The House and Senate Transportation committees unveiled their biennial budgets this week without much fanfare. We’ll go through some of the pertinent details here, and if you get through the wonky budget stuff, you’ll be rewarded with pictures of the new light rail station at the end!
Aside from transportation revenue proposals (as we’ve been covering in detail over the last several weeks), there are mandated two-year budgets. Over the last decade, these budgets have been shrinking as the majority of the last gas tax, passed in 2005, were bonded and spent on projects already.
Both the Senate and House proposed generally status quo budgets that neither radically improve nor radically cut, transit, bike and pedestrian funding. One very good piece of news is that both budgets increased state spending on regional mobility grants. Regional Mobility Grants are the only program that state has that invests in transit (both operations and capital) in a significant way.
In the past, Regional Mobility Grants have funded projects ranging from pilot bus operations to light rail extensions. An example of this was Intercity Transit receiving a Regional Mobility Grant to expand its express bus service from Olympia to Lacey and Tacoma in the fall of 2013.
State statute mandated that this funding increase, and the House did exactly that; proposing to raise the program amounts from to $60 million over the biennium (an increase of about 9 million from 2013-2015 levels). The Senate also increased the program, which is good news, but they didn’t go far enough to meet amount required. They increased it by $5 million less per biennium than the house; or $45 million total. These investments will help continue to grow transit service across the state and we are working to urge the Senate to agree to the House levels.
In the past biennium, the legislature appropriated transit operating dollars to help struggling transit agencies. While the amount wasn’t huge, it was an important step as it was the first time the state had invested directly in local transit operations since the 1990s. The current biennial budgets discontinue this program, we are strongly advocating for it to continue in the budgets and/or the transportation revenue package. There is a direct state interest in public transit operations.
Finally, we’ll end on a good note; the House and Senate agreed to include the full requested amount of 17 million dollars for ongoing Alaska Way Viaduct transit mitigation.
Whew! As promised, hopefully you didn’t just scroll to the bottom to see the pictures, but if you did, we can’t say we blame you. Stay tuned next week for the next Dispatch from Olympia, and in the meantime, who is excited for the new stations opening at UW and Capitol Hill? TCC got an inside look at both stations today, and here are some pictures of the highlights of the gorgeous UW Station (Capitol Hill station pictures are embargoed but we assure you, it looks great!).
