Transit users and commuters who, in these times of soaring gas prices, are looking for alternatives to driving to work have a real chance this Spring to support a long-overdue upgrade for northwest Arkansas's public transit system: a dedicated permanent revenue stream for our public transportation system, Ozark Regional Transit.
The Washington County Quorum Court approved, on March 8, placing on the May 22 ballot a 1/4-cent sales tax to fund mass transit services in the county.
Ozark Regional Transit has functioned primarily as a paratransit system (providing transportation to the elderly, the disabled and others lacking access to private automobiles), with a limited number of fixed routes serving Northwest Arkansas Community College, community health and service agencies, and major shopping destinations.
Ozark Regional Transit has provided high-value service to many residents of northwest Arkansas in the twenty years since regular daily service began and the decade since fixed-route service has been offered. O.R.T. gives the communities it serves excellent service for the limited funding it receives, but as a growing region with increasing demand for commuter transportation services and an increasing population of individuals dependent on public transportation for basic needs, Ozark Regional Transit is no longer to meet these needs with the limited federal funds it receives. Worse, much of the funding that O.R.T. currently receives is at imminent risk of being cut, ironically, as a result of our region's population growth!
As northwest Arkansas's population has climbed in the last decade, we have crossed a numerical threshold in the law that is used to differentiate a predominantly urban metropolitan area from a rural or low-density area. The latest census (2011) bumped us up from the low-density metropolitan category to the urban designation, which is making us ineligible to continue receiving much of the funding we previously qualified for under the rural area program guidelines. While our population grows and demand for service has never been stronger, we find ourselves in this new category that provides much less funding for basic services! The bottom line? Northwest Arkansas communities now must step up and provide local funding to replace the federal monies we no longer qualify for.
Sadly, some community leaders--including the editorial board of the Northwest Arkansas Times--have a basic misunderstanding of the nature of the services provided by Ozark Regional Transit and the costs and revenue streams associated with those services. Beyond the immediate question of whether the proposed sales-tax revenue is needed (and it most desperately is!), uninformed or misinformed opinion leaders have not yet grasped the vital role that a well-run public transportation system plays in the community's economic base, and in promoting regional economic development. Public transit is not and never has been a luxury; it is an essential public service. We can no longer afford the false assumption that public transit is only for those who lack access to private automobile transportation. Relying on the family car to get parents to work and kids and grandparents to the doctor's office is becoming cost-prohibitive for many working families who have cars but can't afford $3.50--soon perhaps more than $4--per gallon gasoline. As the cost of purchasing, licensing, insuring, maintaining, and buying fuel for private autos continues to rise, more and more motorists look to public transit as an option for commuting to work and to other destinations.
Opponents of the sales tax measure claim, with no facts to back up their claims, that Ozark Regional Transit doesn't "need" the money. On its face, this is utterly false. O.R.T. has been underfunded since its creation, and as demand has risen, the degree of under-funding has increased substantially. The demand for more routes (i.e., more buses), for more frequent service (even more buses), and for longer service hours (evening and night-time service, for example, to entertainment districts and to 24-hour employment centers), has always existed and grows with each passing year and with each uptick on the price of gasoline.
Opponents argue, again incorrectly, that O.R.T. should self-fund by raising fares. There is no public transit system in the nation that supports itself primarily through passenger fares. There are too many people needing transit who are unable to pay the full cost of the service. It is not possible to set fares high enough to fund the entire system because most riders could not afford them. Every transit system relies to a large extent on public funding from taxes. Transit benefits everyone, thus it is most fairly and efficiently funded through tax revenues.
To that point, another (false) argument made by transit opponents is that transit benefits only poor people, people with disabilities, and others who already use the service regularly. Transit also benefits those with autos who would like the option of taking the bus. For example, many families with two wage-earners, living in cities with efficient, well-funded transit systems choose to get by with only one car. When one or both parents can take the bus to work regularly, there's no need for a second auto for commuting. And for those who prefer not to use public transit at all, a well-funded, efficient transit system reduces congestion on the roads and highways, allowing those who do drive to reach their destination faster and more safely.
In the longer run, a modern transit system helps to lower society's overall transportation costs by reducing the number of cars on the roads, thereby reducing peak traffic congestion. For example, a frequently cited transportation "need" for northwest Arkansas is the proposed Western Beltway--an entirely new freeway that boosters claim would cost over $400 million dollars, a figure at which critics scoff as a laughable low-ball number. The justification for this highway--which would pave over more than thirty miles of farmland and require demolition of an unknown number of homes and businesses--is based on the argument that the 540 freeway is too congested to handle future interstate traffic demand. This argument collapses upon any serious consideration of implementing congestion (demand) management techniques, including investment in expanding and improving transit services.
Traffic congestion can be alleviated in one of two ways: build more capacity (roads and highways) or reduce the peak demand (fewer cars and trucks). Study after study has shown, and real-world experience has borne out the studies' predictions, that reducing peak demand is easier to implement, faster to achieve, and much less expensive than building new highways. Giving Ozark Regional Transit an upgrade today, by providing a permanent revenue stream, is one of the most cost-effective and rapidly achievable solutions to reducing peak congestion on northwest Arkansas roadways. There is no need for a Western Beltway, for example, if people don't have to drive their cars on the 540 freeway! That's a cost saving of at least $400 million dollars in tax money!
Of all the erroneous arguments used by transit opponents, perhaps the most politically charged claim is that raising a transit tax raises citizens' overall tax burdens. In most cases, transit taxes tend to hold down overall taxes because they reduce demand for other public services that are also funded by tax revenues. Most obviously, a sales tax that raises a few million dollars a year (the May 22 sales tax measure would raise about $7.5 million annually) can help stave off the need for a $400+ million dollar freeway that would be paid for by sales taxes on gasoline, and by other state taxes (including possibly a statewide sales tax that may be on the November ballot), and possibly by tolls. (Note: tolls are like bus fares, in that they can't be raised too high or people won't use the system.) But the trade-offs don't end at the freeway off-ramp.
Employers increasingly will depend on a functional, fixed-route bus system as the cost of private autos climbs and squeezes those employees in the lower-paid end of the workforce. If their employees can't get to work, employers will delay business expansions, and may consider relocating to other metro areas where efficient transit systems already exist. For area employers with large numbers of low-wage employees (e.g. Walmart and Tyson), fast-rising gasoline costs coupled with a lack of public transportation service could lead to lay-offs which in turn would stress public assistance budgets and public service agencies' capacity to handle large numbers of people who find themselves suddenly unemployed. Those who lose their jobs at one low-wage employer because they can't afford to drive to work will probably find it difficult to find other employment for the same reason. Thus, the stage is set for a long-term, regional transportation crisis that affects the regional economy in profound ways including driving more and more families into poverty.
A healthy transit system is a necessary part of a healthy regional economy. It's also an essential part of a healthy regional environment, particularly and most directly in terms of the region's air quality. One of the inescapable realities of our auto-dependent culture is the reliance on gasoline to fuel those autos and diesel to drive those big rigs, and the production of ozone, carbon dioxide, soot and other pollutants as exhaust from every vehicle, for every mile traveled, on every road and highway. On congested roads, the functional efficiency of vehicle engines plummets and the production of toxic exhaust gases rises, contributing to haze and smog, especially in the warmer months. But beyond the aesthetics of brown haze beginning to hover above our cities and darken our once-pristine Ozark skies, the growing level of air pollution from private autos and large trucks threatens public health and eventually will impair economic development efforts.
Health studies show that air pollution from "mobile sources" (i.e., cars and trucks) kills upwards of 50,000 people annually in the U.S. and is responsible for the current epidemic of childhood asthma and a host of other respiratory and other diseases in millions of people. Where congestion is heaviest, the emissions per mile are greatest, and the worst health effects occur. The new public health data have led U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to issue new rules that will result in tightening the standards for allowable levels of pollutants in the air we breathe. These changes will have a direct impact on northwest Arkansas in coming years as the number of vehicles on our roadways increases and as congestion slows down the traffic.
The U.S. Clean Air Act requires states to set threshold limits of air pollutants, above which local governments may become subject to a variety of sanctions designed to bring the metro areas into compliance. Cities that don't voluntarily implement programs to reduce emissions from autos and trucks can be forced to do so, for example, by having the area's federal highway funding cut. Ironic, huh? Once the new, stricter air standards are in place--in about three years--northwest Arkansas will likely be instantly out of compliance. This is because the current pollution levels are below the current threshold but the new standards will be lower, and most likely beneath our current levels. So we become a violator overnight. If we demonstrate we are making progress toward reducing mobile source emissions, including for example, by providing a new, permanent revenue stream for an upgraded transit system(!), we will probably avoid immediate sanctions. If, however, we show that we won't even support a minimally functional transit system, that could send a message to the E.P.A. that the regulatory sanctions hammer needs to be swung sooner rather than later.
As some sage once said, you can pay me now or you can pay me later. And if you pay me later you're going to have a big interest charge. That is what we face if we don't pass the May 22 sales tax.
This is all of a quarter--25 whole cents--on a $100 purchase. Not much for middle-class income earners and nothing for the millionaires and billionaires whose most important choice in transportation is whether to drive the Mercedes or the Land Rover today. But for those of us who struggle to makes ends meet at minimum-wage jobs, a quarter on a hundred dollars can add us fast when you have to feed and clothe children and pay the ever-rising costs of rent, utilities, and, yes, gasoline, even as your real earnings continue to decline. Sales taxes are regressive taxes, that is, they hit the lower-income members of society the hardest. Those of us who strive for a more fair tax system wince when we find ourselves in the position of advocating for yet another tax that falls disproportionately on those of us can least afford it. But the laws of the State of Arkansas make it exceedingly difficult to raise new revenues through a progressive tax such as the state income tax. This helps to ensure that those among us who are MOST able to afford to pay a fair share of taxes, don't. [That's not a mistake, it was set up that way for a reason!] Those of us who support transit have no real choice; a sales tax is our only real vehicle (so to speak) for raising the necessary funds to keep O.R.T.'s buses rolling. It's some consolation, I suppose, to the anti-transit, anti-tax folks that the poor people of Washington County will be paying a higher proportion of their income than the wealthy to fund the county's transit system, even though the higher-income residents derive substantial benefit from the tax as well, even if they never set foot inside a bus.
And those of us who are determined to see this ballot measure through to victory at the polls on May 22 can take some small comfort in knowing that whenever we hear the opposition claim that this is just another subsidy--another "redistribution of the wealth"-- paid for by the haves and handed to the have-nots on a silver hubcap, we can come right back at them with the truth, that if anything this tax is a perfect example of the have-nots being made victims of the haves. Here we have real redistribution of the wealth, taking from the poor to subsidize the rich people's (eventual) lower tax burden, the result of spending less of their income on gasoline (and gas taxes), auto maintenance and insurance, and having more free time to spend with their families and a higher quality of life in general because they don't have to waste so much of their short, happy lives sitting in traffic, nor will they have to pay tolls to drive on the future Western Beltway because there won't be a need to build it in the first place... I would call this "highway robbery" if I could get away with it...
... More to come...
