Aligned Transportation Funding
Let’s define Tucson’s future as urban, sustainable, and multi-modal.
A place where people enjoy unparalleled access to the outdoors and can connect easily with work, play, and each other on a dynamic transportation network for the 21st century. A city that’s great to experience at every age, as an 8-year-old kid and an 80-year-old adult.
Living Streets Alliance advocates for this future by making sure that it is reflected and supported by transportation funding that is available to our city. We want to make sure that what people need and want—things like sidewalks, safe crossings, connected and protected bikeways, and reliable transit—are what gets prioritized and built.
A major part of our work as an advocacy organization is tracking these funding opportunities and making sure community voices are heard and incorporated into them. Two current initiatives that will greatly impact our transportation future our Move Tucson—the city of Tucson’s mobility master plan—and RTA Next, the proposed renewal of a 1/2 cent sales tax to fund transportation enhancements in Eastern Pima County for the next 25 years.
Based on what we’ve heard from the community, our hopes for each plan are as follows, and we’ll be advocating for them every step of the way:
RTA Next should prioritize safe and connected networks for alternative modes of transportation, like bus rapid transit, light rail, bicycle corridors, and continuous sidewalks and crossings. This has the added benefit of being a traffic and climate change mitigation strategy; as biking, walking, and transit become reliable and dignified ways of getting around, our streets become less congested with cars.
Additionally, maintenance of the transportation network is essential, ensuring that we’re taking care of the investments we’ve already made as tax payers, and that future investments don’t go to waste.
We’re excited by the potential for this initiative to create a solid blueprint for Tucson’s transportation future, rooted in complete streets. It would provide and ensure safe and convenient networks for Tucsonans to move about the city, whether it be on foot, on bike, riding transit, or in a private automobile.
Addressing and atoning for historical disinvestment and inequities is another key opportunity with this initiative. We hope it will prioritize communities and parts of the city that have been neglected, disproportionately suffered from destructive and toxic roadway widenings in the past, and have not received adequate transportation infrastructure to support safe, affordable, and dignified movement through the city.