Bush is Starving Mass Transit
While CNN continues to scratch its head and declines to even mention mass transit as a possibility for alleviation of the cost of oil spike afflicting this nation, others are noticing the solution, and the problem.
Let us be clear. People are increasingly using mass transit, when it is an option.
When it is an option.
ABC News reports,
Only about 5 percent of the American public uses public transportation to commute regularly. In part, that’s because only about 20 percent have easy access to trains, subways, and buses. Most of those people are located in the densely populated Northeast and in other urban areas. There, the infrastructure exists, but the ability to expand to cope with increases is somewhat limited.
And even when it is an option, you still have to get to the metro. And that is no easy feat.
The Baltimore Sun reports,
But even after a recent addition of 428 spaces, parking at Halethorpe station is at capacity by the time Conners’ train rumbles in, and commuters’ parked cars snake down Southwestern Boulevard. One recent morning, the former Sun editor couldn’t find a clearly legal space within a half-mile. She took her chances and found a $27 ticket on her windshield that evening.
How many people are discouraged from using mass transit because of experiences like this?
In a state with widely dispersed development, Kay said, public transit will never be a “door-to-door experience.”
Well, it needs to be, and that takes a rush-hour bus/van system that feeds into the metro system of each city.
But even as more and more Americans are turning to mass transit, regional systems are not only unable to grow accordingly, some are actually cutting service because of lack of necessary funds.
Almost 40 percent say they were forced to delay or cancel planned service increases, and the same portion had to transfer funds from their capital budgets to their operating expenses. Almost 20 percent even had to cut service, despite the increase in demand.
The Cleveland area is an example. Last year, the transit agency spent $12 million on fuel. This year, it’s expecting fuel to cost as much as $20 million. At the beginning of the year, it cut bus service lines by 5 percent.
Why is this happening?
The Washington Post today explained the economic reasons for the budget crunch of mass transit systems in its editorial “Screeching to a Halt.”
The rush to mass transit is accentuating what has been plain for years — that America’s investment in its public transportation infrastructure is glaringly, perilously inadequate. The gasoline tax, which provides the main source of transportation and transit revenue, has not been increased since 1993. As a funding source it is being dangerously eroded by inflation and Americans’ decreased driving mileage.
The good news is that both parties are to blame, so at least we have that ever elusive bi-partisan initiative when it comes to doing bubkes.
Washington’s inattention to public transportation is bipartisan and longstanding. Congress and the Bush administration have done little to fix it. In the omnibus transportation bill signed in 2005 (covering the period from 2003 to 2008), annual funding for mass transit is targeted at around $10 billion, of which about $7 billion goes to capital infrastructure projects. Add that to state and local funding, and the nation’s total capital spending on transit amounts to roughly $13 billion annually. But even by the administration’s conservative estimates, the minimum need is closer to $20 billion. And the American Public Transportation Association reckons $45 billion to $60 billion annually would be optimal to replace and modernize aging buses, facilities, subways and rail systems. That’s quite a gap.
And the nation is led by a president who is concurrently an oil company mogul.
Meanwhile, the administration has slashed spending on new mass transit projects while toughening approval criteria and insisting that states and localities pony up greater shares of such projects, often up to half.
The Washington Post does not mince words.
Last year, a bipartisan commission recommended sharply higher levels of funding for transportation of all kinds, including mass transit. The panel’s recommendations included raising the gas tax. Although Transportation Secretary Mary Peters was on the commission, she declined to endorse its findings. Her head-in-the-sand posture neatly captured the administration’s abdication of responsibility.
And by the way, inflationary pressures due to the skyrocketing cost of oil are affecting corporate profits and producing inflationary pressures far outside the cost of transport itself. True, it hasn’t translated into a dramatic rise in the cost of durable goods…but just give it time.
We’re in for a rough ride.
21 comments
Of course mass transit is starved. The campaign is on to convince us that this oil shortage is fake, that if only those damned enviro-nazis would get a freaking life and stop screwing with offshore & Alaskan drilling, we’d have enough of our own oil to power a nation of SUVs at least another couple of election cycles. Money has already been committed to massive highway projects that can’t be neatly undone- for example, within a few years, we’ll have a nice new 10-lane bridge going in and out of New Haven (but only slightly upgraded rail service). http://www.i95newhaven.com/imp.....ract_b.asp
Well said!
If it was not for _______ (fill in the blank) we would not have the problem, so we do nothing but blame others. NO NEW TAXES, but we think of other FEES. Like for HOV lanes all ready paid for, we are now converting to HOT lanes for the rich to use.
Third world countries are increasing its rail (and highway) transportation infrastructure while we let ours rot and put every road block we can think of in its way to be “Political Correct.”
I do not know about other cities, but here in Atlanta our Mass transit system is a joke. Where there is train service, MARTA functions very well. The buses are another story. Atlanta, when founded was a Terminal city for railroads, and it is still a shipping terminus. Yet subways have been difficult due to the terrain that is in and around Atlanta. Stations and rail systems are extremely difficult here and it prevents much needed expansion of the rails. Planned expansions take up to 25 years of construction and work. Added to the basic criminality of the MARTA Authority (fraud, embezzlement - i.e. common city problems) the populace has no respect for the service. I wish it were as easy as snapping your fingers, but I believe that the government has once again waited too long to act. We need more politicians with foresight and not looking out for themselves and donors.
Here in Boston, we have the oldest mass transit system in the country - and it shows. Not enough trains/buses; the trains run above ground over more than half of the system, often as streetcars, where they stop every other block. Never enough money to maintain them properly. Of course, we also have some of the highest auto insurance rates in the country (we’ve only gone to managed competition within the past couple of months), so people would take public transportation if it were more readily available and even moderately comfortable and convenient.
The bottom line is that it’s simply miserable to live around Boston without a car. You can do it if you live and work in the city, but it isn’t as convenient as living in NYC without a car; it’s a much smaller city, and there aren’t as many amenities, places to shop, etc. I live in Brookline, just up the street from Boston (really a residential neighborhood of Boston, analogous to Brooklyn in NYC, but we chop everything up into individual municipalities here), and I hate having/maintaining/paying for a car, but I’d find it terribly inconvenient not to have it. If I ever move to New York, it’s gone in a flash.
For a small tax increase, a community can have free public transit and enjoy a better quality of life and economic stimulus at the same time. It is not a dream, it has already been done.
Funny you should mention free mass transit, fpteditors. I’ve heard that San Franciso has, essentially, two mass transit systems, BART being the more expensive one that caters to people who prefer not to ride with the people that gravitate toward the cheaper option.
As an enthusiastic and committed mass transit user (up to a reasonable point, that is), I am very pragmatic about the pros and cons of these services. In my own city, the bus is lovingly called the “loser cruiser”. It routinely stinks of vomit, urine, alcohol, bo, “Axe” etc., even though the buses are kept quite clean and tidy. Making mass transit free will help certain groups of people travel more readily, but it will not encourage others (who could already afford to use the bus if they wanted to) to give it a go. And it would probably lead to some current mass transit users opting out altogether.
judi has a point…”free” isn’t ever free…and one of the grave threats to acceptance of mass transit is the anti-social behavior of a segment of its ridership.
This must be avoided at all costs for mass transit to succeed.
For mass transit to succeed, we need a little fascism to help it sit well with the middle-class. And that’s…okay.
That’s why I’m proposing the “Stretch Prius”, a 34-foot version of that lovable hybrid. Able to comfortably and luxuriously seat 20 at $8.75 apiece, the “Stretch Prius” is everything you’d want in a mass transit vehicle: style and exclusivity and a false, yet palpable sense of environmental responsibility.
SEND THIS ARTICLE TO YOUR CONGRESSMAN! (S)HE NEEDS TO READ THIS FOR THE SAKE OF THE COUNTRY!
Wow, Judy. So you think more drilling is gonna do this world a lot of good? If that’s they case, I dare you to take a deep breath out of your vehicles own tail pipe. Because mass transit trumps cars when it comes to avoid breathing THAT.
Wow, Judy. So you think more drilling is gonna do this world a lot of good? If that’s they case, I dare you to take a deep breath out of your vehicle’s own tail pipe. Because mass transit trumps cars when it comes to avoid breathing THAT.
Nancy, Judi was being sarcastic.
I think I’m going to have to start putting a disclaimer at the bottom of my posts. Thanks for coming to my rescue, D.
For a blog that seems to have such a constant skepticism about the motivations and tendencies of Orthodox rabbis, you seem to have an insanely large blind spot about the motivations and tendencies of politicians, and are completely ready to throw power over other people’s money into their hands as if they have a sterling track record for the last 5,000 years.
Clearly, history says otherwise about politicians.
The best solution always has been the fact that life is what happens while you’re making other plans. For instance, in the quest to bring under $30 fans, cheap cat play toys, and inexpensive faux wood television stands to the masses, companies such as WalMart have redistributed more American money to the third world than all the first world socialist politician feel good self-congratulatory confiscatory police power actions have combined, never mind the bumbling panhandling morons at the laughably named United Nations.
Similarly, every time a problem comes up in society, some other drive of human nature leads to one or more humans engaging in the classic behavior of “it seemed like a good idea at the time” and this totally by accident negates the other issue while creating entire new ones, but mankind is unhappy without self-created problems to come up with self-created solutions full of unintended consequences for. World War II eliminating the Great Depression and creating the Cold War comes to mind.
In every case, specifically laid out initiatives to be engaged in by political bodies turn out to be anything other than what is stated which would if it was not true be alarming as the people laying out the initiatives are politicians and for politicians not to engage in duplicity and deception for self-aggrandizement would probably trigger G-d to throw up His hands in total amazement and cancel creation altogether.
Clearly we cannot take the chance of that, even if there’s about as much odds of it happening as the Cubs winning the World Series ten straight years.
More threatening, we cannot take the chance of giving politicians any more of our money or worse yet, the idea that we actually want them to take it and talk of increasing taxes to bring about social change, justice, and all that malarkey is only pandering to their sense of hunger for empowerment at the expense of all and sundry and worse yet, will eliminate the minuscule chance of their stunted consciences being bothered by the theft.
Many years later, you will be without all that money, mass transit of the sort you envision based on 70s ex-hippie futurist moving sidewalks and mach 2 superconductive levitating trains will still be so much fodder for fluff programs on The Science Channel. I know, I grew up with all that and did the calculations to eight decimal points longhand on the energy generation, conversion, and transmission efficiencies and losses and it’s nonsense to say the least. The economics from start to finish don’t work unless you suspend human free will and even G-d Himself hasn’t done that since before the Torah was set down.
On the other hand, if you truly believe that the same government which exposed soldiers to direct nuclear blasts is more trustworthy with your income than let’s say any given Orthodox institution you’re currently upset with, well feel free to donate as much as you like to them. Just don’t expect me to do so. It’s been barely two months since tax filing deadlines and most Americans are still walking bowlegged after the experience.
suitepotato,
Do any of the cities that have significant mass transit seem to fit any of your nightmare scenarios, or do they seem better off?
“Almost 40 percent say they were forced to delay or cancel planned service increases, and the same portion had to transfer funds from their capital budgets to their operating expenses.”
Presuming they can.
In California, a large part of the public transportation funding comes from the sales tax on gasoline sales (by amount paid) and the per-gallon gasoline tax. The latter is restricted by the state constitution from being used for anything but capital projects, and the former is allocated via a complex formula which only allows a relatively small percentage to be used for operation of transit service.
Kymberleigh Richards,
What are your options in Cali? Preferred and otherwise?
Do you mean funding options? Or what services are available?
Funding options.
It’s rather complicated.
There is a primer on my website which has an annotated slide show on how public transportation is funded in California.
Click on my name here and then scroll down on the front page to “Transportation 101″.
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