Roundup: More taxes or more traffic? LA voters face tougher choice than presidential election

While many voters are having a hard time deciding which of the two least favorite presidential candidates in the U.S. history they would vote for, Los Angeles' residents face yet another tough choice on Nov. 8 -- more sales tax or more traffic.

The LA County Metro put a ballot measure, the Los Angeles County Traffic Improvement Plan or Measure M, up for a vote on election day. If passed by 66 percent votes, it would be one of the most ambitious acts that local governments in the country come up with to fix traffic problems.

This plan proposed to increase countywide sales tax by a half-cent for the next 40 years, expecting to generate billions of dollars to fund more than a dozen major transportation projects.

Drivers in LA wasted an average of 81 hours last year stuck in traffic, the most in the nation, according to a recent study released by the data company Inrix. Despite having close to 30 major freeways and highways, LA had four of the world's most congested freeway segments.

"I feel like I am wasting my time doing nothing," Julie Lin, a resident told Xinhua on Wednesday. Lin used to drive to work every day, and her normal 25-minute drive can easily become a 1 to 2 hour commute.

The progress of updating LA's Metro system has been very slow. Six lines have been opened since 1990 but only two in the past decade, leaving many residents far away from any Metro station. To add to the frustration, the bus system in LA is not great either.

To solve this problem, Measure M proposed to add 29.9 billion U.S. dollars over next 40 years to help expand bus services. It would also allocate about 5 billion U.S. dollars to create more transit connections and keep fares affordable.

As for the folks who decide to stay on the road, Measure M set aside revenues to help motorists by improving street condition and repairing potholes. Bad California roads added about 54 billion U.S. dollars' extra maintenance cost to its drivers every year, according to RebuildSoCal, a Measure M advocacy website.

With the vast amount of money LA Metro estimate this measure can bring, it does have one consequence -- more taxes.

LA County said this would have a minimal effect on its people. In fact, an average resident would be spending an extra 25 U.S. dollars in taxes for every 5,000 U.S. dollars they spend yearly, according to Mark Masaoka, who helped people better understand county policies and measures through community organizations.

"I'm all for additional funding if it will help improve the (transit) system," Rago said. "I feel like the effect is so minimal that it is hard to say NO to it."

Despite the relatively small extra burden adding to the county residents as claimed by the advocates, some doubt increasing sales tax once again would be useful, when the measure had failed to bring any significant changes the last three times.

Measure M would be the fourth time since 1980 LA residents voted on to increase taxes for transportation. The last three times, in 1980, 1990 and 2008, raised one-and-a-third cent sales tax already.

Moreover, with autonomous cars on the horizon, others argued raising taxes might not be the smartest plan for the taxpayer money.

"In two to four years there will be self-driving Uber cars," questioned Julia Morris, a LA County resident. "Why do we need to put so much money in public transportation?"

A 2015 in-depth report from BI Intelligence predicted there would be 10 million self-driving cars on the road by 2020. Even LA City Mayor Garcetti had openly showed interest in driverless cars, calling for building lanes that would fit both current and future automobiles.

"A bus lane today may be a bus and an autonomous vehicle lane tomorrow," reads a statement Garcetti made on many occasions, including at the CityLab summit in 2014.

He hoped the car capital of America could be the first city to offer its people self-driving cars.

Whether or not self-driving cars would solve LA' s infamous traffic problem was too early to tell, but LA voters were only three weeks away from making a decision which in one way or the other would affect their daily life more than elections. Endi