Last Saturday I attended a lunch to thank Rep. Ellen Tauscher for her work securing $36 million in federal tax dollars to widen Highway 4 in eastern Contra Costa.

I presented her with a replica of the thank you signs Finish4Now.com posted to celebrate this historic accomplishment.

Again, thank you – Ellen Tauscher.

The Contra Costa Times published a very timely editorial today urging California’s Senators (Boxer and Feinstein) to support Highway 4 funding .  They can do that by ensuring that Rep. Ellen Tauscher’s $20 million earmark for the project survives the conference committee process – now expected to finalize the highway bill this week.

Read the editorial on the Time’s website.

Or- if – in the future – the link has expired – visit the Finish4Now website and look under Progress Updates.

Thank you, Contra Costa Times.

We have a tremendous opportunity in the next few months to make substantial progress on completing Highway 4 in eastern Contra Costa County.

The Congress is debating, and hopefully deciding, federal transportation funding for the next five to six years.  Representative Ellen Tauscher has already “earmarked” $20 million from the bill for the project.  However a strong, broad-based effort may enable us to get more federal funding – maybe even enough to finish 4 now.  Transportation experts estimate that $90 million would finish 4 to Hillcrest Road in Antioch and $140 million would finish 4 completely!   Local residents are already contributing to the project by paying an extra half-cent sales tax and new homebuyers in East County pay $8,500+ per house in a regionally adopted impact fee.  Even better – the project has completed all its environmental clearances so federal funding would “hit the ground” so to speak very quickly and help our local and regional economy.  Win-win-win.

Visit the Finish4Now website and sign-up to stay informed and do your part by letting our federal and state officials know you support their efforts to finish Highway 4 now.

Erin Hallissy writes about "The Nastiest Commute" in today’s San Francisco Chronicle covering the Census Bureau’s study of average commute times in various regions of the country.  The bureau claims the average commute in Contra Costa is 32.1 minutes and that about 5 percent of us spend up to 90 minutes getting to work.  Erin quotes a number of residents who are skeptical of the numbers.

I know our traffic congestion is politically intolerable.  But what would have happened if job centers had not decentralized throughout the Bay Area over the past 30 years?  If all or most of the jobs had stayed in Oakland or San Francisco wouldn’t things be far worse? 

P.J. O’Rourke has written a piece about the Transportation funding bill that passed the House last week.  It’s called "Mass Transit Hysteria" and it humorously calls into question whether anyone bothers to do cost/benefit analysis anymore.  I know,  long-term consequences – but come on.  Maybe life is now too complicated to balance resources against priorities – or to even set priorities.