Transportation Policy at the Ballot Box

Abstract

Through direct democracy, the voting public can engage in ballot box planning, by which voters themselves, rather than decision makers, set policy and make project decisions. Previous studies found that ballot box planning has a growing influence on land use policy as well as transportation and land use finance. However, the impact of ballot box planning on transportation policy is relatively unexplored. This paper examines 148 local transportation policy–related ballot measures in California from 1995 to 2015. Most transportation policy measures passed, but measures that could be classified as proalternative or anti-car passed at a slightly higher rate than did procar or antialternative measures and showed some agreement between voters and transportation professionals toward multimodalism. Nonetheless, there are numerous examples of voters constraining the options of transportation planners by restricting or even prohibiting contemporary planning strategies. For example, several successful ballot measures took aim at priced parking, red light cameras, and roundabouts. Ballot measures also can create uncertainty through a ballot box volleyball effect, by which policies and project decisions vacillate between two extremes depending on the results of several ballot measures on the same topic. For such reasons, it has been argued that ballot box planning is a deliberative failure in planning and counteracts the best-laid plans of elected officials and planning practitioners.