Bellingham Buys Back Sunday Bus Service

Jared at the Bellingham Herald has an informative article in today's paper about the City of Bellingham and Whatcom Transportation Authority (WTA) finalizing their plan for the city to buy back Sunday bus service.

WTA's .2% transit sales tax measure barely failing countywide last year and the city's successfully passed a .2% tax measure a few months later using transportation benefit district (TBD) authority.  With the city generated funds Bellingham and WTA are entering into a creative agreement that ultimately will preserve Sunday bus service in Bellingham.

While this is not a permanent solution to the transit funding crisis in Washington I do think creative partnerships like this one using city's TBD authority will be an important tool in the toolbox for helping transit survive across our state in the next few years.

Transportation Benefit District for Roads, Mobility, and Transit Passes in Bellingham

In case you didn't hear, there was a big election last night. 

There is still a lot in flux with last night's election in Washington State and I'll let the political blogs cover yesterday's wild night.

There was one important transportation focused measure in Bellingham that passed last night which may be of interest to you and is lost in the fray of everything else going on.

As you'll recall earlier this year Whatcom County narrowly rejected a .02% sales tax measure, which we endorsed and worked on, that would have saved bus service in Whatcom County.  In that election voters in Bellingham overwhelmingly approved the measure and everyone else in the rural areas of the county overwhelmingly rejected it.

After the WTA measure narrowly failed, The City of Bellingham under the leadership of their mayor decided to go back to the ballot to ask only Bellingham voters to approve a .02% sales tax increase to buy back transit service in the city and to back fill their underfunded road maintenance and bicycle-pedestrian infrastructure accounts. 

Jared at the Bellingham Herald reports that the sales tax increase for transportation and transit funding in Bellingham is passing at a comfortable 55%.  This is not surprising considering the transit measure passed with 60% in May. 

By passing this measure transit service should be able to stay much more intact within Bellingham, which is definitely a good thing, but the counter question is by using sales tax at the city level will that politically prevent WTA from going out to their entire taxing district for the rest of their sales tax authority in the future?  Regardless of that answer to that question, I think that public transportation districts at the city level are going to become an increasingly relevant short term solution to save transit service as we approach a very complex State Legislative climate in 2011.

A Creative Approach to Transportation Impact Fees

Jared Paben on the Belllingham Herald traffic/transportation blog has a recent post on a very interesting idea regarding transportation impact fees.

Transportation impact fees are collected by the majority of local governments, cities and counties, in Washington when new developments are permitted.  Traditionally this money goes towards the local governments roads funds and in the case of large exurban developments they often pay for new expanded road capacity.

According to Herald Blog post Bellingham is proposing a set of criteria that developers can use to reduce their overall impact fee costs.  Upon first glace I think this is a brilliant idea coming out from my hometown in the Northwestern corner of the State.

Here is the list of criteria proposed the reduce impact fees in Bellingham:

• 15%, for building in one of the follow urban village areas: Downtown, Fairhaven, Old Town, Waterfront District, Fountain District, Samish Way, Barkley Village.
• Up to 10%, for being close to bus lines. Developments that front a once-every-15-minutes Go Line get a 10% discount, those within one-quarter mile of a GO Line get a 7% discount, those fronting a standard WTA route of at least once an hour get a 5% discount, and those that are one-quarter of a mile from a standard route get a 2% discount.
• 10%, for participating in a mandatory commute-trip reduction program. Under state law, only businesses with 100 or more employees are required to participate in these programs.
• 1%, for each employee or resident of the project who is provided two years worth of WTA bus passes.
• 2%, for each car share program membership fee that’s provided for an employee or resident. They also get a discount of 2% for providing a space for a car share vehicle to park. We don’t have car share programs here anymore, after Community Car Share, a nonprofit that was based in Bellingham, folded earlier this year.

 This approach will incentivize developers to build in urban walkable pedestrian oriented areas.  It will encourage them to put their developments through a robust transportation demand management program and in the end it will save them money, encouraging development in the right places and with sustainable approaches.

It will be interesting to watch how this program works out in Bellingham (once it is adopted) and may serve as a good model for the Legislature as they grapple with how to incentivize sustainable development in our urban areas of Washington State.


The full blog post is here http://blogs.bellinghamherald.com/traffic/?p=5360
More info on the City of Bellingham's website here http://www.cob.org/services/neighborhoods/community-planning/transportation/development-impact-fees.aspx

Bellingham Said Yes, Whatcom County Said No

The good news is the overwhelming majority (65%) of Bellingham voters support transit service. The bad news is the vast majority of Whatcom County voters outside of Bellingham voted strongly against preserving transit service.

The Bellingham Herald has a the vote breakdown at the end of a recent article discussing pending cuts to the system.

Breakdown of votes by city in the April 27 special election seeking a sales tax increase for WTA. These are preliminary numbers from the Whatcom County Auditor's Office.

Bellingham (47.4 percent voter turnout): 64.8 percent - yes; 35.2 percent - no.

Blaine (43.2 percent turnout): 45.2 percent - yes; 54.8 percent - no.

Everson (36.9 percent turnout): 31.9 percent - yes; 68.1 percent - no.

Ferndale (41.6 percent turnout): 46.7 percent - yes; 53.3 percent - no.

Lynden: (49.7 percent turnout): 30.6 percent - yes; 69.4 percent - no.

Nooksack (39.8 percent turnout): 30.9 percent - yes; 69.1 percent - no

Sumas (38.4 percent turnout): 39.4 percent - yes; 60.6 percent - no.

Unincorporated county (44.4 percent turnout): 39.3 percent - yes; 60.7 percent - no.

The debate the article focuses on is whether service should be cut less in Bellingham, which overwhelmingly supported the measure.

I wonder if this will spur a discussion in Whatcom County to shrink the service and taxing size of their Public Transportation Benefit District (PTBD). Intercity Transit in Olympia drastically shrunk their PTBD a few years ago in order to pass their last sales tax measure. As a result they have a smaller service size that has transit supportive densities. Since shrinking their PTBD they have been able to serve their community better while collecting taxes from less people. Transit agencies are often hesitant to discuss shrinking their boundaries due to the nature of their boards, which usually have elected representatives from communities that would be cut out of the PTBD if they were to shrink.

Another option to maintain bus service to transit supportive Bellingham would be to form a Transportation Benefit District. This would allow the Bellingham City Council to tax Bellingham residents with a small vehicle license fee, and buy extra service from WTA (perhaps to preserve service in the City on Sundays and evenings). Seattle has a similar arrangement and buys extra service from King County Metro

This is just a few ideas to consider as we consider the future of Pierce Transit, Whatcom Transportation, and other agencies that are on life support.

On a final note, as transit agencies across the state make tough choices about taxes and service cuts no help has come from the State Legislature or the Governor's Office. Washington State contributes less than 1% of the State's transportation dollars towards transit and gives agencies the volatile sales tax as their only option to fund operations.