T4America Blog

Crucial transportation and transit-related ballot measures coming up in 2016

Throughout 2016, ballot measures and referenda that will raise new revenue for transportation at the local or state level will be decided during elections across the country. As in years past, we’ll be keeping a close eye on several of the most notable questions in the 2016 edition of Transportation Vote.

We’ll be profiling a few at length on the blog over the next few months and keeping all the relevant information organized in a table: https://t4america.org/maps-tools/state-policy-funding/2016-votes

Two years ago in 2014, a handful of states moved to create “lockboxes” for transportation funds and several others raised new funding. At the local level, cities and counties from Atlanta to Seattle approved important ballot measures to raise new funding to either preserve or massively expand public transportation service.  The voters in a growing list of states and localities will be deciding similar questions this November, and we’ll be keeping a close eye. Stay tuned for more, and bookmark Transportation Vote 2016.

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.

As soon as election day is over, the focus will shift to 2017 and especially the state legislative sessions beginning around the beginning of the year. If you want to know more about state legislation related to transportation revenue, you need to join us in Sacramento for Capital Ideas II. 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 2017 and beyond.

Note: We don’t track 100 percent of all transit-related measures — for an overview of all transit-related ballot measures, turn to the Center for Transportation Excellence, the authority on tracking such data. Questions about measures or know of a significant one we should be following that doesn’t appear here? Reach out to Dan Levine on our staff.