California State Senate

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For social media coverage of California's statewide transportation issues, follow Melanie @currymel on Twitter or like the Streetsblog California Facebook page.

A coalition of bike and pedestrian advocates are inviting organizations to sign on to a letter [PDF] asking the state legislature to recommend allocating $50 million of the state's cap-and-trade revenue towards the Active Transportation Program. Currently, none of the $850 million in cap-and-trade funds are allocated specifically for walking and bicycling in this year's budget.

Doubts about the High Speed Rail Authority's ability to fund its estimated $68 billion program dominated last week's Senate Transportation and Housing Committee hearing (see the background report in this PDF). Committee Chair Senator Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said he was “somewhat skeptical” about the Authority's 2014 Draft Business Plan and questioned CAHSRA CEO Jeff Morales on the authority's reliance on uncertain funding sources.

A series of hearings in Sacramento have been revisiting California's Global Warming Solutions Act, Assembly Bill (A.B.) 32, which calls for a statewide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) to 1990 levels by 2020. Two recent hearings have opened discussions of Governor Jerry Brown's proposed spending plan for the revenue received so far from the state's cap-and-trade program, implemented as part of A.B. 32, and another recent Senate hearing discussed the program's impacts to date.

It was the California State Assembly's turn to review the recent State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI) report on Caltrans at a Transportation Committee hearing Monday.

The deadline to introduce new bills to the California legislature was Friday, so a slew of new legislation is currently being assigned to committees for hearing. Some of them are so-called “spot” bills, as in “hold a spot in line for me, bub,” containing a bare minimum of information, with the plan being to shape them in legislative discussion. All of them are likely to be amended before reaching a vote, and they must go through two voting processes (one in each house) before being passed on to the governor to be signed. Meanwhile, they give some clues about what our lawmakers are thinking about.

CA Senator Darrell Steinberg proposed a change yesterday to California's nascent cap-and-trade program that would replace next year's cap on fuel emissions with a per-gallon carbon tax. Steinberg called it a “broader, more stable, and more flexible” way to reduce emissions from fuels than cap-and-trade.

With a recent report calling out the need for Caltrans to focus less on building highways and more on letting cities build people-friendly streets, state legislators have an eye trained on the agency's progress towards reform.