Taxing for Transit: An Exploratory Analysis of Local Option Transportation Taxes

This research seeks to analyze recent trends in transportation funding—voter-approved local option transportation taxes (LOTTs) with a transit component. The research involved developing a dataset of those LOTT ballot measures to: summarize and describe characteristics of proposed LOTT ballot measures; analyze the relationship between election outcomes and characteristics of the taxes and voting locales voting; and summarize transit funding from successful LOTT county sales taxes to examine modal distribution and planned use of the funds.;While user fees remain the largest funding source, alternative mechanisms such as LOTTs are now a fixture of transit funding. In many locales, LOTTs have passed, been extended, and are resulting in real investment in bus and fixed guideway systems. This research led to future research recommendations including: development of a comprehensive LOTT ballot-measure dataset; analysis on consistency between proposed and actual expenditure; and analysis of differences in revenue allocation between LOTT investment and the traditional transportation planning process.