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Suttonhoo, approved for non-commercial reuse
How Measure AA Conned Voters & Is Set Up to Fail
This week 52,443 voters, or 74.70% of voters obediently voted yes to Measure AA which opened with this claim:
"In order to relieve traffic congestion on Highway 101 and local roads..."
By far the majority of the proceeds, 55%, will be spent on Marin Transit that provides local bus service within Marin County. These buses are apparently the silver bullet deserving the majority of our funding to relieve traffic. But how many voters when voting knew that this would be the claimed solution, and that Marin Transit buses according to officially reported Department of Transportation data carry an average of just 4 riders?
The myth constantly being perpetuated by local elected leaders such as Stephanie Moulton Peters and Damon Connolly is that we must spend even more on transit to relieve congestion. If only 9% of voters realized the facts this measure would never have passed.
Here is the real story of transit in the United States:
Falling transit ridership poses an ‘emergency’ for cities, experts fear, Washington Post, March 24 2018
- Transit ridership declined 5% in 2017 in the US
- Transit use declined 30% over a decade in Los Angeles
- Transit ridership fell in 31 of 35 major metropolitan areas in the United States last year, including the seven cities that serve the majority of riders, with losses largely stemming from buses but punctuated by reliability issues on systems such as Metro, according to an annual overview of public transit usage.
- 2017 was the lowest year of overall transit ridership since 2005, and bus ridership alone fell 5%.
- Between 2016 and 2017, ridership fell in each of the seven largest transit markets: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, D.C., San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia.
Our elected leaders, and the Transportation Authority of Marin which was the beneficiary receiving the proceeds of the 1/2c measure AA sales tax, is obsessed with the futility of the Sisyphean task of trying to shift people from cars to transit.
Elected officials and TAM - proponents of measure AA - are joined by a chorus of companies receiving the proceeds of measure AA. They perform studies or otherwise receive money spent by TAM. They spent their money persuading voters to vote for the measure despite a conflict of interest that no one seems to be concerned with.
SO WHAT ARE GENUINE SOLUTIONS?
You might ask "so what are genuine solutions" since AA is a dud. Let's move on to what can really help, instead of the money bonfire that is measure AA (what a terrible waste, and a terrible deception on voters):
1. Encouraging Carpooling - we should be using the money instead to incentivize people to car pool. Here the author is not just preaching , he himself practices this solution. For the past 3 months I have been driving in a teacher from Marin to Menlo Park using Google Waze. Each ride I collect $12.90 - of which $5 comes from Google. We should specifically have TAM approach Google and say:
(a) We want to promote Google Waze in Marin, we will do this through flyers, spending money on ads, promotion in forums, in public communications
(b) We will chip in an additional $2 per trip for rides originating from, ending in, or traversing through Marin
2. Shift Marin Transit Ridership to Other Means - - Marin Transit is running giant buses with a capacity of 30+ riders, but most of the time carrying just 4 riders on average according to the data. What if Marin Transit was closed down and the money instead offered to Uber or Lyft to perform subsidized on demand rides?
3. Subsidize Car Sharing, Uber & Lyft for those on Low Incomes. We keep jacking up taxes (measure AA is 1/2c, SMART is 1/4c) which hurts those on low incomes but what we offer is not helping them. Here is an excerpt from a recent Press Democrat article on SMART's ridership:
"SMART’s average rider is 46 years old, lives in a household of three, earns $97,300 a year and has the option to drive but instead chooses to take the train. The majority of participants in two online SMART surveys and an in-person sampling conducted by the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission, identified as white (77 percent) and English speakers (95 percent). Male passengers make up 53 percent of riders and female passengers make up 47 percent.
Just 15 percent of riders classified themselves as Hispanic, with 4 percent citing Spanish as their native tongue. As of July 2017, Sonoma County’s Latino population was estimated at 27 percent compared to 16 percent in Marin, according to the United States Census Bureau.
The discrepancy in the share of Latino riders taking the train versus their proportion of the general population gave some SMART board members pause.
So we are using scarce transportation dollars to provide an alternative to wealthy non-minorities who already can afford to drive - this should be right at the bottom of our list of transportation priorities. There are many surveys showing that access to a car makes an immense difference to those on low incomes - enabling them to travel to get to a job, and to get there reliably and on time.
Instead of subsidizing VIP travel for the affluent who can afford SMART's high fares (with paltry average daily ridership of just 2,191) we should focus transportation on helping those who need it - subsidizing buses, car sharing and encouraging car pooling.
Continuing to throwing money at transit, and tell voters this will somehow relieve traffic, is getting beyond simple irresponsibility - the data is stark. Measure AA and its' solution plan are destined to failure. Heads should be rolling for the lies packed into measure AA.