Every year since 2018, over three-quarters of ballot measures to fund public transportation have passed. And state and local elected officials have a wide range of opportunities to harness this popularity. Governors make appointments to state departments of transportation (DOTs), and those appointees can significantly affect state DOT priorities: Do they prioritize fixing existing roads, increasing transit construction, and operating more transit service in order to make transportation more affordable and build more economically vibrant communities? Or do they focus on widening highways and roads at the expense of road maintenance and every other mode of transportation and the communities that would benefit from them?
Together, governors and state legislatures decide how well public transit is funded, guide the work of state DOTs, and determine how much funding flows directly to local governments. Both state and local elected officials have significant influence over street design, depending on whether the state government or local government owns particular roads, and they often collaborate with federal elected officials to win federal grant money for bigger projects.
Furthermore, local elected officials often have significant discretion over the delivery of locally controlled public transit services. Given this power, candidates for state and local office have a chance to run on delivering improvements to public transit that are popular around the country, year after year.
But in order to deliver improvements, it is important to look beyond the total amount of money spent. When state and local elected officials pass transportation bills, it is imperative to judge their success based on the outcomes they deliver on the ground, not how many dollars they distribute.
In the following report, we describe why transportation is a kitchen-table issue, describe solutions that communities are seeking for their transportation problems, and highlight existing state and local policies that are models for other state and local governments to emulate.