The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Miranda Schubert
Kylie Walzak
Community reliance on fare-free public transit has grown over the past four years, along with a groundswell of support across local businesses, organizations, nonprofits, and grassroots groups. Recognizing this, the Mayor and Council unanimously voted last May to commit to fare-free transit indefinitely, or until they vote otherwise. Tuesday, they will consider the City Manager’s recent recommendation to bring back fares for Sun Link and Sun Express services.
The primary reason given for the recommendation was budgetary. City officials report that they have been unable to obtain financial buy-in from institutions that directly benefit from fare-free transit. However, our local leaders need to show that they are genuinely committed to finding solutions. They need to accept responsibility for ensuring that the city budget directly and indirectly meets the needs of our communities, even if others won’t step up and do the right thing — especially in historically disinvested areas. Charging people fares as a result of failure to figure out funding for a basic service like public transit is passing the cost along to the folks who can afford it the least. To those of us who rely on public transit in our daily lives, it doesn’t really matter where fault lies. The impacts are the same.
The problem with discussing public transit as though it’s a simple expense is that it ignores the indirect environmental, public health, and quality of life benefits that outmatch any dollar value — although there’s monetary gains, too. A recent Arizona Luminaria piece noted that research has shown regional GDPs can increase when cities go fare-free. More crucially, investing in public transit is about serious, systemic interventions that will save lives and address the dangers of our current and future climate reality. Though it may sometimes feel otherwise, government isn’t a business in which every cost has to pencil out. Between extreme heat and pedestrian fatalities, it’s a moral imperative to get more cars off the road and provide refuge from the elements.
There are more stones to turn over to find the necessary funding to keep Tucson fare-free. We’ve only just begun to look closely at different options like small increases to the hospitality tax paid for by out-of-town visitors, replacing the RTA Next regional half-cent sales tax with a city-only mobility tax that includes improvements to our transit system, and encouraging Pima County to consider a modest increase to the primary property tax rate to fund both transit and transportation needs County-wide.
The vision set forth by this mayor and Council to make our transit system fare-free is bold and brave. It’s also wildly popular. People are choosing to locate here for school, work, and to raise families because they want to live in a city that commits to a bold vision like a permanently free transit system. People who already live here are using transit at rates we have not seen since the Great Recession. Taking any step back from the goal and vision of fare-free transit is the wrong message to send when we are looking at so much economic and environmental uncertainty. Yes, it costs money to provide the basic human right of mobility. But it should no longer come from users — not here, not anywhere.
Our commitment to free transit makes us feel incredibly proud to live in Tucson, a lot like that time we elected the city’s first Latina mayor, or how much water our collective conservation efforts can save even with increased population. It feels like our mayor and Council are stepping right up to the edge of turning back from that next big, courageous leap we need them to take for us. Please let them know: we can’t go back. Keep Tucson’s transit system — all of it — permanently and forever fare-free.
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