Transportation Tax Breakdown
Major props to Mike Lindblom of the Seattle Times for this detailed report that gets to the bottom of just how much money we are currently forking over in transportation taxes —and how much more we could be forking over very soon.
As Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels asks voters to spend more money on city roads, and King County Executive Ron Sims promotes a countywide sales-tax boost for more buses, the annual local tax bill for transportation already exceeds $800 per adult.I have been noticing this nagging feeling lately that maybe I'm not quite paying enough in taxes. Wait... no. And what's the deal with the money being split half and half between roads and public transit? Last I checked, far fewer than 50% of trips in our area are on public transit. Is 50% even a remotely reasonable goal? (I really would like to know—does anyone know where I can find studies of highly "transit friendly" cities?) Why is so much money being dumped into a "solution" that accommodates so few people, even while the roads are being "overwhelmed by growth in the motoring population"?
The dollars are collected in so many ways — state and federal gas taxes, sales taxes, car-tab taxes, property taxes, business taxes, real-estate tax — that the average person doesn't know the bottom line.
A Seattle Times review of major transportation taxes estimates that agencies collected an average of $843 per adult in urban areas of King County, including Seattle, last year. The figure for Seattle residents is $881. Roughly half the money went to transit, and half to roads.
In addition to this year's proposals by Nickels and Sims, another pair of multibillion-dollar packages — for Sound Transit and regional highways — appear headed toward the ballot next year.
If all four measures win, the area's transportation investment likely would exceed $1,000 per adult in both Seattle and its suburbs.
Oh, and I especially love this bit:
To avert a "roads-vs.-transit" fight, state lawmakers have required the highway and Sound Transit measures to pass together, or they both fail.I just have to ask... why?
(Mike Lindblom, Seattle Times, 05.27.2006)
2 comments:
Note that I wasn't asking for comparisons of how much other areas spend on transit, I was asking whether "50% of trips ... on public transit" is a reasonable goal. It seems to me that the money ought to be spent roughly in proportion to usage, or at least in proportion to expected usage. I just want to know whether 50% of trips via transit is a reasonable expectation.
Right now we're spending half of all collected transportation taxes on transit, and what do we have to show for it?
I found a hose throw costa rica homes for sale and I can´t wait more time to go there. But I never went before. So is important to me to know about the transportation in the country which is vey beautiful. How ever, I heard the transportations is really good.
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