taxes Archives - Transportation For America

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.

Locals encountering help or hindrance from states on their transportation plans

Flickr photo by John Greenfield http://www.flickr.com/photos/24858199@N00/10090187245/

Several places have been in the news lately as they find their ambitious efforts to solve transportation challenges hinging on legislative action this lawmaking season. In some, state legislators are helping out with enabling legislation, but in others they are challenging the concept of local control and threatening needed investment.

The prime case of the latter has been in Nashville, where a handful of Tennessee legislators decided to interfere in a regional Nashville plan to build a first-of-its-kind bus rapid transit system through the region’s core.

An initial measure from a non-Nashville lawmaker would have required a vote of the General Assembly to approve the BRT line, despite the state DOT’s role in planning the line as a member of the Nashville Metropolitan Planning Organization’s board. An amendment to an unrelated bill said flatly: ”No rapid bus project in a metropolitan form of government, such as Nashville, could be built without the permission of the … General Assembly.”

Mayors of Tennessee’s four large cities immediately saw the threat that legislative micromanaging posed to their ability to meet their economic challenges and fired off a letter (pdf) that helped persuade legislators to try a different tack. The House version now simply affirms the status quo that the DOT must approve use of state right-of-way for a transit line and that only the legislature can appropriate state funds.

But new language was added in the Senate’s version that would prohibit any transit system from picking up or dropping off passengers in the middle of state roads as a “safety” measure — exactly what’s planned for The Amp line — regardless of what the Federal Transit Administration or engineers at TDOT have to say about the safety track record of center-running BRT. (Center running BRT is already in use or on the way in Cleveland, OH; Eugene, OR; San Bernardino, CA; Chicago, IL; and a handful of other cities.)

Current conditions on Ashland in Chicago, and rendering of the new planned center-running BRT for the corridor. Does one of these streets look safer for pedestrians than the other?

In Indiana, meanwhile, the legislature finally granted metro Indianapolis the right to vote on funding a much-expanded bus network, including bus rapid transit. What it won’t include is light rail, as dictated by the new law, which would allow six counties to hold referendums to let voters decide whether to build a transit system using mostly income-tax revenue, according to the Indianapolis Star.

Despite the mode-specific directive, it was a big victory for the business community, who pointed out that the state stands to benefit if growth engine Indianapolis continues to succeed economically. The region is a hotbed of healthcare jobs, and once again, providing a better bus system — something Mayor Greg Ballard and region’s other leaders are committed to doing — means that those employers get access to a bigger pool of workers, and workers of all incomes can reach a greater range of jobs.

Four years after their bus service was completely canceled, Clayton County just south of Atlanta proper is catching a helping hand from the Georgia general assembly. Lawmakers just passed a measure that would allow Clayton County voters to vote on approving a penny sales tax to restore local transit operations — something voters, local leaders and citizens alike strongly support.

When Clayton County lost that bus service, they lost something that employers — especially those at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport — depended on to get employees to work every day. There are thousands of jobs at that enormous airport right at the edge of Clayton County, and a good transit connection was a boost for jobs and residents to benefit from that economic magnet.

Up in Minnesota, the state is moving a huge comprehensive funding package for transportation across the state — one of many states considering ways to raise their own new revenue for transportation. (See our tracker) A House committee voted 9-6 Friday to pass the comprehensive transportation funding bill (HF 2395). Similar legislation didn’t make it through the House committee in 2013.

Supporting and enabling these efforts is exactly what states should be doing as local cities and regions are trying desperately to make these sorts of investments a reality, usually with their own skin in the game; not obstructing them at every turn.

When a city or region wants to raise a tax via public ballot vote to improve their transportation network, shouldn’t the state leaders proudly support those efforts of a city bootstrapping their way up?

Editors note: We’re in the process of updating it with 2014 information, but you can find similar information to the Minnesota plan over on our State Funding Tracker, which focuses largely on state (i.e., not local) plans to fund transportation.

A state with one of the oldest transportation systems tries to make things new — new state series

It’s a state that boasts the first active subway line and a network of turnpikes that predated the Interstates, so it shouldn’t surprise you that Massachusetts has some of the oldest infrastructure in the country.

Though Massachusetts’ bridges are middle of the pack in deficiency nationally, they’re beyond middle age (an average of 56-plus years) and many of its busy subways, bus lines and commuter trains – and the roads, bridges and tunnels that carry them — are starting to fall apart after decades of heavy use. Saddled with debt from the Big Dig (among other things) and chronically underfunded after years of budget cuts, Massachusetts leaders and advocates are trying to reform their transportation agencies while raising new money to bring an aging system into the 21st century.

With MAP-21 out the door, attention has shifted from Washington to the states. In many cases, states are deciding that they need more money for transportation and are embarking on ambitious and often groundbreaking plans to raise additional revenues for transportation. This post is part of a longer series we’ll be doing in 2013 looking at how states are addressing the need for more transportation dollars, along with key policy changes. Visit the home for state plans here, where we’re tracking all of the news. – Ed.

These aging systems in Massachusetts combined with years of lacking the needed money for maintenance has left things in perilous shape and makes for unreliable service on the roads and rails— along with unsustainable levels of debt that force MassDOT to use their capital funds (intended for construction, expansion, new trains, etc.) just to keep the system operating day-to-day.

Here’s one crazy fact for you: 100% of MBTA (The “T”) fare revenues go to paying down debt, because Big Dig-related debt largely ended up on the MBTA books.

While a significant 2009 reform merged the Bay State’s myriad of transportation agencies into one MassDOT, the revenue question was left unanswered. Reform did indeed result in some savings, however the funding gap identified by numerous Blue Ribbon Commissions and nonpartisan think tanks has remained and indeed expanded in the past four years.

A big source of the problem is that thanks to generations of budget cuts, a painful recession at a terrible time and rising expenses (like healthcare), the state has been paying for everything with bonds and other non-sustainable sources (read: debt.) A couple of winters of failing commuter trains, unreliable bus lines and overcrowded subway cars has helped convinced the public that the system is falling apart.

The state recently tallied up — confirmed by other independent sources — that they need about an extra $1 billion a year to bring the system into a state of good repair, fully fund operations and address some critical “expansion” projects.

But enough about the past, what’s the plan going forward?

Paraphrasing our partners at the T4 Massachusetts coalition, how will Massachusetts raise enough money from sustainable sources to fully fund the systems’ operations and invest in its future, spent in a transparent manner that helps increase access to transportation choices across the whole state, supports the economy and reduces greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector?

Gov. Deval Patrick introduced a plan that addresses some of the issues through dedicated sales tax revenue with some very progressive elements. His plan would:

Lower the sales tax rate from 6.25% to 4.5%, but deposit it all to an infrastructure fund for multiple things, including transportation. This alone will reduce revenues by $1.1 billion, but…
Index the gas tax to inflation to bring in an additional $13 million in 2014, and up to $118 million more by 2021. (The state gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1991 and was never adjusted for inflation, so it’s actually at its lowest level since the introduction of the tax.)
Increase vehicle fees by 10% every five years beginning in FY16
Increase tolls by 5% every two years beginning in FY15
Raise state income tax from 5.25% to 6.25% with changes to exemptions to raise $2.8 billion.
Increase MBTA transit fares 5% every two years.
Unlike some other states, the new money raised is expressly intended for multimodal projects. There’s no restriction on spending money on transit.

There’s a statewide pilot program for a vehicle-miles-traveled tax, a proposal to pay down Big Dig debt with other funds (freeing up transit money for, you know, transit), and the Transportation Investment Act, which would help guide how money gets spent in the state. This act, supported by a broad cross section of business, community and environmental groups and backed by the T4MA coalition, would send money to Regional Transit Agencies across the state, invest in low income communities, and enable DOT to comply with the states’ other obligations, like their “mode shift” plan to triple the share of travel in Massachusetts by bicycling, transit and walking. (Read Streestblog for more on that.)

The ball is currently in the Legislature’s court, but the clock is ticking.

A plan must be approved in time for the MBTA’s budget submission deadline around the corner in April or there will definitely be more fare hikes to keep the MBTA operating. The impact of that could be disastrous for lower-income commuters who depend on the “T”, a system that’s already experienced drastic fare hikes over the last 7-8 years.