Local opinion: RTA’s proven accountability is displayed in regionwide projects

The following information clarifies some of the incorrect assertions made in recent letters to the editor and guest opinions regarding the Regional Transportation Authority.

Assertion: The RTA is not accountable.

RTA accountability is apparent with more than 1,000 projects delivered under the RTA-1 plan, as promised to voters in 2006. This includes major projects bringing improvements to the Broadway, Valencia, Houghton and Grant roadway corridors, plus expanded evening and weekend transit services, paratransit/dial-a-ride services, and a host of bike and pedestrian safety projects across the entire region. The Sun Link streetcar and the Twin Peaks interchange at I-10 are additional regionally funded projects. All along these improvements, you see a host of new retail, medical, office and residential developments that follow to benefit our regional economy and provide convenience and jobs to those who live close by.

As a member and former Chair of the Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC), I can assure you that the RTA Board receives status updates on projects and listens intently to citizen input, whether through the call to audience at PAG/RTA board meetings or its several citizen committees. The Board has been actively seeking citizen input for RTA Next, its Regional Transportation Plan, which we are about to vote on in Propositions 418 and 419. The RTA has also been audited regularly throughout the past 20 years, with notably stellar results. Those audits are available online at RTAmobility.com. In short, the RTA has proven itself to be completely accountable to all the citizens of the Pima County region. And you can rest assured that continued and increased citizen oversight has been approved by the RTA Board and is in the plan’s administrative code, ensuring projects are delivered as promised to voters.

Assertion: The City of Tucson can do better on its own than to continue collaborating with the other seven regional entities that make up the RTA.

Regional planning is hard. After more than six years working to develop a plan that addresses the highest transportation priorities for this region, the Citizens Advisory Committee presented two plans to the RTA Board. We will be voting for a final plan that is anchored by the projects and elements within those two citizen plans. Putting on their “regional hats,” that group of 30+ residents from all over the region helped create a plan that truly addresses the highest priorities of our jurisdictions, including Tucson. Consider an important history lesson: prior to the citizen-driven regional plan of RTA-1, we had rejected four other plans, including ones that were car-centric, transit-centric and even freeway/parkway heavy. Only when we came together as a collaborative team did we achieve a true regional plan. Now comes RTA Next, and after that six-year effort through recession-driven funding shortfalls and pandemic, the RTA Board, on behalf of our elected governing bodies, is asking us to continue investing in ourselves. I say we’re far better as a unified team than as eight individuals. After all, how many major streets or transit routes stop at a town or city line? Remember our shared history. Regional planning is indeed hard — but it’s worth it.

Assertion: The Plan doesn’t fix potholes, the main problem we have.

Did you notice that almost half of the number of major roadway projects (14 of 31), representing more than one-third of the roadway improvement funds, are committed to reconstructing failed pavements, which is obviously preferable to just fixing increasingly larger, deeper and more numerous craters in our streets? Those 14 urban core street reconstruction projects will also bring them up to the community standards for pedestrian, bike and transit amenities prescribed in Move Tucson. I say, forget the pothole argument, because if we don’t pass these propositions, we’ll have even less money for pothole repairs, starting July 1st.

Vote yes on both Prop 418 and 419 – we owe it to ourselves as a region.