About RTA’s

Regional Transportation Authorities can create jobs and a stronger economy by empowering communities to operate cost-effective, balanced transportation systems. Allowing communities to form self-supporting RTAs will:

Grow Wisconsin jobs

  • RTAs spur transit system growth, stimulating both construction and manufacturing industries.
  • RTAs provide efficient multi-modal systems that give employers better access to workers, and workers better access to jobs.
  • RTAs sustain transit operations that hire locally, keeping dollars at home instead of sending them to Saudi Arabia for fuel.

Make Wisconsin healthier

  • RTAs support transit choices that can reduce air emissions, lowering health care costs for asthma and other diseases and keeping communities in compliance with air quality standards to avoid costly pollution sanctions on manufacturing sources.
  • RTAs can reduce the demand for parking and other paved areas, whose runoff degrades water quality and triggers costly anti-pollution measures.
  • RTAs can cut death and injury rates from transportation crashes, saving lives, reducing health care costs, and avoiding time lost from work.

Build stronger Wisconsin communities

  • RTAs provide a solid financial mechanism that allows Wisconsin to compete for federal transit-construction dollars.
  • RTAs can ease costly traffic congestion, insulate communities from fuel price shocks, and foster more efficient land development.
  • RTAs support transit options for commuters; regular transit riders can realize thousands of dollars in savings in avoided costs of driving and parking a car, especially when gas prices rise.
  • RTAs can organize and modernize our outdated, patchwork transportation system, giving our communities a competitive edge in attracting and retaining business and residents.

Many states have RTAs or similar mechanisms that provide governance and financial stability for transit across municipal boundaries. They have used RTAs to vault ahead of Wisconsin in providing business-friendly, green, and convenient transportation choices. Under Wisconsin’s cumbersome and antiquated rules, cities that provide transit must contract with one another and squeeze transit funding out of their general revenues, mainly from property taxes. The resulting unstable, underfunded transit cannot compete for federal construction dollars, and cannot provide sustainable service to its communities.

We support the Governor’s RTA proposal in A.B. 75, and in addition support language in A.B. 75 that will permit Wisconsin’s communities “not covered in the Governor’s Budget” to form RTAs with the authority to levy a sales tax of up to 0.5 percent.