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Tax revenues failed to generate the amount of funding anticipated for the multi-year plan.

Project costs were climbing at a higher rate than expected due to inflation and major economic jolts.

And the Regional Transportation Authority — the group charged with overseeing implementation of major projects — was often mired in internal disputes.

All of that is partly to blame for seven roadway projects voters approved not being completed by the time the half-cent sales tax voters approved in 2006 for the work coming to an end.

The concern for voters and local officials pitching RTA Next, the newest multi-year plan:  If the RTA couldn't deliver projects promised to voters 20 years ago, why should they pay another 20 years of sales taxes for a long-term transportation plan?

Mail-in voting has started for RTA Next's March 10 election, which appears on the ballot as two propositions, 418 and 419.

If a voter hasn't voted their mailed ballot by March 10, they will need to fill it out and drop it off at one of the ballot drop-off sites run by the Pima County Recorder's Office. Of, if they no longer have their bail ballot, they can cast a replacement ballot at one of the Recorder's ballot replacement sites.

Locations can be found at , or at .

The recession kickstarted the issue, but it came with strings attached, said RTA Executive Director Michael Ortega.

One example: the original RTA plan used "baseline" revenue projections to estimate how much money would come in. Baseline projections are not the lowest estimates — those would be classified as "pessimistic projections" — usually coming in somewhere in the middle of high and low estimates.

The RTA Next plan voters are being asked to approve now relies on pessimistic projections, Ortega said.

The original RTA Plan also did not factor in inflation to project cost estimates, so when revenues cratered, the regional authority lacked the necessary funding to deliver on projects, though the Regional Transportation Authority was able to blunt the impact of the recession over the years, to a certain extent, by bringing in outside funding and "regional dollars" to supplement the plan, Ortega said.

And although the RTA has the authority by law to go back to the voters for approval of project changes, to save costs or alter projects that are no longer needed given changes in population or demand, the board didn't take that opportunity.

When asked why, when those factors became apparent, why the RTA Board did not go back to the voters, Ortega said it was pride, and optimism that things would turn around, that primarily held the board back.

Ortega called the previous plan overly optimistic about both costs and revenues.

"That optimism was great and wonderful, but we probably should have had a conversation much sooner about and much louder about the pending shortfall," he said.

Then, nearly 15 years after voters approved the 2006 plan, the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020.

It created a "perfect storm," Ortega said: sales tax revenues dropped while projects cost estimates exploded due to inflation, supply chain issues and a labor shortage.

The result:  Seven voter-approved road projects, mostly within Tucson, were not completed: Those are:

• Silverbell Road, from Camino del Cerro to Ina Road;

Those projects have been added to the top of the RTA Next plan voters are being asked to approve now.

More reviews, hands-on approach

Ortega, who in June stepped into his role as PAG/RTA Executive Director, said going forward the RTA Board is going to get a review from both the Citizen's Advisory Group and the Technical Management Committee, a technical and policy advisory committee made up of representatives from each of the RTA jurisdictions and the private sector, to get "unfiltered information" that will keep the board updated on projects and finances.

The quarterly updated are intended to not only give a clear picture of progress to the RTA Board, but to also give the public that update as well, Ortega said, in an attempt to build more transparency and accountability.

"If there's a challenge on the horizon, we're going to not only know it, but (we'll have) a public discussion and the board will be given recommendations for potentially going back to the voters" if necessary, Ortega said. "But it's an open dialog. It's that relationship with the public that is extremely important."

Further RTA Next projects have built-in contingency funding so "that way we have a little bit of a buffer in each one," Ortega said.

"Depending on the complexity of the project, the contingency could be anywhere from 5% to 20% (of the original cost estimate)," Ortega said. "It varies based on the entirety of the program. And so when we go through that, we make sure that there's a discussion about what's happening down the road."

There's a flip side to that coin, Ortega said: the RTA won't just try to keep itself and the public as up-to-date as possible, but it will be transitioning its role to become more hands-on when it comes to delivery of roadway projects.

"The RTA has traditionally taken a role whereby we convene, we have the conversations about funding and how that's all going to go, but we didn't necessarily get involved in the implementation," he said. "What I've suggested to the board is our role should be to facilitate that implementation of those projects ... we're pivoting into a more hands-on agency to assist and facilitate the delivery of those projects and the program as a whole."

"The goal here is to say, what can we do to help and facilitate getting those projects out the door on-schedule," Ortega said. "The schedules are extremely important, not only because of the voter, that's the most important (aspect) but also because we have to keep that inflation in check. So, the sooner we can get those projects out, the better we are for the entirety of the region."

The RTA will also be establishing "advanced corridor teams" that will look at the RTA Next projects to give the authority "a roadmap for how to get those projects done," Ortega said. Those teams will identify challenges such as utility relocation, railroad crossings, property that needs to be acquired, so that the RTA isn't waiting until projects begin to have those challenges identified.

Another change when it comes to project delivery from the original plan to RTA Next will be the effort to incorporate "alternative delivery methods" into the timeline from planning and design through construction, Ortega said.

Generally, most projects follow a "design-bid-build" process where the RTA or the jurisdiction finalizes the design of a roadway project, puts it out to bid for a contractor, then the contractor builds out the project, Ortega said. But a "design-build" method, which hasn't traditionally been used locally, could be implemented for certain projects to speed up completion, Ortega said.

Under that method the jurisdiction would, in-essence, hard-bid "concepts" of projects, Ortega said, where the design itself may only be 30% complete and it's on the contractor to finish the designs themselves.

"What ends up happening is (contractors) can start construction as soon as they're comfortable, as soon as they're ready to go, so they're still designing landscaping while they're going through and building the road," he said. "One of the things we hear about is how long certain projects take to complete . . . those are effective models that can compress that timeframe."

'Plan it, plan it, plan it'

The external, economic factors are only half the issue. Tucson City Manager Tim Thomure explained that the city has learned several lessons from measures passed in recent years that will help RTA Next speed up project delivery.

Thomure pointed to the city's delivery of Proposition 407, the $225 million bond package approved by voters in 2018 that funds upgrades to the city's parks and bike trails over a 10-year period.

When the city was in phase one of Prop. 407 it had started the planning and designing of projects in the second phase, so when the time came, projects were already planned and designed, and public feedback had already been received, Thomure said.

That strategy will translate, generally, Thomure said, to Tucson's Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project that's included in RTA Next. It's one of the city's largest projects in RTA Next and akin to what the streetcar was for Tucson in the original 2006 plan, Thomure said.

The BRT will be a 15-mile, high-capacity transit corridor that will be able to bus people from the Tohono Tadai Transit Center at the Tucson Mall to the Tucson International Airport.

Before the RTA Next plan even made it to the ballot, Thomure said, the city had already taken the BRT to a 10% design.

"We've already done the (federal grant work) and we've already gotten the file open with the Federal Transit Administration, so the feds already know it's a project," he said. "As soon as RTA Next is approved, we can actually file for the federal grant. We have the local match in-hand and we would probably be three or four years ahead of where we were (with the streetcar) in 2006."

Additionally, the city has finalized Move Tucson, its citywide master transportation plan, which was the "foundational document" for the named projects in RTA Next, Thomure said, putting the city "years ahead of where we were first time around."

Including the arterial rehabilitation aspect of RTA Next was informed by the struggles the city went through in the original 2006 plan, Thomure said. It allows the city to do "significant pavement improvement" for existing roads within city limits.

"That is work that doesn't lend itself to the type of delay you see on a major expansion or widening project," Thomure said, but it is something he says the city has gotten better and better at through the delivery of Propositions 411, 101 and 409.

Likewise, struggles caused over the course of the last 20 years of transportation projects influenced the city to push for the transit dollars it could potentially receive under RTA Next, which will go toward maintaining the current number of routes and service hours that the transit system currently operates.

That funding will "go to work" on day one, assuming voters approve RTA Next, Thomure said, but the piece that will need additional planning is the transit safety aspect.

The city rolled out a transit safety action plan at the end of last year and has already allocated $500,000 out of the general fund to implement the first phase of that plan, as part of the Safe City Initiative.

"And as soon as RTA Next passes, that money would be able to be already put to work because we already have a plan established," he said. "Plan it, plan it, plan it, is my short little soundbite on how we would do better under RTA Next."