No debate: We need both
Published 12:01 am Tuesday, June 21, 2011
As of late last week, Community Transit had received more than 1,000 online comments about its three options for next year’s 20 percent cut in service. That’s more than double the number from the same time last year, when falling tax revenues forced the agency to cut service by 15 percent and raise fares.
Lots of people depend on transit, and recession-fueled service cuts are complicating life for many of them. But it’s the only option for CT, which serves tens of thousands of Snohomish County residents with bus routes, vanpools and paratransit. Its operations are funded mostly by a sales tax of 9 cents on every $10 purchase, and when consumers cut back, CT must too.
So the agency, which already has cut back its routes and payroll sharply, will shrink and reprioritize again. For the immediate future, it will play a lesser role in reducing traffic congestion. Yet surveys have consistently shown that taxpayers understand and value that role, even if they never step onto a bus themselves. It’s why solid majorities have approved sales taxes for CT in the past.
As leaders from the Legislature — working with representatives from business, labor and the environmental community — begin discussing priorities for a statewide roads and transit package to put before voters in 2012, they need to avoid infighting and come to quick consensus on a balanced package that restores transit service and improves roads.
Why? Because their biggest challenge will come in selling that package to a skeptical public. In a poll conducted last month for the Washington Policy Center, 52 percent said they wouldn’t vote for a major tax increase for transportation, even if they thought it would reduce traffic congestion in their area.
But effective congestion reduction will require new revenue. Old sources are drying up — sales taxes in the case of transit, and gas taxes in the case of roads. The former is inherently unstable; the latter will continue to erode as vehicles become more fuel-efficient.
Indexing the gas tax to inflation should be part of the discussion. Tolls will no doubt be part of the answer. So will vehicle license fees. All three share the virtue of being paid by users, as well as relative stability. But voters will have to be convinced they’ll make a difference.
Some of the folks who will cobble together a proposal for 2012 want the lion’s share of funding dedicated to transit. Others want it for roads. A tug-of-war pitting roads against transit won’t win for anybody at election time. We need both.
Transportation taxes will be a hard enough sell. An early compromise in the roads vs. transit debate is essential to gaining the broad support any package will need to succeed.
