Transportation Tax Ballot Initiatives as Regional Planning Processes

Local option taxes increasingly dominate transportation planning and finance in many states. In bypassing the formal metropolitan planning process, these taxes appear to put important regional policy goals at risk. The extent to which key policy issues (e.g., the equity, environmental, and regional transportation impacts of projects) were considered within the planning processes is examined, by drawing from archival research and interviews, for four of these tax measures at a critical stage, when they were becoming dominant in California. How these processes exhibit characteristics associated with “the new regionalism”–consensus building, proactive visioning around untraditional policy goals, informal governance, and network-like organizational approaches–also is described.