Some transportation ideas from my paper

1. This is just an idea, but surface transportation (bus and streetcar) could be free throughout the city. A few places have free transportation downtown--Seattle, Pittsburgh, Portland among others--either all the time or during limited periods of the day, to reduce congestion, and to discourage driving. Portland's Fareless Square was initiated out of air quality concerns.

Thinking about this for DC, the idea of free surface transportation is more about equity and marketing. I haven't really worked through whether or not it's worth considering.

I couldn't get actual numbers for bus farebox revenue within DC. There are about 400,000 daily bus riders. I don't know how many are transfers, pass users, etc., so I estimated the revenue from bus fares at $1.5 million/week, generating $75 to $80 million in annual revenue.

2. Yesterday's papers had articles about WMATA funding legislation being introduced in the Senate. See "Md.'s Senators Submit Plan for Funding," from the Washington Post.

The idea is that federal funds be provided only if the members of the WMATA Compact institute a regular funding stream, such as from sales taxes.

One of the things I mention is that since 40% of the peak riders of WMATA heavy rail are federal workers, that the Federal Government should join the Compact anyway, and provide regular funding outside of the traditional federal transit funding that is open to all transit systems in the country.

3. But... I also talk what is done in certain counties in Oregon. There is a transit withholding tax for employees, paid by the employer.

The tax rate in Multnomah County is 0.06176%.

DC has 671,678 daily workers according to the Census 2000 Journey to Work statistics. 410,794 of these workers don't live in DC.

Estimating that the average income of the non-residents is $50,000 and of residents is $40,000 (these are figures I pulled out of the air, I haven't looked into finding better data, and these are conservative numbers as there are many many high paying jobs in DC) the gross earnings would be:

non-resident total income: $20,539,700,000
resident total income: $10,435,360,000
Total: $30,975,060,000 * 0.005% = $154,875,300

One problem : could it be done? Is this a commuter tax, or a kind of charge for transit and roads.

If the money only went to funding transit and selected road and streetscape improvements, it would be harder for people to make cogent arguments in opposition.

Note that we need to do a study about how much revenue the average office worker generates for the city in terms of sales taxes. I aver it's not as much as commenters in blogs and The Express seem to think.

This could pay for free surface transportation within DC, and more.

By not doing free surface transportation, it could be the funding source for a separate blue line subway system adding transit capacity in the center city, from Georgetown to Benning Road.