Dive Brief:

• The city of Austin, Texas, is claiming victory over Proposition A, or the Project Connect Initial Investment ballot measure, with preliminary totals showing a 58% vote for the measure and 41% vote against.

• The approved measure will raise property taxes in the city by 8.75 cents per $100 (approximately 4%) annually, to bring in at least 20% of the needed $7.1 billion for the comprehensive transit plan. Austin Councilmember Ann Kitchen, who supported the ballot measure, said the tax starts "right away ... in fact, it is already on the property tax bill."
• Kitchen said the immediate next steps following Prop A's victory will be "structural." The city's first priority is to pick the five-member board of the Austin Transit Partnership (ATP), which will be responsible for handling all of the contracting and the disbursement of funds for the project. 

Dive Insight:

The approval of Prop A marks a milestone in the city's years-long battle to reimagine its mass public transit. In a press conference on Tuesday night, Capital Metro Board Chair Wade Cooper cited the city's "young voters" who "showed up in droves and took ownership in changing the future of our city," the Austin Monitor reports.

Twenty percent of the funding for Project Connect will come from the ballot initiative's tax hike and 45% is anticipated to come from the Federal Transit Authority (FTA) Capital Investment Grants program. The plan's cost was originally projected at $9.8 billion, but city council approved a revised plan to eliminate one line and scale back another to make the project more affordable. 

The project includes:

• New light rail lines connecting different parts of the city and the airport.
• New and expanded commuter rail service.
• A transit tunnel downtown that would separate rail from cars.
• Expanded bus service with an all-electric fleet, new routes and on-demand circulators in some neighborhoods.
• Nine new Park and Ride stops near transit centers.
• An all-electric bicycle fleet stationed at transit hubs.

The proposed rail system and its transit tunnel are the biggest parts of the Project Connect plan, and by far the most expensive coming in at $5.8 billion. The system would include 27 miles of rail service and 31 stations, and would utilize the downtown tunnel to increase on-time performance.