Because of local political pressures, I expect that transit fares won’t even keep up with inflation in many cities, as politicians please pressure groups by subsidizing operations at the expense of capital projects.

I still think the most important point about this bill is that you get more federal funds for operations only if you reduce federal funds available for capital projects.

In my opinion, to deal successfully with global warming, we need to build enough transit and enough transit-oriented development to transform our cities as dramatically during the next half century as we did during the second half of the twentieth century. That won’t happen if we reduce funding for transit capital projects by 30%, as this bill will do.

I think this bill plays into our very destructive tendency to indulge ourselves in the present at the expense of the future. We do this by borrowing too much and saving too little; we do it by running up big federal budget deficits that our children will have to pay off; we do it by burning fossil fuels and ignoring the global warming that our children will have to face. Now you propose that we should also do it by getting lower transit fares for ourselves instead of building better transit systems and a more livable world for our children.

In addition to the Republicans, Alice Rivlin of the Clinton Administration also argued against additional capital investment in mass transit, particularly light rail.