Abstract
Sales tax measures passed at the local level and dedicated to transportation projects have become increasingly popular in the United States. While revenues from fuel taxes stagnate, growth of local transportation sales taxes (LTSTs), most approved in local elections, has led to a gradual shift of the financial base for transportation projects away from user fees and toward broader-based taxes. In this study, the relationship between voter support and the social, political, and geographic characteristics of the voters is explored. Using precinct-level voting data and census demographic data for three local transportation sales tax elections in Sonoma County, in the San Francisco Metropolitan area of California, regression models were constructed to analyze this relationship. In addition, the relationship between the outcomes of the three measures was explored to better understand which transportation projects might have garnered more support for the successful measure. It was found that the closer voters lived to the transportation projects to be funded, the greater their support. Higher incomes were also positively related to support, controlling for other variables. Political leanings were found to affect support, with the direction of the effect dependent upon the project list in each measure’s expenditure plan. Finally, it appears that the latest measure, which passed successfully, benefited greatly from its multi-modal expenditure plan.
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Abbreviations
- LTST:
-
Local Transportation Sales Tax
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Acknowledgements
The research reported in this paper was conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, where Mr. Hannay was a Masters degree candidate and Mr. Wachs was Professor and Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies. The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support for this project from a Donald Carlson endowed professorship in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Berkeley.
Notes on Contributors: Robert Hannay is a consultant with the Public Finance Management Group in San Francisco, CA. Martin Wachs is Director of the Transportation, Space and Technology group at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, CA.
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Hannay, R., Wachs, M. Factors influencing support for local transportation sales tax measures. Transportation 34, 17–35 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-006-0006-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-006-0006-4