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Plan for light rail, then renew bus tax
By YAEL T. ABOUHALKAHThank you, Mayor Mark Funkhouser.
Shocking transit supporters, the mayor recently spoke the truth when he told a light-rail forum that suburbanites are “not going to invest in regional transit” led by the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority. Instead, Funkhouser wants a different governing structure put in place.
It’s essential to point out that the ATA hasn’t yet come up with a decent, workable light-rail plan for Kansas City. That proposal isn’t expected until later this year.
Given the ATA’s shortcomings in light-rail planning, an obvious question looms: Should Kansas City voters trust the ATA with $375 million at this time for its bus system?
The simple answer is no.
Instead, voters in April should reject the ATA’s request to renew the three-eighths-cent sales tax for buses, then wait for a comprehensive transit plan in November.
That would give the transit agency a lot of reasons to come up with an integrated bus/light-rail proposal for Kansas City. And the ATA then could put a complete funding package before voters.
Under this scenario, the ATA would request extending the three-eighths-cent sales tax to keep the buses rolling plus ask voters to endorse a sales-tax increase to finance the new light-rail system.
Each tax would last a long time — probably 25 years — to provide stable funding for buses and light rail.
City Council member Ed Ford earlier this year talked about holding this kind of election in late 2008.
But the ATA didn’t embrace that plan. Neither did Ford, ultimately.
Instead, transit officials in January pushed hard for the City Council to endorse a long-term extension of the bus tax. Let’s face it, the ATA is and has always been a bus-oriented agency. It wants money for buses, and doesn’t want to risk losing a large funding source.
Funkhouser and the council unfortunately agreed to rush the issue onto the April ballot.
ATA general manager Mark Huffer and others hope to convince Kansas Citians that the loss of the tax would devastate the bus system.
And the ATA is arguing that — if and when voters pass a light-rail plan — a good bus system will have to be in place to feed passengers to rail.
Problem is, the transit authority doesn’t have enough evidence to show Kansas Citians that the three-eighths-cent tax would be properly used in conjunction with light rail.
Defeating the bus tax in April would not devastate the ATA; the tax doesn’t expire until 2009. The authority would have plenty of time to come back with a better plan for voters later this year.
Besides, the ATA is going to encounter other problems as it proceeds with its campaign for a 15-year tax renewal in April.
Consider this: When voters first endorsed the bus tax in 2003, they boosted the ATA’s budget by 40 percent a year. (Currently, the tax generates $23 million annually for the agency’s $76 million budget.)
However, ridership has gone up only 15 percent since 2003. And that’s after the ATA has expanded service and after gasoline prices have soared to nearly $3 a gallon.
Meanwhile, approval of the bus tax relieved the transit agency of a great deal of pressure to cut costs through smaller buses, lowered personnel costs and reduction of less-used routes.
Right now, the ATA is plunging ahead with a flawed attempt to seek voter approval for a tax that hasn’t done enough to create a first-class bus system.
Meanwhile, no one knows how the bus tax — if extended — would really work with light rail to provide a first-class transit plan for Kansas Citians.
There are too many unknowns to give the ATA $375 million at this time for its buses.