The Measure A train hit a brick wall on June 6.

Debbie Hale, executive director of Transportation Agency of Monterey County (TAMC), is pretty sure she knows why.

One week after the countywide, half-cent sales tax failed at the ballot box, Hale blames the defeat on low voter turnout and high voter skepticism. “I guess both of these things go hand in hand,” she says.

Measure A, the proposed transportation sales tax, garnered 57 percent of the vote, well below the 66 percent needed to pass. What’s more, only about 35 percent of registered voters in the County bothered to vote.

“All the ‘no’ votes got out, but the rest of the people didn’t,” says Ralph Rubio, Seaside Mayor and a TAMC board member.

The failed ballot measure would have raised $350 million to pay for transportation-related projects. In addition to losing out on local sales tax money, Measure A’s defeat means that Monterey County will miss out on the chance to leverage millions of dollars in available state and federal matching funds for a variety of infrastructure projects. This leaves TAMC officials and Measure A advocates scrambling to figure out how they’ll complete a myriad of road, public transit and rail projects spanning the County.

“Our goal now remains project delivery,” Hale says. “We don’t want to fund a little bit of money to each of the long list of projects we have in the pipeline, but instead focus money on those projects that we can complete.”

Some top priority projects, according to Hale, include road-safety improvements and lane expansions on Highway 101 through Prunedale, upgrades to Airport Boulevard in Salinas and extending a truck-climbing lane on Highway 1 between Carmel Valley Road and Rio Road.

And then there are the Measure A casualties.

Officials at Monterey Salinas Transit (MST)—an agency that would have received a much-needed $10 million a year—are now working on a plan to raise the current bus fare. At $2 per ride, it’s already the highest in the state.

The Highway 101 and Salinas Road interchange—the most prone to accidents in the county—is essentially dead until new money can be assured for the project. Hale doesn’t know when that might be, although she says she’s hopeful that a state transportation bond scheduled for the November ballot may end up funneling some money to Monterey County.

The 2010 estimated completion date for a Caltrain line extension from Gilroy to Salinas “will definitely be stretched out” Hale says.

While Rubio says he’d love to see another Measure A go on the ballot in the near future, “I think it could take another two to five years to do it again,” he says. “And in the meanwhile, the County’s infrastructure will continue to deteriorate, while the costs for fixing it will continue to skyrocket.”

Hale confirms that TAMC officials are discussing another sales tax proposal for perhaps November 2008. This date is important because Hale says she recently learned that a majority of tax measures are approved when they are placed on the same ballots as presidential elections.

“I wish I had heard that before,” she says. “That might have influenced our timing.”