The following is an original production of AZPM News.

We're just a month away from an important special election that could chart the course of Pima County's roads, buses, transit, safety, and more for the next 20 years.

Yay or nay to RTA Next?

We're sitting down with an urban planning expert along with a seasoned pair of journalists who've been all over this issue.

I'm David Lee and The Press Room starts now.

[Music] Welcome to The Press Room.

I'm AZPM News Director David Lee and today we're talking about RTA Next, Propositions 418 and 419 in the upcoming election with a little bit of a twist.

Joining us at the table we have Arlie Adkins who is the Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Arizona.

We also have, a panel, on the panel, Yana Kunichoff for AZ Luminaria and Jim Nintzel from the Tucson Sentinel.

Thank you all for being here and as we continue tonight our discussion on RTA, we'd like to invite you to take part in a viewer survey.

Simply use the QR code on the screen to let us know your thoughts on Proposition 418 and 419 after the episode.

Arlie, we've talked to members of the Regional Transportation Authority.

We held a special live in-person version of The Press Room which you can still see online.

Folks there were able to ask some tough questions.

We also had members from the audience step up and ask some questions as well.

You're an expert when it comes to just kind of overall urban planning and laying out cities.

What stands out for you right now when you look at the RTA plan right now?

Great question.

I think the first thing that I see, and think that's really important for voters to understand, is that this is a really big deal.

This is really setting the agenda, setting the roadmap for the next 20 years of transportation investment in the region and that impacts every from Tucson to the smaller jurisdictions.

I think in any plan like this you're going to have aspects that people are happy about, people aren't so happy about.

I think it's people say you can't make everyone happy in a plan like this.

One of the things I think that is really standing out to me, especially considerin that these plans really are these roadmaps for the future, and I think should have some amount of aspiration in them.

They should be something that the community can get excited about and see some kind of shared common vision.

I think I'm not seeing as much of that as I would like to.

A lot of the people that I'm talking to who are proponents are talking more about in terms of this is sort of the best we can do at this point or the consequences if we say no to this.

I think to the degree that I really would rather see a stronger vision for the future of transportation in the region, I think that's something for people to pay attention to.

Yana, definitely a big deal.

Are you seeing a lack of enthusiasm about this?

Everyone I talk to sees transit as really important and they want changes in what transit, or certain investments in what transit will look like in the future in Tucson.

I don't think that they are seeing it from the folks I'm talking to.

I'm not talking to a lot of folks who are seeing it in the RTA Next plan, but I also think that they have concerns about some questions about the governance structure and RTA more broadly, but I also think that they want things like more bike lanes or more protected bike lanes and conversations about pedestrian safety that I think they really feel are lacking and that's where I see the urgency.

Jim, what are you seeing when you talk to folks about it right now?

I think there's a horseshoe thing going on.

There's a lot of folks on the left who are unhappy about there not being more transit support in there.

I think there's a lot of people on the right who say we don't like taxes at all.

We're upset that more work wasn't done during the first 20 years of the RTA, that some projects did not get finished.

So you have and then you have I think folks in the middle who basically say, "Listen, we're way behind on investing in our infrastructure.

We need to get our roads in better condition.

We need to improve our corridors."

And they feel as though the transit element is about $36 million a year.

Right now, the RTA provides about $20 million a year in support of transit.

So they're saying that's a significant increase from what we're getting now and they feel like the balance is right.

So where that will land on election day and ballots do go out next week for this March 10th election and folks need to register by Monday if they want to vote in it and where the voters will land on that of course remains to be seen.

In terms of your reporting, if these two propositions, 418 and 419, do not pass, what's your understanding of the money that's still in the pot right now versus what they might need to create the next plan if it doesn't happen?

What happens to some of that money?

So there's money that's still being collected and will continu to be collected through the end of June and that is dedicated to a number of projects that have not yet been finished.

There are projects on top of that that they've run out of funding to complete and that's been moved into the second round of that.

So one of the things that would happen if this gets passed is projects like Grant Road and First Avenue and Silverbell Road and Houghton Road, 22nd Street between Kino and I-10.

Those projects would have the funding to continue.

If it goes away, there's no telling where the funding would come for those projects.

With transit, right now again, $20 million a year, about $10 million for inside the city limits, about $10 million for service outside the city limits that they expanded into as a result of the first RTA.

That goes away.

The city council discussed that.

The staff is coming up with alternatives.

They're going to have to go through a whole public process if it does not pass to determine the best way to go on that.

But it's definitely going to, well, I shouldn't say definitely, perhaps the city can find money elsewhere.

There's always money in the banana stand, as they say.

But the city is facing a $40 million deficit next year.

So it's going to be a difficult conversation to find additional funding without going back to charging fares for the transit.

And that's a big thing, right?

Charging fares.

I mean, there was, I think some people thought, oh, we're going to have this transit system, this train that will be there, we'll be able to make some money off of it.

And that's not happening.

Yes.

And I would say that typically, fares are a fairly small part of revenue for a transit agency.

They're actually very costly to collect fares and deal with that.

Increasingly, we're seeing complex fare collection systems that are very expensive.

But it does, yeah, it does matter in a constrained resource environment.

Every dollar helps.

Okay.

Yana, when you talk to people right now in some of your reporting, how frustrated is the community with this whole process right now?

Yeah.

I mean, I think that the, I think you obviously have sort of a coalition that has come together against some of this effort that I think you have folks who are very active in the transit space.

I think also having folks kind of from the Republican party who are against this, I think to me that it makes me think a lot about Prop 414, which I think was an example of an effort to kind of have like a big tent public investment.

But there were so many people that I think felt there was something they were really strongly opposed to in that, that there was not enough people that came together to pass that effort.

So I think what I see here is that I haven't talked to anyone who said that they absolutely hate every single thing being proposed here, but I think they say there's not enough.

And I think that frustration in this moment of, I think broader feeling of public scarcity is, I think, turning people away from the plan.

And it's also really complicated, right?

So I think that it takes time to understand it, to understand how it works, how RTA works.

And I think that that is hurting the effort to get people on board, because it just takes attention and work to understand.

Yeah, Arlie, you know, there's a lot of 'us versus them' in this discussion, core residents versus suburban residents, drivers versus people who like to take alternative modes of transportation.

Is this level of contention something that you see in other communities around the country with developing a plan like this?

You certainly can.

I think we can also look at many examples, including Phoenix, just last year, where they were able to pass, Maricopa County was able to pass what I think a lot of people are calling a more balanced approach.

I think it included considerably more for transit, also more specifically for transit infrastructure investment.

So building out their bus rapid transit system, and that's on top of the city of Phoenix, you know, passing a measure, probably six or seven years ago, funding a lot of light rail expansion.

So I think that you can build strong coalitions when you strike that right balance.

And I think other jurisdictions have, other regions have managed to do that in a way that I'm not seeing people coming together around this package.

Jim, you know, are there enough alternative forms of transportation kind of built into this plan?

I know a lot of people are talking about different things that it's maybe more attuned to people who want to have cars and drive as opposed to other alternative plans.

I think it's definitely attuned to people who have cars that want to drive, but I think that's the majority of the people in the community.

I don't think, you know, we, the transit I think, got to about 15 million riders in the year 2018.

Slid off considerably, especially during COVID, and now is back up to about 15 million people riding the bus.

And it's unclear to me how they're tracking the number of riders via Sun Tran because people aren't paying fares anymore.

So I don't know how they're doing that.

And I've reached out to Sun Tran and they haven't been able to get me that answer.

So I definitely think in terms of a coalition, I think if you look back to where they were in 2006, you had a much larger coalition moving in favor of this.

And I think that was because there was a sense that we had, you know, you mentioned Maricopa County, which passed its sales tax for transportation a good 20 or 30 years before Tucson finally did in 2006.

So they had been way ahead of us in terms of paying for infrastructure up there.

And we have been not, we just haven't had the money to really keep up with our transportation system, which is why you have so many potholes.

And that has reversed to some degree as a result of RTA, as a result of the city of Tucson passing its own transportation initiatives that have helped patch potholes and things like that.

But the last time out, I mean, in this case, you definitely have the vast majority of elected officials and all the jurisdictions are supporting this.

You had certainly have the business community strongly behind this, but you don't have the Republican Party.

And you don't have the, there's a split among people who support transit for sure.

But it's not the, there was a lot more support from transit advocates in the last one, I think because of things like the light rail in downtown that was part of this and RTA paid, I think about $75 million of the cost of putting that together.

So, and I just, I do get the Prop 414 vibes on this one where you're just hearing a lot more opposition from the channels I'm listening to than I'm seeing support.

Yeah, and one of the things that I think is particularly interesting when you look at the overall plan, RTA is saying that if we don't do this, we could lose 54,000 jobs over the years.

If we do do it, maybe there's 48,000 jobs that come in.

I'm not sure where the math is on all of this and what kind of jobs are we even looking at?

Yeah, I don't have a great sense of that breakdown.

I think looking at the Connect Pima, the fact that there have been a lot of building trades that have invested in it, which is the PAC that is supporting the effort of investing in that effort.

I think seeing the bus drivers unions but I think labor has been supportive of bus driving jobs.

I think I can see that that is a, I think just like a can be a sustainable job in a community that struggles to always find jobs for people to do that pay living wages in the place we live.

I think this was in the data center fight.

I think that this is just, I think they are hitting on like a really just sore area for the community of the reality that it's like economically struggling for many people in many ways.

I'm not seeing that as what is sticky for the people who are opposed.

If there's anything that I'm seeing that the people who are opposed are like kind of interested in, it's the fact that there is money, it's the transit money and the concerns about that.

Okay.

Arlie, if this passes and it goes through, but folks still have some concerns, how flexible can this project be moving forward?

My understanding is that they've added a slightly higher degree of flexibility than in the 2006 plan.

I'm not exactly sure what that looks like, but I think that brings up another concern that opponents have had, and critics of the RTA, over the last couple of decades is the decision making structure at RTA.

That's where the city of Tucson with about 55% of the population of the region only has one seat at the table with, I believe, nine regional council members.

Even if there is that flexibility, if it's flexibility that needs to be approved by the regional council down the road, there's no guarantee that that would happen.

Really quickly, if I could, just to the jobs number, I've looked into this a little bit.

I think one of the things that's missing there, and I think, again, this is part of the nuance and the sort of bigger discussion that needs to be happening, is that I think while there may be some level of exaggeration there, I think it's also true that those numbers are based on an alternative where we do nothing, where we stop investing in transportation period at the regional level for the next 20 years.

I just don't think that's realistic.

I think that there is appetite, if this were to fail, to come back to put something else together that could look like a smaller regional approach and then the jurisdiction.

So Tucson coming up sort of its own plan.

But I don't think it's realistic to think that if this fails, we're going to stop investing in transportation, which can be a driver of economic growth for sure.

Jim, how much of a danger has there been though, saying you have to pass both of these, right?

418 and 419.

You can't do one without the other.

I mean, that could mess a lot of stuff up if it doesn't go through?

I think if you're tending to support the proposal, you're either, you're going to vote for both.

If you're thinking, "I don't like the proposal," you're going to vote against both.

I don't think voters are going to make that big a difference.

I think last time out the sales tax lagged behind the plan by a percentage point or something like that.

But I think most people will probably go one way or the other.

And that's basically just the way it was set up in state law, which to your point that the governance structure gives every jurisdicti a separate vote.

I think that also was set up by the state legislature.

And I don't think it's likely that the city of Tucson is going to be able to persuade the Republican controlled legislature to change up that structure.

I think we're stuck with what we're stuck with there.

I just don't see the Arizona legislature saying, "Oh yeah, Tucson, we think this is unfair.

Let's give you more of a voice."

That seems like a reach to me.

All right.

So I think that you are correct that it's a reach.

I think it's going to be a heavy lift to get that changed, which is one of the reasons people have concerns about the next 20 years under this plan with that governance structure.

But one of the first times I got involved in these conversations with RTA was the current mayor of Tucson asking me to look into this and testify at regional council.

And there is some discussion right now.

And I think my read is that if Pima Association of Governmen were to change their governance structure, their voting structure, their membership structure, that that would automatically change the RTA regional council voting structure.

And that is something that would not need legislative approval.

And I know there are ongoing conversations between the city and PAG, but so far they have not come up with a solution to that.

I don't think we can ever guarantee that things will remain the same on the political front, but I do think Mayor Romero has proven pretty adept at bringing in the tribes, in the city of South Tucson and Pima County to her way of seeing things and been able to essentially control the way the final package came together.

She got a lot more for the city of Tucson than was originally on the table for them.

Yana, it seems like it would be easier since there's already a half cent tax in place to just kind of extend it as opposed to whether or not they had to shut it down and then start a whole new tax, right?

Yeah, I mean, it seems like that is easier in the administrative elements of my understanding of government.

I think that the level of opposition that I'm seeing to this now, though, I think that I wonder if a different type of tax or city specific tax will maybe just be received a little bit better than this one that comes with the past 20 years of concerns and people specific experiences around RTA.

And that's an important point is that it may be that we move away if this fails, the city of Tucson may decide to go it alone and pass our own sales tax and use that towards funding transportation and transit.

And that sort of remains to be seen, but I think they'd come up with about $80 million a year if it was just in the city of Tucson as opposed to the RTA, which is about $125 million a year.

Arlie, one of the things that the RTA folks have talked about is the importance of I-10.

This is also why this plan right now has to happen.

How important is that aspect of it when you look at the overall planning?

Yeah, I think projects like that can be very important to regional efforts like this.

And I think those, when we think of sort of regionally significant projects, which can be regional transit systems, it can be major roadways or interstates that truly have a regional impact.

And I think that's one of the things I think voters should be looking through this list to see how much of these projects really meet that criteria.

And I think you'll find some in here that do if you look at the project list, but then you'll find some that I think really are more local projects.

And that's where I think this starts to feel less like an actual plan and more like a list of projects.

And I think there's some questions about what got included and what didn't, the public process, some last minute changes that were added, literally last minute or last week changes.

And yeah, so I think those projects are very important as is transit, as is safety.

And I think people have to look both at what's in here and also what's not in here.

I'll throw this out to all of you.

I got my voter guide at home, which looks like War and Peace.

It was a huge element.

How many people, but at the same time, I've seen a lot of people just kind of look at it, trash it.

Are people really going to get in and look at all of this?

I would say this is a requiremen of state law.

Yeah.

You have to send out a sample ballot, you have to send out a publicity pamphlet.

You invite people to write arguments.

People on both sides feel very passiona about this.

I think you have five dozen arguments in favor and four dozen arguments against, which even at 300 words fills up a lot of pages in a pamphlet like that.

Plus you want to give people the basic information and you want to print it in English and Spanish.

So yeah, you're going to end up with a thick book.

It's twice as long as it looks given that you're probably not going to read it in both English and Spanish.

But that said, I have heard one of the things that people are complaining about was that the booklet was sent out at all, even though it is required by state law.

People are like, "Oh, look at how they're trying to sell this thing."

I don't think there was any way around doing it the way they did it.

Okay.

One of the things that we have started to do here on The Press Room is have viewer questions.

It's an opportunity each week for you all to chime in and ask a question.

You can always go to azpm.org/pressroom or comment on the YouTube channel here and we'll pull one of them each week and open it up for the panel.

This week's question actually submitted by Kylie Walzak and this came from our Press Room recording last week.

And his question is, "Proponents of RTA Next are highlighting the safety improvements the new plan will deliver if approved by voters.

They say passing Props 418 and 419 will make commutes safer.

But how do we know if what they're doing and what they will be doing in the future will actually make roads safer when our fatalities have only been increasing over the last 20 years?” Yana?

-Yeah, I mean, I think that the safety question and what is considered a safety measure that is solid enough to call a safety measure, I think is one of the big concerns I've heard from opponents of this.

And I think I'm a cyclist.

It's the way I get around the city a lot of the time.

I think it is true that putting a bike lane on a street like Speedway maybe makes that a bike transit space, but does not make it safe.

And so I think, too, I have from my reading so far, I haven't seen anything that has made me compellingly feel that some of the trend that I do find really scary.

I actually had a friend who was hit by a car in a hit and run while biking.

And I just think that it does not feel safe out there in the form of transit that I take.

So I come to it with some personal feeling that what I have seen here, I think might make my life better as a driver, but I don't know if it would make my life better in the other identities.

I hold a pedestrian or a bicyclist.

So that's how I have felt watching the plan so far.

Jim, number one, I want to say I admire your courage for biking on our streets.

Number two, I'm not here to defend the RTA, but I would say that I don't think the roads will get any safer without this project.

Okay.

And Arlie?

Yeah.

I think that the question for me is whether some of these larger road projects that do include maybe new bike lanes, new sidewalks, are those necessary to really improve safety and would an approach that targeted more of the budget to standalone safety projects and a more coordinated effort be a better approach to addressing what really is a crisis of safety on our streets?

All right.

Arlie Adkins, Yana Kunichoff, Jim Nintzel, thank you all for being here and thank you, the viewer, for being with us as well.

Remember this week, we're conducting a viewer survey to find out if this discussion has helped you decide on how you plan to vote on the RTA Next ballot measure.

Simply use the QR code on your screen to answer the two simple survey questions.

I'm David Lee.

This is the Press Room.

We'll see you next week.

Production of AZPM News.