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.

Poll Results: 56% Whatcom County Residents Willing to Pay a Little More for Preservation of Transit Service

Our Friends at Whatcom Transportation Authority are going to the voters this April to ask them for a .2% sales tax increase (bringing them to .8%). Like most transit agencies across the state WTA is facing rapidly declining sales tax revenues due to the lagging economy. The WTA board recently decided to go the voters to increase their sales tax and hopefully stave off pending service cuts.

They recently released a poll that 56% of the county's residents are willing to pay more taxes to preserve service. This is great news for the potential success for the measure but there is still a long fight ahead for this important campaign. Jared at the Bellingham Herald has an informative piece on the poll today here.

Jared is an intelligent local reporter with keen insight on transportation issues. His Blog has already covered the political back and forth between proponents and opponents of the campaign, which is well worth the read.

Lastly, there will be a citizen's forum on Saturday to discuss the future of transportation in Bellingham, where surely the tax measure will be one of the many topics discussed. It looks to be an interesting discussion!

On a personal note, as a son of Bellingham and a frequent visitor of my cycling/transit friendly city to the North, I very much am looking forward to helping pass this important ballot measure. WTA has done an incredible job in the past few years increasing high frequency routes and building a strong demand of choice riders the medium sized city of Bellingham. Last year ago they had the highest percentage ridership growth in the Country. To loose those impressive gains and be forced to leave riders waiting on the side of the road would be a true shame.

Demand for Transit continues to increase in all corners of the State

Transit Agencies are facing with increasing demand for service across the State. At the same time they have large budget shortfalls due to declining sales tax revenue.

Today from Pierce Transit:
"Pierce Transit experienced an 11.0* percent increase from 2007 to 2008, with 14.5 million boardings in 2007 and 16.1* million in 2008.

This significant increase in ridership continues as Pierce Transit experiences an unprecedented decline in sales tax collections (-7 percent from 2007 to 2008)."

I saw today in the Bellingham Herald traffic blog that ridership for the Whatcom Transportation Authority increased a remarkable 32% between 2007 and 2008.

From the release:
"Boardings, or one-way trips, reached 4.7 million, up from 3.6 million in 2007. Fixed Route productivity, measured in riders per hour, increased by 21 percent."

It is clear that demand for more transit across the state continues to increase, at a time while revenues for agencies are plummeting.

Update: Here is a good article from the Washington Post on increasing demand for transit nationally, "Public Transit Ridership Rises To Highest Level in 52 Years"