A MAJOR FEDERAL DEADLINE is coming this fall that could shape what gets built — and how fast — across San Joaquin County: highways, transit projects and freight infrastructure.
U.S. Rep. Josh Harder, D–Tracy, who represents California’s 9th Congressional District, including much of San Joaquin County, brought local business leaders and the Stockton and U.S. Chambers of Commerce to the Port of Stockton on Wednesday to discuss regional infrastructure priorities and delays that could keep projects stalled for years.
The deadline Harder and others emphasized is the expiration of the Federal Surface Transportation program in September, the large package Congress renews periodically that helps fund roads, bridges and transit across the country.
“This is the process whereby all the money is collected when Americans pay the fuel excise tax at the pump, goes to D.C. and then gets redistributed,” said Christopher Guith, senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute. “It’s critically important that we ensure it doesn’t expire and that it’s made even better than it was last time.”
Money helps, but time is the real problem
Harder and Guith argued that even when funding is available, projects can drag on for years in planning and approvals.
That process often includes myriad bureaucratic requirements, which keeps the progress on projects slow, Harder explained, such as permitting, environmental reviews, agency sign-offs and legal steps required before construction can begin.
Guith said highway projects take about seven years to move through federal permitting on average, a timeline that can raise total costs as inflation increases and materials and labor become more expensive.
Delaying projects should be treated as a taxpayer issue, Harder said.
“Delay is just as big a problem as waste, fraud and abuse,” he said. “It is the same waste of taxpayer dollars when it takes projects years and years to actually get built.”
Harder described Stockton as a place where infrastructure decisions have immediate consequences for freight movement, commutes and local air quality.
“Our community is a transportation hub. That’s who we are,” he said, referencing the port, Highway 4, Interstate 5 and commuter traffic over the Altamont Pass. “Infrastructure is not theoretical in our community. It is existential.”
Local projects highlighted
Some of the projects Harder cited are already underway — including the State Route 99/120 connector work led by San Joaquin Council of Governments — while others, like the I-205 Managed Lanes project and Valley Link, are still moving through environmental review and planning, a process Harder said can add years before construction begins.
He pointed to the State Route 99-120 Connector Project as an example of how long projects can take, arguing that planning and permitting stretched on for years.
Harder said he launched a bipartisan caucus of 40 members of Congress called Build America Caucus to push for faster project delivery without weakening environmental or labor standards.
“We’re not just focused on putting money in bank accounts,” Harder said. “We’re focused on putting shovels in the dirt.”
Why the Port of Stockton was the backdrop
Transportation policy affects more than highways, especially for a logistics facility that relies on road, rail and maritime access to move cargo, Port Director Kirk DeJesus said.
“When we think about port, we think of maritime, but we are multimodal,” DeJesus said. “Rail, roads, channels — that all impacts the supply chain.”
The Port of Stockton, California’s most inland seaport, moves more than $1.8 billion in goods and services each year and supports more than 11,000 jobs, DeJesus said.
Tim Quinn, CEO of the Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce, said the roundtable was meant to connect local constraints — from permitting to freight movement — with federal decision-making.
“If we can’t build, if we can’t get affordable or reliable energy, we can’t have the transportation, we can’t move these goods, people can’t get to and from work,” Quinn said. “We can’t have a successful and thriving economy.”
Community impacts: air quality and accountability
Community voices — especially residents most affected by truck traffic and air quality — are included through public meetings and town halls he has held in Stockton, Harder said. Air quality is a consistent concern Harder says he hears from constituents, an issue he understands well, noting his own childhood asthma, and now thinks about as a parent.
“One of the things that we’ve prioritized in this process is trying to make sure that we are investing in those clean air measures,” Harder said, arguing that transit projects like Valley Link — a proposed passenger rail line connecting the northern San Joaquin Valley to the Bay Area’s public transit system BART — could reduce vehicle trips, while port investments could reduce truck traffic over the Altamont Pass.
Harder also highlighted federal investments aimed at moving the Port of Stockton toward “clean energy, zero emissions.”
The port was awarded more than $29 million through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Ports grant with regional partners, funding DeJesus said will allow the port to electrify cargo-handling equipment to near 100% — up from about 40% currently — a level he described as leading in the state.
As questions of accountability came up, DeJesus outlined how the port plans to track whether clean-port dollars translate into measurable emissions reductions in nearby neighborhoods.
DeJesus said the port has monitoring stations around the facility, including in the Boggs Tract neighborhood, and conducts annual emissions inventories to track progress.
Among the upgrades DeJesus described, solar installations will support electrification, and there will be zero-emissions rail car movers and a “bonnet capture system,” which he said filters diesel exhaust from ships while they sit idle.
“That means putting a bonnet capture system over the diesel exhaust, and we filter that and then put the air back in,” DeJesus said. “So, it basically just cleans the air.”
The funding question behind the deadline
Guith also pointed to a longer-term challenge: the surface transportation program relies heavily on gas taxes, and as vehicles become more fuel efficient and more electric, less money flows into the system even as infrastructure needs persist.
Harder said Congress should keep transportation funding stable and shorten the approval process so projects move faster from planning to construction.
With San Joaquin County continuing to grow, he said the region needs infrastructure that keeps up.
“What we need to do next is accommodate that growth by building the housing, the energy projects, and most of all the infrastructure to make sure that folks can live high quality lives across our area,” Harder said.
This story originally appeared in Stocktonia.
