MAG News

Proposition 400, the voter-approved half-cent sales tax for transportation, expires at the end of 2025. There is a lot of planning work to be done before that happens.

The Regional Council heard an update from MAG staff on the planning work underway for the extension of Proposition 400. For internal planning purposes, November 2022 is being used as the possible timeline for a ballot measure to extend the tax, knowing the situation is fluid and the schedule will modify accordingly.

A timeline with four phases to develop the new Regional Transportation Plan was presented. The first phase, the Foundation, features an important values mapping exercise that kicked off on September 19, 2018. Members of the Transportation Policy Committee responded to a series of thought-provoking questions intended to identify the things our region cares about most. The exercise also was conducted with a diverse group of regional stakeholders and leaders. The exercise will feed into a larger public and stakeholder engagement effort to better understand regional priorities to best develop the Plan’s goals and objectives.

Concurrent to the Foundation phase is the Analysis phase, which consists of critical technical studies to identify the scope of multimodal transportation needs. Examples of these technical studies include analyses of commuter rail, high-capacity transit, freight, safety, maintenance and operations, and arterial and bridge needs. Additionally, a series of projections will be completed, including socioeconomic projections that will be adopted in summer 2019. This technical work is critical to ensure that MAG policy committees will have the information needed to weigh trade-offs, and to make the critical policy decisions guiding the development of the Regional Transportation Plan.

The major work on the Plan takes place in the third phase, Development, projected to begin toward the end of 2020. This phase will include the key policy decisions regarding funding considerations, Plan drafting and refinement, air quality conformity analysis and plan adoption. The final phase is Election, with MAG requesting ballot placement in early 2022. At that point, MAG would shift into an information-providing role only as campaign activities would begin without MAG engagement.

Critical to all of these phases is continuous public and stakeholder engagement. The feedback loop this provides will ensure the Plan resonates with voters.