Durham leaders discuss regional transit

Mar 3, 2010 — The News and Observer

Jim Wise

Mar. 3, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- DURHAM -- Talking about a regional transit system connecting Durham with Chapel Hill, Cary, Raleigh and the Research Triangle Park on Tuesday, Durham County commissioners and City Council members got as far as discussing when and how to sell the public on a tax increase before Mayor Bill Bell weighed in.

"I don't want to be the fly in the ointment," he said, "but ... we really haven't been thinking regionally about where the money comes from."

Bell's wasn't the first cautionary note raised in the first 90-plus minutes of a meeting that ran more than two hours, but given his history as a vocal transit proponent his comment did pull the conversation back to some basics.

Besides pre-recession financial projections, the system proposal relies on the cooperation and shared agendas of multiple jurisdictions. The regional plan, as described by city transportation director Mark Ahrendsen, is an amalgam of three related, but separate, county plans -- each subject to approval and funding through its respective government.

"Are we talking the same language?" said council member Howard Clement. "I have my doubts. Are we thinking in terms of region or are we just thinking in terms of our own provincial interests?"

In 2006, federal authorities said no to money that Triangle authorities had expected to underwrite a commuter-rail link between Durham and Raleigh. Still dealing with congested roads and projections for 1.2 million more residents to arrive in the next 25 years, transportation planners in Durham, Orange and Wake counties started over from scratch.

The "Special Transportation Advisory Committee" came up with a new idea that incorporated and expanded regional bus service, circulator buses in downtown areas and railroad links between Chapel Hill, southern Durham, central Durham, RTP, Cary, Raleigh and Clayton.

Lack of "a robust local revenue stream" proved a "fatal flaw" in the earlier plan, Ahrendsen said. To correct that, the new plan involves a half-cent sales tax and increased registration fees for cars and trucks.

The sales tax would account for the great bulk of local money, about $17 million a year in Durham County alone, Ahrendsen said. Imposing the tax, though, requires each board of county commissioners to approve a final transit plan; each board to approve a public referendum; and each county's citizens to vote to tax themselves to pay for a system benefiting two other counties.

"If all three counties don't support it," Bell said, "we don't have a regional plan."

To make regional transit palatable to local voters, current thinking has the revenue raised in each county being spent in that county -- leaving to question who covers cross-county services and integration of agendas and concerns.

Wake County, for example, has a dozen town governments to align; Orange County wants to use some transit revenue to support Chapel Hill's free-ride buses; Durham County, in the Triangle's middle, would have disproportionate share of tracks and bus routes, and costs, relative to population.

Local revenue helps pay the freight, so to speak, but the transit plan posits federal sources covering 33 percent of capital costs and the state 25 percent.

"Unfortunately," Ahrendsen said, "we began those [plans] under more favorable revenue projections than we have had in the past few months."

The funding model, said Triangle Transit Authority CEO David King, "is full of numbers that are based on assumptions.

"The same caution applies at the state and federal level that applies to when to hold a sales-tax referendum," King said. "The economy's got to get better."

Ahrendsen said transit planners' target date has been the end of 2010 for county boards to approve a final plan, leaving nine to 10 months for selling it to voters before holding referenda in the fall of 2011.

"I have reservations about the economic climate," said commissioner Brenda Howerton.

"Structuring a full-blown input campaign seems like a good step," said commissioner Ellen Reckhow.

"Getting this issue out to the public is important," Reckhow said. "If they respond the way the mayor is responding, it could be a real gut-check for us."

Newstex ID: KRTB-0170-42525808