We fund Washington's transit system from sales tax, excise tax, and rider fares. Oregon which does not have an excise tax or a sales tax has a transit system. Oregon's system is paid for from rider fares and from property tax assessments.

I had a discussion with a Lincoln City transit driver. Children under 5 and senior citizens over 90 can ride their system free. Riders must pay $1.00 to ride a bus within a city limit. There are several little cities up and down the 30 mile area of service. The fare ranges from $2.00 to a maaximum of $6.00 (for a 30 mile trip).

Property is assessed at $0.089 per $1000 dollars of assessed valuation. I wanted to see how this compares with the Ben-Franklin Transit system. BFT gets about $12.5 million a year from sales tax and MVET revenue. Benton County's total property valuation is about $6 billion. If BFT were running our transit system similar to that of Lincoln City, OR, the taxpayer's share would $534,000. BFT gets about 23 times more money from the taxpayer than does the transit system operating in Lincoln City, Oregon. I would say our transit system has something to learn by talking to our neighbor to the south.

-- RD (Monte) Benham (rmonteb@aol.com), September 04, 1999

Answers

Monte -

Please go to www.TI.org and read the Thoreau Institute's writings and information on Oregon's transit system. Oregon's transit system is a flop, according to this Oregon environmental group. We don't want to follow this poor institution.

-- Rachel H (RaeHawkrij@alt.net), September 24, 1999.