CA: Will Riverside County’s transportation sales tax survive the ballot box?

Would you tax yourself to get better roads and public transit?

Riverside County residents have for close to 40 years.

More than $4 billion and a host of projects later, public officials are asking voters to keep the half-cent sales tax known as Measure A going.

The Riverside County Transportation Commission on Wednesday, June 10, agreed to put a sales-tax extension on the November general election ballot. If approved, the ballot measure would extend the tax beyond 2039, when it is set to expire.

“For 37 years, local sales tax transportation funding has helped improve local roads, rebuild interchanges, expand freeway capacity and invest in public transportation throughout Riverside County,” commission Executive Director Aaron Hake said in a news release.

“Local funding matters because it stays in Riverside County, allowing our communities to address local transportation priorities, bring additional state and federal transportation dollars into Riverside County and deliver projects for the public.”

Transportation planning in the Inland Empire usually involves a mix of federal, state and local dollars. Sometimes, developers are asked to pay for improvements — upgraded freeway on- and off-ramps, for example — as a condition of approval for their projects.

There’s been plenty to do on the road-building and public transit fronts as Riverside County, with its promise of cheap housing and suburban living, evolved from an area known for citrus to one of the nation’s fastest-growing counties.

Measure A, approved in 1988, gives planners a steady revenue source immune to the spending whims of Sacramento and Washington, DC. Since its inception, the sales tax has helped pay for:

• Toll lanes and regular lanes on the 91 Freeway between the Riverside County/ Orange County line and the 15 Freeway
• Truck lanes on the 60 Freeway through the Badlands between Moreno Valley and the San Gorgonio Pass
• Widening the 215 Freeway between Perris and Menifee
• The 15 Freeway/Main Street interchange in Lake Elsinore
• Grade-separation projects in Riverside and Jurupa Valley
• The Metrolink Perris Valley Line

The transportation commission — a panel of elected leaders from the county’s 28 cities and the five county supervisors — previously considered another plan asking voters to OK a 1-cent sales tax projected to raise $20 billion over 30 years for transportation upgrades in the county’s western half.

Commissioners voted to shelve that tax, a major funding source for the county’s traffic relief plan, in 2024. At the time, a commission official said it was unclear whether enough voters were willing to approve the tax.

It’s also not clear whether voters in 2026 have the appetite to extend Measure A.

In the June primary, voters in Riverside and Loma Linda rejected two proposed sales-tax hikes to pay for public services, unofficial election results show.

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