Opinion: Opportunities for transportation funding


In December I wrote about the Boulder City Council’s need to determine how they intend to fund the massive transportation needs that will be created by the 60,000 more jobs and thousands of new residents expected under “reasonable” build-out of the city. Last week I had the pleasure of participating in a PLAN-Boulder panel discussing the city’s proposed Transportation Maintenance Fee, a stopgap measure to make up for deficits in funding road maintenance and paying for increased transit.
My fundamental issue with the TMF is that it provides no incentive for people to reduce their auto trips: The TMF charges properties based on statistical averages rather than charging real drivers for actual behavior. The city has expressly decided to avoid creating any incentive with this charge, even though they know that incentives work — in downtown Boulder parking is costly, so people have shifted away from single-occupant-vehicle use. I have been involved with local politics long enough to know that if this TMF goes into effect, nothing will happen to deal with the long term growth issue until we are in crisis mode once again.
In my presentation to PLAN-Boulder, I cited the example of Stanford University, where significant charges for auto use were combined with incentives to choose alternatives. Per their transportation and parking planner, in 2000, Stanford wanted to expand their already huge campus by adding 2 million square feet of buildings and 3,000 residential units. Santa Clara County said Stanford must mitigate its traffic impacts by either funding intersection improvements or cutting peak demand. Stanford chose to implement a transportation demand management program.
The results were that commuter single-occupant vehicle use went down from 64.4 percent to 39.3 perccent (a 39 percent reduction), and peak hour trips were reduced, even with increased population. Stanford also avoided building more than 3,100 parking spaces, saving $107 million plus the cost of the intersection improvements. The only “stick” was charging for parking – $300-$800 for an annual parking permit. “Carrots” included up to a $300 incentive to not drive and free transit passes. And new development, in addition to paying the standard fees for all needed infrastructure, pays $85/sq. ft. for transportation mitigation measures.
At the PLAN forum, I suggested that the city put in place parking charges in all non-residential areas, and use the proceeds to replace the current 0.6 cent transportation sales tax, fund the maintenance deficit, and cover RTD’s costs so that bus service becomes free. I am aware that a combination of a mileage fee, an axle weight charge, and a gas tax would more accurately reflect actual road wear and emissions. But given the city’s legal constraints, parking charges are a more realistic option. Parking charges are more equitable than the proposed TMF, not only because they are tied to actual behavior, but because the TMF overcharges in-city residents relative to those who live just outside the borders. Also, parking charges will likely stand up better to legal scrutiny than what is in effect a surrogate tax.
When I suggested at the forum that we might have to pay RTD $5-10 million per year to get free bus service, it was pointed out that RTD already gets $8 million per year just for Eco-Passes covering only CU students and about 10 percent of residents and 30 percent of employees (with some overlap.) That seemed expensive to me, so I’ve started working on understanding how these costs are calculated.
To put some numbers to it, Boulder’s population is about 3.7 percent of the population in RTD’s territory. Boulder pays almost 5 percent of RTD’s sales tax, about 1.35 times our population’s share. The Metro area jobs/population ratio is about 2/3, and Boulder’s is nearly 1/1, but out-of-town employees generally don’t travel in town as much as residents, so very roughly we pay the right amount of RTD sales tax for our jobs/pop mix.
RTD’s 2012 farebox and pass receipts were $106.2 million. So, arguably, 5 percent of that number, $5.3 million, should be the cost of free bus service for Boulder, since all the rest of RTD’s income is from federal grants, etc., for which all taxpayers pay. Obviously, this analysis is not complete, but even if the true cost is higher, our $8 million per year should put us darn close to getting free bus service. That would be a good first step on the way to solving our future transportation needs.


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