The MT Position

Posted by William R. Coulson
Member, RTA Board of Directors

Chicago’s Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) was established by state law to provide financial and planning oversight to the operations of the ‘service boards” — the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) (light rail and city bus), METRA (commuter rail) and PACE (suburban and paratransit bus), who actually provide the transit.

The RTA and the service boards have been warning Illinois political leaders for years that the system was seriously underfunded and heading for a serious breakdown. Last year an independent agency, the Illinois Auditor General, confirmed this financial crisis in a lengthy report. Simultaneously, the RTA and the service boards painstakingly formulated a “Moving Beyond Congestion” plan outlining their vision for strengthening and expanding the six-county region’s long-term transit, assuming new funds were available. Virtually every mayor and every county board in the six-county RTA region endorsed this plan.

Thus, there is no dispute that the financial crisis is real and that there is a long-term plan to significantly improve the system. Enter Illinois’ unique brand of politics.

The RTA is financed largely through fares, a sales tax imposed in the six counties and a state match of 25 percent of the sales taxes raised. So optimistic was the RTA board in December of 2006 that the 2007 budgets included as projected revenue more than $200 million in what was called “New Transit Funding.”

A bill was introduced in the Legislature to raise modestly the sales tax rate to generate this new revenue for the foreseeable future. The bill also proposed to significantly increase the RTA’s oversight authority of the service boards. The CTA and its unions even negotiated pension and benefits concessions, contingent on the bill’s being enacted. The Chicago media has consistently characterized this proposed dedicated funding of critical infrastructure as a “transit bailout.”

The governor, however, announced that he would veto the bill because it raised a “tax on people.” The state capitol, Springfield, became a welter of intrigue and distrust among the leaders, over a wide variety of issues — the most “poisonous” atmosphere statehouse veterans have ever witnessed. Legislators and the governor could not even pass a state budget until after months of overtime sessions. The governor called 17 different special sessions of the Legislature; the legislators finally just ignored these calls and did not even show up.

There was no budgeted “New Transit Funding.” The service boards’ 2007 budgets had to be amended accordingly to cut services dramatically, layoff employees, postpone maintenance and raise fares. The cuts hit the CTA and Pace first. These agencies announced that these cuts would become effective on Sunday, September 16, 2007. Springfield remained locked in gridlock. Then, four days before this “doomsday” deadline the governor announced that to forestall the cuts he would authorize the immediate advance to the RTA of the $37 million budgeted for the first six months of 2008 to paratransit service and senior citizen discounts. The governor wrote that a long-term resolution of state mass transit funding “is not far off.”

Once again the service boards amended their 2007 budgets to include this advance, and it fell to the RTA board to determine if it could approve these new budgets as “reasonable and prudent” under the RTA statute. Nine votes were required. In a contentious 10-2 vote, the RTA board approved this advance of next year’s moneys. I was one of the two “no” votes. To me, this was like a bad “pay-day loan,” except that even a pay-day loan has a reliable, dedicated source for repayment! One of the board members who did support the measure literally held his nose as he voted “yes.” So six months of next years’ paratransit and senior discount money is now gone — spent this year! Without new monies, next year’s cuts would have to be even deeper. But doomsday was averted for a few weeks.

More gridlock in Springfield. The bill to raise the RTA sales tax and to establish more RTA oversight got a majority vote in the Illinois House (61-48), but the sponsor withdrew it because it needed a super-majority (71 votes) to take effect immediately and to survive the promised veto by the governor. The CTA and Pace had no choice but to again plan for “doomsday” cuts, this time effective November 4, 2007. Again, layoff notices and route elimination notices went out. Community groups and the unions protested. This time, two days before “doomsday,” the governor announced that he had found $27 million in a state infrastructure bond fund that he would transfer to the RTA to stave off the cuts. Again, the governor wrote that a permanent “fix” “can be completed in the near future.” The Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate wrote that they “understood fully” the “urgent need” for a “major increase in stable, long term funding,” and pledged to work to that end “over the next seven to ten days.” This advance of capital funds had to be approved by the Federal government (late on a Friday afternoon in Washington!). Democratic Senator Dick Durbin and the Republican Bush administration agreed to the last-minute proposal, thus accomplishing in an hour the kind of statesmanlike bi-partisanship that has so far eluded Illinois leaders. Doomsday was again averted — for now. The “doomsday” cuts, now more severe then ever, were reset to commence now on January 20^th, 2008.

Yesterday, November 28th, the governor called his 18^th special legislative session, this time to consider only the mass transit crisis, saying, “we cannot afford more delays.” A new funding proposal had been touted by several legislative leaders — the dedicated transfer of regional sales tax revenues from gasoline sales to transit. This would provide a more modest sum to transit than would the increased general sales tax proposal, and it would leave a gaping fiscal hole in the general state budget (where the revenues would otherwise go). Many legislators, including those from downstate Illinois, insisted as a pre-condition the passage of a capital funding bill for highways and schools which would be funded by new casinos in Illinois. The gas sales tax bill failed by a vote of 57 -53 (60 votes are required). “Doomsday” faces us again on January 20.

What to make of it all? I have tremendous respect for the elected public officials who face the daunting task of balancing the state budget in the face of competing demands from constituents. They will have to decide ultimately how important mass transit is to the well-being and economic vitality of Illinois. And the people — who elect them — will have the final word on all this.

As an appointed board member of the RTA, I share the responsibility to provide the best transit to the people of the six-county region that the allotted financial resources will responsibly permit. If our elected leaders want a second-rate system, that is what they will get.

William R. Coulson is a Chicago attorney and former federal prosecutor, who was appointed to the RTA Board on April 1, 2007, by the Cook County Board of Commissioners.

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit 

And so it begins. The political machine for next year’s election is kicking into high gear. Sure, there’s been sparring back and forth for some time now, but with the first primaries looming in the beginning of 2008 (Iowa’s primary on January 3^rd is the first), the tempers are flaring and mud is slinging as candidates jockey to prove they are the ones best suited for their party’s nomination.

But enough about the Republicans

Today the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) announced its support for Hillary Clinton in her bid for the presidency in 2008. Anyone in transit is familiar with the ATU. They are one of the twin powers in transit unions with the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU) and have gained much fame (and possibly infamy) for work stoppages in bids for better worker contracts.

Evidently by throwing its support behind Sen. Clinton, the ATU feels that she is the best candidate to represent the issues of transit and transit workers in the upcoming election.

Boy do I hope so.

I started this blog shortly after the last State of the Union Address. You know the one, where we heard several times about breaking our dependency on foreign oil. Here is a replay:

“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.”

As I said in that blog in February, it’s interesting that the president failed to mention public transit in his speech anywhere.

For the past year I have traveled the country (well, the world really) and seen that transit agencies aren’t just working in alternative fuels and technological breakthroughs the president spoke about, they are leading the way with them. Every single agency I traveled to this year uses biodiesel, hybrid buses or some other sort of alternative power for its system.

So as that political machine gets kicked into high gear, here’s a message for candidates seeking more support: Transit Works.

Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Friday.

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

You may or may not know it, but strikes seem to be breaking out all over the place in the last few weeks. Here in the United States, the one getting the most attention is the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike. The writers of your favorite television shows and movies are currently picketing on both coasts. If you haven’t been paying attention, this probably has slipped under your radar, but it may become all that more attention getting in a month or so when there is the potential for virtually every television network to go into lengthy reruns or reality programming.

While this really doesn’t affect the transit industry, it’s interesting to see how one group has the potential to grind an entire industry to a halt. Sure, there have been transit strikes that have shut down systems, but nothing has shut down the entire transit network — at least not here in the United States.

Of more interest to the transit industry is the current strike going on in France. To bring people up to speed, a strike has been called by the leading transit workers’ unions to oppose a plan by the French president to eliminate early retirement for the transit workers.

The thing here that we in the U.S. may find it hard to wrap our heads around is that when the transit workers in France strike, they don’t shut Paris down, they shut France down. About 10 percent of France’s trains were running on Wednesday, with slightly more on Thursday. That’s 10 percent for all of France. So let’s say we shut down all of the transit systems in the U.S. except for say those in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and North and South Dakota.

Now add to this the strikers from the electric and gas companies who shut down nuclear plants, effectively ending electricity production for a large part of the country. Students also were striking, shutting down two-thirds of the universities. And within the next week civil servants, teachers, postal workers, telecommunications workers, bank employees and judicial magistrates are expected to strike.

Now all of these divergent groups aren’t striking for the same thing, but they are all in opposition of reforms by France’s president. As one union leader put it, “This is no longer just a strike. It’s a resistance movement.”

And the interesting thing is that public sentiment is with the strikers.

For those of you who have suffered through strikes here in the U.S., think about having not just the transit officials, but multiple different groups all striking at the same time in your city or state.

As you sit down for Thanksgiving dinner next week, take a moment and remember you may have more to be thankful for than you thought.

Thanks for reading. Due to the holiday here in the U.S., there won’t be an MT Position next week.

See you in two weeks,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

By Leah Harnack
Mass Transit Associate Editor

It’s not often you go to a conference and the welcoming reception is at a night club with lights flashing, music pounding and there is what looks like a woman, but what is indeed a man, belting out songs on the stage.

It was a fun, energizing way to meet up with familiar faces, get acquainted with new ones and to kick off Rail-Volution 2007: Building Livable Communities with Transit.

The conference was three days in Miami Beach, with more than 50 workshops and 17 mobile workshops that provided hands-on learning and a trade show featuring 24 exhibiting companies.

When talking to friends about the conference I was going to be attending, the name was a bit misleading as they thought it was simply a conference about trains and passenger rail. Rail-Volution covers much more, looking at how all modes of public transportation can shape a community.

Workshops illustrated some of the latest creative solutions to common challenges and reiterated the importance of cooperative relationships between everyone when it comes to successful transit.

I don’t know if it was from the hot sun, the exhilarating nightlife or the restful beach, but the conference had a relaxed ambience with quite a bit of humor on the part of the presenters.

But more importantly, it provided examples of what can be accomplished and what has already been accomplished. Many of the common challenges were addressed, including parking, partnerships, gentrification, climate change and of course, funding.

In the workshop TODs and Responsible Development in Lower Income Communities, James Hencki, senior urban designer with PB PlaceMaking, talked about planning with the community of West Baltimore.

At the end of a weeklong charrette at the beginning of the process, a small group of vocal dissenters presented unforeseen negative attitudes due to their anger, fear, anxiety and frustration.

Hencki stressed to us the importance of responsible development: everyone has a safe, decent place to live, to succeed you need a place to call home, hard-working people should be able to afford a home and necessities to live there and children deserve an opportunity to succeed.

He concluded his presentation sharing that the second community workshop was very well attended after they had learned a few things that made all the difference in collaborating with the community.

It’s better at their speed, not the planner’s speed. Reach out to the community early and thoroughly. Identify and support community leaders. Focus on the community’s issues, not planner issues. Gender and ethnicity do matter. And, to build a place, you have to build trust.

At the Implementing TOD at the Regional Level workshop, Tom Boone, TOD project manager with the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) in Denver, Colo., had his own list of information to share — his Top Ten Ways to Fail at Collaboration:

10. Make speed your priority

9. Speak negatively about stakeholders in their absence.

8. Hold unfocused meetings.

7. Send irate emails when someone does something you don’t like.

6. Use jargon when you don’t want people to understand.

5. Be exclusive.

4. Don’t concern yourself with how you will resolve conflict.

3. Want more for yourself, your cause or your organization.

2. Don’t take the painful steps to agree on the problem you are trying to solve.

1. Push for your favorite solution and hope others will acquiesce.

The question and answer part of the discussion maintained some humor, despite the tough topics being addressed.

Boone talked about DRCOG’s breakthroughs in behavior in the community through marketing and was asked how he felt DRCOG did at communicating with the community prior to the campaign. He responded, “I think we sucked at it.”

It was good to have a session such as this, where attendees could hear the steps involved that improved the communication and the effect that has had in the community.

When asked about the three biggest challenges in the Bay Area, Steve Heminger, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in Oakland, Calif., answered, “Parking, parking and parking.” He then added, “If you build it; they will come. Especially if it’s free.”

Some thoughts on solutions revolved around what people should be charged for parking and to build parking in a way to make it easier to turn into development as an area changes. A parking lot is easier to turn into a multi-use development next to a transit station, as opposed to a multi-story parking garage.

Understanding and Using Federal Legislation and Regulations provided a lot of useful information, especially for those not familiar with the FTA’s funding process.

Mariia Zimmerman, vice president for policy with Reconnecting America in Washington, D.C., discussed what is going on now on the Hill and the impact that is having, or could have, on transportation dollars.

SAFETEA-LU is important, but we should be showing equal enthusiasm in the energy bill she pointed out. Climate change and transportation are key issues for energy and transit has not been in the climate change discussion as much as it should be.

Another big concern is that when SAFETEA-LU is up in FY09, the highway trust fund is projected to be down to $0 and they could look to transit dollars for money.

To win support in communities for public transportation, Zimmerman says, “Make public transportation personal.” Transportation is the second biggest expenditure for the average person but often people don’t realize it.

Rail-Volution provided many examples of specific strategies that illustrated how public transportation creates sustainable and livable communities. Hopefully next year we will see you in San Francisco next year as more industry leaders share success stories and lessons learned.

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

The big news for the week has to be the various referendums and ballot measures across the country. The two we’ve paid most attention to were the ones in locations of past cover stories, Charlotte and the Seattle area. Both are interesting in how they played out.

The Charlotte vote seemed on the face to be the most contentious. A region with a burgeoning transit renaissance, its first light rail line about to debut in a few weeks, but plagued by cost overruns and a vocal anti-transit group.

Sound Transit in Washington’s Puget Sound region was looking to the Roads and Transit package on this year’s ballot to bolster its already successful light rail, commuter rail and bus services in the Seattle area.

So this one seemed like easy money in Vegas. A city looking to finish its first light rail line that had been plagued by delays with a vocal anti-transit group lobbying against it versus a region known for embracing sustainability and transit with a successful regional system. One of these looks like it should pass easily and the other is probably doomed to failure, correct?

That’s why they let people vote.

The Charlotte area voted 70 to 30 in favor of keeping its transit tax. What’s more interesting is that there were less votes to repeal the transit tax than the number of names it took to get the measure on the ballot in the first place! Say what you want about voter turnout, but that is still a sizeable vote of confidence for a transit system.

Charlotte’s citizens turned out to make it known that they support transit and saw through the rhetoric being slung around as during all voting seasons. They let it be known that not only did they support transit, they vehemently supported it.

Next year is an election year. As 2008 progresses, it’s important to get the word out that transit is important and for voters to see through rhetoric and doomsayers who always come out in droves at times like this.

Transit will be challenged by all sides next year — it doesn’t reduce congestion, it is slower than taking a car, it costs too much, money spent on transit should be put into other things, really who rides it anyway.

It needs to be ready to face down these challenges and be prepared to face the spin.

Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Friday.

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

A respondent to last week’s blog, Interesting Numbers, suggested some transit modes that they felt were overlooked by the transit industry. These included taxis, ride-sharing, and car-sharing.

Most of these aren’t likely as overlooked as one would think.

I know of at least one agency that controls taxi service in its area, and I am sure there are far more than that. I’ve gotten the impression that taxis aren’t seen as part of the larger public transit picture, but if you think about it, they all have at minimum two people in every car. We don’t require any less on most of our HOV lanes, so why shouldn’t they be considered part of transit?

Ride-sharing (or carpooling) was a growing part of the transit picture, even without the recent increase in gas prices. Vanpools are also growing. CATS in Charlotte has a fleet of vanpool vehicles that have proven very successful for the agency. That’s just one example. The Rapid in Grand Rapids, Mich. is another. Their RapidVan vanpool service (see our June 2007 story on this) has been a tremendous asset to that agency for years.

Car-sharing, though, intrigued me. There was a recent story about the U.S. House of Representatives trying out a car-sharing program. The program currently consists of four cars (three hybrids), but it is being monitored and I am sure popularity will spark growth. This got me to thinking about the whole car-sharing prospect.

My associate editor just told me she may need to work from home one day this week because she needs new tires on her car and her carpool isn’t running this week since everyone is at one convention or the other.

I thought about this and I thought about how many cars sit in parking lots all day doing nothing. Heck, my car spends most weekends sitting in my driveway.

This got me to wondering just how many of us really have a need for cars on a 24/7 basis. I would hazard a guess that most two-car families probably only really need one. The other is a work car. One person uses that car to go to and from work during the week and it sits in a driveway, parking lot or on a street otherwise.

Having a car available when we need it gives tremendous peace of mind, but how much of that could be leveraged if you knew that there would usually be a car available when you need it at a local parking lot?

With the increased number of people being able to work from home via Internet connections, not having a car isn’t the end of the world it used to be.

Maybe that’s the new slogan transit should pitch: “Get Rid of Your Car. It’s Won’t Be the End of the World.”

Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Friday.

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com