Arnold grabs a TRANNY

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger got himself a TRANNY. Nope, it doesn’t mean what you think—TRANNYs are the awards given to those honored by the California Transportation Foundation for their significant contributions to Golden State transportation. For the most part, those contributions involve making or repairing roads for cars to drive on. At the 18th annual TRANNY Awards luncheon, sponsored by businesses such as Caltrop Corp. (a construction and project-management company), HDR (another construction-management company), and Lehman Brothers (a financial-services company), honors went overwhelmingly to projects involving the construction and retrofitting of traditional roads.

The governor was honored as TRANNY Person of the Year for his tireless work on behalf of 2006’s Propositions 1A and 1B, two of the infrastructure-bond measures that provided ongoing funds for major road projects. A major complaint about these two measures was the failure to include funding for alternatives to automobile transportation.

That lack of alternatives doesn’t seem to bother the CTF, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded to provide support for injured transportation workers and memorial funds for transportation workers killed on the job. Only two TRANNYs went to transportation projects that don’t involve cars. The Bicycle/Pedestrian Project of the Year Award went to the Laguna Woods Multi-Modal Trail System, which will make it possible for senior citizens to drive golf carts between two shopping centers and a residential community (wheelchairs, scooters, bikes and pedestrians are OK, too). The Planning Program of the Year Award went to the city of Lincoln for its Neighborhood Electric Vehicle Transportation Plan. Lincoln will provide special NEV lanes on some streets so that residents of Sun City Lincoln Hills can drive their electric wheels downtown.

Meanwhile, the governor’s May budget revise continues to cut funds from such alternative transportation modes as bus and light rail, while he remains insistent that he’s a “green” guy. What a drag.