Chris Cargill: Spokane Transit receives too much tax revenue for the services it offers

The people of the Spokane area are being overcharged for public transportation. You might be surprised to hear this, but the facts show it to be true.

Statistics from almost every database show a decrease in passenger numbers. Public data shows that passenger numbers for the Spokane Transit Authority have steadily declined, while taxes paid by working families in the area to aid transit continue to rise.

The numbers for the five years leading up to COVID (2015 to 2019) show that STA driver numbers are down 8 percent, according to the Federal Transit Administration.

Last year the numbers were even more dramatic. It’s no surprise that COVID negatively impacted passenger numbers in 2020, which resulted in a 42 percent decrease. But the long-term numbers tell a more troubling story. If you look at the first four months of 2021 and compare them to the same period in 2019 before COVID-19, the number of passengers in STA is about 35 percent lower.

Transit is about getting people from A to B as efficiently as possible. There are several ways to look at efficiency. One way is to look at the passenger miles traveled per sales mile and the cost per mile.

For example, in 2015 STA buses carried an average of 8.4 passengers at an operating cost of $ 8.55 per mile. In 2019, the average STA bus carried just 6.6 passengers at a cost of $ 9.02 per mile.

At the same time, the amount of local revenue STA earns has increased 63 percent. The increase in local tax revenue should come as no surprise. Less than five years ago, STA officials urged voters to approve a further increase in the VAT rate, while promising new routes and projects like the once-rejected and still controversial Central City Line in the downtown area.

The costly new services have not increased the number of passengers. This is all the more remarkable given that the Spokane area’s population – and therefore the potential STA driver base – has only increased over the years.

Higher sales taxes are a particular hardship for low wage earners. Sales taxes are regressive, and 2019 census data showed that only 4.2 percent of people making less than $ 25,000 a year made commutes. This means that almost 96 percent of low-income workers paid disproportionately for trips in transit that they did not take.

All of this indicates one thing: the Spokane Transit Authority is spending more money on unneeded services and buses, and the area’s working class families who pay STA’s bills deserve a break.

This is not an unusual request. Families in the Spokane area have limited resources to spend on the regressive taxes that fund government projects and priorities. They want to know that the government is flexible enough to react when needs rise and fall.

This smart, priority government approach is what the leaders of the Tri-Cities have called for this summer. As the number of passengers in transit has also decreased there, the elected guides wanted to slightly reduce the amount received by the Ben Franklin Transit Agency and use it instead for psychiatric care in the region. Unsurprisingly, the Tricity traffic bureaucrats rejected this approach – they didn’t want to lose the taxpayer money they received.

Instead of funding empty buses in our region, taxpayers’ money could perhaps be better used for mental health problems or homelessness, or even returned directly to taxpayers in the form of a lower VAT rate for working families.

We shouldn’t be afraid to address this issue. No government agency deserves an endless source of income, especially one that serves fewer people each year.

Chris Cargill is the East Washington director for the Washington Policy Center, an independent research organization with offices in Spokane, Tri-Cities, Seattle and Olympia. Online at washingtonpolicy.org.