Nearly two dozen local and county measures to support transportation are on the Nov. 3 ballot this year. Voters will be asked to approve sales and property taxes, bonds and a parcel tax for roadways, public transit, safe streets and bike and pedestrian infrastructure.
“These local measures really matter,” Jessica Grennan, executive director of the American Public Transportation Association Center for Transportation Excellence, told Smart Cities Dive. Transportation measures do well in big cities and rural communities, in blue states and red states, she said.
Thirty-four of 39 transit measures that have already been voted on passed this year, according to the CFTE. They include a 0.2% municipal income tax increase in Athens, Ohio, property tax levies in Cabell County and Huntington, West Virginia, and a 30-year sales tax extension in Sonoma and Marin counties, California.
Based on the success rate of these earlier ballot measures, Grennan is optimistic about the upcoming votes. Volunteers are “getting the message out,” she said. “They're talking to their neighbors. They're knocking on doors. … They're going to meetings.”
Smart Cities Dive will follow up with the results of the November ballots shortly after Election Day.
