Tacoma Streets Initiative II would raise at least $25 million per year for Vision Zero projects, neighborhood greenways, and road maintenance projects.
In a special election this April, Tacoma residents will get a chance to level up the city’s investments in safety and mobility, with a ballot measure dubbed Streets Initiative II. As the name suggests, it’s a renewal of the 10-year transportation funding package approved by Tacoma voters in 2015.
At the end of 2024, the Tacoma City Council approved the renewal proposal and sent it to voters. The package was heavily geared toward road repaving projects on neighborhood street, but Streets Initiative II would also turn the city’s attention more toward improving safety and providing enhanced mobility for people not in cars.
Expected to raise $25 million in its first year and ramp up over time, Streets Initiative II would be funded by a 0.5% increase in the city’s utility taxes and a property tax increase of 5 cents per $1,000 of assessed value. The measure would provide a new baseline level of funding for the City of Tacoma to maintain and modernize its streets that starts to keep up with inflation. While Streets Initiative I was term-limited to a decade, the new measure would be set to continue indefinitely to meet the needs of a city expecting to add more than 100,000 new residents in the next two decades.
If voters give the go-ahead, Tacoma Public Works expects to move ahead with projects in every corner of the city, repaving deteriorating arterial streets but also tackling some of the most dangerous corridors for people who walk and bike, hotspots identified in Tacoma’s 2022 Vision Zero Action Plan. Those include Portland Avenue, S Tacoma Way, and S 74th Street.
“It’s a huge difference in our commitment,” Tacoma Councilmember Kristina Walker told The Urbanist. “We’ve made big strides in getting Vision Zero as part of what [Tacoma] Public Works does, and to evaluate everything based on safety and equity. And so the project list for Street Initiative II reflects that. The investments are across the city. That’s really, really important to voters. We don’t want to leave any part untouched.”
As part of the work of crafting the next iteration of the first Streets Initiative last December, the Tacoma City Council also approved the renewal of a 0.1% sales tax to fund street improvements, a move that doesn’t require voter approval. With that comes a new commitment to set aside at least 15% of the revenue generated to pay for projects benefiting pedestrians, including sidewalk upgrades, curb extensions, and improved lighting. That set aside was proposed by Walker and Councilmember John Hines, who is one of several candidates vying to become the city’s next mayor.
Currently, the City of Tacoma funds its Vision Zero program well below the scale of the actual need, as traffic fatalities within the city continue to increase. Last year, after the initial city budget included a 90% cut to the Vision Zero budget for 2025, Walker was able to add back $1 million specifically for safety projects as part of the budget process, keeping funding more steady. But it will take approval of the full ballot measure to fully realize the Streets Initiative II vision.
From 2011 to 2020, Walker served as executive director of Downtown On the Go, a Tacoma-focused transportation advocacy nonprofit. The group has backed the proposal, with current Downtown On the Go Executive Director Laura Svancarek calling it “transformative” and “very needed.”
“When you compare it to the previous, recent initiative, it’s a pretty transformative package,” Svancarek told The Urbanist. “It represents a significant shift in how we’re prioritizing resources, towards safety and towards neighborhood connectivity in a way that we haven’t seen from the city before. Getting this initiative passed would allow the city to make significant, sweeping investments in safety that are very needed on a timeline that is much more responsive to the traffic safety situation that we find ourselves in right now.”
Along with repaving 223 miles of streets, Tacoma aims to improve between 130 and 170 miles of bike infrastructure and 250 to 300 miles of sidewalks over the first 15 years of the new initiative. But it will be the corridor-focused redesigns that are likely to have the biggest impact on safety and mobility in Tacoma.
A prime example is S 64th Street in Hillsdale, which recently got a full revamp that includes crossing improvements, new sidewalks, protected bike lanes, and traffic filters.
Supercharging a neighborhood greenway network
Along with upgrades to arterial streets, Streets Initiative II also includes an expansion of Tacoma’s neighborhood greenway network. As in Seattle, neighborhood greenways that don’t actually provide any separated space for people biking have been a mixed-bag for Tacoma, but the city has been improving designs by leaps and bounds in recent years.
“In the last six years, I’ve seen a shift in how the city thinks about those bicycle boulevards in a really good way,” Svancarek said. “So you can compare Park Avenue, which is a bicycle boulevard, which really that just means it’s parallel to the arterial, which is Yakima, and it’s got some sharrows on the ground that doesn’t prevent people from menacing me as I’m cycling on Park Avenue. Compare that to the recent project on Fawcett Avenue, which is the bicycle boulevard running north-south through downtown Tacoma. That project includes significant bulb outs. It includes two diverters. It includes raised crosswalks, things that actually make it not just unappealing for drivers to use as a through street, but also impossible for them to use as a through street with those diverters.”
The investments could also help green the city, Walker pointed out.
“The other beautiful thing I think about greenways is that they partner with other departments, in terms of stormwater and investing in trees and literal green space on the side of these green transportation corridors,” Walker said. “It also allows us to partner with our partner agencies like Metro Parks, Safe Routes to Schools, and work together on these sorts of community spaces, in addition to the green transportation options that they allow.”
All in all, the project list eyed for Streets Initiative II includes approximately 20 greenway corridors, leveling up Tacoma’s bike network, and making bike travel in the city a much more attractive option.
Tacoma voters rejecting the Streets Initiative II would turn back the clock to pre-2015, before Tacoma had a dedicated funding source for transportation maintenance and modernization. The Urbanist asked Walker what failing to pass the measure would mean for mobility in Tacoma.
“I try not to entertain that thought, but we will have to leave streets untouched that are desperately in need of new pavement, of new safety features,” Walker said. “It would be devastating to our ability to address transportation and infrastructure. Our ability to do these big changes that we really need because of the big crashes, I mean, that just won’t happen.”
Streets Initiative II will be in front of voters in an April 22 special election. The Yes on Prop 1 Tacoma campaign is holding a kickoff event on Thursday, February 27, at 5:30pm at the Tacoma Firefighter’s Hall on S 50th Street. More information on the event available here.
Ryan Packer has been writing for The Urbanist since 2015, and currently reports full-time as Contributing Editor. Their beats are transportation, land use, public space, traffic safety, and obscure community meetings. Packer has also reported for other regional outlets including Capitol Hill Seattle, BikePortland, Seattle Met, and PubliCola. They live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
