By Laura Wenus : sfpublicpress – excerpt (includes audio track)
an Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties will vote on Measure RR, a one-eighth-cent sales tax to be collected for the next 30 years, whose revenue from which would provide critical funding for Caltrain. While supporters say the rail service is at risk of shutting if the measure does not pass, this is not an emergency measure brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, which has cost Caltrain the majority of its riders. Opponents of the measure point to that decrease in ridership as evidence that the need for this rail service has dropped and say it may never recover enough to justify the tax. Opponents also say that a sales tax will disproportionately affect those already most hard-hit by the economic fallout of the pandemic…(more)