Placer transportation tax for Roseville, Rocklin, Lincoln falling short in latest returns
Measure B, the south Placer County transportation tax that aimed to ease congestion, has so far failed to secure the two-thirds majority of votes needed to pass after Tuesday’s vote.
As of Friday afternoon, when the Placer County elections office released another batch of results, the measure still had only 63% of the vote, in line with early returns on Election Night. It would need almost 67.7% of the vote to succeed.
Based on previous vote counts among the three cities, more than two-thirds of Tuesday’s votes have been accounted for.
Measure B would add a one-half percent to retail purchases in Roseville, Rocklin and Lincoln for 30 years. Officials estimated it would raise $41 million annually, and they made plans to spend just over half of that money on highways and making roads wider.
The county said it intended to use the revenues to provide the “local match” demanded by many state and federal grants.
A similar transportation tax failed in the county in 2016, securing 64% of votes — a majority, but less than the two-thirds threshold needed to pass.
The measure before voters this year laid out the larger plans that the sales tax would fund and explained exactly how the money would be apportioned.
A majority — 52% — of the tax revenue would go to “major highway and road programs.” One of these projects would widen Highway 65 to three to five lanes in each direction on the eight miles between Galleria Boulevard in Roseville and Twelve Bridges Drive in Lincoln. That stretch of highway is mostly two lanes in each direction. Officials also want to widen about 12.5 miles of road to Highway 99 starting at Baseline Road and Foothills Boulevard in Roseville.
Widening freeways and roads would almost certainly not reduce congestion in the long run.
Decades of research show that widening roads only temporarily relieves congestion and ultimately leads to more drivers on the road. Two researchers explained in a 2011 article in the American Economic Review that there is a “fundamental law of highway congestion: People drive more when the stock of roads in their city increases.”
Although officials wrote that they intended to find “a reasonable balance between competing highway, rail, transit, bicycle/pedestrian, and local streets and road needs,” only 5% of the funds from Measure B would be earmarked specifically for bike and pedestrian infrastructure improvements. Another 12% of funds would have been slated for transit.
