SacRT, and some supporters of transit, have said that the Measure A transportation sales tax on the November 2022 ballot is ‘better than nothing’. STAR is opposed to Measure A, because it will lock in a too-low level of funding for transit for the next 40 years.
STAR has believed since it’s inception that transit in Sacramento County must be funded at the equivalent of one-half cent of sales tax (see below). We intentionally use the word ‘equivalent’ because we recognize that sales taxes are regressive, and that other neutral or progressive sources should be used to fund transportation.
The existing Measure A, updated in 2004 and covering 2009-2039 (30 years), allocates 38.25% to transit, the equivalent of 0.19 cents. If you include the allocation to paratransit, an average of 4.5%, it adds 0.02 cents, for 0.21 cents.
The proposed new Measure A (2023-2063, 40 years) allocates 25.11% to transit, the equivalent of 0.13 cents, or adding in the 3.05% for paratransit, 0.02, for 0.15 cents. The proponents claim that the Transit and Rail Congestion Improvement Projects category of 10.85% should be added in, but STAR disagrees. This funding is allocated to mitigate issues created by the other projects, not to serve actual transit needs, and is intended as match for grants, not for direct expenditures. If it were included, it would add 0.05 cents.
So where does that leave overall funding, if the measure passes? The two measures together would result in the equivalent of 0.36 cents, far short of the one-half cent that STAR believes in necessary. Even if the mitigation funds were included, it would still only be 0.41 cents.
The real concern to us is that this mis-allocation of transportation funds will ensure that transit is underfunded for the next 40 years, through 2063. What will the world be like in 40 years? What we can be sure of is that we will need an effective transit system more in 40 years that we do now. But we won’t have it, because Measure A has allocated most of its funding to roadways, and has effectively foreclosed the possibility of more funding for transit. The chances of voters being willing to fund transit at a higher level, when they are already being taxed one cent for transportation (and not getting much for it), is zero.
Why one-half cent?
Surveys of transit systems all over the United States indicate that the equivalent of one-half center of sales tax revenue is the minimum necessary to operate a transit system in a medium sized city. The only locales with lower rates are small cities. Larger cities mostly have higher rates, up to 1-1/2 cent equivalents. Sacramento County, and the Sacramento region, is an even more challenging place to operate an equitable and effective system because so much of the developed area is low density. Low density makes effective transit very difficult, and very expensive, forcing transit agencies to either promote coverage over frequency, or to simply not serve some areas at all. SacRT is temporarily addressing this issue with the SmaRT Ride on-demand micro-transit service, but it is grant funded and unsustainable without special grant funding.
Sales tax is not the only source of funding for SacRT operations. The county transportation sales tax provides 51%, fares provide 20%, state provides 8%, and federal provides 21%. (FTA National Transit Database 2020). Fare recovery has plummeted during the pandemic, and may or may not recover. State and federal funding is up at this time, but most of that is limited time added funds that will not be stable over the years. Local funding is the base on which transit should stand, where citizen contributions and transit expenditures are most closely linked. For transit infrastructure projects (light rail extension, light rail cars, and buses), the existing Measure A only provides 1.4%.
Though we have seen comparisons of transit agencies on sales tax equivalents, we are unable to locate that information at the moment, so instead, we looked at sales tax income per population.
SacRT gains $57 per person from sales tax. Metro (Los Angeles County) is $171, but all the other transit agencies in the county nearly double that. Muni (San Francisco) is only $11 from sales tax, but with general fund and tolls, is $196. VTA (Santa Clara County) is $245. AC Transit (East Bay) is $45 from sales tax but with other sources is $58. BART is $38, but it overlays a number of other transit agencies. San Diego is the lowest at $19, but other agencies in the county add $17. Note that these figures are based on UZAs, urbanized areas, which do not necessarily cover the same area as the transit agency.
Sacramento Transit Advocates and Riders (STAR) 