A Year Later and a Dollar Shorter
Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor
As we plunged into the election season last year we were steamrolled with a double shot of media blitz covering the two presidential candidates and the sharply declining economy. Transit was plugging along floating on surging ridership numbers to prove to politicians that they were in fact worth the money spent on them. CTA had just averted a doomsday and things were good. Unfortunately, it looks like it took a while for things to catch up.
It’s a year later and where is transit now? Probably worse than it was last year. Sorry to be a downer, but of the 10 largest transit agencies in the country more than half are probably facing serious budget issues in the next year. Both the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority (WMATA) are looking at fare increases and service cuts to cover budget shortfalls in 2010. Clayton County Transit (C-Tran) in Georgia, which was operated by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) is shutting down all service and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) is being subsumed into what is being dubbed a “superagency” incorporating several formerly independent state entities.
And yet, we somehow have time to wait (i.e. waste) for the passing of a new transportation funding bill?
Transit is starting to really feel the pinch of the economy. Sure it felt it some last year, but as tax (and other) revenues continue to decline, funding streams dry up and state governments start looking toward transit budgets as potential places to trim their own budget shortfalls, transit is really starting to take it on the chin.
Sadly, as ridership numbers continue to show, this is when transit is needed the most. It used to be a call to cut transit budgets because all those buses did was, “transport air,” but with that argument quashed, transit gets held up as not being able to pay for itself or other silly statements.
I admit it. I’m a rail guy. I like riding trains. But I also enjoy a good bus ride, and I’m smart enough to know that if I take the train to a city, I need to have another form of transit when I get there or I am stuck. So we can talk about high-speed rail all we want (And I love the current talk!), but we can’t sacrifice our transit systems in exchange for rail systems.
The government, and by government I mean federal, state and local, must do whatever they can to make sure these transit systems keep providing the essential services this industry provides.
If we don’t do that, pretty soon it will be someone like CTA and not C-Tran that shuts down for good.
Please take the time to answer our You Decide! poll. You can’t miss the red, white and blue logo on our home page. I’m a firm believer in listening to our readers and for 2010 we’re throwing it to you to let us know who you think should be on our cover. We’ve narrowed down our picks to 12 agencies in the United States and Canada we think have some interesting stuff going on. Now it’s up to you to decide who rises to the top.
Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,
Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
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October 16th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Fred, C-Tran in Clayton is shutting down because they’ve run out of CMAQ funds and didn’t think about how to replace them until it was too late. I’m sure they are hoping that the Legislature will come charging to their rescue, but if prior experience is any guide, they can forget it. Georgia is still too busy dreaming of new ways to lay asphault to actually fund transit. That would be Socialism!
October 16th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
It would be more interesting to find transit agencies that haven’t cut service and raised fares. In California, only the tiniest agencies have limped along without service reductions or rate increases.
October 17th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Fred, I’m a bus guy but I am with you on multi-modal and I am with you on raising a ruckus on Clayton County. While I am sure, you, like me support the “Livabilty and Sustainability” initiative from the federal departments, it seems to me they are leaving out perhaps the most important “-bility”, that is “Mobility”. For example, not likely that Transit Oriented Development will be a big push in Clayton County if there is no transit.
I can hear my federal friends saying, wait a minute, the Clayton County decision was a local, not federal one. But if the feds would listen to the “Hundred Bus Coalition” folks and make 5307 eligible for operating, maybe that would give some of the struggling agencies a bridge to keep going.
Having done a fair amount of work in states like Georgia that do not provide any transit operating funds and in some instances do not even allow for the passage of local based taxes to support operating, the local policy makers are then forced to compare ongoing transit subsidies, including local match, against police, fire, schools, etc. and thus transit often comes in last. Thus systems either get eliminated or services are cut back to the point they only carry the most dependent of riders.
Maybe what we need from USDOT is a posture to states that if they want to receive highway funds (and what state does not) they must provide a state based transit operating source or some ingeniously developed concept that gets state operating funds to transit.
While I also support the ideal of connecting portions of the country with high-speed rail, I do not believe we want to build that infrastructure without first thinking about those transportation disadvantaged persons that have, through good and bad times, been the foundation of ridership for public transportation throughout the country. There is a federal role to “sustain” their transit and make their existance “livable”. Perhaps it is time for Mass Transit to take a look at places like Clayton County and others in Georgia, Alabama, etc. and help get some attention on the breadth and depth of the issues facing these operations and make it a bigger part of the national dialogue on authorization and initiatives. Thanks.