Voters in Austin and Portland will be asked to increase local taxes to pay for rail transit this November. Less than 8 percent of Portland-area workers and just 2.3 percent of Austin workers take transit to work, so why do transit agencies think that a majority of voters would support spending billions of tax dollars on rail transit?
Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.
The answer to this question is provided by a famous article in the Onion that claimed a survey by the American Public Transportation Association had found that “98 percent of Americans support the use of mass transit by others.” Congestion in many American urban areas has grown significantly and the Onion article quotes a commuter as saying, “It’s about time somebody did something to get some of these other cars off the road.” Continue reading
