When the House rolled out its stimulus plan on Thursday, the set-aside for mass transit had fallen significantly from the proposal outlined last week by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair James Oberstar (D-Minn.).
Oberstar had called for $30 billion for roads and bridges and $17 billion for mass transit, which would give mass transit 36 percent of all the transportation funding in the stimulus package. But in the plan unveiled yesterday, while the road money stayed the same, the public transit portion was reduced by 25 percent, which includes cutting operation assistance funds entirely. As for intercity rail, for which Oberstar wanted $5 billion, its funding was reduced to $1.1 billion—a 78 percent cut.
Whose decision was it to ax so much mass-transit funding, considering that the House committee chair responsible for it has been so pro-public-transit? Sources on the Hill say that the incoming administration’s economic team was very involved in the drafting of this final proposal. Are they responsible for reducing transit so significantly, despite repeated claims that reducing oil use and investing in public transit is going to be top priority?
Oberstar’s office says the cuts were the product of the House speaker’s office, the Senate majority leader, and the Obama transition team. “How those decisions were made, I don’t know,” Jim Berard, communications director for the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told Grist. “It’s disappointing that our recommendation was not accepted on the whole, but at the same time we got a good deal for transportation infrastructure and we want to keep the momentum going for this bill.”
Berard says that at this point it’s not likely transit advocates in Congress will make too big a deal out of the cuts. “We don’t want to get into a family squabble at this point. I think the imperative is to get a bill going and get it going fast, and get it enacted quickly,” he continued. “I think there’s a lot of arguments to be made for more funding in every category on there. So to slow the process down by lobbying for more money for one particular sector or another may not be productive.”
Transit activists, of course, are not happy.
“Chairman Oberstar set the bar for transit and rail investment in his stimulus blueprint. The proposal unveiled yesterday fell short by keeping his highway spending while cutting investments in options that save oil,” Deron Lovaas, federal transportation policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Grist. “This is at odds with the president-elect’s agenda to break free from oil dependence.”
Those who favor spending on roads and bridges like to argue that these projects can provide faster stimulus than others because they’re “shovel-ready.” But there are billions of dollars worth of transit projects already queued up too.
In fact, there’s at least $50 billion worth of backlogged repair needs for public transit systems, compared to just $8.5 billion needed to maintain current road systems. And yet the current stimulus bill gives $30 billion to roads, meaning much of the money will be spent on expanding roads or building new ones. Meanwhile, public transit systems would get just $2 billion for upgrades and repairs to existing systems—a mere 4 percent of the funding needed to maintain current systems. Amtrak’s northeast corridor alone has a backlog of more than $10 billion in repair and infrastructure needs, but the bill allots just $1.1 billion for improving Amtrak and intercity passenger rail.
The House stimulus package includes a relatively minuscule $1 billion for new commuter and light rail, even though there are at least $2.4 billion worth of new light-rail projects that are ready to go, according to the Federal Transit Administration.
All this comes just as Barack Obama and “Amtrak” Joe Biden get ready for a railroad trip along said corridor. They’ll be traveling from Philadelphia down to Washington, D.C. this weekend on their “Whistle Stop Train Tour.” Maybe the trip will give them a few hours to think about transit funding.
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Comments
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Sam Wells Posted 10:36 am
16 Jan 2009
Apparently not. Somewhere along the line somebody went to sleep at the switch so we didn't pay for even the most rudimentary maintenance projects.
It's just like GM and Chrysler to me. Why should we bail out systems that lose money, and are going to go broke anyway? For too many years we've just piled on more and more massive debt as service gets worse and worse. Now you want to pile on more debt?
Perhaps I am opposed to any and all of these bail out and "stimulus" programs in general terms. But in theory, one pays for what one gets. The issue with mass transit has always been that large northern cities couldn't pay for it, so highway fuel taxes redistributed more money to save those old cities, and less to the new cities. Why? Because mass transit is not economical!
Before you lambaste me, I want to see mass transit and more of it because by doing so, we'd reduce emissions on a passenger-mile basis. But it has to be self sustaining - just like giving a loan to GM or Chrysler. Tell me, how do they plan to do that?
I get the impression that mass transit is a "forever" thing where we keep throwing money at it. That has to change. We need some fresh thinkers who can think about how to make the system sustainable, like any other business or government. -sammie
Onward through the fog
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racc Posted 11:13 am
16 Jan 2009
High speed rail is one of the top ideas on change.gov, Obama's transition site. Show your support at:
http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov/ideas/viewIdea.ape ...
It is not about us, it is about everyone.
http://www.everyoneforever.org/
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Tasermons Partner Posted 11:20 am
16 Jan 2009
That's almost as much as the previous administration spent for rail in a whole 8 years in office.
And this is just the first bill. Hopefully, more will come.
Some of these guys have taken public transit for years as parta their commutes, I don't think that they'll let it down (at least not like the previous guys did).
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racc Posted 5:03 pm
16 Jan 2009
It is not about us, it is about everyone.
http://www.everyoneforever.org/
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Sam Wells Posted 6:23 am
17 Jan 2009
Onward through the fog
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:11 am
17 Jan 2009
anyway, it's shameful that the stimulus bill did not try to plug shortfalls in operating assistance, I think that that means that the big transit authorities like in NYC will have to go through with big rate hikes and service cutbacks.
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guade00 Posted 10:38 am
17 Jan 2009
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Tasermons Partner Posted 1:56 pm
17 Jan 2009
Calculate the economic benefits of shorter commute times, less money on gas, insurance, car maintenance.
Then include the decreased medical costs related to less traffic accidents and decreased vehicular pollution.
Also include cost of less potential police protection and response to accidents and other car-related offenses.
And increased property values around transit stations.
And jobs created by the trains and their construction and maintenance.
Rail eventually pays for itself, in terms of money invested, it just does so indirectly by "filtering" the economic benefits to other segments of society, rather than as a direct profit related to the trains themselves.
Really, the same can be said (somewhat) of the freeways and most (non-toll) roadways.
We paid for the roads with tax money.
The roads themselves don't actually produce any money, and are dircetly unsustainable economically.
But when ya calculate the impact on business and transport of goods and people, the roads (hopefully) make money...but they do it by encouraging economic productivity in other areas that rely on (but aren't necessarily directly related to) road transportation.
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