Sunday, May 7, 2006 9:52 AM CDT

Anyone who is worried about growing traffic congestion in Flagstaff should be in favor of more bus service.

But that’s not the main reason to support Prop. 403, which would double the transit tax to 33 cents per $100 of taxable sales.
At 2,000 riders a day, Mountain Line buses aren’t replacing many of the estimated 300,000 vehicle trips in Flagstaff each day. Even quadrupling ridership, as is projected if the tax hike passes, won’t do much to untangle Flagstaff’s notorious rush-hour traffic jams.

What’s more important is the access and mobility that convenient and affordable bus service provides to people who don’t drive or don’t have access to a car. That includes students, the elderly, the handicapped, and two-earner families with one car. Those are the people who will help Flagstaff maintain its demographic diversity despite rising housing costs, and public transit is one way to accomplish that.

Are there other reasons to support the tax hike? One of them is the environmental benefit that comes from expanded bus service: Lower pollution and greenhouse gases as more people leave their cars in the garage and new buses are outfitted with hybrid diesel/electric engines.

Another is the more efficient use of urban space, something to which Flagstaff, with its limited private land base, must pay particular attention. As more people take the bus to work and shopping, less land is needed for parking. And instead of building houses with three-car garages, developers can put in more affordable cottages with parking for one vehicle apiece if convenient bus service is available.

That convenience factor is hard to measure, but one rule of thumb is that a bus must come by a stop every 15 minutes to entice riders to wait by the curb. Longer than that, and commuters won’t have the patience to wait. Prop. 403 would raise an extra $2 million a year, and most that money initially would go toward purchasing more buses. That would allow the bus frequency on some routes to get down to 15 minutes and even 7 minutes on the NAU/downtown shuttle, a threshold that is expected to quadruple ridership on those lines.

Another marker of convenience is how close a bus stop is to your home. In neighborhoods where it’s more than a five or six-block walk, ridership falls off steeply. Prop. 403 provides for new service out West Route 66 as far as Railroad Springs as well as new routes in east Flagstaff neighborhoods, thus getting more buses closer to where more people live.

Does Prop. 403 mean that riders will get a free ride at the expense of taxpayers? We don’t think so. Rider fees will account for about 17 percent of the budget, which is close to the industry standard. Mass transit is an investment by a community in a key form of transportation, just as it pays for new roads and overpasses. It was never meant to pay for itself out of fares.

Is the Mountain Line plan perfect? No, but nothing is. University Heights and Country Club currently are not scheduled for service, even if Prop. 403 passes. But residents of those neighborhoods will still benefit from enhanced bus service as downtown congestion is eased and low-income and elderly households attain greater mobility without having to drive.

Finally, Prop. 403 is affordable. Although the tax rate will double, the total tax collected would amount to one-third of 1 percent on a taxable purchase. With visitors to Flagstaff accounting for half of all taxable transactions but Mountain Line likely to serve mainly local residents, that makes Prop. 403 more than a bargain.

We urge voters to check Yes on their ballots for Prop. 403.

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