Senate Bill 1 is a landmark transportation bill adopted in 2017 that will provide over $50 billion in new transportation funding over the next decade to repair highways, bridges and local roads, to make strategic investments in congested commute and freight corridors, and to improve transit service. The State of Good Repair Program provides approximately $105 million annually to transit operators in California for capital projects. The Program is funded under a portion of the new Transportation Improvement fee on vehicle registrations due on or after January 1, 2018. The Program investments will benefit the public by providing transportation agencies with a consistent and dependable revenue source to invest in the upgrade, repair and improvement of transit infrastructure, and in turn improvement of transit service.
As a transportation planning agency, the Transportation Agency is an eligible recipient of Program funds for Monterey County, and can act as a lead agency on eligible projects or as a “contributing agency” that can pass funds to MST to support an eligible project. Program funds are allocated to regional transportation planning agencies and to transit operators using the State Transit Assistance distribution formula, which allocates funding to transportation planning agencies based on population and to transit operators based on transit operator revenues. The Transportation Agency’s allocation of Program funds is $587,602 and MST’s allocation is $184,661 for a Monterey County total of $772,263.
Staff recommends that the Transportation Agency act as a "contributing sponsor" and release its FY 2017/18 State of Good Repair allocation to MST to support a future bus procurement that will replace old diesel buses that have met their useful life (Attachment 1). This action also authorizes the Executive Director to sign and submit required documentation to Caltrans (Attachment 2).