The California Legislature enacted the Transportation Development Act (TDA) of 1971 to improve existing public transportation services and encourage regional transportation coordination. Caltrans administers the TDA through each county's regional transportation planning agency. As the regional transportation planning agency for Monterey County, the Transportation Agency is responsible for administering the county's TDA funds, which includes authorizing funding to local transportation agencies for the purposes outlined in the Act, and conducting an annual unmet transit needs assessment.
The Transportation Development Act provides two major sources of funding for public transportation in California. The first, the Local Transportation Fund is derived from a 1/4 cent of the general sales tax collected statewide. The second, the State Transit Assistance fund is derived from the statewide sales tax on diesel fuel.
The Transportation Agency submits transit performance audits to the state every three years pursuant to the Transportation Development Act. The performance audits evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness, as defined in the Caltrans Performance Audit Guidebook, of Monterey-Salinas Transit, which is the county's sole public transit provider, and TAMC, which serves as the Local Transportation Fund administrator.
Generally, the audits review each operator's financial and operating reports to determine compliance with state operating requirements. The audit also determines compliance with administrative requirements, including timely submittal of required financial documentation, farebox recovery requirements, and a review of operating costs among other indicators. Any recommendations to correct findings identified in the audits, or improvements needed by each operator to enhance the performance and cost-effectiveness of their respective transit services must be implemented in the next three-year audit period.
The Transportation Agency and Monterey-Salinas Transit have satisfactorily complied with applicable performance measures. Copies of the complete TAMC and MST audits are available for review as web attachments to this report.
The audit recommendations for the Transportation Agency are listed below:
1. Work with Monterey-Salinas Transit (MST) to add the calculation of farebox recovery in the MST annual financial audit.
2. Coordinate with MST to conform composition of the Mobility Advisory Committee with statutory provisions of the Social Service Transportation Advisory Council.
3. Develop baseline metrics for the transportation demand management (GO831) program.
The audit recommendations for Monterey-Salinas Transit are listed below:
1. Include calculation of farebox recovery in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.
2. Consider procurement and implementation of enterprise asset management software.
The Transportation Agency expects to implement the recommendations to enhance the existing administration and management of the Transportation Development Act funds in the next fiscal year.