That was certainly the case in California and Washington State, where statewide measures designed to raise funds for transportation failed. In Washington, voters not only turned down a statewide referendum to increase transportation fees and taxes to finance $7.8 billion in road improvements, they also elected to trim the motor-vehicle tax and put several other revenue cuts in place--cuts that will, in effect, eliminate 20 percent of the Sound Transit agency's budget. In a local referendum, however, voters approved an increase in the car tax in order to help finance a monorail that would connect several of the city's outlying areas with the downtown--a project that will have to be accomplished by the Seattle area's transit agency, despite the state initiative reducing its revenues.
A closely watched measure on the ballot was in traffic-snarled Northern Virginia, where local voters could vote yea or nay on increasing local sales taxes by a half-cent to pay for new roads and some transit projects. It was soundly defeated. Moreover, a similar measure in the Hampton Roads-Norfolk area of the state also lost.
This is not a sign that people are willing to accept the current gridlock, says Jay O'Brien, a Virginia delegate. "What they are saying is that the financing solution was the incorrect approach."
In both Northern Virginia and Washington State, the measures were opposed by both anti-tax and smart-growth activists, with the latter arguing that the proposed plans put too much focus on roads and wouldn't stem rampant development. Both regions will still have to find some solution to their traffic problems, but "after stinging defeats to the business communities and transit agencies that backed these measures, the issue becomes extending the olive branch and getting productive discussion going--getting opponents to come back to the table," says Betsy Jackson, executive director of the Center for Transportation Excellence, a research group that supports public transportation.
Another high-profile measure that went down to defeat was in Hamilton County, Ohio, where voters said no to a sales-tax increase to finance a $2.6 billion Cincinnati area light-rail system. "The more and more these issues devolve to local decision making, the more they will reflect very specific local circumstances," Jackson says.
Jackson points out that an unusual number of transportation referendums on the ballot this year were local or regional in focus-- 23 of the 30. What this represents, she suggests, is "more and more local seizure of the transportation discussion. The state-level solutions aren't trickling down."
Despite the tide of losses, some local initiatives got the go-ahead. Miami-Dade County voters said yes to a measure that will up the sales tax by half a penny and use the money for improvements to the local bus service, as well as to finance the construction and operation of a new network of rail lines that will cover the county. And in Las Vegas, an all-transit measure that increased the sales tax by 1/8 cent squeaked by.
