At the recent ECOS Climate Change Committee meeting, Roger Dickinson raised a question that was on many people’s mind: If the proposed sales tax measure does not qualify for the ballot or does not pass, how will SacRT get the funds it needs as matches for its grant applications? Should the advocacy community consider supporting the measure for its transit benefit, even if it doesn’t like much of the rest of the measure? Good question!

There is a much larger than normal amount of funding available for transit right now, from the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act, other pandemic relief sources, and a bigger state budget surplus than has existed recently. But almost all the grants require matches, ranging from 20% to 50%. There is not a lot of slack in the SacRT budget that could be moved over to matches. Nor is there a lot of funds available from the existing Measure A, since bonding almost every project has left the measure with little money left to spend rather than pay off bond payments. If SacRT doesn’t have the match, it will miss out on many grant opportunities. Henry Li, General Manager of SacRT, has expressed this concern many times. It is why SacRT has been in support of the 2016 failed measure and the 2020 withdrawn measure, even though it knows there is a lot wrong with the measures.

Without major grants, the light rail modernization project might stop at the halfway point, Gold Line only, because there won’t be money for more low-floor modern cars and platform modifications. Light rail extensions probably would not happen (which is not entirely a bad thing). Bus replacement and purchase of electric buses would probably slow down. Moves of the administrative offices, bus maintenance facilities and bus yards would not likely happen (again, not entirely a bad thing). SacRT would have to decide on trade-offs between service expansions or just maintaining service levels, and putting funds to capital project matches. Note that these are all speculations. SacRT has announced what it would do with the additional funds, but has not announced what it would do without them.

The gotcha about all of this is that every freeway lane addition, every interchange, every capacity expansion of roads, encourages more people to drive and fewer people to take transit. Can the 28% for transit counteract the 72% for everything else? Transit is seen as the mitigation for all the increased VMT that will result from other projects. SACOG sees it the same way, as mitigation.

This will be the major policy issue for transit advocacy organizations this year – to support the measure, to oppose the measure, or to remain neutral.

Stay tuned for information about how STAR will address this issue.

• Measure A 2022
• SacRT
• transportation funding