Placer County transportation tax for Roseville, Rocklin, Lincoln ahead in Tuesday’s election
Measure B, the South Placer County ballot measure that would slightly increase the local sales tax to fund road projects with 52% of the money going toward highways and road widening, was ahead in early returns Tuesday night. The transportation tax increase needs a two-thirds majority of the vote to pass and had just under that — 65% .
That threshold would fall to 55% if Proposition 5, the statewide measure on bond voting for municipalities, passed.
The measure would add a half percent to retail purchases in Roseville, Rocklin and Lincoln for 30 years. Officials estimated it would raise $41 million annually . Without the sales tax, the county has no money budgeted to provide the "local match" demanded by many state and federal grants.
The ordinance laid out exactly what infrastructure plans the tax is for . Placer County Local Transportation Authority plans to focus on widening roads as the population grows.
A major goal of the ordinance is to "reduce traffic congestion," but several of the projects it would fund are unlikely to achieve that aim. Decades of research has shown that widening roads only temporarily relieves congestion and ultimately leads to more drivers on the road. Two researchers explained in a 2011 in the American Economic Review that there is a "fundamental law of highway congestion: People drive more when the stock of roads in their city increases ."
In the expenditure plan, officials said that they intended to provide "a reasonable balance between competing highway, rail, transit, bicycle/pedestrian, and local streets and road needs." However, a majority of the funds are earmarked for six major roadway projects, including widening Highway 65, attempting to fix a bottleneck at the Interstate 80/Highway 65 interchange and constructing a four-lane expressway on Placer Parkway between two highways.
Only 5% will go to pedestrian and bike projects. UC Berkeley's Transportation Injury Mapping System shows that between 2013 and the end of last year, at least 52 pedestrians were killed or severely injured in traffic collisions in Roseville, Rocklin and Lincoln. Vehicles have struck and injured more than 200 cyclists in the three cities, and three crashes killed cyclists in Roseville.
A quarter of the tax revenue would go toward maintenance and repairs on existing roads. And 12% of the estimated $41 million in annual revenue would go to transit. The remaining funds would go toward flexible projects and administration.
If the measure passes, a citizens' oversight committee will also form to monitor the way revenues from the new tax are used.
