Regional Measure: Austerity or Abundance?

An important Transportation Revenue Measure Select Committee convened by the MTC is meeting on Monday and will be starting to shape scenarios to consider for a regional transportation ballot measure. While there are many details to be considered, it’s clear that the Bay Area faces a major choice about the direction of its transportation network going forward:

  • A future where transit is declining, funded with a revenue measure that will reduce the size of cuts and speed of decline

  • A future where transit is improving: increasingly fast, convenient and abundant, accessible and affordable, funded with a revenue measure that will promise and deliver robust improvements to the public.

The Select Committee includes legislators, MTC Commissioners, business, labor, and advocacy stakeholders. Following the debates that resulted in the 2024 regional measure authorizing legislation (SB1031) effort being paused, the goal of this stakeholder group is to take a fresh look at the region’s transportation funding options.

Unfortunately, some stakeholders have come away from the debate over SB1031 with assumptions and conclusions that could lead transit down a path toward austerity and decline.  Fortunately, there are different lessons that can be drawn from the SB1031 discussions  - and brand new draft plans from MTC and transit agencies that create a compelling scenario of abundance. 

Austerity scenario

The thought process leading to an “austerity” scenario goes like this:

  • A regional funding measure should center on addressing the fiscal cliff facing agencies facing the steepest financial impacts from the pandemic, due to declines in fare revenue and other revenue sources such as SFMTA’s dependence on the city budget

  • The post-covid operating deficit for transit agencies is ~$600M (see below)

  • Voters are pessimistic, the tax should be relatively small

  • Only a sales tax is feasible (in contrast to evidence from polling from Voices for Public Transportation and Seamless), and ¾ per cent sales tax would crowd out other local taxes

  • A half-percent sales tax raises $1B (see chart below)

  • Capital projects are appealing, so use a majority of funding on capital projects

  • This leaves only $300-$400M for transit operations

  • Therefore - a regional measure should offer a tax that would provide less funding than the amount needed to maintain service on agencies facing a fiscal cliff, resulting in service cuts that would lead to a future of decline that would be less steep than if there were no tax

Abundance scenario

But there are new draft plans from MTC and transit agencies - that create a compelling scenario of abundance.   

Voters consistently reply to polls saying that they want transit to be faster, more convenient, and better coordinated. Voters want to make the system better even more strongly than they want to prevent cuts.   

Addressing the fiscal cliff - providing operating funding to keep transit running when temporary federal and state funding runs out - is essential - but not sufficient to deliver the improved transit system that voters want and that is needed to achieve our region’s goals.

One of the challenges with the SB1031 debates was the understandable demand from a variety of counties and agencies to see benefits for multiple parts of the region and multiple agencies, with less of a concentration on BART and Muni. 

Fortunately, for the first time in history, the Bay Area’s draft regional plan is based on creating a network of faster, more frequent transit all around the region, based on collaboration with agencies and county transportation authorities.  

The brand new maps from the draft plan weave in the plans that local agencies have developed for faster, more reliable, more frequent service - all around the region.

In the next draft coming forward in January, the draft Transit 2050+ plan will include data about outcomes - ridership increases, mode shift from driving (and congestion relief), benefits for housing and communities helping many more people to live within short walking distance of good transit, benefits for mobility with many thousands more people having convenient access to jobs, schools, and destinations.  These benefits will provide an even more compelling case for transit investments.

The prospect of a more convenient, connected, faster, more frequent transit network will be appealing to voters - much more than asking voters to tax themselves to get outcomes of service cuts, ridership declines, more congestion, less mobility, and greater challenges to housing and climate goals.

We strongly support the consideration of an “abundance option” for a regional funding measure that sets the region on a path toward abundant, convenient transit.   Even though the Bay Area is unlikely to achieve world-class transit in a single step, a regional measure that funds clear improvements will help increase public confidence that will be needed for public support for future improvements.

Adina Levin