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Meeting the moment after the 2024 elections

We are heading towards a budgetary cliff on a transportation program that has failed to deliver on every one of its promises, from congestion and emissions reduction to improved safety and access to work. Strong leadership is needed to ensure our transportation system is able to meet the needs of average Americans.

The Biden Administration championed and delivered to us the 2021 surface transportation reauthorization, a massive investment in U.S. transportation that the administration claimed would modernize our infrastructure and address environmental concerns. As we wrote in our report Fueling the Crisis, this law failed to achieve its goals.

Traffic, emissions, and safety for people walking all worsened over the first half of this federal investment, and the next reauthorization will likely face the biggest budgetary cliff the program has ever seen. Before we discuss how to fill the coffers, we need a totally new approach to transportation investment and strong, visionary leadership to help turn these trends around.

The 47th president, Donald J. Trump, fashions himself as a disruptor. The transportation system is in need of disruption, as the current approach has failed the American people for decades. Taxpayers are driving further to accomplish less, and if they are unable to drive, they have few (if any) alternate options for travel.

However, if the president’s idea of disruption is to return us to the 1950s and 60s, his efforts will not be useful or effective. Stripping our transportation system down to the 1956 highway bill is no strategy to modernize our system to meet the needs of the day. Instead, this wasteful approach would only further entrench a system that is already failing to deliver for the American people.

The success of local ballot measures confirms what we have always known: everyday Americans need and desire a transportation system that safely and conveniently gets them where they need to go. Across the nation, voters made their voices heard on traffic safety, state of good repair, and above all, the need for more transportation options. Now, as always, we stand ready to support their goals, and we hope that Congress and the Trump Administration will be ready to do the same.

Voters across America show support for more transportation options

Throughout the United States, various measures for funding transportation improvements were approved, advancing efforts to invest in the rest at the local level.

An electric Central Ohio bus arrives at a stop with a nearby bikeshare station
Columbus, Ohio voters supported funding for improved bus service in the recent election. (Central Ohio Transit Authority)

In addition to the presidential, Senate, and House races that occurred during this tumultuous election cycle, American voters recently decided on a variety of transportation and housing measures for their communities. (See our recent post on success for transit in Nashville here.) No matter the outcome of the federal elections, these measures represent a desire to invest in the rest of our transportation system and secure more travel options. Here are four major highlights from the many measures that were voted for around the country.

Columbus, Ohio

Issue 47 raises the sales tax for the Central Ohio Transportation Authority (COTA) from 0.5% to 1% in order to fund LinkUs. The plan calls for 45% more bus service, the creation of five bus rapid transit (BRT) lines to create faster and more efficient bus service. This includes dedicated lanes, priority at signals, and 14 new bus routes. The plan would also provide eight new COTA//Plus zones, which provide subsidized rideshare in neighborhoods of Columbus without bus service.

Money from the new sales tax will also be used for pedestrian infrastructure to support walkable neighborhoods near the new transit lines. LinkUs will create opportunity and access for Columbus, which is expected to grow to over three million residents by 2050.

Durham, North Carolina

The Durham Streets and Sidewalk Measure authorizes the city to issue $115 million in bonds for street and sidewalk projects. This money will be used in a variety of projects, such as adding 12.4 miles of sidewalk, repaving an estimated 100 miles of streetscape, and continuing an ongoing project to pave the remaining 10.5 miles of unpaved streets in Durham. The success of this measure shows that voters in cities like Durham understand that fixing it first is vital to support a well-functioning transportation network.

A yellow line metro train arrives at an underground station
WMATA Yellow Line at L’Enfant Plaza Station. (Photo by author: Maxwell Reinisch, Transportation for America)

Fairfax County and Arlington County, Virginia

Both the Fairfax County and Arlington County transportation bond measures provide millions of dollars of bonds for public transit. Fairfax County provided $180 million in bonds for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) to assist with capital costs of acquiring land for transportation facilities, new train cars, and more. Arlington County also provided $72 million in bonds, including $44.3 million in funds for WMATA capital improvements, $22 million for improving local streets, and $1.5 million for sidewalk and curb maintenance, and $1.3 million for street lighting and miscellaneous transportation projects.

WMATA has made great strides in recovering ridership since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and these funds will allow WMATA to keep providing frequent, reliable service throughout DC and its surrounding counties.

Denver, Colorado and surrounding counties

Measure 7A allows the Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) to collect and reinvest revenue from sales tax above the originally approved levels in 1999. Removing the limits from decades prior allows the RTD to continue to improve service for the Denver Metropolitan Area for the three million residents in Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, and Jefferson Counties as well as portions of Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas, and Weld Counties, which rely on RTD’s bus, light rail, and regional rail lines.

Why it matters

Municipalities around the country voted to invest in the rest in this last election, including funding for a more balanced transportation system that designs streets for safety over the speed of private automobiles.

While not every transit or transportation investment measure was passed, the majority were approved by voters. And where transportation measures failed, like in Charleston County’s Special Sales and Use Tax ballot measure, voters rejected funding for projects that would have gone to a highway expansion and negatively impacted the local environment.

It is important to acknowledge the progress that forward thinking communities in the country have made towards making our transportation system more equitable and sustainable for everyone. When determining how to support our nation’s transportation system, we hope that the incoming administration takes note of these trends.

What’s inside presidential candidates’ transportation plans?

Our director Beth Osborne often jokes that transportation is the first agenda item on politicians’ second to-do list—which is why it never gets done. Most presidential candidates are no different, advocating for business-as-usual transportation funding or embedding transportation across multiple plans.  Here’s what’s in them. 

Photo of an Amy Klobuchar campaign event in Des Moines by Phil Roeder on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

At Transportation for America, we believe that transportation shouldn’t play second fiddle. Rethinking transportation policy has enormous potential to solve so many of our problems, from economic inequality to climate change. But transportation is consistently glazed over by our political leaders. 

Which is why we ranked leading presidential candidates on how well their platforms meet T4America’s three guiding principles for transportation policy: prioritizing maintenance, safety over speed, and access to jobs and services.

But before we begin: If any campaign wants to reboot their transportation platform, give us a ring—we are happy to help! 

Donald Trump: Fail

Our 45th president is under the false impression that the private sector will “gift” government money to fix our infrastructure. But it will never happen. 

Both President Trump’s proposed infrastructure package and the Senate bill that POTUS endorsed during the most recent State of the Union—America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act—fails to achieve our three principles. Billions of new dollars for the existing, broken transportation program with no call to use those funds on repair first, address the unsafe design objectives of the main highway program or measure how well the transportation program connects people to jobs and services.  This failure to address the major flaws of the underlying program overshadow the Senate bill’s notable new programs, like a climate title and Complete Streets requirements. 

We appreciate that President Trump tried to eliminate the funding silos between modes and infrastructure categories and shake up the transportation program. But his administration’s hostility to transit has slowed the release of transit grants and resulted in a $500 million cut to the critical Capital Investment Grants program—the main source of federal funding to build and expand transit around the country. If President Trump wants to make a difference in transportation, he needs to grapple with the fact that transportation investment will require public dollars.

Joe Biden: Fail

Former Vice-President Joe Biden’s plan is business-as-usual. Under his infrastructure plan, federal transportation policy sticks to its storied role as a pass-through program to states and transportation departments, with no real accountability for how the money is spent. 

His plan talks about the importance of repairing roads and bridges, but there’s nothing in the proposal to guarantee that it happens. As we learned in our report Repair Priorities, many states spend more on road expansion than maintenance—which is completely legal and would continue to be kosher under the Biden proposal. 

To his credit, Biden tries to make up for the emissions and economic damage wrought by the baseline program by funding some side projects—like transit, passenger rail, and Complete Streets. But layering good programs on top of a program that causes the problems isn’t smart policy. 

Lastly, Biden’s plan makes no mention of measuring the success of the transportation program by improving people’s access to jobs and services, which is why he flunks on access.

Michael Bloomberg: Pass

There’s a lot to like in Michael Bloomberg’s infrastructure plan. The former New York City mayor is the only candidate who leads with updating and improving the structure of the transportation program itself—not just pouring more money into a broken system. He calls out the transportation program’s total lack of goals and his proposes assessing how transportation projects improve “connectivity to jobs, equity, accessibility, development efficiency, health and environmental effects,” according to his plan. 

Additionally, Bloomberg’s plan spends a lot of time detailing the importance of street design in ensuring safety for all road users, which is why he passes our safety metric. He specifically sets a safety goal of saving 20,000 lives by 2025 “by adopting safe street designs, lowering speed limits and implementing other measures.” Setting goals for improved safety at all is a step forward, as there is no federal requirement for states to set safety targets that actually call for fewer fatalities than currently occur in a state. 

We’re not thrilled that his first priority is to “fix congestion and bottlenecks.” Oftentimes people interpret this as widening highways; but as many of us know, widening highways only makes traffic worse. However, his proposal calls for addressing congestion by repairing roads and bridges as well as expanding transit.

Pete Buttigieg: Pass

Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg would make big changes to the formulas at the heart of the transportation program. His plan would require states plan for maintenance before they’re allowed to build new or wider highways with federal funding. Requiring maintenance before expansion earns Buttigieg a ✓ by our standards.

Pete’s plan calls for instituting a national Vision Zero plan, which is radical for a country where states are allowed to set targets for pedestrian fatalities above the actual number of deaths. He would require that states “actively improve their safety records or road design processes, or else lose federal funding for other roadway projects,” according to his plan. 

Lastly, Mayor Pete’s plan scores high on access. He would require that states, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), and any other recipient of federal transportation funding demonstrate how projects improve access to jobs and services. That is key: requiring progress towards goals—and even setting goals—in order to receive funding is common sense. Sadly, it is not a feature of our current transportation program. 

Pete’s plan is similar to Bloomberg’s. The big difference is in how he communicates it: Buttigieg leads with funding, not what he’d do with the transportation program. We think this is a bad way to do policy. After all, in what other policy area (or facet of life, for that matter) do people tell you the price before they tell you what they’re selling? 

What isn’t clear is how funding will be shifted between modes, if at all. With a President Pete, are we still in a world where highways get 80 percent of the funding pie, leaving only 20 percent for transit? 

Elizabeth Warren: Fail

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s transportation “platform” leaves a lot to be desired. Her campaign lacks a dedicated transportation plan, embedding the proposal within other policy platforms. 

Similar to Biden, Warren proposes new grant programs designed to fix the problems caused by the traditional federal transportation program, but it doesn’t call for fixing the the program itself. She includes additional funding to electrify our vehicle fleet, but there is no mention of creating safe streets for all users and improving access for non-drivers so that people can emit less by using more efficient modes (while having more equitable, affordable access to economic opportunity).

We admire the creative thinking behind Senator Warren’s “Build Green” program, which is modeled off of USDOT’s successful TIGER program (before the Trump administration watered it down and renamed it BUILD). But without changing our current transportation program—one that builds highways we don’t need while our infrastructure crumbles—Warren’s plan wouldn’t bring about the transformation we need.

Bernie Sanders: Fail

Senator Sanders’ platform includes so much money.

But as we have learned time and time again: more money won’t solve our transportation problems. The problem is what we’re funding, not how much. In fact, more money might make the problem worse. 

Sanders’ plan includes $75 billion for the Highway Trust fund “to improve roads, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure,” based off of high 2015 Rebuild America Act. But there are no assurances in the proposal that this money would be dedicated to repair first. We know that when states are not required to repair their infrastructure, they often spend those funds on expansion first. Ribbon cuttings for new things are more fun that maintaining the things we already have, like dessert is more fun than flossing.

While he includes a laudable goal to increase transit ridership by 65 percent by 2030 with a $300 billion investment targeted toward transit-oriented development and improving transit service for seniors, people with disabilities, and and rural communities, there is no mention of investments to make our streets safer so that people can walk to the transit stop. Further, the lack of focus on improving access for all means we would be likely to continue building a program that does not provide equitable, affordable access to economic opportunity. 

Amy Klobuchar: Fail

Senator Klobuchar’s plan is even more traditional than Joe Biden’s. Her hope is that putting more money into the current program will inspire it to behave in ways it never has before. 

Klobuchar—who represents the state where the notorious 35W Mississippi River Bridge collapsed in 2007—pledges to make “smart investments” to repair our infrastructure, but doesn’t guarantee that states will be required to spend federal dollars on maintenance before expansion. This gives Amy an “F” in our book. 

Unlike Biden’s plan, however, Klobuchar doesn’t mention Complete Streets—or any safety measures, for that matter. In addition, Amy doesn’t mention measuring the success of transportation programs by how well they connect people to jobs and services. In fact, performance standards don’t come up once in her plan. 

In conclusion…

Only two of the presidential candidates—both former mayors—receive passing grades on their transportation plans, according to our three principles. Only two of the many politicians vying to be the most impactful person in the country understand what it takes to save Americans time, money, and from the dangerous effects of unchecked climate change.

Further, not one candidate speaks honestly about how to pay for their proposed funding increases. In fact, they all seem to propose that we abandon the user pays system, which in many ways we already have. If so, bye-bye, trust fund. They all seem to propose we fund this by deficit spending (as we have been for the last decade) or maybe taxing the wealthy or getting magical private funds? 

This reminds us of something former Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee once said about transportation funding: “If something is important enough to have, it’s important enough to pay for.” We’d like to add: If you aren’t willing to pay for it then you don’t believe it is important enough to have.

More money isn’t the solution to our transportation problems. It’s rethinking what we fund. But lawmakers often rely on the rules set by the outdated Highway Trust Fund to make this critical decision for them. 

Do climate plans do enough on transportation?

Climate change has become a top issue for Americans, so how do the top Democratic candidates plan to reduce emissions? Here’s a brief look at what some of the presidential candidates are proposing when it comes to emissions from transportation.

A recent poll found that most American teenagers are “frightened” by climate change. It is no surprise then that candidates for president and members of Congress are releasing their plans to combat the climate crisis. So what do the Democratic presidential candidate front-runners say about transportation in their climate plans? Not nearly enough.

Virtually every plan released to date focuses on promoting electric vehicles (EVs) and strengthening fuel efficiency (CAFE) standards. While EV adoption and increased efficiency are essential for reaching any ambitious climate target, they will not be sufficient on their own to decarbonize the transportation sector.

T4America Director Beth Osborne explained why recently in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Transportation is now the largest single source of climate pollution and the vast majority of those emissions—83 percent—come from the cars and trucks that people drive to the grocery store or school or that deliver our Amazon orders. All that driving is why transportation pollution keeps increasing, despite gains in fuel efficiency standards and the adoption of electric vehicles. Between 1990-2016, despite a sizable 35 percent increase in the overall fuel efficiency of our vehicle fleet, national emissions rose by 21 percent. Why? Because those improvements were accompanied by a 50 percent increase in driving. Cleaner and electric vehicles are essential, but they’ll only ever be a small part of the solution. For one, it takes a long time for the vehicle fleet to turn over. Even if Americans purchased nothing but electric vehicles starting today, gas-powered cars would still be on the road for at least another 15 years.

Emissions won’t drop fast enough if we pin all our hopes on EVs. We need to reduce the amount and distance people drive through better land use and by promoting transit, walking, and biking. Today, our federal policy incentivizes high speed, long distance driving—rewarding states that increase both with more money—and makes it far too difficult to build communities which provide people with transportation choice.

Even the Green New Deal fails to adequately address the need to reduce driving and rethink our land use decisions.

The climate plans & transportation

We took an in-depth look at the climate plans from the top eight presidential candidates (according to RealClearPolitics polling data as of November 1, 2019) for the Democratic Party nomination. We’ve also included Jay Inslee in our analysis, despite the fact that he dropped out of the race, because his climate plan is widely considered to have set the standard for climate plans.

There are some candidates running for the Republican nomination for president, but none of them have released climate plans. The closest thing President Trump has to a climate plan is the “Affordable Clean Energy” rule which could actually increase pollution.

Note: Investments, quantifiable targets, or policy proposals below are bolded; broad value statements or acknowledgements of an issue without a proposal to address it are not bolded.

PollingCandidateElectrify vehiclesReduce drivingPromote bikeable/walkable communitiesInvest in transitSupport passenger rail
n/aBiden's unity task forceSupport “cash-for-clunkers” style approaches to incentivize accelerated adoption of zero-emission passenger vehicles. Provide incentives for manufacturers to build new factories or retool existing factories in the United States to assemble zero-emission vehicles or manufacture charging equipment.“Encourage states to prioritize allocation of transportation funds for public mass transit, and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and ensure transportation options and infrastructure meet the needs of tribal, rural, and urban communities to fully participate in zero-emissions transport.”“Encourage states to prioritize allocation of transportation funds for public mass transit, and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and ensure transportation options and infrastructure meet the needs of tribal, rural, and urban communities to fully participate in zero-emissions transport. Make major improvements to public transit and light rail. Preserve and grow the union workforce within the rail, transit and maritime sectors.”

“We commit to public transportation as a public good, including ensuring transit jobs are good jobs.”		Invest in high speed passenger and freight rail systems, while reducing pollution, helping connect workers to quality jobs with shorter commutes, and spurring investment in communities more efficiently connected to major metropolitan areas and unlocking new, affordable access for every American.
1Biden500,000 new public charging outlets by the end of 2030 and restore the full electric vehicle tax credit.Altering local regulations to eliminate sprawl and allow for denser, more affordable housing near public transit would cut commute times for many of the country’s workers while decreasing their carbon footprint. Communities across the country are experiencing a growing need for alternative and cleaner transportation options, including transit, dedicated bicycle and pedestrian thoroughfares, and first- and last-mile connections. Ensure that America has the cleanest, safest, and fastest rail system in the world and will begin the construction of an end-to-end high speed rail system that will connect the coasts.
2WarrenZero emissions in all new light and medium duty vehicles by 2030.Expand and improve public transit across our country.
3Sanders100 percent electric vehicles powered with renewable energy.For too long, government policy has encouraged long car commutes, congestion, and dangerous emissions. Create more livable, connected, and vibrant communities.$300 billion investment to increase public transit ridership by 65 percent by 2030.$607 billion investment in a regional high-speed rail system.
4ButtigeigAll new passenger vehicles sold be zero-emissions by 2035.Switching from individual vehicles to public transportation not only reduces traffic congestion, but also reduces emissions while improving air quality.$100 billion over 10 years, which will include installing bike and scooter lanes.$100 billion over 10 years, which will include modernizing subways and other transit systems and deploying electric commuter buses and school buses.
5Harris100 percent zero-emission vehicles by 2035.Incentivize people to reduce car usage and use public transit...focusing our transportation infrastructure investments toward projects that reduce vehicle miles traveled and address gaps in first mile, last mile service. Funding robust public transportation networks to bring communities together.
6YangRequire all models from 2030 on to be zero-emission vehicles.$200 billion grant program to states to electrify transit systems.
7GabbardWhile Gabbard has not released a climate plan, she has introduced legislation in the U.S. House that would require all new vehicle sales to be 100% electric by 2035.
8O'RourkeRapidly accelerate the adoption of zero-emission vehicles.$1.2 trillion through grants and other investments, including: Transportation grants that cut commutes, crashes, and carbon pollution — all while boosting access to public transit.
--Honorable Mention: Jay InsleeInvest federal moneys and expand effective public policies linking community-based economic development to housing affordability and mobility. Promote vibrant communities, more healthy and walkable neighborhoods, and both the preservation of existing affordable housing and construction of new affordable units.Invest in expanding public transit and connecting people in communities through safe, multi-modal transportation options. More than double annual federal investment in public transit systems and incentivize expansion of transit networks.Provide major new federal investment in electrifying passenger and freight rail throughout the country, and offering federal investment to states and regional partnerships to expand ultra-high-speed rail.

Politicians think EVs will solve our transportation problems

It’s telling that each candidate has ambitious targets for EV adoption but largely lack policies and investments for other forms of transportation. While EVs will go a long way toward reducing transportation emissions, they don’t go quite far enough. As we’ve written about previously, an all electric vehicle fleet won’t reduce emissions enough to reach our climate targets.

Not only will EVs fail to address the climate crisis, but they will do nothing to address the larger shortcomings of our current transportation system.

EVs won’t make our communities more walkable, bikeable, or transit-oriented. We’ve designed many of our roadways and communities so that it’s almost impossible to get around without a car. People often have no choice but to sit in traffic to get to work and the grocery store. Electrifying everything won’t change this. Nor will it help those who can’t afford a vehicle in the first place, regardless of how it’s powered. We need holistic transportation solutions that make it safe, affordable, and convenient to get people where they need to go.

The elephant in the room

These plans are all missing any meaningful discussion and understanding of how land use and transportation are inextricably linked, likely because we tend to think that the federal government plays no role in land use decisions.

But federal transportation policy drives local land use decisions. Where we build roads and highways influences where developers build houses and stores. When we give states a blank check to build a new highway while giving them a minuscule amount for transit (if they can jump through all the regulatory hoops we apply to transit funding), we’re encouraging more sprawl. As houses, businesses, parks, and other daily destinations spread farther apart, people are forced to drive farther and farther, increasing our emissions in the process.

Federal transportation policy has an essential role to play in reducing transportation emissions and making our transportation system work for everyone. How we spend federal transportation money should reflect this and keep climate goals in mind. So far, it seems as though most Democratic presidential candidates don’t quite understand this.

10 questions every presidential candidate should answer about transportation and climate change

The debate has passed, but the relevance of these questions have not. We’ll continue to urge candidates to answer these questions.

On September 4, 10 Democratic presidential candidates will participate in a town hall focused solely on climate change. We have a list of questions related to transportation that we want every candidate to answer. 

Climate change is undoubtedly a defining issue of our times, and the transportation sector is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. But there’s little understanding about where transportation emissions come from or how to reduce them. Many think we just need to replace all gas powered vehicles with electric vehicles (EVs). But we cannot address this crisis without an understanding of the crucial role that the design of our communities and roadways play in producing our transportation emissions. 

While many other sectors have reduced emissions, transportation is headed in the wrong direction. Driving represents 83 percent of all transportation emissions and these emissions are rising—despite cleaner fuels, more efficient and electric vehicles—because people forced by our development patterns and transportation system to drive more and make longer trips. 

It’s time to have a more robust conversation about the connections between transportation and climate change. The future depends on it. Here are the questions every candidate should be asked: 

1) How does your plan to respond to climate change allow people to make fewer and shorter car trips? 

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and those emissions are rising. Studies show that we cannot reduce emissions by relying on expected growth in clean vehicles and fuel, that we must also reduce expected growth in driving. 

2) What are the ways in which we can change development patterns to place jobs and other essential services closer to the people who need them? 

Our reliance on cars and driving to our destinations often goes back to development decisions that place people’s needs—banks, groceries, schools, jobs—far away from where they live. 

3) As President, what will you do to ensure the United States measures greenhouse gas emissions in transportation?

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Soon after taking office, the Trump Administration scrapped a U.S. Department of Transportation plan to measure greenhouse gas emissions in transportation. If we aren’t taking the basic step of measuring these emissions, how can we take steps to reduce them? 

4) How should Congress rethink how federal highway dollars are spent?

Federal surface transportation policy prioritizes highways over all other forms of transportation. Federal highway formula dollars are guaranteed and allow states to spend over $40 billion per year on highways and highway expansion. Highways often result in a more spread out development pattern, which generates both more traffic and more emissions. There is no limit on federal funds used for highway expansion and no requirement that states use that money to maintain the system we already have. As a result, our emissions keep going up and our potholes get larger. 

5) How does your plan orient more investment toward transit? 

The federal government makes it easy for states to build and expand highways, providing up to 80 percent of funding for highway projects. In contrast, the federal government will only pay no more than half of the cost of public transit projects, which places a greater burden on communities to build transit compared to highways. The federal government spends five times the amount on highways than on transit. 

6) How would you shift the program to promote and reward efficiency and reduced emissions?

Under the current formula structure of the federal program, states are rewarded for inefficiency. The more gas is burned—the more people drive and the more they emit—the more funding the state gets. Is this the message you support? 

7) What should change in the federal transportation program to support walkable communities which are better for the economy and the environment? 

Core, walkable areas are responsible for the highest density of economic activity in most regions. Yet the federal program is much more focused on supporting high speed vehicle traffic, even in these walkable areas, which makes walking deadly. 

8) How does your infrastructure plan address this pedestrian safety epidemic and make it possible for people to take more trips by walking and biking?

Almost half of all car trips are under three miles. But our roadways are designed for vehicle speed over pedestrian safety, making it unsafe in many situations for people to walk instead of drive. In the past decade, the number of people struck and killed while walking increased by 35 percent, reaching overall level of fatalities not seen in nearly 30 years. 

9) How would you support communities that are shifting their transportation systems to integrate more transit? 

Small and mid-sized cities across the country are recognizing that providing transit options is essential to boosting their economic activity and reducing their emissions. 

10) As President, what would you do to strengthen and support Amtrak’s existing long distance and inter-city network?

Many presidential platforms, including the Green New Deal, proclaim the need to invest in and build a national high speed rail network as a way to connect communities and reduce emissions. 

Mixed messages on transportation at the ballot box this week

With a range of notable ballot measures for transportation considered by voters Tuesday, how did the issue fare at the ballot box? Did the recent trends for transportation-related measures continue?

Metropolitan Transit System, Trolley # 4014

Compared with two years ago when there were a number of major, big-ticket ballot measures to raise billions in new local revenue for transit on the ballot, there were relatively few local ballot measures raising new money for ambitious bus or rail transit projects in 2018. We’ll get into what actually happened at the local level, but this year, one of the more interesting trends emerged at the state level.

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T4America members: We’ve produced a more detailed post-election analysis for you. You can download that short document here. Reach out to us if you have any questions.

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Statewide

The biggest question on the ballot was Proposition 6 in California, which would have undone the state’s 2017 legislation that increased fuel taxes to raise more than $50 billion to prioritize repair and pledge billions toward transit, safe streets for walking and biking, and an overall multimodal approach to solving the state’s transportation challenges. The legislation also gave money directly to California localities to spend on their greatest needs, allowing for a strong measure of local control.

Proposition 6 was defeated—preserving 2017’s tax increase—with just 45 percent in favor. Of all the states that have raised new transportation revenues since 2012, California was one of the few that raised new money that could be used on a diverse range of needs. Voters just signaled their approval for this approach a year later.

By contrast, statewide proposals to raise new revenues for transportation—almost all for only roads—failed in Missouri and Colorado, as well as a non-binding advisory measure in Utah that went down by a wide margin. While a portion of Colorado’s gas tax dollars (those directed to localities) can be used on any transportation purpose, both Missouri and Utah have constitutional prohibitions on 100% of their gas tax dollars, preventing them from being spent on any other transportation needs.

What’s the trend to extrapolate from these four measures? The latter three measures were essentially status quo referenda on whether or not voters want to put more money into the existing state system for transportation. The taxpayers resoundingly answered “no.” In Missouri’s case, this was their second run at raising state fuel taxes for only roads, and like in 2014, voters in the state’s metro areas widely rejected the measure, viewing the taxes as regressive and a way to funnel money out of their metro area to pay for needs elsewhere in the state. All three contrast with California’s new system to devote new taxes toward a range of multimodal projects that was reaffirmed by voters.

This will be the most pressing question of 2019 as Congress ramps up to work on reauthorization. Do the American taxpayers believe that the federal transportation system works for them? Will they be supportive of federal legislators raising their taxes or creating new revenues to put into the same old system?

Local

At the local level, there were notable measures approved in Broward County (north of Miami) and Hillsborough County (Tampa). Broward’s penny sales tax increase would raise $15.6 billion over 30 years, largely for transit with about $9 billion earmarked for new light rail lines. In Tampa’s case, after a few failed attempts, they finally passed a measure with money for transit that raises the sales tax by a penny to raise about $275 million annually for transportation. (Revenues are split 45/55 between transit and roads/other projects.)

Federal

Many want to know how the changeover in House leadership will impact transportation, and particularly transit funding. It’s worth noting, however, that it’s been a bipartisan effort in Congress to press on USDOT to keep these transit projects moving. It was a Republican House and Senate that approved an unprecedented provision to the 2018 appropriations bill requiring USDOT to obligate all of their 2018 transit capital grants before the end of 2019. And it was a Republican move in the Senate to require Trump’s USDOT to use President Obama’s TIGER grant qualifications for the last round of TIGER grants.

Will much else change with the House’s leadership transition? The top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee—the committee charged with writing policy for the 2020 reauthorization—went on the record today saying that federal transportation policy is just fine as it is. All we need is more money.

We’ll have more on the federal angle in the coming days. View our tracker for 2018 state and local ballot measures for transportation here.

Billions in transit measures approved Tuesday — unpacking the 2016 election results

Though we’ll be waiting to see where the federal chips land with President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration and the congressional committee changes, Tuesday night’s biggest transportation news was the fact that local voters across the country approved scores of ballot measures that raise new local money for transportation improvements.

Transpo Vote 2016

View the results on the slate of measures we were tracking here.

Representing more than $150 billion of the more than $200 billion in local transportation measures on Tuesday’s ballots, residents of Los Angeles and Seattle approved measures that will make enormous decades-long expansions in local and regional transit. In L.A.’s case, an overwhelming number of voters (nearly 70 percent) said “YES” to investing more of their tax dollars in public transit, approving Measure M to add a half-cent to the sales tax and extending 2009’s Measure R half-cent transit tax for perpetuity.

In an election where President-elect Trump played heavily to economic concerns, the residents of Indianapolis — enabled by legislation actually signed by VP-elect Pence — voted to increase their income taxes to improve and expand their historically subpar bus service.

Indy’s plan will create new connections and dramatically improve service for current customers, while also starting the buildout of an impressive bus rapid transit network to connect yet more neighborhoods and people to opportunity. In Raleigh (Wake County), voters approved a half-cent sales tax for building out the regional transit network. Planned service, including 20 miles of new bus rapid transit routes and new commuter rail, is expected to quadruple transit ridership in the county in the next ten years.

It’s worth noting that local leaders from both Indy and Raleigh spent a year in the Transportation Innovation Academy we conducted with TransitCenter back in 2015, laying much of the groundwork for these successful campaigns.

Transportation innovation academy denver group

2015’s Transportation Innovation Academy class of Raleigh, Indy and Nashville.

In Atlanta, the city residents within Fulton County approved a half-cent tax for MARTA, their transit system, to raise $2.5 billion to fund subway extensions, hefty improvements in bus service, new light rail on the Beltline project which will eventually encircle the city with transit, a walking/biking trail and linear parks, and improvements to bike and pedestrian connections near stations and bus stops.

The federal level

As for the incoming presidential administration, President-elect Trump’s 100-day plan includes an infrastructure push, which “leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over ten years. It is revenue neutral.” In his acceptance speech last night, he said, “We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.”

There’s no clear roadmap of what’s to come in January 2017, or what any Trump-backed infrastructure package would look like. According to this piece in Yahoo News, there’s an indication that “Trump’s plan would rely heavily on private funding, with the government encouraging investment through a tax credit that would raise the return to investors and lower the cost of borrowing to states and municipalities that would oversee the projects.”

Stay tuned for more information over the next few weeks, and don’t miss Thursday’s livestream discussion at 12 p.m. Central time on Facebook Live. If you weren’t able to tune in, you can view the full video of the livestream here: https://www.facebook.com/transportationforamerica/videos/10157670655470117/

11/11 Addendum: Here’s the Director’s Note from T4America Director James Corless in our post-election newsletter:

Without a doubt, the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential race was a surprise. But there are similarly surprising — and encouraging — trends in Tuesday’s local elections that illustrate part of the path forward for cities and towns eager to continue making smart transportation investments.

Indianapolis, covered above, is a great example.

Deep in the heart of a state that went solidly for President-elect Trump and also contributed the Vice President-elect to the ticket, the residents of a large county that includes a wide spectrum of incomes voted to increase their own taxes for transit. And the improved and expanded transit service will pay dividends first and foremost to the lower-income Marion County residents that depend on the current service or would benefit the most from better connections to jobs and opportunity.

As we move forward and look for ways to build bridges and unify our communities after an unusually divisive national election, it’s important to find common ground and ways to work together to make our communities the best they can be. Indy’s strong local coalition included the Indy Chamber and numerous faith-based groups and churches. That’s a good roadmap for coming together to make the investments we need to build prosperous local economies and ensure that everyone can connect to opportunity.

Live stream: How the 2016 election results will impact transportation

Sign up to join Transportation for America live on November 10th and hear a panel of experts discuss how this year’s elections will impact transportation policy at the federal, state and local levels.

Update: We will be streaming on Facebook Live. Join us here at 12 p.m. Central time/1 p.m. Eastern

How will this year’s elections impact transportation? How will any congressional shakeup affect the committees with jurisdiction over transportation? What happened with the more than $200 billion in ballot measures decided in critical races across the country?

Two days after the election, on Thursday, November 10th at 12 p.m. central time, join us on Facebook for a live discussion with a few national experts about what the new presidential administration means for transportation, and how congress, key state races, and ballot measures will impact your community. Our panel of experts will offer an in-depth look at the new administration, offer key insights, and answer questions. Streaming live from Minneapolis, MN (where we’ll be hosting the first meeting of our Smart Cities Collaborative), this will be an interactive discussion you won’t want to miss.

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Speakers

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  • Moderator: Hon. Peter McLaughlin, Commissioner, Hennepin County, Minnesota (invited)

Date: Thursday, November 10, 2016
Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm (EDT), 12:00pm – 1:00pm (CDT)

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Voters overwhelmingly re-elect candidates who raise transportation revenue, analysis of general election results shows

Continuing a trend observed in the primaries, an updated T4America analysis of November’s election data shows that 90 percent of legislators supporting revenue increases in ten states won their re-election bids. Perhaps that knowledge will help legislators in 17 states (and counting) considering similar plans take similar action this year.

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View our full page tracking and summarizing the data on these votes.

The conventional wisdom has been that supporting any sort of tax increase is a political death sentence, but recent data perhaps suggests the opposite conclusion — at least with regard to tax increases intended to invest in transportation.

Since 2012 at least ten states have done the “unthinkable” and either increased gas taxes or otherwise raised significant transportation funding through legislative action: Arkansas, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wyoming.

Transportation for America has kept a close eye on those votes at the state level to raise revenue and the subsequent response from voters in the elections that followed. We first examined this data after the primary elections in 2014, when supportive state legislators won their primaries at an amazing 98 percent clip. With a full election cycle behind us, how did supportive state legislators fare?

  • A total of 961 legislators in these ten states ran for re-election after voting yes on a measure to raise transportation revenues by some mechanism.
  • 23 candidates lost their primary election, resulting in a 98 percent success rate in the primaries for those that voted yes and ran for re-election.
  • 939 supportive legislators reached the general election*.
  • 71 supportive candidates lost in the general election for a total of 868 supportive legislators retaining their seats.
  • The total re-election rate for supportive legislators who ran is 868/961, or 90 percent.

*1 Independent candidate (Adam Greshin in Vermont) did not run in a primary due to lack of party registration.

View our full page tracking and summarizing the data on these votes.

This encouraging trend could serve as a powerful object lesson for the legislators in the 17 states and counting currently considering legislative plans to raise the gas tax or other tax/fee increases for additional transportation revenue.

With GOP victories, SAFETEA-LU team in line to chair Senate committees

With last night’s election, both the Senate and House will see leadership changes in key transportation committees. With the nation’s transportation funding source running near empty and the current law, MAP-21, expiring in the spring, these new committee leaders will have an opportunity to make an impact in the very near term.

First, the Senate, where the Environment and Public Works Committee writes the largest portion of the transportation bill, the “highway title”. Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is expected to yield the gavel to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK). Though the two worked closely together on MAP-21, Inhofe has indicated that he plans to conduct EPW business differently than his predecessor, and it’s unclear at this point exactly how he would stray from the current course.

The next biggest piece of the Senate bill, the “transit title”, is written in the Banking Committee, where Richard Shelby (R-AL) is in line to become chair. The Inhofe-Shelby pairing also led negotiations on SAFETEA-LU – MAP-21’s predecessor – in 2005.

In the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Ranking Member Nick Rahall (D-WV) — amazingly a member of this committee his entire time in Congress — lost re-election to his 20th term, which eliminates the top Democrat on the committee. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) is next in line for the top Democratic seat on the Committee, and is a familiar and vocal proponent of a strong federal role in transportation.

That covers the policy side of the equation. On the funding side, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) is projected to take over the Finance Committee, swapping roles with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). On the funding side in the House, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is expected to take over the Chair of the Ways & Means Committee for retiring Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI).

In the short-term, the biggest battles will come over annual appropriations, setting the spending levels for discretionary programs such as TIGER and Amtrak. The first order of business for Congress when it returns next week is extending the continuing resolution – a temporary funding measure – that expires in December long enough to allow appropriators to hammer out spending levels for the full fiscal year. That will now likely occur under the GOP-controlled Congress early in the next calendar year.

The 800-pound gorilla of questions marks though, is how Congress will fund the nation’s transportation system next year and beyond. Gas tax receipts are dropping, cars are getting more fuel-efficient and driving is leveling off – and most baby boomers haven’t even stopped commuting yet. Although a faction of Republicans has called for the feds to abandon their traditional role and devolve the lion’s share of responsibility and oversight to the states, that idea so far has not gained traction with the full caucus. Though yet another short-term fix was agreed to a few months ago to keep the program going into next year, that funding will be tapped out by Spring 2015, and the trust fund will be near insolvency yet again.

Raising the gas tax may be a non-starter in a GOP Congress, though that remains to be seen. Other revenue ideas have struggled to gain a foothold, including the House GOP proposal during the last reauthorization to boost revenue with fees from expanding oil and gas drilling into formerly protected areas. On the Democrat side, DeFazio has introduced legislation to replace the federal gas tax with a fee at the refinery level that would be indexed to inflation, potentially yielding a more stable funding source.

In all, Tuesday’s election results should make for a fascinating 2015.

Important transportation ballot measures decided yesterday

Despite the defeat Tuesday of some high-profile measures, transportation funding asks continue to be approved at very high rates – and a few key wins may have impact for years to come.

While some of the key measures we were tracking did not fare well, on the whole, transportation (and transit specifically) did well at the ballot box (See the full list of measures we’re tracking below.) According to the Center for Transportation Excellence’s final results, 72% of all transit or multimodal measures were approved this year, including yesterday’s results – similar to the trend of recent years.

One of the most significant measures at the state level was considered in Massachusetts, where voters were deciding whether or not to repeal a legislature-approved provision to index the gas tax so revenues could keep up with inflation and allow the state to keep up with their pressing transportation needs. The measure to repeal was approved, albeit at a fairly close margin (52.9-47%), which means that Massachusetts will lose a portion of their new funding for transportation, but not all — they also raised their gas tax by three cents, but that was unaffected by this ballot measure.

The Massachusetts vote was definitely one that other states were watching closely as a potential bellwether for attempts to raise new revenue elsewhere. As Dan Vock at Governing Magazine wrote today, “That is not good news for transportation advocates, who are looking for politically feasible ways to raise money for infrastructure improvements.” Though a handful of other states did succeed in raising their gas taxes over the last couple of years, it’s possible that more states hoping to raise revenues in the next few years will consider a shift away from the per-gallon tax to a sales or wholesale tax (as Virginia and Maryland did for example) rather than trying to add in automatic indexing, which many voters saw negatively in Massachusetts.

Rhode Island voters approved a statewide ballot measure to fund some pretty significant transit improvements across the state, including new transit hubs to connect their popular passenger rail services with buses and other forms of transportation, and improvements to the statewide bus network. Scott Wolf, the executive director of Grow Smart RI, which ran the campaign on the measure, was full of praise today:

We commend our fellow Rhode Islanders for recognizing that these investments will provide benefits far beyond their costs and make it easier for the state to retain and recruit a young, talented and mobile work force.  If we can continue to pursue this kind of asset based economic development strategy under Governor-Elect Raimondo, we at Grow Smart RI are confident that Rhode Island’s best days will still be ahead of us.

At the local and regional level, there was perhaps no more significant symbolic vote than the one taken in metro Atlanta yesterday. For the first time in more than 40 years, Atlanta’s MARTA system will be expanding into a new county, as Clayton County, Georgia overwhelmingly approved (73% in favor) a one-percent sales tax increase to join MARTA, expand bus service into the county, and save half of the projected revenue for planning and implementing a possible rail connection into the county.

Clayton was the only one of Atlanta’s five core counties that lacked a local public transit system, and there was a surge of momentum for this referendum after a limited county bus system  folded in 2010. When it did, Clayton State University saw a drop in enrollment and scores of jobs at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport got much harder to reach for county residents.

From a regional perspective, with more of the region now having a stake in MARTA — it was intended to serve all five metro counties when it was created, but only two opted in — the agency will expand their base of users and bring more local officials to the table who care about seeing it succeed. And the resounding vote of support with local dollars will likely help continue develop support from the state legislature, where MARTA CEO Keith Parker has been hard at work to create allies for the only major transit agency that receives no dedicated funding from the state.

The news was not so good one state further south, where Pinellas County, Florida (St. Petersburg/Clearwater) saw their Greenlight Pinellas referendum roundly defeated, with only 38% in favor. (A smaller similar measure was also defeated in Polk County, to the east of Tampa.) The referendum would have made enormous expansions to their existing bus service, added new bus rapid transit corridors, and begin laying the groundwork for light rail running through the spine of the county.

It’s a blow not just for Pinellas County, the most densely populated county in the state, but also for the Tampa region at large. Business and civic leaders were hoping that Pinellas would take a first step that Tampa would follow in 2016 with a measure of their own, as they stitch together a region with two major cities divided by the bay. Pinellas leaders can take heart, however, in the fact that many places have lost their first (or even second) run at an ambitious ballot measure, before winning in the end.

We’ll be back shortly with a look at some of the national and state candidate races, and the implications of all the moves in Congress will have on the precarious nature of the nation’s transportation fund, and the upcoming reauthorization of MAP-21 in 2015.

Transpo Vote 2014 promo graphic

State

Massachusetts – Question 1 to repeal state’s new funding for transportation
Result: Measure Approved (52.9% – 47.1%)
T4A summary: Massachusetts vote a bellwether for efforts to raise state transportation revenue

Rhode Island – Question 6 transit bond measure
Result: Measure Approved (60% – 40%)
T4A summary: Rhode Island’s first statewide ballot measure to support transit

Wisconsin – Question 1 for transportation funding
Result: Measure Approved (79.9% – 20.1%)
T4A summary: Voters in two states consider measures to restrict funding to transportation uses

Maryland – Question 1 on transportation funding
Result: Measure Approved (81.6% – 18.4%)
T4A summary: Voters in two states consider measures to restrict funding to transportation uses

Texas – Proposition 1 to direct rainy day funds into highways
Result: Measure Approved (79.8% – 20.2%)
T4A summary: Texas looks to voters to ensure billions in highway funding

Louisiana – State infrastructure bank
Result: Measure Defeated (67.5% – 32.5%)

Local

Clayton County, GA – One percent sales tax to join MARTA and re-start bus service
Result: Measure Approved (74% – 26%) 
T4A summary: After spurning it for decades, suburban Atlanta county seems poised to join regional transit system

City of Seattle, WA – Proposition 1 to add a 0.1% sales and use tax to prevent bus cuts
Result: Measure Approved (59% – 41%)

Austin, Texas – Proposition 1 for $600 million bond for light rail
Result: Measure Defeated (43% – 57%)

Pinellas County, Florida (St. Petersburg) – Greenlight Pinellas for improving transit service & adding light rail
Result: Measure defeated (38% – 62%) 
T4America summary: Leaders say St. Petersburg measure key to economic success

Alameda County, CA – Measure BB for a half-percent increase in sales tax to fund local transit and transportation projects
Result: Measure Approved (70% – 30%)

Gainesville, FL (Alachua County) – 1% sales tax for a range of transportation improvements
Result: Measure Defeated (40% – 60%)

Join T4America this Thursday to unpack the transportation ramifications of tomorrow’s elections

Voters will make decisions on November 4 that will resonate deep into the future. Join us Thursday as we provide the inside scoop on how the elections will affect MAP-21 reauthorization and ever-dwindling highway trust fund revenues, and how important state and local transportation measures fared.

If the Senate flips to a Republican majority, what will it mean for federal transportation legislation and the anticipated Spring 2015 insolvency of the federal transportation fund? If Massachusetts successfully votes down an attempt to kill a portion of their new transportation funding package, what would that mean for other states’ hopes to stabilize transportation funding? What will the next two years bring?

Once the dust settles, we will be hosting a free teleconference on November 6th at 3:30pm EST to analyze and discuss the full impacts of these elections.

Register Here

 

We’ve been keeping a close eye on several significant ballot measures from Florida to Washington. Pinellas County will take a landmark vote on an ambitious expansion of their transit services. Texas could pass a measure to raise billions for highway spending without having to raise taxes or fees. And Maryland and Wisconsin are attempting to create dedicated transportation funds that can’t be diverted for other uses.

Federal legislation is routinely a reflection of what states and localities have already tested and tried to be true, which is why key state and local measures are so important for predicting what might be on the horizon in the next Congress.

We hope you join us this Thursday.

Transportation-related measures we’re tracking in the 2014 elections

In just a few weeks on November 4, ballot measures and races with huge transportation implications will be decided at ballot boxes across the country. Some of the notable measures we are keeping an eye on would raise new revenue for transportation at the state or local level, while others redirect existing dollars. We’ll tell you more about each as we approach election day.

Transpo Vote 2014 promo graphic
Bookmark our new page where we’ll be summarizing the issues and tracking the results: Transportation Vote 2014.

Transportation-related ballot measures tend to do well with voters — whether statewide or exclusively local measures — passing at around twice the rate of all other ballot measures. And transit or multimodal measures always do well, passing about 71 percent of the time since 2009.Voting Info Graphic 1

There’s a handful of notable questions being decided by state and local voters in just a few weeks, and we’ve rounded up the details on the ones we are keeping a close eye on for various reasons. Some are good, some are not so good, but they will all give us useful information about what state and local voters think and feel about transportation investment.

One of the most interesting statewide questions is in Massachusetts, where voters will be deciding whether or not to repeal part of the state’s new transportation funds approved just last year by the legislature — one which voters supported at least by implication when all but one of the supportive legislators won their primary election following the vote.

And one of the most interesting local issues actually started at the state level as well. After Clayton County’s bus service was cancelled outright in 2010, because of state law, the Georgia state legislature had to pass a law that would allow the County to levy a tax to join MARTA, the Atlanta region’s transit system. That one percent sales tax will be on the ballot in Clayton County on Nov. 4.

We’ll have a much more detailed look at both of those issues in the next few days, so bookmark this page and check back here on the blog.

As soon as election day is over, the focus will shift to 2015. If you want to know more about state legislation related to transportation revenue, you need to join us in Denver for Capital Ideas. There’s still time to register and make travel plans to meet us there. Don’t miss your opportunity to be a part of this terrific event that will help equip you to make things happen in 2015 and beyond.

A dozen states have moved to raise transportation dollars, with more to come: Track them here

With Congress continuing to flail on providing stable funding, many states are finding they can’t wait and are moving on their own. But it’s not always as simple anymore as adding pennies to a per-gallon gas tax, so states are taking some creative approaches. 

You can learn about what 12 states already have done – and the political fall-out from it – with our revamped and refreshed tracker. You’ll also see what’s brewing in still more states.

With the Highway Trust Fund still headed for insolvency due to declining vehicle miles traveled and more fuel-efficient vehicles, states have increasingly been coming up with their own plans for raising additional transportation revenue over the last few years — and 12 states have approved plans to raise additional revenues.

Version 2.0 launching today has plenty of new information on these state plans with some comprehensive details on how votes broke down on successful bills. Perhaps most interestingly, you can see how voters responded to those politicians who supported plans to raise additional transportation revenue.

Want a hint about that one? How about this:

View “How do voters respond to state legislators raising transportation taxes?“

As we’ve been chronicling on the blog for the last couple of months, the conventional wisdom has been turned on its head with the recent primaries in these states — members of both parties supporting any sort of tax or fee increase for transportation have been winning their primaries almost across the board. With Massachusetts and New Hampshire primaries taking place Tuesday of this week (as well as Vermont just a few weeks ago), we’ll update the numbers on this page later Wednesday — numbers we don’t expect to change a whole lot.

This updated resource provides detailed information on and bill numbers for the current (or immediately recent) funding plans that were considered as well the 12 successful plans to raise revenue at the state level for transportation.

Click on through to see the full array of information, including tables with the vote results on the bills and results from the primaries for supportive elected representatives.

Did we miss something? Let us know.

Tuesday’s vote: Strong support for more transportation options nationwide

They say all politics is local. Well, that goes double for transportation.

During a federal election season that saw the presidential candidates making only the barest mention of our teetering system for funding transportation infrastructure, local voters took transit funding into their own hands in more than two-dozen locales Tuesday. Most of the measures that included public transportation and a more balanced set of transportation options appear to have passed – or in the case of California, came achingly close to the required two-thirds majority. (Read The Transport Politic for a great summary of important measures. -Ed.)

According to the Center for Transportation Excellence election tracker, 14 of the 20 measures whose ballots have been tabulated at this point passed, a 70 percent rate. And in two of the “losses”, the funding proposal actually won 65 percent of the vote. Despite continued doubts on the economy, voters confronted with a well-presented plan to fix or improve local transportation networks generally said “yes” to slightly higher taxes. Up until yesterday, 2012 had seen 33 of 39 such measures pass, for an 85 percent pass rate.

One of the most closely watched votes Tuesday was Measure J in Los Angeles, where voters were asked to extend their 2008 transit tax another 30 years out to 2069. It was an ambitious scheme to build more of the expansive rail and rapid bus network faster by taking larger upfront loans over the next several years. The longer repayment stream was necessary in order to be able to sell long-term bonds in the coming years. Outside observers thought it was a heavy lift to get voters to approve another transit tax just four years after passing Measure R, but Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and others felt that Angelenos are impatient to get the transportation options they’re seeking sooner.

Expo Line at La Cienega / Jefferson station
Metro Board member Richard Katz, Los Angeles Mayor and Metro Board Chair Antonio Villaraigosa, Metro Board member and Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky earlier this year celebrating the new Expo Line light rail, funded in part by 2008’s Measure R. Photo by Metro Library and Archives.

Apparently they were right: The measure won 64.7 percent of the vote. Unfortunately, that’s just shy of the two-thirds required for revenue measures in California. (Notably, only 2.3 million Angelenos voted this year versus the 3.3 million who voted in 2008, when LA’s breakthrough sales tax for transportation, Measure R, passed with 67.8%.) A similar fate befell Alameda County, across the bay from San Francisco, where a half-cent sales tax would have helped improve local bus service and build a BART extension to Livermore. It’s likely to fail despite also receiving a strong majority of support — over 65.5 percent. (That vote is still too close to call and might not be decided for a few days, though it is still trailing. -Ed.)

Transportation issues played a significant role in a few mayoral races, as well. In Honolulu, the election became a referendum on construction of the $5.26 billion light rail line voters approved in 2008 (and which is already under construction today.) There, rail supporter Kirk Caldwell, the former city managing director, bested former Gov. Ben Cayetano, who came out of retirement to stop the rail project. Caldwell, who said he will “do rail better”, came from behind to win 54 percent of the vote to Cayetano’s 46 percent.

In Portland, OR, Charlie Hales – a longtime rail and streetcar proponent – beat state Rep. Jefferson Smith with 62 percent of the vote. In San Diego, U.S. Rep. Bob Filner, a Democrat, beat city council member Carl DeMaio in a race in which both candidates passionately embraced complete streets and safer conditions for walking and biking. And in Troy, MI, Mayor Janice Daniels, who rejected federal funding for a transit center in 2011, was recalled.

In other key votes, a few jurisdictions voted to join the transit party begun by neighboring communities. In Orange County, NC, home of Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina, third city in the Research Triangle formed with Raleigh and Durham, voters approved a sales tax expected to raise $661 million for upgraded bus service and light rail to connect to Durham. Partly prodded by in-state rival Charlotte, which has seen multiple benefits from its own rail line, Durham County approved a half-cent sales tax for those purposes last year. Now it remains to be seen whether Raleigh will complete the triangle.


Rendering of a future light rail/Amtrak station in the Triangle Transit System in Durham, courtesy of Triangle Transit

Inspired by the success of light rail in neighboring Norfolk, voters in Virginia Beach approved an advisory measure in support of extending it to their city and, potentially, waterfront. The city council will make the ultimate decision whether to go forward. Elsewhere in Virginia, the D.C. “suburb” of Arlington approved a $32 million bond issue for transit, roads, bike, and pedestrian projects, with half going toward improvements related to the Metro rail service in Arlington. In Michigan, where four jurisdictions – Kalamazoo, Muskegon and Eaton and Ogemaw counties – passed transit levies, the Grand Rapids suburb of Walker overwhelmingly rejected withdrawing from the regional transit system.

In South Carolina, voters in Richland County – home of the state capital, Columbia – passed a penny sales tax to would widen and build roads, expand bus service and extend miles of sidewalks, bike lanes and trails. It passed with 54 percent and will be collected for 22 years.

Bucking the trend, voters in Clark County, WA – across the Columbia River from Portland – appear to have rejected a proposal to fund transit service on the proposed Columbia River Crossing, a controversial, multibillion-dollar bridge and freeway project connecting Vancouver, WA to Portland. That loss likely wasn’t just about transit — transit-supporters such as Mayor Tim Leavitt of Vancouver and the Clark County Chamber of Commerce opposed the sales tax measure, claiming there were other ways to fund operations and maintenance of proposed transit improvements. (This vote is still too close to call, though the measure is currently losing. -Ed.)

A couple of the ballot failures were nonetheless winners in the “worth a try” category. Memphis city leaders sought a one-cent per gallon gas tax to raise money to expand eight bus routes and build a downtown trolley, but were rebuffed. In Houston, transit advocates sought to end the practice of diverting a quarter of the one-cent transit sales tax to local roads. Voters confused by the fact that a “for Metro” vote continued the diversion and effectively ends light rail expansion, overwhelmingly approved it.

So many localities ponying up their share for expanded transportation options has led some to argue that the feds can shrink from their commitment to fund infrastructure. But ask any of the local communities that have just taxed themselves to improve transportation options and you’ll quickly hear that it’s not an either/or proposition.

Local communities have a vision for a 21st century transportation system that provides affordable options for every resident. They’re willing to tax themselves to get there, but they can’t do it alone. Stay tuned in the next several days for our take on what seems likely to change – or not – at the federal level as a result of election 2012.

Transportation Vote 2012: San Diego mayoral candidates indicate strong commitment to investing in transportation options in a televised debate

In San Diego, a region facing significant growth on a congested transportation system, the two mayoral candidates signaled their commitment to expanding transportation options throughout the region in the years to come — but shrinking transportation funding will test that commitment.

This post is one of our Transportation Vote 2012 series, looking at the role of transportation in local and state elections this fall.

Like most other metro areas across the country San Diego is facing major transportation challenges. Over the next 40 years the region’s population is expected to grow by 1.3 million, 42 percent, with the city itself absorbing half of that increase.

With regional freeways and roads already straining to deal with the congestion that threatens economic competitiveness, health, and quality of life, San Diegans need and are demanding more and better options for getting around where they need to go day-to-day. While the city is making plans to significantly expand their public transportation systems and invest in making streets safer for walking and biking, the limited transportation funding available in the years to come will test its leaders’ commitment to prioritizing these investments over more of the status quo.

And just who that leader will be is a decision voters will make this election season.

Last week in San Diego, Transportation for America partners Move San Diego, WalkSanDiego, and the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition held a mayoral debate titled “Walk Bike Move Live” between the two candidates for mayor. Congressman Bob Filner and San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio, both put forth their visions for improving transportation and quality of life in San Diego.

“We want San Diego residents to know the candidates’ plans on how to improve transportation alternatives that support smart growth, and what those plans are for improving our environment, the local economy and preserving and enhancing the quality of life that defines America’s Finest City”, said Elyse Lowe, Executive Director of Move San Diego.

Though accelerating public transportation improvements were emphasized, most of the energy of the debate focused on how to make San Diego one of the most bikeable and walkable cities in the country.

Both candidates stressed their commitment to making San Diego’s communities safer for biking and walking with Councilman DeMaio saying it is in an investment in making the city more competitive, creating jobs, and “the San Diego way of life.”

Congressman Filner stressed that this would be one of his top priorities and that he sees San Diego’s future as a “city of villages” connected by walkable and bikeable streets that promote the arts, community, and the economy.

Biking and walking are gaining significant traction as transportation options in San Diego. The regional transportation planning organization SANDAG is planning to invest more than $3.5 billion in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure by 2050. This investment will make streets safer as more people travel by foot and bicycle and enhance access to transit, jobs, and housing while reducing the cost of transportation.

“Making our communities more walkable is one of the best ways to make the San Diego region a better place to live”, said Jim Stone, Executive Director of WalkSanDiego. “Walkable neighborhoods lead to healthier people, lower healthcare costs, higher real estate values, better retail sales, less air pollution, and an improved quality of life. Walkability is a winning proposition.”

Even as both candidates repeatedly trumpeted their commitment to this approach — certainly easy to do in debates typically long on promises and short on specifics — questions remain as to how they’ll achieve this vision given the fiscal realities facing cities today and in the days to come.

The federal programs that fund the majority of bicycle and pedestrian projects was significantly cut in the recently passed federal transportation bill, (MAP-21) and state revenues for transportation funding have remained flat and sometimes decreased.

“The San Diego County Bicycle Coalition is looking for a bold leader who will commit to join us in our quest to become the nation’s most bicycle friendly city”, said Andy Hanshaw, Executive Director of the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition.

“Working together we can change the way we think and get around by taking the initiative to provide safe and accessible bike connections throughout our city.”

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You can watch a full video of the debate below.

Last week’s elections a net plus for public transportation

Last Tuesday’s election results were a win for public transit, although high-profile state and national races stole most of the headlines. According to the Center for Transportation Excellence, 72 percent of transportation ballot measures received voter approval on November 3.

November’s ballot included seven measures in five states – Colorado, Indiana, Maine, Michigan and Ohio. Voters ultimately approved $74 million for transportation and rejected measures to delay transit projects, most notably a measure in Cincinnati aimed at blocking a planned streetcar line. The pro-transit incumbent in Cincinnati, Mayor Mark Mallory, was re-elected and voters in Charlotte, North Carolina elected transit advocate Anthony Foxx over an opponent who has been less supportive of transportation choices.

Two states – Maine and Washington – rejected initiatives known as TABOR measures. If passed, these would have imposed harsh spending limits on state governments, potentially forcing deep cuts to public transportation.

Starting tomorrow, the Center for Transportation Excellence is launching a free, six-part webinar series aimed at helping transportation organizations and advocates get measures on the ballot and win. The first part, scheduled for Friday, November 13 is themed “Election Trends: Learning from the Past and Looking to the Future.” Future webinars include “Building a Winning Coalition,” “Making Your Message Better” and “Silencing the Naysayers.”

CFTE maintains comprehensive records of transit politics throughout the country. Their website, http://www.cfte.org is a terrific resource.