment starts to rise?

There are some people that are talking about eight percent unemployment in California next year. That would be devastating to our economy. One of the side benefits of Measure R is that we can put billions of dollars into the construction industry, which has a significant multiplier, depending on what model you use, anywhere from 5:1 to 8:1. That's how you put people back to work. That's how you get out of a recession, much the way WPA and others did the last time we went through an economic downturn like this.

Measure R opponents in the San Gabriel Valley complain that there is too little funding for the Gold Line extension in Measure R and that the allocation of transit funding is inequitable? Your response?

The San Gabriel Valley asked for $80 million to match federal money. There is no federal money. There is none set aside for the Gold Line, and no one in D.C. supports it other than a couple members of Congress. Measure R takes that $80 million and grows it to $735 billion that's available starting next year, and the year after, to begin the Gold Line. The only hope the Gold Line has of ever getting built is the passing of Measurer R.

Let's turn to what happens if two thirds of LA County voters do not support Measure R. As a Metro boardmember, what is the board faced with on November 5th?

If this measure fails, Metro has no additional dollars to build anything that's not already entirely funded. We still have money from existing sales taxes, and we still have money through some ongoing federal projects. But without Measure R, the Expo Line never gets completed, the Gold Line never gets built, there will never be a new, North-South connector from the Valley to the West Side. There is not going to be money to expand a clean fleet of buses. There is not going to be money to keep bus fares low-Measure R freezes bus fares for a year and freezes fares for seniors, students, and the disabled for five years. All that goes away without Measure R, and we will be forced to reduce service over time because there won't be money to pay for any of this. Congestion will get worse. The local cities and counties will not have the 15 percent return money to fill potholes or update signals in their cities. We are going to be in a major world of hurt both from a mobility and an air quality standpoint.

Let's transition to a related subject: Metrolink and rail safety. You're Mayor Villaraigosa's point person for Metrolink, which has been the stepchild of transportation funding for years. How does underfunding impact safety?

Before the crash in Chatsworth, Measure R set aside a billion dollars for Metrolink, to be spent on rail safety and expansion of the system. We are learning more and more about Metrolink's needs each day. We appointed a peer review panel, which consists of academics and professionals in the rail transportation field. Their purpose is to take a top-to-bottom look at the Metrolink's rail safety plan to see how we can make it better. We've already put a second set of eyes, a second engineer, on many of our trains. We're going to be installing video and voice recording equipment on the trains. We're looking at adding automatic train stop equipment, which, while it's older technology, can still make our trains safer while we wait for the new generation of positive train control to come online. In fact, just yesterday, the Metro board unanimously approved $5 million for the L.A. County part of Metrolink, in terms of adding the additional automatic train stop equipment.

Down ballot on Nov. 4th is the high-speed rail bond measure. What are your thoughts about this measure? Has the time come for investment in high speed, intercity rail?

I'm not a big fan of the high-speed rail bond measure. I am a high-speed rail fan, but I really believe that from a North/South standpoint, we're probably a technology generation away from making it cheaper and faster. This is a $9 billion bond measure. I've seen estimates at $25 billion to build this, and yet, at the end of the day it's not cheaper than some of the airlines we have going back and forth between the Bay Area and L.A. I have some concerns about it. I have some concerns about using bonding capacity and limited resources. We'd much rather focus on the local solutions to transportation at this point.

Richard, you will be leading a panel at the VerdeXchange Green Marketmakers Conference at January 26th on the greening of goods movement and the ports [verdeXchange.org/conference]. What are your thoughts on the need for investment in "green" infrastructure?

VerdeXchange is an idea that is growing every year and I'm very pleased and honored to be a part of it. The ideas being discussed there represents the type of vision we need in this region.

We need to look at goods movement and remind the country that 40 percent of all the goods that are distributed throughout the U.S. right now come from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Everyone around the country, and Congress, has a vested interest in giving us the resources we need, not to just move goods but to move them in an environmentally sensitive and green fashion.

I'm hoping that the discussion we have at the VerdeXchange conference in January will focus on AB 32, greenhouse gases, and mobility. I think we need to link these issues together and make these investments in a smart way so that we're solving more than one problem at a time.