The state’s expanding cap-and-trade program
Southern California leaders are anticipating a $2 billion windfall in transportation dollars from the state’s expanding cap-and-trade program that could be used for building more pay lanes or funding the county’s growing bus and rail system.
As dollars from the gasoline tax drop, transportation planners will turn to polluters — including oil companies — who will begin to pay into the state’s cap-and-trade program in 2015 set up in a market-based exchange.
The program was part of the state’s AB 32 laws passed in 2006 to substantially reduce greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
State officials predict the cap-and-trade fund will grow from about $1 billion to $5 billion next year, when oil companies begin to pay for carbon emissions. Of that, about 40 percent would flow to transportation for everything from a rail line into LAX, to light-rail across the foothills to Claremont to pay lanes on the 105, 134, 5 and 405 freeways.
“This is huge,” said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments. “This is the only new source of transportation funding we have.” Ikhrata was part of 1,000 leaders from seven Southern California counties who came here Friday to discuss transportation solutions as part of an annual Mobility 21 Summit.