The House and Senate Transportation committees are both proposing a package of increased transportation fees to help meet the budget shortfalls in transportation across the board. These proposals would direct those fees to various transportation investments.
Sadly, only one of these proposals could be called balanced.
The breakdown of how these new fees are spent in the House is pretty good for advocates of more transit and bike/ped funding. It very closely matches the compromise that was agreed upon last year.
Unfortunately, the Senate proposal drastically reduces the share of new fee revenue that goes towards public transportation and safe routes to schools.
With transit agencies on the financial brink, and basic road and ferry maintenance needs
across the state growing, we cannot support the Senate’s ill-advised, unbalanced proposal.
The 7% for transit and 3% for bike-pedestrian that the Senate committee proposes, simply put, is not enough. The Senate proposal woefully underfunds the immediate maintenance needs of our state’s transportation system. In fact, the Senate’s proposal spends millions of dollars in planning for new roadway capacity instead of fixing our crumbling bridges and unsafe highways that are in desperate need of repair.
As an important side note, the Senate budget also doesn’t include the fix for the Colman Dock passenger ferry issue that the House budget did.
Below is a full break down of how each body (last year’s compromise, the House, and the Senate) propose to spend the additional fees. Please note, the preliminary design category is road planning money that will be spent over the next year, with more money slated to go towards that category in the next three years.
Please contact members of the House and Senate Transportation committees and tell them to pass a balanced transportation budget that is focused on maintenance and transportation choices that work for everyone.
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