The MT Position

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

Is our nation anti-transit? I know that’s a hard sentence to swallow, and for those of you reading this in transit-rich communities, it’s hard to conceive, but think about it for a minute. How many times have you heard of the American “car culture.” And how often has that been held up as a reason people just won’t try transit. Is it that they won’t try, or is it that they don’t have the option?

Are we as a nation anti-transit? No, no we’re not. But we’ve been ingrained since birth to treasure our material possessions like automobiles as if they were members of the family. So now asking someone to step onto transit is akin to asking them to give up their cars. And that feeling has infested our government from the top level on down, breeding a shortsightedness that is just staggering.

The current administration wants to cut the Amtrak budget by $100 million for FY 2008, not to mention the $300 million the transit funding is falling short. In comparison, it intends to increase highway funding by $500 million.

And yet, the president calls for us to end our addiction to foreign oil. By giving us more roads to drive on?! It is this amazing short-sightedness that struck me as I read an article about the Amtrak shortage this week and how it mirrored activity in my home state of Wisconsin.

The Milwaukee area is looking at revitalizing/expanding its transit system, but somehow no one can decide what the best way to do this is. The short-sightedness comes in when you realize that the city of Milwaukee has $91.5 million dollars to spend…and has had it for 16 years now!

I understand the value of patience, but 16 years?! You would think someone would have been able to come up with a plan by now. Take a look at your transit system and where they were 16 years ago. Sound Transit in Washington, our February/March cover story, didn’t even exist 16 years ago! And the amazing thing is they are still fighting over it.

The current mayor is looking at a plan that includes a downtown tram system, a commuter rail service serving a highly populated corridor, two BRT lines and upgrades and expansions to the current fixed-route service.

Sounds like a pretty good plan? I thought so, but evidently not good enough as the feuding continues with little to nothing being done at all. And herein lies the heart of the problem. It’s not about whether or not the plan is any good. It’s that the mayor stepped up and gave a plan. He suggested doing something, anything with the money the government gave the city for its transit system more than a decade ago.

And so the bickering begins again. And all the while these elected officials are fiddling, Rome is burning. Transit isn’t cheap, we all know that. But it sure isn’t going to have a sudden drop in price in the next year or so.

Actually, I bet the costs from 16 years ago look pretty good right about now.

Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Thursday.

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

I don’t know about you, but for me news tends to be cyclical. It’s probably the nature of media with someone breaking a story and everyone else running to find a similar story in their neck of the woods. That being the case, you tend to see a bunch of similar stories float to the surface (It’s an epidemic!) and then suddenly fade away as something else catches the public’s eye.

Last year seemed to be the year of the strike. Granted, when the transit system in NYC goes on strike, everyone pays attention — and for good reason. But all of the sudden it seemed as if everyone was going on strike. New York and Denver led the way, but every strike seemed to get national coverage.

This year the big story looks to be funding issues. Sure, funding issues are an omnipresent issue for public transit agencies, but so far this year we’ve heard of severe budget deficits looming for agencies in Newark, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Chicago among other places.

What has happened to our transit funding? We all know that the government works slowly, it’s the nature of the beast. Even though SAFETEA-LU was passed, the money authorized it still had to filter down through several layers of bureaucracy before it would be seen by local agencies. But now it seems that agencies all over the country are checking out their bank accounts and finding out they’re about to bounce a few checks.

Service cuts and fare increases are being considered by all of these agencies as last ditch efforts to prevent them from shutting down. Are we at a crossroads as an industry where we need to reduce service? Has the general populace turned against public transit? Is the sky falling?

Well, the answer to most of these questions is no. (Still not sure about that last one…) The industry isn’t collapsing in upon itself. APTA ridership numbers show that public transit is up more in recent years. And with gas prices on the rise again, the desire for more transit will increase as well. So is this all the media then? No. The stories are out there, even if they are getting more coverage than they may normally get.

What it is time for is the industry to start looking for new revenue streams. Sure, sales taxes have been and are being used, but maybe more agencies need to look into them and other taxes. How about public/private partnerships? I hear the oil companies are doing real well these days, it may seem against their nature to fund public transit, but who knows.

What I do know is that while it may seem bleak at times with stories of fund shortages and pending service cuts dominating the airwaves, the industry is still strong. It will survive and it will get bigger and better — it has too.

Thanks for reading the MT Position, our weekly blog updated every Thursday!

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

It’s been cold here in Wisconsin — real cold. When I woke up Monday morning it was 17° degrees below zero (Fahrenheit). All of the schools were closed and I went out to start up the family vehicles, mainly to make sure they would start. My wife’s car didn’t. I was to be on a plane for a trip for Mass Transit in a few hours, so this became a real issue. Thankfully with the help of a neighbor and his battery charger, we were able to get it running.

This little emergency got me to thinking — actually, it got me to wish for some public transit in my small Midwestern town, but that’s for another day — we look at agencies when they survive catastrophes, but hardly notice those everyday emergencies.

Denver’s RTD suffered one of these last Thursday when an insulator failed on the Southeast Corridor of its light rail line. The failure caused the wire powering the rail line to sag, affecting other insulators (about a half dozen total) and tripping a substation. Suddenly the system was without power in the morning on one of its busier lines.

Luckily, the location without power was near a major bus station and the agency was able to ferry people to other operating stations using platoons of buses until the line could be brought back into operation before the afternoon rush.

This is one of many examples of everyday emergencies agencies face and overcome with little fanfare from us or other media outlets. This is just them going about their day, doing business like clockwork.

Public transit agencies do their jobs so well on a daily basis that we not only don’t pay attention when they overcome outages and delays, we expect it of them. As long as the trains run on time is an old adage, but it’s true. People are only upset when their train or bus is late (or worse yet, early).

It’s time for us to start giving agencies credit for overcoming these everyday emergencies and not just expecting it as part of them “doing their jobs.” As a group, we laud people for going above and beyond the call of duty to help out others, but let’s not let that mean something other than preventing and solving emergencies daily while transporting millions of people a year without fail in this case.

Thanks for reading the MT Position!

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

I know that the State of the Union has been dissected numerous times in numerous ways since the President presented the address, but it’s something that has been weighing on my mind and the new Mass Transit blog wasn’t ready last week.

For the few of you reading this who aren’t aware why the President’s speech would be weighing on my mind, here are the pertinent parts of the address:

“It is in our vital interest to diversify America’s energy supply — and the way forward is through technology. We must continue changing the way America generates electric power — by even greater use of clean coal technology…solar and wind energy…and clean, safe nuclear power. We need to press on with battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and expand the use of clean diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel. We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol — using everything from wood chips, to grasses, to agricultural wastes.

“We have made a lot of progress, thanks to good policies in Washington and the strong response of the market. Now even more dramatic advances are within reach. Tonight, I ask Congress to join me in pursuing a great goal. Let us build on the work we have done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next 10 years — thereby cutting our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East.

“To reach this goal, we must increase the supply of alternative fuels, by setting a mandatory Fuels Standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017 — this is nearly five times the current target. At the same time, we need to reform and modernize fuel economy standards for cars the way we did for light trucks — and conserve up to 8.5 billion more gallons of gasoline by 2017.

“Achieving these ambitious goals will dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but will not eliminate it. So as we continue to diversify our fuel supply, we must also step up domestic oil production in environmentally sensitive ways. And to further protect America against severe disruptions to our oil supply, I ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

“America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. These technologies will help us become better stewards of the environment — and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change.”

Notice how he didn’t mention public transportation anywhere in there? APTA did and issued a statement the next day:

“The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) is disappointed that, in his State of the Union address, President Bush did not recognize public transportation usage as one of the ways Americans can reduce their dependence on foreign oil. We urge Congress and the Administration to increase investment to make public transit services available to more Americans and to include incentives that will encourage greater transit use in the energy legislation that will be developed.”

I admit, as I watched the State of the Union address, I was chanting under my breath, “Mention public transit. Mention public transit.” He didn’t and for the most part, the news media totally passed over the matter.

This is where the weighing on my mind part comes in. I was mulling over what the President said, or more to the point what he didn’t say, and I really can’t blame him. See, here’s the rub. It’s not just about whether or not the President said that public transit can help reduce reliance on foreign oil, it’s about everything transit can offer.

The President spoke about alternative fuels, but didn’t mention the numerous public transit agencies across the country that have spearheaded the use of alternative fuels — many of them mandated by law to use them. As one agency executive told me, “We can’t even sniff at using diesel fuel.” And hybrid vehicles?! Public transit agencies are leading the charge in the research and use of hybrid vehicles.

The problem typified by the President’s State of the Union address is one of image. People either see transit as their conveyance to and from their destination or (largely for those who don’t have it readily available) they have the Hollywood image of riding a bus with drunks, smelly people and criminals.

Transit is so much more than that and this is where the State of the Union address fell short. While I was disappointed that the President didn’t point out how riding transit can reduce oil consumption, I am even more disappointed that in his examples of what we should be doing as a nation to stop our reliance on foreign oil, he didn’t point out that public transit agencies are already doing it.

Thanks for reading the MT Position, our new weekly blog updated every Thursday!

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com