For the past decade, it's been going full-speed ahead. Ridership on both light rail and subways increased, and voters in several regions approved major rail-transit plans. In November 1999, for example, Denver-area residents OK'd a plan to build a light-rail line in a congested highway corridor--two years after turning down, as they had for the past three decades, tax increases to fund other proposed rail systems.
Similarly, voters in the fast-growing Charlotte region in 1998 approved sales tax increases to fund a major transit expansion. In Georgia, the centerpiece of Governor Roy Barnes' efforts to cope with congestion and air-quality problems in Atlanta is a new regional transportation authority that is looking at expanding the region's rail-transit system. At the federal level, the highway and transit bill that Congress passed in early 1998 increased federal spending on transit by about 50 percent and explicitly made more than 200 local rail projects eligible for federal funding.
Nonetheless, there are signs of deepening discontent with rail.
Earlier this year, county commissioners in the Orlando, Florida, region decided not to build a planned light-rail system that was to be financed mainly with federal dollars. They were concerned about the locally funded operating subsidies the system would need. And, despite earlier plans, a California commission won't ask voters in November to approve large gas tax increases to fund a proposed 670-mile, $21 billion statewide high-speed rail system. The reason? No one believes voters would actually approve it.
These rail reversals come on the heels of other electoral defeats last November in Columbus, Ohio; Aspen, Colorado; Kansas City, Missouri; and Virginia Beach, Virginia, for tax increases to fund rail projects. Miami voters did the same last summer. A year earlier, voters in Los Angeles overwhelmingly approved a ban on the use of local money to pay for new subways. On the same day, voters in the Portland, Oregon, region turned down a tax increase to fund a planned north-south rail line.
Viewed closely, rail's recent victories and defeats suggest that voters are loath to support large tax increases unless they believe that they will directly benefit from those increases. Rail projects tend to be oriented to downtown areas, which no longer house the majority of most regions' workers. Consequently, many suburban voters see little merit in supporting a massive downtown-oriented rail program, such as the one proposed in Denver in 1997. Indeed, that measure passed within the city's limits but was overwhelmingly rejected in the suburbs.
In response, the area's transit planners made three significant changes. They revised the plan so it did not need a tax increase; instead voters were asked to give up sales-tax refunds they were supposed to receive from 2005 until 2026. Then, instead of asking for an entire system, they sought only a relatively small line in one congested highway corridor. Finally, they linked their proposal to a popular ballot measure calling on the state to increase borrowing to speed up the schedule for planned highway improvements.
There is nothing new about such approaches. Indeed, they are similar to the tack that Seattle transit planners and supporters took after suburban opposition defeated a planned transit package in 1995. They returned a year later with a plan that had less light rail within the city limits, more commuter rail, more express buses, more HOV lanes and a funding plan that promised each part of the region that it would receive back roughly equal the transit taxes that it paid.
Some transit backers have tried a different plan of attack in response to voter skepticism about rail. Most notably, Tri-Met, the Portland-area transit agency, has been developing transit expansion plans that do not require voter approval. The agency, for example, is proceeding with a 5.5-mile, $125 million light-rail line from downtown Portland to the region's airport to be funded by Tri-Met, city urban renewal funds, head taxes imposed on airport users and development rights to a 120-acre parcel on the line that is near the airport and a major highway interchange. Tri-Met, moreover, is planning a modified version of the north-south rail line turned down by the voters; it would be paid for primarily with federal money but also with state and local funds that do not require voter approval.
Thus, the rail renaissance is not dead, but it is facing difficult obstacles. The plans that are moving forward suggest two important questions: Is scaling back a large rail plan a matter of good planning or merely a hollow victory? Second, is proceeding with rail plans in the face of voter disapproval a matter of innovative management or dangerous bureaucratic arrogance? There's no easy answer to either question. We can only hope that those making transportation decisions pause to consider them.
