Pierce Transit’s local funding rate has been stagnant since 2002, but a sales tax measure on the ballot this year could change that. If passed, Proposition 1 would nearly double bus service in the region.
Transit measures in Pierce County have had a rocky history. Voters rejected a measure to raise the transit sales tax in 2011 and in 2012 by a margin of less than 700 votes.
The failure of those measures was a huge blow to the region’s transportation network; it caused service reductions and meant Pierce Transit has fallen behind peer agencies, said transit advocate Laura Svancarek, the executive director of Tacoma On the Go.
“The level of service we currently have is not sufficient for a city like Tacoma, or a county as large as Pierce County that is anticipating such a high level of growth over the next 20 years,” Svancarek said.
Pierce Transit initially planned to go back to the ballot in 2020, but the pandemic put that on hold. Now, 14 years since the last attempt failed, Pierce Transit is coming to voters with a new proposal that could reshape transit service in the region.
Pierce Transit’s current sales tax rate is 0.6%. That is behind similarly sized agencies such as Community Transit in Snohomish County (1.2%), Intercity Transit in Thurston County (1.2%) and Spokane Transit (0.8%).
Proposition 1 would raise the sales tax rate to 0.9% — an additional 3 cents on every $10 spent. Pierce Transit said that would allow the agency to increase bus service by 47%, extending service hours, shortening bus wait times and adding four new routes. It would also make all bus rides free for seniors and add more connections to the Tacoma Dome light rail station planned for 2035.
Svancarek is optimistic that this year’s transit proposition won’t be a repeat of the failed 2011 and 2012 measures.
“I think this package is a lot more impressive,” Svancarek said. “This isn’t about maintenance or service, this is about significant expansion of service, making quality of life improvements, easier transfers, higher frequencies.”
If the measure fails, Pierce Transit would be forced to make service reductions, said Kristina Walker, a member of the Tacoma City Council and Sound Transit Board, and chair of the Pierce Transit Commission.
“The agency anticipates those won’t happen tomorrow, but they will over time,” Walker said. “We can’t keep up with inflation, costs are rising faster than our income can keep up with.”
Pierce County has grown significantly over the past decade, and expects about 275,000 more residents by 2044. Expanding public transit will be critical to accommodating that growth, Walker said: “We have more people, we have more regional transit, we need our local transit to catch up.”
There is no organized opposition campaign to Measure 1. The “statement against” on the ballot was written by Tacoma resident John Miles, who said he stepped up after hearing nobody else wanted to.
“I thought people should have a chance to look at the trade-offs,” Miles said.
Miles agrees that Pierce County needs more transit; he would like to take the bus to church on Sundays, and right now it doesn’t come early enough.
Still, Miles does not think a sales tax is the right approach. It is a regressive type of tax that hits poor people harder, and the sales tax rate is already too high in Pierce County, he said.
Supporters of Prop. 1 note that a sales tax is one of the few options the state Legislature makes available to fund transit measures and that the tax would not apply to groceries, rent or medicine.
Miles doesn’t know what the ideal alternative would be — “I’m not a legislator,” he said — but he thinks Pierce Transit should lobby the state legislature to come up with some less regressive funding ideas to improve buses in Pierce County.
“It’s very disappointing that we don’t have better transit service here,” Miles said.
