A freeway does not stop at a city boundary, and neither does a bus route, a bike path or a housing market. San Diego County has 18 cities, one county government and 17 federally recognized tribal nations, and the problems of moving people around the region cannot be solved by any one of them. The agency that exists to coordinate that work is the San Diego Association of Governments, known everywhere as SANDAG.
What is SANDAG?
SANDAG is a regional government agency whose members are the 18 cities and the County of San Diego. It serves a region of more than 3.3 million people that stretches from the Pacific coast to the desert and from the Orange County line to the border with Mexico. Because it shares a border with Mexico, the agency’s planning has a binational dimension that most American metropolitan regions do not have.
The agency holds several formal designations, and each comes with legal responsibilities. It is the region’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is the body federal law requires to approve transportation plans and spending in a metropolitan area, and its Regional Transportation Planning Agency, which does the same under state law. It also serves as the region’s council of governments, a forum where local governments take up shared issues such as housing, and it is the region’s toll authority.
How is it governed?
SANDAG is run by a Board of Directors made up of elected officials, specifically members of the 18 city councils and the County Board of Supervisors. Representatives of partner agencies, such as the transit operators, the Port of San Diego, the airport authority and tribal governments, sit as advisory members without a vote.
That arrangement is deliberate: the people who make decisions at SANDAG are the same officials who must answer to voters in their own cities. It also has consequences. The board has to balance the interests of the region’s largest city, which has the bulk of the population, against those of smaller cities that want equal standing. The agency’s voting rules, which weigh population in addition to giving each member a voice, grew out of that tension and have been reformed by the state legislature in the past.
The board delegates a good deal of its early work to policy advisory committees, and their recommendations are subject to ratification by the full board.
What does the Regional Plan contain?
The agency’s signature document is the Regional Plan, which it updates every four years. The plan is a long-range blueprint covering transportation, infrastructure, land use, housing and environmental needs. It lays out which highway, transit, rail, bike and pedestrian projects the region expects to build over decades, how they will be paid for, and how the region plans to meet state requirements for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks.
The plan matters because federal and state transportation money flows to projects that appear in it. A project that is not in the plan is much harder to fund. That gives the plan real influence over where new rail lines, bus lanes and highway lanes are built, and it explains why public hearings on it draw a mix of transit advocates, highway supporters, housing groups, environmental organizations and business associations.
What is TransNet?
TransNet is a half-cent local sales tax dedicated to transportation. San Diego County voters first approved it in 1987 and renewed it in 2004, and SANDAG administers the revenue. TransNet money is divided among highway improvements, local street and road maintenance, transit projects and environmental mitigation, with a portion going to the cities and county for local needs. Because it is locally controlled, it also serves as the match that allows the region to compete for state and federal grants.
The tax carries an oversight structure, including an independent taxpayer oversight committee, and the money must be spent in line with the plan voters approved. Any change to the broad categories would generally require another vote.
A related point is that the environmental mitigation program, which buys and protects habitat to offset the effects of transportation projects, is one of the less visible uses of TransNet. It lets project builders meet environmental rules with advance planning rather than case by case.
What does SANDAG build and operate?
Besides planning and funding, SANDAG builds and runs some infrastructure directly:
- The SR 125 toll road in the South Bay, which the agency operates.
- The Interstate 15 Express Lanes, a set of managed lanes where drivers can pay a toll to use less congested lanes.
- Regional data and technical services, including population and employment forecasts and travel surveys, that cities and agencies use for their own planning.
- Capital projects, including rail and highway work, that are designed and delivered as a group of agencies share costs.
The agency does not run day-to-day bus and Trolley service. That is the job of the transit operators, notably the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, whose lines are described in riding the Trolley and buses. SANDAG’s role is to plan the corridors and help pay for them, while operators run the service.
How is SANDAG different from the city and county?
The city of San Diego, covered in how city government is organized, controls local land use and local streets. The county government, discussed in what the Board of Supervisors controls, handles health and social services and land use in unincorporated areas. SANDAG does not replace either one. Its authority comes from the member governments and from state and federal law, and its main powers are to plan, to allocate certain funds, and to build and operate a few regional facilities.
Housing is the area where that distinction gets most interesting. As the region’s council of governments, SANDAG assigns each city and the county a share of the housing the state expects the region to plan for. Cities then have to show in their own plans how they will make room for that housing. Where a project is built remains a local decision, but the numbers that frame the debate come from the regional level.
What role do the border and tribal nations play?
Two features set San Diego’s regional planning apart from most U.S. metropolitan regions. The first is the border: freight, commuters and shoppers cross between San Diego County and Baja California every day, and roads and ports of entry on the American side have to be planned with that traffic in mind. SANDAG works with Caltrans, federal agencies and Mexican counterparts on binational corridors, a topic explored in how the San Ysidro crossing works. The second is tribal government. The county has more federally recognized tribes than any other county in the country, and their lands sit inside the region’s road network, so tribal governments take part in the planning process as sovereign partners rather than as ordinary stakeholders.
Why it matters to residents
Most people notice SANDAG only when something goes wrong or something is announced, such as a tolled lane, a new rail line or a funding fight. Its less visible work shapes the daily experience of the region: how long a commute takes, where buses run, which neighborhoods get bike lanes, and whether growth is directed toward transit.
Public meetings of the board and its committees are open, with agendas posted in advance, and the Regional Plan process includes comment periods. For a resident who wants to influence a project, the plan is the place to start, because it is where the region decides what to build and in what order.
Sources: San Diego Association of Governments; San Diego Metropolitan Transit System; California Department of Transportation
