In pressing local residents to support the continuation of Measure I, county and local municipal officials are omitting disclosure of what is perhaps the San Bernardino County Transportation Agency’s deepest and most untoward secret: the substantial and continuing debt the entity took on from immediately after the measure’s taxing authority was approved by county residents 37 years ago.
San Bernardino Associated Governments, known as SANBAG, was created in 1973 as San Bernardino County’s council of governments and its regional planning agency. It subsequently took on the role of the county’s transportation agency overseeing freeway construction projects, regional and local road improvements, train and bus transportation, railroad crossings, call boxes, ridesharing, congestion management efforts, freeway service patrols and emergency freeway service, and continued to serve as the county’s council of governments. In 1989 a collection of local municipal and county officials proposed placing before the county’s voters a half-cent sales tax override, the proceeds from which were to be used to finance transportation improvements countywide. When the voters approved the measure, SANBAG was entrusted with the administration of that funding.
Rather than bank the money coming in through the half cent sales tax until enough money accrued to undertake transportation improvement projects, San Bernardino Associated Governments’ board, consisting of a representative of what were then the county’s 21 cities and single incorporated town plus the five members of the board of supervisors, elected to bond against the future revenue from Measure I and utilize the proceeds from those bond sales to initiate projects at once. This was done because many of those politicians who made up the SANBAG board had been Measure I advocates, and they wanted to be able to make a show of having achieved results with regard to transportation infrastructure improvements in their follow-on reelection efforts. While this doubtless generally redounded to those politicians’ own personal political benefit in helping them obtain reelection, it cut into the amount of actual money available for transportation improvement projects, as it initiated debt service requirements for the bonds that were issued. That indebtedness persists until the present, nearly 37 years after Measure I’s passage and 18 years after the 2004 passage of a Measure I taxing authority extension. Instead of Measure I revenue being devoted entirely to paying for transportation-related undertakings, a substantial portion of the tax revenue is perpetually dedicated to paying the interest on the bonds issued in advance of that money’s coming in.
In 2017, San Bernardino Associated Governments – SANBAG – was rebranded as the San Bernardino County Transportation Agency or SBCTA
According to SBCTA, Measure I generates approximately $250 million a year in revenue. According to SBCTA’s annual comprehensive financial report, in 2025 SBCTA had $150,856,407 in outstanding bond indebtedness.
Over the years, projects funded with Measure I money have included ones at various spots throughout far-flung San Bernardino County. Among them have been the I-15/I-215 Interchange; creating a high occupancy lane from Haven Avenue in Rancho Cucamonga to Ford Avenue in Redlands on the I-10 Freeway; improvements to the Cherry Avenue exits and onramps; the I-10/Live Oak Canyon Interchange; the I-10/Riverside Avenue Interchange; SR-60/Euclid Avenue ramp improvements; I-10/Cherry Avenue, I-10/Citrus Avenue, I-10/Tippecanoe Avenue, I-15/Duncan Canyon, I-15/La Mesa Road/Nisqualli Road and I-15/Ranchero Road interchange improvements; fixes to the I-10/Cedar Avenue onramps and offramps in Bloomington and the SR-210/Baseline Road entrances and exits in Highland; improvements to freeway and road articulation involving SR-60/Central Avenue in Chino, I-10/University Street in Redlands, I-215/University Parkway in the City of San Bernardino, I-10/Alabama Street in Redlands, I-15/Baseline Road in Rancho Cucamonga, SR-60/Archibald Avenue in Ontario, I-10/Monte Vista Avenue in Montclair and I-10/Pepper Avenue in Colton. SANBAG and SBCTA were involved, as well, with Metrolink service as part of the Downtown San Bernardino Passenger Rail Project; the sbX articulated bus project running from near the VA Hospital in Loma Linda to Cal State San Bernardino; renovations to the historic Santa Fe Depot Building in San Bernardino where the board for SANBAG and now SBCTA held and hold their meetings, the Redlands Passenger Rail Project to provide service between the San Bernardino Transit Center and the University of Redlands on the existing cargo rail line between the two cities; Omnitrans bus operations, the Mountain/Desert bus transit lines; rail line improvements generally; Victor Valley Transit Authority bus operations; Morongo Valley Transit bus operations; planning and engineering preparation for the extension of the Gold Line from Azusa to Montclair; grade separation/overpass or underpass projects at Palm Avenue in the City of San Bernardino and the County of San Bernardino, Laurel Avenue in Colton, Hunts Lane straddling the cities of San Bernardino and Colton, Milliken Avenue in Ontario, 9th Street in Colton, Monte Vista in Montclair, North Vineyard Avenue in Rancho Cucamonga and Glen Helen Parkway near Devore; the Lenwood Grade Separation near Barstow, including preliminary engineering; the Barstow First Avenue Bridge; the Yucca Loma Road Widening in Apple Valley; the Needles Connector Project; improvements to Yates Road, Baker Boulevard and Park Boulevard in the county’s unincorporated areas; signalization on Lear Avenue in Twentynine Palms; improvements at Green Tree Boulevard/I-215 in Victorville; the bi-county gap closure near the I-215 Barton Road Interchange; I-215 Corridor widening; State Route 210 construction; SR 210 lane addition widening; I-15 Express Lanes (South of SR-60 to SR-210); the I-10 Corridor Project; the I-10 truck climbing Lane; I-10 express lanes; Metro Link stations or parking lots in Rialto, Rancho Cucamonga, and Upland; the Control Point Lilac to Control Point Rancho Double Track from Rialto to San Bernardino; Sierra Avenue Metrolink grade crossing pedestrian improvements and Juniper Avenue Metrolink grade crossing pedestrian improvements in Fontana; the Zanja Bridge removal near the intersection of North Lincoln Street and Sylvan Boulevard in Redlands; and the West Valley Connector Project, a 33.5-mile-long bus rapid transit project with limited stops, running from Pomona to Montclair, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, and Fontana. SANBAG and SBCTA have also supported the Mountain Area Regional Transit Authority, also known as Mountain Transit, the bus and shuttle transit service operator in the San Bernardino Mountains area of the county.
One of the more controversial of SBCTA’s undertakings is the I-10 Express Lanes project, consisting of two lanes on the eastbound I-10 Freeway from Montclair to Rancho Cucamonga and two lanes on the westbound I-10 Freeway from Rancho Cucamonga to Montclair. All four lanes are legally accessible only to cars whose drivers pay a toll to use them. Enforcement of this requirement is effectuated through videography of the cars using it and checking the vehicles’ license plates against a database of vehicles whose owners have paid tolls.
When the project was initially proposed, SBCTA officials justified transforming the space on the federal highway right-of-way into toll lane by saying that the lanes were being constructed by a private company investing in the project and that the tolls were a means of recompensing the company for the improvement. Subsequently, however, the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority’s story changed and the agency now acknowledges that the I-10 Express Lanes, which opened in August 2024, were constructed with $929.2 million coming directly from SBCTA, the California Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans and the federal government.
Who gets the revenue from the toll lanes on I-10 from Montclair to Rancho cucamonga?
In their first 12 months of operation, the toll lanes generated $19 million in revenue, according to SBCTA, which maintains that the toll proceeds are used to pay for the maintenance of the lanes along with servicing the debt on a $225 million federal loan used to finance a roughly 24.21 percent of the construction.
This has caused some county residents to cry foul, as the tolls are, they say, tantamount to a quintuple tax. Local residents and all of those paying to use the toll lanes have already paid for them, given that the toll roads themselves were constructed in the middle of the freeway, which had been paid for with federal, state and local taxpayer funds some six to seven decades previously when the 10-Freeway was constructed during the Eisenhower Administration. In addition, the county’s taxpayers approved and extended the Measure I taxing authority. Those who make daily or less regular commutes on the I-10 Freeway have shared in paying the Measure I tax. Furthermore, SBCTA, like SANBAG before it, was a recipient of state and federal grants, money that had originated with American taxpayers all across the fruited plain, including Californians and ones in San Bernardino County. What’s more, California motorists who purchase gasoline in the state are subject to a gas tax that at 68.1 cents per gallon is the highest in the United States, making gasoline purchased in the Golden State more expense than fuel purchased elsewhere in the country. Now, in addition to those four layers of taxation, commuters using the toll lanes on their drive on the 10 Freeway through Montclair, Upland, Ontario and into Rancho Cucamonga must pay an additional fee – a fifth tax.
Some of those aware of how much Measure I is being eaten up by interest payments debt servicing the bonds issued against future Measure I revenue have pointed out that there would be no need for toll charges to use the freeway if the county’s politicians originally in charge of SANBAG and now heading SBCTA had exercised self-discipline and had waited to fill in SANBAG’s/SBCTA’s coffers with the Measure I proceeds and adopted a pay-as-you-go approach to financing projects rather than borrowing the agency into a position of monstrous debt. Among some county residents, there is a desire that the current SBCTA board would have the courage to discontinue ongoing and planned projects long enough to retire all past debt and thereupon reinitiate transportation project planning, adopting a pay as you go approach to avoid in the future having the county’s taxpayers continuously behind the eight ball and having to debt service past projects.
Those city officials and county officials in office now, however, are not willing to take that approach and rather want to continue with ongoing transportation projects to make a show of accomplishment with their constituents to enhance their electability.
For that reason, the widespread number of current municipal and county officeholders, in making their recommendations to the county’s voters to support the continuation of the Measure I taxing authority have celebrated what has been accomplished with Measure I’s generation of revenue, have called upon the voters to renew the taxing authority and have let it go at that.
They have confined themselves to saying, for example “While the demand for transportation far exceeds the ability of Measure I to raise funds, can you imagine San Bernardino County without it? or “Just look at the positive results the Measure I investment has had in our county!”
-Mark Gutglueck