Comments on: Advocating for a Transpo Bill That Keeps Transit Riders Moving

By: erok

erok — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:54:55 +0000

“Pittsburg” has an “H” at the end of it

By: Larry Littlefield

Larry Littlefield — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:49:35 +0000

I’ve been making this argument forever.

Let say the goal here is no new transit projects, all money for operations. It still doesn’t work, because most “capital” spending is actually maintenance, especially here in New York.

So diverting money to operations really means letting all the transit systems decay.

By: Transit Girl

Transit Girl — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:45:44 +0000

I agree with Charles. All HR 2746 will do is allow states and localities to back out local funds and replace it with federal dollars while canibalizing capital programs. This is a lose-lose proposition. We have enormous infrastructure needs across the country and the federal government plays a key role in funding those programs. Let’s not sacrifice one to pay for the other. States and localities should step up to the plate and fund the operating expenses of their transit systems. We don’t have enough federal revenues now to pay for the current inadequate level of investment and no politician wants to substantially raise the gas tax. A $450 billion multi-year transportation bill would require a 40 cent incrase in the gas tax. What politician will vote for that kind of increase? We all want a stronger federal government, but we don’t want to pay for it.

By: Charles Siegel

Charles Siegel — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:08:05 +0000

“H.R. 2746, sponsored by Rep. Russ Carnahan, a Democrat from St. Louis, would allow transit agencies in large cities like New York to spend up to 30 percent of their federal funding on operations”

This could backfire. Where I live, NIMBYs are opposing BRT by saying the money should be spent on providing more frequent service instead. Right now, we have a decisive argument against them: this money will come from capital funding and cannot be spent on operations. But if this bill passed, opponents of more transit infrastructure could successfully divert the money to operations.

In fact, this bill is bound to reduce capital funding available for better transit infrastructure: all it does is to divert capital funding to operations. You know that, because fare hikes are politically unpopular, city governments will avoid them by killing capital projects and diverting the money to operations.

I think we need separate funding for operations in addition to the capital funding, rather than reducing capital funding to support operations.