Sunday, Jan. 30, 2011
| Dane County’s new Regional Transit Authority is distributing for comment its plan to expand and modernize public transportation in the county’s urbanized area and -- guess what -- it doesn’t include commuter rail. Yet it’s a plan that could go a long way to move public transportation services into the 21st century and begin relieving traffic congestion. If commuter rail becomes a consideration, it will be years down the line, RTA Chair Dick Wagner says. The RTA plan calls for an integrated system of express, local and paratransit buses, new park and ride lots, and conveniences like wireless communications, “wave-and-pay” fare cards and improved bus shelters. It would integrate the bus services already provided by Madison, Fitchburg, Middleton, Verona, Sun Prairie, Monona, Shorewood Hills and the town of Madison; remove the costs of those services from the municipalities’ property taxes; and finance a more efficient integrated service through what would most likely be a quarter-cent sales tax. Verona provides an example of how the system would work. Buses there now carry people from the huge Epic complex to the West Madison transfer point at Tokay and Whitney Way. Under the RTA plan, employees would have an option of catching an express bus to downtown Madison instead. As promised, nothing will go ahead unless voters in the RTA area approve the sales tax. Whether the tax question can be placed on this April’s ballot depends on how quickly the nine RTA directors hear back from the municipalities, business interests and citizen organizations that are reviewing the 16-page proposal. The plan has been sent to every municipality in the county, whether it is within the RTA boundary or not. Wagner hopes the tax question makes the April ballot because there’s no election this fall, meaning a referendum would have to wait until 2012. With gas already over $3 per gallon and predicted to go higher, demand for public transportation could increase dramatically. Commuter rail opponents were so convinced last fall that rail would be the major part of the RTA proposal that they placed a referendum on the ballot in several municipalities, asking voters if they favored commuter rail financed by a half-cent sales tax. The narrow question lost by a big margin. Madison and Fitchburg declined to participate, pointing out no plan had yet been proposed on which voters could make an intelligent decision. Though key business leaders and citizen groups have already voiced approval of the new bus plan, one of the anti-commuter-rail leaders, county supervisor and now county exec candidate Eileen Bruskewitz of Waunakee, is making it clear she’s anti-bus too. Bruskewitz is circulating a resolution asking the County Board to go on record against the proposal. Besides being opposed to any sales tax money for public transportation, period, her resolution predicts Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature, no friends of the Madison area, after all, will repeal the RTA authorization passed by the last Legislature.
If that happens, Dane County will be denied yet another opportunity to provide transportation alternatives for all its people.
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