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An Instructive Win for Transit in Spokane

Posted on August 12, 2026 in Advocacy, Elections, Funding, Spokane 0

Downtown Spokane is really spectacular, by the way. Photo by William Jacobs vs Pexels.com

In many US cities, voters will soon be asked to invest in public transit, if only to sustain services as operating costs rise.  So it might be useful to look closely at the just-completed battle in a very “purple” place, i.e. a place with plenty of Democrats but also lots of Republicans.  What’s interesting is the specific arguments that the opposition made.  You can expect these arguments when this issue comes up in your community.  This post provides some responses to them.

Spokane, Washington’s transit agency faced the voters on August 4 in a special election in order to renew their 0.2% sales tax.  This renewal does not let them expand the total quantity of service very much, but it does ensure that they can maintain the current level of service well into the future.  The measure looks like it has passed although the State of Washington takes a long time to confirm, but it was a nail-biter — currently 51.5% in favor.  (You can follow the results here.)

Again, the Spokane metro area is not an especially progressive place, although there are concentrations of progressives especially in the City of Spokane and the college town of Cheney.  It is in a safe Republican congressional seat.   Spokane County (85% of whose population is in the transit agency boundary) voted 50.6% for Donald Trump in 2024 and 54.6% for the Republican candidate for governor the same year.

Knowing that, it’s striking that the leading opponents of the measure all emphasized how much they support public transit.  You’ll see that in

The Downtown Spokane Partnership statement gives the essence of these business-based arguments:

After careful consideration about fiscal priorities and timing, the DSP Board voted to oppose Proposition 1 on the August 2026 ballot. Consistent feedback from DSP members and the broader community indicates that the community’s highest priorities remain focused on addressing urgent public needs that affect safety, economic vitality, and quality of life. The DSP believes those priorities should remain the primary focus of new public revenue commitments at this time.

The’s DSP’s opposition to Prop. 1 is not a reflection of the value of public transit, or the quality of the services STA provides. Our position reflects the reality that taxpayers are being asked to fund a growing number of important public needs at a time when available resources are limited. In this environment, difficult choices must be made about which investments should take precedence.

None of the leading business arguments claim that transit is unimportant, or that it’s obsolete because we’ll soon have driverless cars.  Instead, they affirmed how much they support transit, and then gave these arguments, which we should expect in city after city:

  • “There are other more urgent priorities.”  They emphasize other obvious needs — help with public safety, homelessness, etc.  This gives opponents the opportunity to give speeches about those problems as though the transit agency has anything to do with them.  This is going to be a common issue.  In city after city, transit seems to be everyone’s seventh priority.  Business leaders are going to keep saying “this isn’t the right time,” as though they would be more supportive at some other time.  Other urgent priorities are not going away, and at some point it’s going to be necessary to deal with this one even though those others are still urgent too.
  • They think that the agency doesn’t need the money.  In some places you’ll hear opponents imply that transit agencies should just crush their labor unions and pay people less.  Some senior workers are certainly highly paid, but overall the current salaries of bus drivers and mechanics are mostly market-driven and reflect the difficulty of hiring those positions.  In Spokane, thanks to years of responsible management, the agency has a substantial reserve.  Opponents demanded that the agency spend down that reserve, moving the system closer to the real fiscal cliff that many agencies face.

What can we learn from this near-disaster? First, the opponents of the measure were smart: they focused their message entirely on the swing voter.  Their political base includes people who think transit is evil because it brings crime or communism or immigrants, but their message ignored those people.  Instead, they spoke to people who think transit is good but are worried about taxes.  Every part of their argument is talking to that person.

If you are an urban progressive socializing mostly with other urban progressives, you must remember that even in your city, your social circle is unlikely to make the difference in a transit election.  The swing voter is someone who supports transit but worries their taxes are too high.  Be ready with responses like the ones I’ve given above.  Above all, don’t talk about transit as though it were a progressive thing.  Don’t talk about free fares or structural racism or overthrowing capitalism when you’re trying to get people to vote for transit, unless you’re 100% sure that everyone who hears you cares about those things.  Emphasize instead the diversity, including political diversity, of the people who find it useful.

In most communities (yours may vary) the swing voter is politically moderate and often respectful of local business leadership.  In Spokane, this swing voter probably voted for Trump but cares about their community and is open to taxes that provide efficient investments that deliver outcomes they value.  In this election, Spokane Transit’s good management and a careful “yes” campaign appears to have won the day over very well-organized, well-funded, and strategically savvy opposition.  It will be a victory worth learning from.

Do US Conservatives Support Public Transit? A Clue

Posted on May 26, 2025 in Advocacy, General

If you live in an urban progressive bubble in the US, it may seem absurd to speculate about whether US conservatives could support public transit.  The Trump administration’s Secretary of Transportation is openly attacking the funding plan for the nation’s most transit-dependent big city, while amplifying exaggerated narratives about crime.  It’s rare to see national Republican politicians speaking up strongly for public transit as a worthy public investment, particularly where this would compete with road funding or with other Republican priorities such as tax cuts.

But locally, the picture is quite different.  And like all local pictures, it’s different in each locality.

This is about to become very important, because we are headed into a period of epic state and local battles about public transit across the country.  Many agencies are facing financial crises that will require either new funding or service cuts.  That new funding will need to be approved either by voters, or by state and local politicians who will need the support of voters.  All this needs to happen by November 2026 at the latest.

And in a lot of places, that will mean winning the votes of some people who see themselves as conservatives.  These are not people who will vote for Democratic candidates nationally, but who are still open to local efforts to solve problems that they see in their own communities.

So I want to flag a remarkable detail from a survey just completed by Spokane Transit Authority in Spokane, Washington.  85% of self-described conservatives believe that it’s at least “somewhat important” for “the region to support and fund public transportation”!

 

 

(Note for math geeks:  Yes, I know that with 447 total replies a single cell of a crosstab may not be statistically meaningful, but look at the larger pattern: Over 90% saying at least “somewhat important” in a region that’s not especially leftist.  Again, this is a statistically valid survey, not a self-selected one.)

Spokane area can fairly be described as a purple region in a blue state.  It has some universities but is not culturally dominated by them.   The City of Spokane itself is moderately progressive and much of the suburbs are quite conservative.  The congressional district is safely Republican.  So while the transit system benefits from state funds that it wouldn’t have if it were a few miles further east in Idaho, it still must build local support in a bipartisan way.  The agency’s communications and management have been aware of that for some time, and have grown adept at engaging with conservatives to build left-right consensus.

I don’t believe for a moment that the Spokane area’s conservative voters, when presented with a specific tax measure and a specific “no” campaign, would vote 85% yes.  But this does speak to the importance of not presuming they will vote no, and talking about transit in ways that will appeal to them.  Transit agency comms and campaigns must avoid signaling that transit is an exclusively progressive cause, even if some on the urban left will find the results a little irritating.  There’s just no other way to build a large enough consensus.  In California, for example, the political leadership is overwhelmingly progressive and will tend to speak in progressively-coded ways, but many sales tax measures require 2/3, which means the deciding voter is far to the right of the median voter

As Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn likes to say, “When bottom-up conservatives work with bottom-up progressives, they find that they need each other.”

Meanwhile, have other transit agencies asked this question and run this crosstab?  If not, it’s something I’d recommend.

Transit Prevents the Collapse of Civilization

Posted on April 7, 2020 in Advocacy

My piece on transit’s role in the Covid-19 crisis, and what it should teach us about what it’s role has always been, is in Citylab today.  Key idea:

The goal of transit, right now, is not competing for riders nor providing a social service.  It is helping prevent the collapse of civilization.

Covid-19: Transit Will Not Survive Without Help!

Posted on March 17, 2020 in Advocacy

Public transit in the US is facing an unprecedented crisis.  Fare revenue will collapse as people stay home, while the tax revenues that transit relies on will also decline steeply as we go into a recession.  Some small transit agencies are shutting down, but most are trying to keep going, as a public service.  As I recommended, many are cutting peak commute service but keeping the all-day service that is a city’s lifeblood, and the lifeline of the people who are keeping things running right now.

Fortunate people use airlines, so they’re obsessed with saving them.  But if we want transit to still be there when this crisis is past, emergency assistance will be critical.  See below for what you can do.

Here’s the statement by the American Public Transit Association today:

March 17, 2020

Urge Your Members of Congress to Fight for Public Transit COVID-19 Funding!

Congress is actively working on a third package of COVID-19 response legislation and an emergency aid package could pass in the coming days.?Public transportation organizations are taking extraordinary efforts to protect the health and safety of riders and employees while working tirelessly to maintain essential services. We want to ensure that the federal government includes aid to public transportation agencies to help offset the additional costs and lost revenue related to COVID-19.?

APTA requests $12.875 billion for public transit to offset direct costs and revenue losses of COVID-19 in Fiscal Year (FY) 2020. These funds are necessary to maintain essential services, including providing public transportation to health care workers, Medicaid recipients who receive non-emergency medical transportation, and law enforcement personnel. Without these emergency funds, public transit agencies may be required to suspend services.

The APTA request of $12.875 billion will offset the following costs and losses:

  • Direct Costs: $1.75 billion. Based on preliminary results of the APTA survey, 98 percent of public transit agencies have increased direct costs because of COVID-19 (e.g., cleaning vehicles and facilities);
  • Farebox Revenue Loss: $6.0 billion. We anticipate a 75 percent loss of farebox revenue over the remaining six months of FY 2020 (total annual revenue: $16.1 billion);
  • Dedicated Sales Tax Revenue Loss: $4.875 billion. We anticipate a 75 percent loss of dedicated sales tax revenue over next six months (total annual revenue: $13 billion); and
  • Restart Costs: $250 million.
CALL TO ACTION

We strongly encourage you to contact your Members of Congress today and share the impacts, such as ridership losses and increased costs due to labor and cleaning products, of COVID-19 on public transportation in your communities.

To contact your Members of Congress, please call 202.224.3121.

Hating your transit agency won’t make it better

Posted on July 3, 2015 in Advocacy, Vancouver

P1010476The Vancouver metro area has now reached the climax of a frenzy of orchestrated rage directed at its transit agency, TransLink.  Over 60% of voters have rejected a sales tax increase for urgently needed transit growth, largely due to an effective campaign that made the transit agency's alleged incompetence the issue.  

There's just one problem.  TransLink is (or was) one of North America's most effective transit agencies.   Parts of the agency had made mistakes, and of course TransLink was struggling to meet exploding demand in one of the world's most desirable metro areas.  Almost nobody defends TransLink's governance model either.  But TransLink is, or was, an effective network, run by a reasonably efficient agency.  For years I cited it all over the world as a model for good planning.  Whether it remains that depends on how much of it is now destroyed in the thrill of recrimination.

Admittedly, I have a personal angle on this, because I worked inside TransLink's planning department for two long stints, for a year in 2005-6 and for six months in 2011.  (I have assisted them as a consultant since, but I have no contracts with TransLink now and no expectation of one.)  It was, I thought, an unusually forward-thinking and principle-driven transit planning department.  I assumed this was an expression of Metro Vancouver's unusual culture of intentional, strategic, controlled urban development. It also reflected an era of leadership that created the space for these thoughts to occur, as opposed to the crisis-by-crisis lifestyle that too often prevails in transit management.

The conversations that were happening at TransLink — especially about the difficult question of how a regional transit agency can form a reality-based relationship with its constituent cities — were extremely sophisticated and respectful.  How should a large regional agency interact with city governments when it holds the technical expertise about transit that city governments mostly lack? For example, when a city government demands something that is geometrically impossible, how can the transit agency's response avoid appearing overbearing?  Much of what I now know about this relationship, and the unavoidable forces operating on it, I figured out while helping with policy development there.  

Today, those issues are at the core of my practice, as the relationship between city governments and transit authorities becomes an urgent issue almost everywhere. 

Special-purpose regional governments are vulnerable creatures.  The marquee leaders of an urban region — usually major mayors and state/province leaders — influence them but don't control them directly enough to feel responsible for them.  Blame is easily shifted to them by the more powerful governments all around them.  

All this is even more true when the product is transit, for four reasons.

First, transit somehow looks easy, in a way that water and power and regional land use planning do not.  Many reporters have no factual frame for thinking about transit, and treat anyone with a simplistic answer as an expert.  (Tip: my book can help provide that frame.)

Second, transit's success is utterly dependent on municipal actions around land use and street design, so regional transit agencies that are thinking strategically must form an interest in those municipal decisions.  This is easily characterized as interference with municipal sovereignty.  (I always advise transit agencies to respect local right to make decisions but to clearly describe the transit consequences of those decisions, in advance.)

Third, everyone is now screaming at transit agencies to innovate, and yet voters have zero tolerance for risk.  Some of TransLink's failures are arguably innovations that didn't work out.  If you expect everything your agency does to be successful, then quit telling them to innovate, because failure is intrinsic to innovation.  

Fourth, transit, when considered in isolation as in Metro Vancouver's referendum, cannot avoid generating a ferocious difference in opinion across different parts of an urban region.  In any region, maps of votes on transit referenda are mostly maps of residential density (Vancouver, Seattle), and for good reason.  Transit demand rises exponentially with density: doubling density makes it more than twice as urgent.  So of course the average core city dweller views transit as existential while the average outer-suburbanite on a cul-de-sac views it as unimportant.  Giant regional transit agencies will continue to be pulled apart by these forces until we stop having regional transit debates and start having regional transportation debates.  (The other important trend, in response to this basic math, is that core cities must exert more leadership, and funding, on their own transit issues.  More on that below.)

What is amazing, then, is not that regional transit agencies are having political problems, but that so many of them are doing so well, considering.  Many regions are moving forward with strong regional transit strategies, supported by working majorities of voters.  Many are also making tough choices, like the painful shift in priorities that underlies Houston's new network.

Hating your transit agency is easy and fun.  You don't have to understand your regional politics, in which the real power to fix transit is usually not held by the transit agency.  You can also have the thrill of blowing up a big institutional edifice, as Metro Vancouver voters may now have done.

But a lot that's good will also be destroyed.   In Metro Vancouver, amid all the recriminations, TransLink has lost the credibility it needs to lead reality-based conversations about transit.  Maybe some other agency will step into that role.  (Indeed, core cities for whom transit is an existential issue must develop that capability.)  Or maybe there will just be many more years of blame shifting among the elected officials who really control transit in the region.

If you look at transit from the point of view of a state or province leader, you can understand why so many politicians are terrified of the issue.  Everyone is screaming at them about it, pushing simplistic solutions, and the issue is polarizing on urban-suburban lines.  Some huge problems, like equipment failures due to deferred maintenance, are curses laid upon us all by our parents' generation.  What's more, most elite leaders are motorists, and need help finding their feet in the geometric facts of transit where a motorists' assumptions lead them astray.  So they panic, shift blame, and leave transit agencies appearing to have more power to solve problems than they actually have.  If you've never been a political leader, don't be sure you wouldn't do the same in their place.

Be patient.  Breathe.  Resist the desire to see your transit agency in smoldering ruins.  Then, demand leadership.  Demand state/provincial leadership that looks for solutions instead of pointlessly stoking urban-suburban conflict.  (One possible solution is to spend more time on regional transportation debates instead of just transit debates, because regional transportation plans can look more balanced than transit plans can.)  And yes, if your transit agency is being given dysfunctional direction by the region's leaders, demand a better system with more accountability to an elected official who will have to answer for outcomes.

Finally, if you live in a major city that cares about transit, demand that your city leaders look beyond blaming the transit agency, and that they do everything they can themselves to make their transit better.  Remember, your city government, through its powers of land use planning and street design, controls transit at least as much as the transit agency does.  Ask them: What is their transit plan?  Tell them to follow the work of cities that are investing in transit themselves, beyond what their transit agency can afford, like Seattle and Washington DC., or for that matter transit-ambitious secondary cities like Bellevue, Washington, who have their own transit plans to guide the city's work.  No regional or state transit authority — beholden to state or regionwide government that is dominated by less urban interests — is going to meet all of the transit needs of a dense, core city that has chosen to make transit a foundation of its livability.  Their staff may well be doing what they can with the direction that they have, but they need your city government's active support, involvement, leadership, and investment.  

Sorry, transit is complicated.  It's fun to blow things up, as Metro Vancouver's voters probably have.  But the solutions are out there, if we all demand leadership, and offer it.

Local bus systems reduce employee turnover! (quote of the week)

Posted on May 7, 2015 in Advocacy

This.  Is.  So.  Important.

We find that the size of the fixed-route bus system (measured as real per capita operating expenditures) is negatively related to employee turnover rates [for local employers]: An increase in bus systems’ per capita operating expenditures is associated with a decrease in employee turnover. Decreases in employee turnover represent cost savings to businesses by reducing the costs associated with training new workers and rebuilding firm-specific knowledge or better employee-employer matches. These results suggest that access to fixed-route bus transit should be a component of the economic development strategy for communities not only for the access to jobs that it provides low-income workers but also for the benefits accruing to businesses that hire these workers.

Dagney Faulk and Michael J. Hicks,
"The Impact of Bus Transit on Employee Turnover:
Evidence from Quasi-experimental Samples"
Urban Studies

This also means that new employers need to read this before they choose their location!

I could wish that they had measured transit quantity using revenue hours rather than expenditures, because revenue hours are a better measure of service to the customer.  But still, this is a big deal.  Eric Jaffe also has the story at Citylab.

Email of the week: A no-voter on Metro Vancouver’s transit referendum

Posted on April 3, 2015 in Advocacy

From John DeFazio.  He's responding to this post, or maybe to this one.  I have not edited for grammar or clarity.

Jarrett,
you write like a scholar, using you master's degrees to cleverly make readers feel sorry for Translink and vote yes, even if they are confused… you know the adage, "bullshit baffle brains", thats what you and your kind are doing… and how much are they paying you Jarrett? 
Nothing.  
there are many other ways that Translink can raise funding for transit and you bloody well know it… alternatively Translink should go public, make it competitive for private companies to run transit for the masses… look at BC Ferries, they run low on cheddar and they raise their rates, simple, you wanna ride, you pay…
 
Here's what professionals know:  Specialized transit services in monopoly positions or isolated intense markets are sometimes profitable.  BC Ferries, which cross water barriers where the only alternative is flying, are a great example.  But the entire transit system for a metro area the size of greater Vancouver is never profitable in a developed-world context, just as roads are not.  That's not why transit exists.  It exists, among other things, to protect the economy from being strangled by traffic congestion.
 
like [Vancouver] Mayor Robinson who makes stupid promises he cant even come close to keeping, and big ones too, you know, the "end homeless" bullshit he's peddling… Robinson wants a freebie from all lowermainlanders in the form of 0.5% tax hike to pay for his Broadway subway that he's been promising for years! Hey, what about if Vancouver raises their own money to do the subway? or lobby the provincial govt for cheddar or lobby the Federal govt for cheddar!! 
 
When the British Columbia government wanted to widen the Port Mann freeway bridge between the cities of Surrey and Coquitlam, they argued it was province-wide interest.  Nobody talked about it as "Surrey's and Coquitlam's bridge."  Likewise, the Broadway subway is physically in Vancouver but that doesn't make it Vancouver's.  If you ever want to be able to get from the northeastern part of the metro area to the airport, for example, you need the Broadway subway, because only with that subway do all the rapid transit lines into Vancouver connect with each other so that people can make suburb-suburb trips. 
 
I defer to locals to explain the cheddar metaphor.  
Im so glad i don't live in Vancouver where Robertson pretends he's the Mayor in…
Whatever supposedly high principles anti-transit campaigns may be espousing, a key motivating force is usually sheer hostility toward the region's densest city, and everything it represents.  If you want to understand why anti-transit campaigns are so fervent, this always seems to be part of the answer.
and who's paying for the yes advertising eh? taxpayers? who else… that's so shameful and in the end will see what a waste of resources this has been… pissing away good money when there is no chance of winning this plebiscite!
Why didn't you talk about Mayor Corrigen eh? remember him? he's opposed to the tax hike with validity…
Longtime readers know that I almost never write about personalities, because this is not about them.  It's about the freedom and opportunity of citizens in the region.
Ive voted NO, every one i know has done the same… the yes campaign hasn't a hope in hell to even come close and you know it Jarrett…
Yes, I'm sure everyone you know agrees with you.  That's how human beings withdraw from reality, by only "knowing" people who agree with them.   Personally, I get bored listening to people who agree with me, which is why I wanted to share John's email.  By the way, I didn't select this email from a whole pile to create a particular effect; it's the only one I've received on the subject, but it's typical of what Metro Vancouver seems to think is a credible opposition.
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