Category: Triangle Transit

Proposed bill would hobble transit across North Carolina

A bill being considered in the N.C. General Assembly would bar N.C. counties from raising sales taxes to fund both education and public transportation. The taxes could fund one or the other, not both.

The bill – House Bill 1224 – acquired some surprise provisions in the last few days. One provision would kill the plan to ask Mecklenburg County voters in November to OK a quarter-cent sales tax increase to pay for teacher raises and offer a bit of help for arts organizations.

The bill would cap any county’s local sales tax at 2.5 cents, and Mecklenburg is already at the cap. See “Senate bill would scuttle November sales tax referendum.”

The effect on transit hasn’t gotten much publicity in the Charlotte region, although it can’t afford to build its long-planned transit system with only the half-cent transit sales tax it’s had for 14 years. But in the Triangle, it’s a different story. Transit advocates are worried. (Update July 25: The bill was amended to get rid of the either-or provision. It still would cap a county’s sales taxes, effectively barring Mecklenburg from its planned sales tax referendum for teacher pay and creating a dilemma for Wake County. Here’s a summary of the bill’s process. It passed the N.C. Senate on July 24, and now sits in the N.C. House Finance Committee.)
Some background, although be forewarned, it’s complicated: In N.C., no city or county can raise sales taxes unless the state legislature gives them permission. But N.C. legislators in 2007 gave all N.C. counties permission to raise sales taxes a quarter-cent, if county voters OK’d. (That’s the tax increase Mecklenburg commissioners were hoping to use.) That money could be used for any county use. In addition, in 2009 the legislature gave three Triangle-area counties permission to ask voters for a half-cent sales tax for public transit. The heavily congested Triangle has been planning a rail transit system for years, but had no way to fund it.

Voters in Durham and Orange (Chapel Hill) counties approved the transit tax. In Wake County (Raleigh), a Republican-dominated board of county commissioners has not put the issue to voters. However, Wake commissioners had been expected to decide next month whether to put a quarter-cent sales tax for education to a November referendum.
 
The Senate bill now would allow sales tax income to be spent on education, or on public transportation, but not both at the same time. Huh? Yes, it’s confusing. This article from WRAL-TV is helpful: Senate seeks to curb local tax use. So is this one, from the Raleigh News & Observer: Senate bill would ban N.C. counties from raising sales taxes for both education and transit.

The N.C. Senate was to vote on the bill today; the vote was postponed until Monday.

WRAL’s Laura Leslie quotes a Raleigh-area legislator,Sen. Josh Stein, D-Wake, who said he was puzzled by the bill:

“Why wouldn’t we allow it, if they chose to designate a quarter-cent to transportation and a quarter-cent to education? Why must it be one or the other?” Stein asked. “What if they have needs for both?”

Raleigh-area transit advocates worry the bill could devastate plans for multicounty systems. “This is a really bad bill that could kill the transit referendum for Wake County,” Karen Rindge with WakeUP Wake County wrote in a message to supporters. Another source, speaking on background, told WRAL: “It pits transit against education, and transit’s going to lose every time.”

In Charlotte, meanwhile, the 1998 half-cent transit tax doesn’t bring in enough money to build anything beyond the Blue Line light rail, now operating, and the Blue Line Extension, under construction. No nearby counties have stepped forward to help make the Charlotte Area Transit System a regional one.

Of course, tax policy experts will tell you sales taxes are harsher on the poor than property taxes, because the poor spend a larger proportion of their income on food, clothing, and other taxed purchases. So why not just raise property taxes to fund both education and public transportation?

In my experience, no matter how practical that idea may sound, the question is about as welcome as an ex-boyfriend at a bridal shower. In other words, you aren’t likely to hear any pols — local or state — asking it.

Triangle’s transit tussle – and its ‘expert’ trio

And speaking of public transit, which I often find myself doing, Rob Perks of the Natural Resources Defense Council last Friday posted a good summation of the situation in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill region, where two of the three counties have voted for a sales tax to start building a system of rail and bus lines throughout the region. But Wake County continues to balk.

And read on to learn about my research into a panel of three ostensibly unbiased “experts” that may have been a stacked deck.

First, here’s a link to Perks’ blog, “The Tussle over Transit in the Triangle.” It’s a good summation of the situation. Be aware that given Perks’ job and beliefs, it’s commentary, as opposed to a news article.

The situation: Wake County commissioners, dominated by Republicans, have stalled and stalled. Then they hired a three-person panel of “experts” to look at the local data and provide advice. One of the experts is Sam R. Staley, well known in planning circles as an anti-Smart Growth voice. He’s a research fellow at the Reason Foundation, a libertarian public policy think tank. Among those on Reason’s board of directors is David Koch, the billionaire oil industry mogul and conservative activist whose money in part has helped bankroll the Tea Party, among other political endeavors. But I digress.

Another of the three experts is Steve Polzin, director of the mobility research program at the Center for Urban …
Transportation Research at the University of South Florida. A Tampa Bay Times investigation in 2009 found that the center has frequently been critical of passenger rail travel, while promoting alternatives (highways and bus rapid transit) that it has been paid millions to study.  Read it here: One of rail’s biggest critics gets millions to study and promote alternatives

The article notes the CUTR’s history of opposition to rail transit projects. Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio (who didn’t run for a third term in 2011) was critical of CUTR. She told the Times that CUTR’s objections to rail have held the area back and predicted they’d be recycled, again, to weaken public support of a light rail proposal headed for a 2010 vote. [That 2010 vote for a 1-cent sales tax for transit in Hillsborough County lost 58 percent to 42 percent.]

“I’ve been very disappointed in the role CUTR has chosen to play,” Iorio said. “I do believe academic think tanks can play a very important role in shaping public policy. But CUTR is such a waste of a resource. It’s one of the reasons why we haven’t moved forward with rail. It’s really been a shame.”

The third expert is Clarence W. “Cal” Marsella, former general manager of the Regional Transportation District and the public face of its multibillion-dollar and nationally praised FasTracks rail project.

Here’s an account of the panelists’ recommendations from the Raleigh Public Record.

Of course, transit and transportation scholars can legitimately disagree about the wisdom of one public policy course over another, and they can provide research data to support a wide spectrum of conclusions. That’s legitimate.  But for the Wake commissioners to name two prominent rail transit critics to a three-person advisory panel might be raising some eyebrows in the Triangle. 

Here are some links to Raleigh News & Observer articles on the three-member panel:

New urban workers want rail transit
Wake transit plan – which never got first look from commissioners – needs ‘second look,’ Triangle Transit chair says.

 

A ‘CATS’ fight for transit money?

Looks as if the Charlotte Area Transit System may finally be getting some in-state competition for federal transit money for light-rail. The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Sunday (“Triangle Transit proposes 2 light-rail lines”) that Triangle Transit, the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill transit agency, is looking at two potential light rail routes. The TTA timetable has it applying to the Federal Transit Administration next summer and, in fall 2011, asking Triangle-area voters for a 1/2-cent sales tax to fund the transit plans.

“In a fall 2011 referendum, Triangle voters are expected to consider approving a half-cent sales tax – which would add 5 cents to every taxable $10 purchase – that would cover a large share of new bus and rail costs.”

For now, the TTA has dropped its earlier idea of commuter rail to the Research Triangle Park. It’s looking at light rail instead, because light rail – which is powered by overhead electric wires – need not run on a railroad right of way as it does in Charlotte, but can run in the streets as well, i..e., as a streetcar. (For terminology geeks, just fyi, “heavy rail” doesn’t mean Amtrak-like passenger rail. It means a rail system powered by an electrified rail on the bottom, like subways, with the so-called “third rail,” hence the allusions to a “third rail” that one must never touch without deadly effect.)

The N&O’s Bruce Siceloff reports:
“So, at public meetings last week and this week, Triangle Transit officials and consultants are explaining that the first light-rail trains will not run through the region’s suburban center. The two most promising corridors are about 20 miles apart in the western Triangle and Wake County:

– Northwest Cary through N.C. State University and downtown to Triangle Town Center in North Raleigh, 18 miles. It rates high in projected rider counts, job and housing density, development potential, and capital costs compared to the number of weekday transit trips.

– UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill to Alston Avenue in downtown Durham, 17 miles. It rates high in rider counts, low-income residents who are more likely to depend on transit, and capital and operating costs. This corridor is rated weak in housing density and development potential.

And don’t read right over that part about “bus.” A close relative of mine was trying to get to Chapel Hill from the Durham Amtrak station on Labor Day and realized, with some shock, that the TTA’s Chapel Hill-Durham bus didn’t run on the holiday. Better bus service in the Triangle would likely be welcomed by many.

TTA is also looking at “a limited kind of region-wide rail service that was not in the cards a few years ago. Commuter trains pulled by standard diesel locomotives are proposed to run from west Durham to the Wake-Johnston county line. These trains would operate on weekday rush hours, every 30 or 60 minutes, and make stops in RTP.”

I was joking when I wrote that headline about a CATS fight. While CATS and every other transit agency in the country knows competition is tight for federal money, in the long run it’s probably better for all N.C. cities to have multiple mass transit systems. That way the N.C. DOT, the legislature and all the entities holding the money bags – not to mention the voting (and riding) public – can get their heads around the concept that “transportation” means more than just private-auto transportation.

Anyway, the CATS fight currently is what’s going on in the Mecklenburg County Metropolitan Transit Commission, between backers of the proposed commuter rail to North Mecklenburg and those of the being-built-but-rather-slower-than-planned extension of light rail to UNC Charlotte.

Transit update from the Triangle

Interesting e-mail exchange a few days ago with Brad Schulz, communications officer for Triangle Transit, about what happens next in the places that won permission from the General Assembly to hold votes on adding a sales tax for transit. Schulz was a longtime broadcast journalist in Charlotte, mostly for WBT radio, who left to work for CATS 2000-2003 and joined Triangle Transit in the Research Triangle Park in 2003.

The new law says large counties can put a half-cent sales tax to a vote of the people; smaller ones get the option for a vote on a quarter-cent sales tax. County commissioners would have to decide to put the issue on the county ballot. And I haven’t met a politician yet who thinks this year is a good one to take such a question before the voters – especially after the legislature recently popped a 1-cent sales tax increase on us to balance the state budget. But longer term, who knows?

Schulz wrote me, “It’ll be up to commissioners in Wake, Orange and Durham counties to call for a referend(um) (a) when they feel the time is right economically and when each county has a transit plan they feel adequate to answer future needs. … Triangle Transit is assisting the counties with financial modeling right now on what sales taxes could be raised with a ½ cent and what the counties could provide in ramped-up bus service (much like CATS did) as it planned for light rail.

“The sales taxes would go for bus and rail improvements in the 2015-2025-2030 time frame for construction/completion (remember if you’re going in the federal queue [for funding] it usually takes 10-12 years from plan/design/construct/opening.

“BTW… it doesn’t take all three counties moving in tandem to begin bus and rail improvements. If one or two said yes and the other/others said no, we could still move forward with planning for that county.

But, one caveat is that all of the county plans should also fold into a rational regional transit plan that would one day allow us to connect Chapel Hill with North Raleigh with 51 miles of rail. Light rail is the preferred mode, instead of the diesel units we looked at before, for energy/fossil fuel/environmental-sustainability reasons.

A 29-member citizens commission reported out last spring that the region should be ready to go it alone if there were no federal funds available. The bill as passed … would allow for 25% state funding – with that precedent set by NCDOT with the CATS Lynx South Corridor Project.

” … Chances are that the Chambers (of Commerce) would be leading the charge for the ½ cent sales tax along with the business community. BTW… the owners and tenants association of the Research Triangle Park also agreed to raise their taxes in the park to help pay for transit improvements. “