In the United States and Canada, voters are sometimes asked to decide whether to raise taxes to fund transit improvements. I’m often asked whether I support these things. I don’t like telling people how to vote, but I can point out some predictable patterns in the arguments, and some universal facts about transit that you need to keep in mind. Here’s the list and then some detail on each point.
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In growing urban areas, transit needs grow faster than tax revenues.
This problem is mathematically inevitable.
As cities grow, and especially as they grow denser, the need for transit generally rises faster than population, at least in the range of densities that is common in North America. In brief: Suppose a particular square mile of the city doubles in population. Transit demand would double because there are twice as many people for whom transit is competing. But independently of that, if density is higher, each person is likely to find transit more useful, because (a) density creates more disincentives to driving and car ownership while (b) density makes it easier for transit agencies to provide abundant and useful service. Those two separate impacts of density on transit, multiplied together, mean that transit demand is rising faster than population. Again, go to my book for a more extended and thorough argument.
However, existing revenue sources are usually growing, on average, no faster than population. The various tax streams that support transit have a range of differences, but they are not going to grow massively faster than the population is growing.
So if the city is growing denser, transit needs are growing faster than transit revenues. This is nobody’s fault. It’s a mathematical fact about the geometry of transit and density.
If transit and roads were thought about together, you would not see this exponential growth in total transportation spending, because as populations grow denser, they need fewer highway lanes per capita — precisely because they’re using transit, walking, and cycling so much more. But we usually don’t think about those things together, unfortunately.
The cost of running a transit vehicle for an hour is rising everywhere due to market forces and concerns about security.
In our firm’s work we stay in touch with transit agencies all over the US, and they are all having the same problem: escalating costs of offering each vehicle-hour of service, due to (a) competition for qualified staff, (b) higher spending on security to satisfy demands for a greater perception of safety. The rising cost of staff is not just about unions flexing their muscle. Driving a transit vehicle is a difficult job and there has been an explosion of employment opportunities in the delivery industry that compete directly for workers who like driving and are good at it. This has shown up directly in difficulties with hiring. In short, the free market is requiring transit agencies to pay more for labor.
But not all transit funding measures improve service directly.
Many funding measures are only about infrastructure, but don’t fund more service. But it’s the need for service that grows, out of proportion to revenue, as a city grows.
So ask: “Does this measure increase or maintain service, or does it just build infrastructure?” Also, if it builds infrastructure, what will the service on the infrastructure be?” (It’s always shocking to see politicians take positions about an infrastructure project before they know what the frequency is going to be, for example, because every transit rider knows that frequency is fundamental to whether the service will be useful.)
An infrastructure-only plan can still improve service indirectly. It may make service more efficient, which effectively creates more service at the same cost. It may fix safety problems, relieve crowding, or remove barriers to access, so that the service is useful to more people to go more places. It may improve speed and reliability. These are all good things that people will experience as better service in the end.
But infrastructure may be promoted other benefits for your city that are not related to its usefulness of transit. You may hear people advertising the infrastructure for its look and feel, or the way it will stimulate development, or the prestige it will lend to the city. As you evaluate these claims, remember that they are entirely separate from your ability to go places so that you can do things. If you value that, make sure the infrastructure actually improves that.
Who is for and against? (But don’t overreact!)
Everyone looks at this, and it’s a big source of hysteria.
You will also hear lots of dark tales about the supporters. Your proposed measure may be supported by engineering firms, urban real estate interests, and anyone else who’s going to be personally enriched if the measure passes. This is normal and boring and should not affect your vote. Never vote no on a measure just because people are supporting it for partly selfish reasons. Those motives are in play in any campaign for anything. They are also in play in the “no” campaign!
Likewise, you should never vote one way or another because of how you feel about the campaign. Campaigns are thrown together quickly, work under immense time pressure, and usually make mistakes. The campaign will be over soon, but the effects of your vote will last much longer.
But here is one thing to watch for. You should be alarmed if there is a significant argument against the measure coming from people who usually support transit taxes. Unlike the political right, these people really want measures they can vote yes on, so if they’re voting no there is probably something wrong.
I don’t mean, of course, to give every self-proclaimed transit advocate a veto. As in any business, some of them are crackpots. But this opposition should be concerning. Notice it if it exists, or if it doesn’t.
But the transit agency looks so wasteful …
This is a tough one, because I can’t promise it isn’t true.
But be suspicious of what the anti-tax folks point out. Many things that look like waste make sense in another light. The most obvious example is that many people see empty seats on buses in their neighborhood and think they’re seeing waste, which is not true. (Smaller vehicles usually would not be any cheaper, and create other costs.)
Your transit agency may also have tried something that didn’t work out well — they make mistakes, like anyone. They’ve probably spent money on things that are easy to ridicule from certain quarters, like public art or maybe driver restrooms that someone thinks are too grand, though often these are the result of complex agreements that help get a transit project built.
But the managers have such big salaries!
You’d better hope they do. These are complex jobs with appalling responsibilities. The people in them could go to the private sector and earn much more. The best of them are in this business because they believe in it.
People expect transit executives to do impossible things every day — like run buses on time in wildly variable congestion, or cut labor costs without setting off rebellion in the workforce, or run service wherever anyone feels entitled to it no matter what the cost. The political pressures on them are off the charts.
Not every transit executive deserves that compensation, but in those cases the problem is usually the executive, not the compensation.
In any case, executive compensation is usually trivial in the context of transit agency budgets. It’s the compensation and management of the whole labor force, especially bus and train drivers and mechanics, that determines how efficient the agency is, and how much service you’ll have. I am not defending every executive perk or unnecessary management position; I’ve seen plenty of waste in my career. But cutting executive wages will not unlock much money for better service.
My own view is that transit executives — indeed, all transit staffs — should be paid very well and should be judged on very high expectations.
Maybe your transit agency isn’t like that. Maybe you’re really mad at them.
Well, if you don’t like the management of your water department, does that mean you don’t need water?
Voting no on urgently needed things is a poor way to protest waste and inefficiency in government. Instead, get involved in fighting those issues. Send your elected officials a letter saying “Don’t you dare read my vote for this as support for that!” Find other ways to keep up pressure if you think it’s warranted. These communications always have more impact than most voters realize.
Will transit reduce congestion?
Advocates of car-dependence often object that transit doesn’t reduce car congestion, and that car congestion is higher in transit-rich cities. To respond, see here. To understand the exclusionary attitudes behind the transit-doesn’t-fix-congestion argument, see here.
Do driverless cars mean we don’t need transit anymore?
This is not yet true anywhere, and it will never be true in dense cities that don’t have room for every traveler to be in a separate car. It may be that driverless taxis will replace a lot of low-demand coverage service — think buses wandering in low density suburbs carrying just a few people who really appreciate them. But if it is allowed to destroy higher ridership service, as some of its proponents would like, the result will be unacceptable levels of congestion.
Understand the consequences of a “no.”
One of the most universal delusions among everyday voters is that they can vote no and that means things will stay the same. Transit funding measures whose purpose is to sustain service are not like that. If ‘no’ wins very big things will change, and possibly for the worse. Check and see if there are plans for what transit will look like if such a measure fails. (Our firm is often involved in preparing these.)
If you’re still confused, vote yes.
Why? Because most people do the opposite. They vote no if they don’t understand, which is why it’s hard to get anything done. If you vote yes, you’re no more likely to be wrong than the no-voter is, and in a world where government often can’t seem to do anything, you’re voting for doing something. That sends an important signal in itself.
As a transit advocate, I’ve voted no on a couple of transit measures in my time, always with great regret as well as frustration. But usually, even if the plan contained something I object to, I’ve voted yes. Even a project that achieves its outcomes inefficiently usually achieves something. Even a project that’s solely designed to trigger condos for the very rich will at least get more rich people into the inner city, where they will then start caring about transit and supporting the kinds of transit a rich and vibrant city really needs. And while the failure of a ballot measure may be because of public objections to how the money was to be spent, lazy journalists and elected officials often treats it as a no to transit itself, so it often takes years to get another measure going.
So only if you’re still confused, go with this: All the other confused people are voting no, so vote yes.