Measure RTM in the Bay Area: Why Vote Yes, and Why It Matters Nationwide

There are lots of reasons to be worried or excited about the upcoming US midterms, but as a transit advocate, I’m most worried about the San Francisco Bay Area’s Measure RTM, which would raise the sales tax by half a cent (a full cent in San Francisco) for 14 years to prevent catastrophic cuts to the Bay Area’s busiest transit services. This measure will have consequences nationwide. Its failure, which polls suggest is possible, would intimidate any other US metro area that is thinking of seeking transit funding at the ballot box. All over the country, people will say, “if the most liberal metro area in the country won’t vote for transit, what hope do we have?” So the likely outcome of RTM’s failure is more of what we’re seeing now across the US: Massive, ruinous cuts in transit service, done in many cities without even asking the voters if this is what they want. Contents Why Transit is in Trouble Across the US How Bad Would the Cuts Be? But Would These Cuts Really Happen? But…