Responding to the Critics
There are some in the community who have criticized our Regional Transportation Plan without fully understanding what our plan does and does not do.
In the words of Ernesto Portillo Jr, in his Daily Star column, “Opponents should admit they don’t have a viable alternative and own up to the fact the longer we delay, the worse our transportation problems will become.”
Here are some responses to some of the assertions we have heard.
Why can’t we use impact fees to pay for this?
We are leveraging impact fees for many of the road projects like Houghton Road and Tangerine Road. State law requires that impact fees can only be used in the area they are collected, and can only be used for arterial roadways. Therefore, only roadways at the edges are the only ones that would qualify for impact fee funding. Impact fees are also not allowed to be used for transit.
Why can’t we use gas taxes to pay for this?
We can’t. Gas taxes are set by the State Legislature, and have not increased since 1982, when their current level of 18 cents a gallon was enacted. The Arizona Constitution forbids local gas taxes, and forbids the use of gas taxes to pay for transit. The State Legislature only allows us to use a half-cent sales tax as the funding source for the RTA Plan.
What about road maintenance?
The State Legislature does not allow us to include road maintenance as part of the RTA plan. However, the City of Tucson is currently developing a dedicated funding source and plan to take care of deferred road and street maintenance within the city limits.
Who’s going to ride this modern streetcar?
According to an intensive federally-required study to determine its effectiveness as a mode of transportation, the Modern Streetcar will attract twice the riders per mile as today’s most popular bus route, the 8-Broadway line. 10% of all people in the region live or work within walking distance of the proposed streetcar route. The streetcar will cost roughly the same as an equivalent bus service to build, operate, and maintain over 20 years. The sales taxes on the additional retail that will be generated along the route–because of the streetcar–is likely to exceed the cost of operating and maintaining the line. A community liaison group consisting of representatives from 25 neighborhood associations, business groups, nonprofits, and schools worked with the Tucson Department of Transportation for more than a year in the course of this study before settling on the Modern Streetcar as the preferred mode for the high-capacity central-city circulator.
Will those new road widenings harm our neighborhoods and businesses?
The RTA board enacted a legal requirement that every single road project in the plan will require a Corridor Area Plan that allows the neighbors and businesses most directly affected to collaborate in designing those roads. In this way, we will be able to design roads that work for motorists as well as for the neighborhoods and business district through which they run.
Who put this plan together anyway?
35 volunteers from all over the region worked for eleven months meeting every other Monday for three-hour work sessions. These people were diverse in age, ethnicity, gender, place of residence, ideology, occupation, and almost every other way. They came together, bridging many differences, because they all recognized the importance of fixing our problems as a region and doing it now. They also worked alongside a 22-member technical management committee who brought together the talents of transportation and planning staff from every regional jurisdiction. The final plan was passed unanimously by all members of each committee in joint session.
How do we know we’ll get the projects we vote for?
The RTA legislation requires the establishment of a Citizen Oversight Committee that will submit to the public a report on the plan’s progress each year. If the mode split of the projects varies by more than 10% in either direction, the plan is required to be returned to the voters for approval.
Wasn’t this process rushed?
The transportation planning process in this region is ongoing. Most of these projects originated in the 2030 RTP Task Force, a group of citizens from across the region that met monthly and often biweekly from 2001 through 2005. The RTA Citizen Advisory Committee of 35 members met every two weeks for 11 months in 2005, taking public input at each meeting and through three phases of outreach. Members donated more than 2,000 hours of their time in 27 open houses and more than 200 presentations. (In comparison, the Maricopa County public process lasted nine months in total.) Major changes were made because of what was heard from the public (eg: eliminating the eastern extension of Barraza-Aviation; increasing bus service regionwide, etc.) The resulting plan is stronger because of the time taken to listen to the public.
