Dear friends,
With just two weeks left in the Washington State legislative session, things are moving fast. Today is the last day for bills to be voted out of the transportation committee in the opposite chamber from where they started, and they must be voted on by the full opposite chamber by the end of Friday. We’ve got more updates on bills below, but first, let’s talk budgets.
Last Monday, we got our first look at the House and Senate supplemental transportation budgets. Here’s a quick breakdown.
In both budgets, there are things we support, including:
- Restored and partially restored funding for Regional Mobility Grants, which invest in things like new buses, bus shelters, and transit centers — as well as expanded routes and frequencies — in communities across the state.
- Restored funding for Commute Trip Reduction programs, which help jurisdictions and employers incentivize workers to drive less, reducing congestion and pollution.
- Funding for free youth fares on Amtrak Cascades.
- Funding for Tribal Transportation Grants.
Some of our priorities appear in one budget, but not the other:
- The Senate version builds momentum for a Megaproject for Safety. After committing $100 million last year for the 2027-2029 biennium, the Senate commits another $100 million for the 2029-2031 biennium to help make some immediate safety fixes on main street highways, which are some of our state’s busiest transit corridors and most dangerous roads for pedestrians. In addition, the Senate budget includes a proviso directing WSDOT to develop a comprehensive Megaproject for Safety program to shape corridor-wide transformations of these roadways in the future.
- The House version supports free transit for students at community and technical colleges. While a bill related to this died, the House budget includes funding for a Community & Technical College Transit Access Pilot. This would support transit agencies that don’t already offer transit passes to community and technical college students to develop programs to do so.
Despite these potential wins, we have serious concerns about the way both budgets are funded, and the long-term sustainability of transportation spending in our state. In order to invest in maintenance and preservation and continue to fund highway projects, both budgets are borrowing from the future.
The Senate transportation budget relies on bonding, proposing $2 billion in new debt. While bonding is an important tool, and one we support for generational infrastructure like the buildout of light rail, we’re wary of using it to keep building highway projects that were designed several decades ago. And while our existing infrastructure is in dire need of maintenance and preservation, it’s not sustainable to keep paying for that with debt that future generations will have to pay on.
The House transportation budget takes money from the state’s multimodal account, which funds transit, bike, and pedestrian programs. It delays a lot of important projects in order to pay for highways. We can’t afford to sacrifice our multimodal programs now or in the future to build and maintain roadways.
The legislature continues to put pressure on the most flexible funding accounts to pay for programs and projects that can be and should be funded with the gas tax. The House budget’s approach of redirecting multimodal funding to highways is a stark example of this pattern. Because there is not a codified amount of funding for transit, bike, and pedestrian programs in the state’s transportation budget, legislators regularly sweep unallocated funds into other capital projects, like highways and ferries, which can result in delays and less investment in key programs. In other words, less than 5% of the state’s $11.8 billion transportation budget goes toward the transit, bike, and pedestrian programs that keep our most vulnerable road users safe. Now, legislators propose reducing that already paltry amount by an additional $227 million.
Our state needs a new revenue source to address the decline in gas tax revenue that can pay for our streets, trails, and transit, not just highways and freeways. We saw a viable proposal last year with Rep. Fey’s Road Usage Charge bill. But both proposed budgets this year continue to kick the can down the road.
On a smaller scale, we were disappointed that neither budget included ongoing funding for our state’s intercity bus network. This network provides critical connections all across our state, helping people reach jobs, healthcare, and family. While a $5 million investment from last year was maintained in the current biennium, this program needs at least $10 million a biennium in ongoing funding. We’ll continue to push for this funding next year.
Below, you’ll find updates on some of the bills we’ve been talking about. You can also check out our full Bill Tracker here.
Ride on!
– Transportation Choices Coalition
Updates on Bills We’re Tracking
A bill to extend Sound Transit’s bonding authority to 75 years to deliver transit projects faster (SB 6148) is not scheduled for a vote in the House Transportation Committee today. We’re working hard to see if this policy can still be supported through the budget process.
A bill to give Sound Transit enhanced permitting tools to build light rail faster (SB 6309) was voted out of the House Committee on Local Government last week and is now in the House Rules Committee. It must be voted off the House Floor by Friday.
We testified in support of the ‘mosquito fleet’ bill on Friday. HB 1923 would increase the availability of passenger-only ferries. Read more about it in The Urbanist. This bill must be voted out of the Senate Transportation Committee by end of day today.
A bill to protect vulnerable users of public ways died. ESHB 2095 would have increased accountability for drivers who hit people walking and biking, but it did not get voted out of the Senate Committee on Law & Justice before last week’s Opposite Policy Committee Cutoff.
