Last week’s midterm elections in the US highlighted again the popularity of public transit at the ballot box. Urban and suburban populations continue to want good public transit and are willing to pay for it.
The big win, of course, was San Francisco Bay Area Measure RTM, which was leading with over 60% yes on election night. That’s a good showing considering that it was raising sales taxes in a place where taxes are already high. This was a sufficiently large blowout that it gives hope to many other agencies that may have to face the voters soon.
But as we look to the future we should be inspired by other elections too. In August, Spokane (Washington) Transit Authority won a reauthorization of its funding in a low-turnout primary election, which I wrote about here. The key takeaways there are that public transit is popular even in places that see themselves as moderate or conservative, as long as it’s clearly (a) well managed and (b) solving problems in actual people’s lives. That campaign deserves to be studied by anyone who needs to pass a transit funding measure outside of the most progressive cities.
There were other wins in these midterms outside of big liberal cities, all of which deserve study.
- Macomb County Michigan (northeast Detroit suburbs)
- Stark County, Ohio (Canton)
- Routt County, Colorado (Steamboat Springs)
- Converse, Texas (rejection of secession from San Antonio’s transit agency VIA)
As I process these results, I think of all the service reduction plans our firm has worked on recently, such as recently implemented networks in Des Moines and Louisville. In both cases, local and state leaders made clear that there was no prospect of avoiding the service cut, so we did what we had to do. I’m proud of both networks but the losses of access to opportunity that they represent will still be felt. And in both cases I wonder, what if it had been possible to at least ask if voters really wanted their transit system cut this much? Whether that’s possible, and how to do it, varies by state and locality.
Finally, condolences to everyone in Florida, which may turn into a dramatic experiment in the next two years. Florida voters passed Amendment 3, a property tax limitation measure that slashes the primary funding source for local government — especially rural local government. Emergency services can be expected to be first in line for the money that remains. This will devastate the rural transit systems that are lifelines for many people, including many retired Republicans. It also heralds a major shift in power from (friendly, accessible) local government to (distant, bureaucratic) state government, which will be alienating to many ordinary people trying to solve problems of all kinds in their communities.
Florida’s new measure will be bad for urban transit agencies too. One of our clients, Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority in the St Petersburg area, estimates that they may face a 25% cut with even worse numbers further into the future.
Florida will be interesting because it will still be entirely under Republican control, so the consequences of this amendment will be borne by the party that proposed it. I hope they figure out quickly that the cuts they’ve unleashed will affect people who might have voted for them, and might not in the future.
What are my takeaways on transit from this election?
- Transit is surprisingly popular at the ballot box if (a) it’s perceived as well-managed and (b) is not presented in a way that codes as partisan.
- Local leaders looking at transit service cuts should be more optimistic about asking their voters for support.
- The conventional wisdom is “people won’t support transit by itself, so we have to package it with road improvements”. So you get measures like the one that just failed in Fresno County, California, with a little money for transit mixed with a lot of money for roads. I wonder if that’s still the right formula. (Eaton County, Michigan, a rural county southwest of Lansing, ran separate transit and roads measures and the transit one won by a bigger margin.) A transit-only measure triggers a clear conversation about transit, and you would be surprised how well that conversation can go even in conservative areas.
- Another conventional wisdom is that transit needs high-turnout elections like the ones that come every two years in November. But Spokane’s August election win deserves a look. Are we still sure that the pro-transit voter is the low-information voter who only comes out to vote for President? I’m certainly not anymore.
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