The MT Position

By Dan Johnson-Weinberger

We transit advocates have a problem: bad language.

Listen to what we ask for:

* Operating assistance

* Formula funding

* Guaranteed appropriations

Boring!

Right now we seem like we’re still on the welfare train, asking for government handouts without any compelling, exciting opportunities for the nation to embrace.

If we want to inspire the imagination of our elected officials and taxpayers to create the modern transit network the nation deserves, we need language that similarly inspires.

And that means we’ll need a wholesale replacement of our current language that emerged from agencies and bureaucracies with language designed to resonate in the political world.

Thus, we should consider the names of the actual program simply a starting point for the language that we will choose to use in our communications with our riders, elected officials and the broader electorate as we look to build support for our political objectives.

Our challenge is capturing in two or three words what we want. We want a two- or three-word phrase that evokes all of the positive benefits that modern transit brings to the nation, and also subtly distinguishes our investment from rival investments (in particular, highway spending). This phrase will be the description of our policy agenda — our goal — that agencies and advocates can use as a replacement for our current language.

Some rules of thumb; ‘investment’ is a better word than either ‘funding’ or ‘program.’ ‘Assistance’ is a bad word. ‘Freedom’ is a good word.

Here are three guideposts to designing new language to describe transit and our policy agenda.

1. Appeal to non-riders (particularly drivers)

2. Convey the benefits of a transit investment

3. Avoid reinforcing the negative associations of taxes and government programs

My initial thoughts on each of these guideposts:

It’s important that we appeal directly to non-riders to build our base of support. Transit ridership, as a percentage of the electorate, is well below 10 percent (even in our largest metropolitan regions). Politics is a game of addition, and to add to our base, we need to target the people who benefit from transit ridership: drivers. Another important group of people that benefit from transit are property owners with higher values thanks to their access to the transit network (and the municipalities who tax the property owners to fund their local budgets).

The benefits of transit include many of the following:

* Freedom from foreign oil

* Freedom from global warming

* Freedom from bad traffic and job-killing road congestion

* More prosperity

* Higher property values and property tax revenues

* Access to jobs and employees

We don’t understand yet which of these benefits are the most compelling to the greatest number of voters, and I suspect that some of these benefits will be more compelling to some groups of voters than others. While we should be prepared to emphasize certain benefits with certain constituencies, language for policy initiatives works best when it is repeated and echoed by the media as well as by the advocate. The new language is successful when it becomes universally accepted.

We don’t want to be associated with activities that elected officials shy away from: welfare, handouts or wasteful government spending.

We do want to be associated with the benefits that transit usage generates: freedom from foreign oil, freedom from global warming, freedom from bad traffic and more prosperity.

Finally, we do want to distinguish ourselves from our rivals for transportation funding: highways.

It isn’t easy to distill our advocacy language into tight, compelling, muscular words, but it’s a job we need to start.

Dan Johnson-Weinberger is the President and Founder of Permanent Campaigns Consulting, a Chicago-based communications firm specializing in partnering with transit agencies to grow ridership.

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

Traveling around as I do, you get to experience a lot of transit agencies. Most of the time it’s a guided tour, so it’s not exactly a full immersion, but you do get to see what the agency’s local riders see. I’ve been warned off by transit police for taking photos. I’ve had another rider help me figure out a ticket machine as I fumbled with my change. I’ve talked to riders on buses and trains and stops and platforms. And the thing you remember most is good customer service from agency staff.

As Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) general manager, John Catoe, recently said to me, “It’s every employee’s responsibility to provide customer service. And if I can do it as general manager, it’s my expectation that every other executive and every other manager in this agency doesn’t just go out there and look. It’s not always that terrible, but take an action, everyday take some small action to improve the service to our customers.”

My publisher and I were at the APTA Legislative Conference earlier this week in Washington, D.C. The conference was great as always and, as always, a lot was packed into a little amount of time. So I was dragging a little bit as we walked the few blocks to the closest Metro station.

Getting our tickets, we headed down to the platform and then stood dumbly looking at the signs as we discussed the different ticket stalls above. It was just then that we were approached by a WMATA employee who had obviously seen our suitcases and stares at the system map and (correctly) figured we needed some help.

Now I’ve ridden Metro several times before this and so has my publisher. We would eventually have gotten our bearings and got on the right train, but it was so nice to have someone come up and offer help without asking and without figuring you were stupid for not knowing the local system (I’ve had that happen, too).

The WMATA employee, told us what train we needed to take, where it would be coming from and, taking his lunchbox in hand, headed up and out of the station. He wasn’t a station manager, either. No, just a passing employee who thought he’d follow Catoe’s advice — even if he didn’t know it — and take a small action to help someone on the system.

Sure, we could have made it on our own, but it was just that little bit of customer service that made a big impact. I remembered it the whole way home and I won’t forget it the next time I ride the Washington system.

I know agencies all over are looking for ways to increase revenue and ridership, but in the end it’s good to remember that it’s the little things that sometimes count the most.

For the latest industry news, check out MassTransitMag.com’s Daily News section.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

By Paul Meyer

With baseball season upon us, I can’t help but chuckle at how the bench players in baseball, full of energy and willingness to contribute, mirror private sector engineers and land surveyors who stand ready to step up and bring home Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Strategic Growth Plan, which puts $15 billion into transportation improvements.

So far, like the bench players in baseball whose value isn’t recognized until late in the season, the private sector is pitching in and working on projects, but is ready to do a whole lot more.

But can the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) deliver this monumental undertaking given the dire circumstances surrounding the state budget deficit, or is it time to call in further resources and reinforcements from the private sector?

For California, at least part of the answer can be found in the findings of a recent study called “A National Assessment of Transportation Strategies and Practices: Lessons for California.” The joint study, conducted by the California Taxpayers’ Association (Cal-Tax) and the Infrastructure Delivery Council (IDC), an affiliate of the Consulting Engineers and Land Surveyors of California (CELSOC), examined the best practices of the departments of transportation in 10 states with major transportation programs already underway including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, New York, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, and California.

A pivotal fact revealed in the study was that California’s ability to successfully deliver these projects is currently hamstrung by the state’s fundamental underutilization of a cardinal element of modern infrastructure delivery methods – the public-private partnership (PPP) model.

California, unlike the other nine states surveyed, has failed to recognize that outsourcing engineering services on these projects actually leads to expedited delivery times in addition to saving taxpayer money.

The study found that Georgia, Missouri and Washington are outsourcing their engineering services on 50 percent of their projects. In Arizona, private sector experts are utilized at levels closer to 85 percent. California outsourced just 10 percent of its transportation projects,

Keeping in mind that time is money; these statistics underscore the importance of the private sector’s role in successfully delivering transportation programs faster, more efficiently, and most importantly cost effectively.

But the decision to outsource is not made solely on cost. One significant factor in deciding to outsource is driven by a targeted project delivery time. A recent look at Utah’s Mountain View Corridor project shows that due to inflation rates as high as 10 percent in recent years, delays are raising the cost of the $2 billion project by $200 million a year.

We agree with the state Department of Finance, which reports that California needs an estimated $500 billion just to bring current its aging infrastructure systems. And, using Utah’s Mountain View Corridor project as an example, we can reasonably deduce that every year our infrastructure projects remain on the shelf, the increased cost of those delays to California taxpayers will be hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.

PPPs, as other states continue to demonstrate, are a cost-effective, efficient means of delivering infrastructure both quickly and professionally. During the 1930s-1950s visionary leadership was able to deliver a massive transportation program with limited inclusion of the private sector. But times have changed and departments of transportation (DOTs) across the country find it difficult the ability to hire, train and maintain large, fluctuating staffing levels needed to support these programs. In addition, DOTs often lack the specialty skills needed to engineer increasingly complex projects.

Private engineering firms and engineers can be used to fill the current and future gaps in staffing levels and specialty skills our state needs to succeed. But today in California, the lack of an adequate statutory framework for authorizing PPPs is “blocking the road.” Without new legislation, wide-scale authorization and implementation of PPPs in California is simply not going to happen.

Take the Golden Gate Bridge project for example. This highly successful project was structured as a PPP long before the term became popular. But the statute that authorized that landmark PPP project only authorized that one project. Our hope is that current efforts by Gov. Schwarzenegger and a new generation of visionary leaders across the state will succeed in their quest to enable California to finally bring its systems and processes in-line with twenty-first century practices.

The taxpayers who will eventually foot the bill for California’s underinvestment deserve nothing less than to have the best players from both the public and private sectors working together to rebuild our state.

It’s time for the public sector in California to call the private sector off the bench and into the game. We need to put our best team on the field and allow them to get to work rebuilding California’s infrastructure and economy.

For a copy of the full study, visit www.caltax.org.

For more information on PPPs visit www.celsoc.org

Paul Meyer is the executive director of CELSOC, which is a 52-year old, statewide association representing 1,200 private consulting engineering and land surveying firms that average 20 employees each. CELSOC is dedicated to enhancing the consulting engineering and land surveying professions, protecting the general public and promoting the use of the private sector in the growth and development of our state. CELSOC’s members provide services for all phases of planning, designing and constructing projects. For more information, visit www.celsoc.org.

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

You know, there are weeks where transit just can’t win.

Last week wasn’t one of those weeks. Facing the brewing infrastructure crisis head on, the Minnesota Legislature voted to override a veto leveled by Governor Pawlenty against a bill raising state gas and sales taxes and increasing registration fees on new vehicles. This bill will now fund $6.6 billion in infrastructure improvements for the next 10 years.

Unfortunately, this was one of those weeks.

This week’s theme seems to be how can we spend our transit funds in the worst way. Take the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority for example. It now has to begin refunding $12 million it collected in taxes and fees since January. Why? Because the Virginia Supreme Court recently ruled that the authority’s taxing ability was unconstitutional.

Now let that sink in for a minute. The state supreme court ruled that the authority’s taxing powers were unconstitutional. Meanwhile, they kept collecting taxes. Now understand the process and how long court proceedings can take, but didn’t anyone stop to think about whether this was possibly against the law before they began to collect the taxes? And now we’re not just talking about giving back $12 million in taxes, we’re talking about money spent on employee salaries to make sure those collected taxes are returned to the correct people.

Unfortunately, Virginia doesn’t hold a candle to Milwaukee. If you didn’t know, Milwaukee received a $289 million appropriation from the federal government to build a bus-only highway along I-94. You might not know because this happened 17 years ago.

This $289 million should be held up as a lesson to all transit authorities in how not to watch your funds get frittered away. After the bus-only highway project was shutdown, the federal government took $48 million back, and another $149.5 million was spent on other road, bridge and pedestrian projects.

The remaining $91.5 million has been sitting there since before the turn of the century, unable to be spent because the powers that be can’t decide how best to spend it. You would think they could get an agreement after nearly a decade of sitting on the money. This week the latest indignation came when a local study committee looking to find the best way to spend the money found its funds running short due to some FTA snafu, leaving the committee without any money to continue its study.

So yet again Milwaukee sits with $91.5 million for transit sitting in a bank waiting to be spent, this time locked behind a wall of red tape. How long it will sit there this time is anybody’s guess.

As those of you heading to Capitol Hill next week during APTA’s Legislative Conference seek funds for your systems, keep this lesson in mind. It’s not just about securing that funding, it’s about making sure you can really spend it.

For the latest industry news, check out MassTransitMag.com’s Daily News section.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

While I was away for business last week my wife thought she heard a noise downstairs. Since the kids were already in bed with her, she understandably got nervous. So she slept with a flashlight and the phone next to her until I got home.

Now the flashlight and phone really didn’t provide her much extra security, but the thought of having them there made her feel better. This week King County Metro fired eight security guards who had past criminal records. The off-duty police officers who normally provide security for the service were up in arms. How could this happen?! The riders — not so much. One rider even said the security guards seemed approachable and that he didn’t feel frightened. I guess for transit it’s more about having security than being secure.

This got me to thinking about my last business trip. Going through an airport is such a chore these days. You practically have to strip down to get through security. You have take off your watch, coat, belt, shoes and pretty much everything else. The last time I went on a train, I stood on the platform reading my newspaper until the train arrived and then walked on board with my coffee in my hand.

Now here’s the interesting thing for me. Transit agencies have been fighting for riders for … well, ever. And to be honest, they’re winning that fight. 11 billion trips a year is pretty impressive. But it is interesting to note that a recent Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) report stated that transit agencies fight increasing security versus increasing hassling riders and/or delaying buses and trains.

When was the last time the airline industry worried about balancing ridership hassles against security? Every security measure in an airport, at least from what I have seen, is stated as being a necessary measure based on past events. We take off our shoes because someone put a bomb in theirs. We have to bag our liquids and not take anything liquid through security because of a plot to mix chemicals on a plane.

The thing here is that is this level of security making us safe? Sure, but more importantly it is making us feel safe. As the MTI report states, security for the transportation industry all changed on 9/11. With the level of that attack on airlines it’s no wonder the government threw a ton of money for increased security.

But there’s the thing, transit handles more people every morning than airports due in several days for a minute fraction of the funding they have on security. And transit does it with an open system. You can’t protect all of those bus stops and rail lines all of the time.

And yet, a massive amount of money goes to airports to make people safe — or is it feel safe. The thing about handing someone a security blanket is that you have to be careful not to throw it over his or her head in the process.

For the latest industry news, check out MassTransitMag.com’s Daily News section.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

How connected are you? I don’t mean the Tony Soprano kind of connected, or even the head of a major corporation kind of connected. I mean technologically connected. How in touch are you with what’s going on in technology? And by relation, how connected is your transit system?

Most transit systems have some sort of trip-planning set-up on its Web site. Many even have automated alerts sent via text message or e-mail to riders who sign up for the service. But is this the level of your system’s connectivity?

In California a group of tech-savvy riders have banded together to come up with new ways to track their local system. They have even staged a two-day “camp” to pool their creative resources and come up with better solutions. This isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened, though, having already taken place several times in Canada.

California seems to be the nexus for this type of activity in the United States. Of the 20 or so agencies listed on Google Transit, nearly half are from California. Not surprising, but with only 12 states listed on Google Transit, the question is why more agencies don’t use the resource.

Take Vancouver’s TransLink for example. They have launched a massive Internet undertaking called iMove (www.i-move.ca) that incorporates the various modes of transit with alerts on construction and traffic delays. This invaluable resource has uses by more than just transit riders and I think could well be the first of a series of similar Web sites.

This whole edition of the MT Position sprung from a couple of things. The first was spending the long weekend trying to see if it was feasible to drop our home landline and just go with cell phones and cell-based Internet service. It also came from the recent announcement that Verizon and AT&T just launched unlimited service plans (the first of many I am sure) for a flat fee. Sprint has had a similar service, including unlimited phone, text and Web usage, but only in select locations so far.

So the question arose, how connected are you and your transit agency? Because if you aren’t you had better catch up because your riders already are.

For the latest industry news, check out MassTransitMag.com’s Daily News section.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

Transit is a hotbed for invention. It is. Just look at all of the testing that is going on with alternative fuels, especially fuel cell technologies. Most electric trains utilize technologies like regenerative braking. And new technologies are tested every day in agencies across the country.

But rather than focusing on how to reengineer the fuel systems, perhaps the future of transit power lies in its greatest untapped resource — riders.

I read a story this week on an “electricity generating floor,” which could be used in transit agencies. The idea is that the movement of riders through a station would generate electricity due to the pounding of their feet on the floor.

This process of using people to generate electricity is already in use. The East Japan Railway Company is using the motion through turnstiles to activate piezo elements to generate electricity. In fact, piezo elements are one of the methods suggested as a means of generating electricity from people walking on floors.

These “crowd farms” are being studied by such places as MIT where two students are looking at the creation of a subflooring consisting of blocks that would slide against each other as people walked on them. This sliding action would work like a dynamo and generate electricity.

Mind you, any practical use of either technology is still a long ways off. But imagine having your stations powered by the very riders who walk into and out of it every day. The money it would save! Spin this out further to buildings or sidewalks. It is a very interesting idea.

Again here, this idea wouldn’t work without transit. A single person can only generate enough electricity to make a single bulb flicker slightly, but the crowds generated through transit could power so much more. And what better place to test things like this out.

As we move into the future, it’s important that we get across to the people funding transit — and those responsible for securing its funding — the benefits of mass transit beyond just moving people. I think the general public underestimates transit. I think most of them still see it as the local bus — you know, that thing that gets in your way when you’re driving.

How many people realize all the benefits transit provides not just the communities it serves, but our human community as a whole by its use. If we got that across, maybe it wouldn’t be a matter of us versus them when it comes to funding.

For the latest industry news, check out MassTransitMag.com’s Daily News section.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Ask the locals in London for the nearest subway and you’ll be pointed somewhere you didn’t want to go: to a pedestrian underpass, forbidding and barren, a walk through which is likely to stir one, irrepressible thought: that someone very bad is waiting for you at the other end.

What you really want, of course, is London’s tube or underground, a considerably better-attended venue that delivers the transport you thought you were asking for. Native New Yorkers like me will naturally liken the tube to their home town’s storied system, and, in some respects, the latter indeed tops the former.

The London tube falls about 5 hours a day short of New York’s 24/7 ubiquity, calling it a night at about 12 am, and its cars are in fact decidedly scruffier than the Apple’s, all but recast into a lending library for that day’s free Metro newspaper discards. Air-conditioning is a non-starter on the tube, and while the London system website (tfl.gov.uk) sports a cool Mapquest-like tube destination finder, its directions often ask me to start my journey from places I’ve never heard of. But the tube owns one mighty advantage the New York system can’t touch: if your train ride takes 15 minutes longer than it’s supposed to, you get your money back.

That incredible factoid is, well, credible. Supply the authorities with some identifying information and a passably accurate recollection about the place and time of the delay, and a reimbursement voucher heads your way in a week or two. I have been compensated twice so far for tube trips gone wrong, and when my stepdaughter was made to take to the buses after her line underwent serious problems a few years ago, she, and lots of other Londoners, were paid back for every day of their above-ground detours.

And the voucher is accompanied by a mea culpa that, for New Yorkers, seems unimaginably contrite:

Once one overcomes the disbelief that attends such official acts of kindness, the obvious question begins to loom: could the selfsame fare pay-back system be brought to New York’s subways, or any other American transit system, for that matter? I emailed that very surmise to New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, a response from which bobbed up in my inbox the next day. A representative explained:

Of course my correspondent has a point. What, after all, prevents scam-minded Londoners from imagining a delay, or more plausibly, alerting themselves to the news of an actual tie-up and insisting that, they too were on the 10:46 out of Tooting Bec (they really have station names like that), the one that languished beneath the Thames for an hour?

The answer to that near-rhetorical question is sealed in a chip implanted in the system’s Oyster card, a protean stub of plastic that, in addition to affording entrée into the tubes, collects a history of the bus and tube journeys amassed by its owner. Graze the Oyster against a tube stop scanner and a diary of the rider’s trips unfurls onscreen, with all the wheres and whens duly remembered. It’s rather eerie, and perhaps born of deeper security concerns, but these mini-archives enable system watchdogs to cross-check their reports of delays against actual passenger whereabouts. And by simply requiring claimants to post their Oyster card number on refund applications - submitted easily online - the system stops a good many of the fraudsters in their tracks, as it were. (And consider the new Oyster incentive - top up, or refill, your card on the Transit for London website and you get to download 5 free iTunes selections. I’m making my list even as we speak.)

Is there, then, any good reason why the London precedent couldn’t be transposed to American transit systems? The technology is there, and the example has been set. New York’s Mayor Bloomberg has already folded London’s auto congestion charge idea into his budget strategy; why couldn’t he, and mayors of other cities, imitate London’s fare-back beneficence as well? Mass transit, is, after all, nothing if not a time-sensitive enterprise - and if London is prepared to take the hit for its tardy trains, why should American systems recuse themselves from reprisal?

Abbot Katz is a New Yorker currently living in London.

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

It’s interesting to look back on things. Just a few decades ago we had no idea how much of what we were doing was bad for us. Take smoking for example. You watch old movies and everyone was smoking. Even movies not so long ago had people smoking in them. Now smoking is not only been declared dangerous for your health, but for those around you and the World Health Organization has declared a massive worldwide effort to stamp out (pardon the pun) the spread of smoking.

It’s amazing how in a few decades you can go from something socially acceptable to seemingly taboo. Take biofuel for example.

Biofuels?

Yep, the darling of the transit industry, biofuels, which only a month ago were touted as being able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 90 percent are now being cautioned against. New reports that widespread conversion of crops to biofuel producing varieties could increase the release of carbon by 420 percent.

Here’s the thing, though. These reports have focused on corn-based ethanol and they are assuming widespread converting of rainforests and grasslands to make the corn for the ethanol. Haven’t we been told for years that destroying the rainforests would add to the increase in greenhouse gases and global warming?

Yes, but if you tack that information on to a study about ethanol crop production it makes that look bad. I can’t help but shake my head at this. Socrates said, “Everything in moderation. Nothing in excess.” That kind of seems common sense.

That should apply here, but it doesn’t. The study talks about widespread conversion to biofuel crops. Not conversion to biofuel crops to supplement our current fuel supplies.

It’s much like what the current administration is looking to do with transit funding. We had a report come out earlier this year that the entire transportation infrastructure was in need of fixing. Note the word ‘entire’ here. Of course, the response was to underfund transit and basically steal from the Mass Transit Account in the Highway Trust Fund to bolster the Highway Account.

Everything in moderation, remember? Balance the highways with mass transit, not sacrifice one to prop up the other. But right now with the public in fear of their local bridges collapsing, it’s far easier to justify this shifting of funds.

It’s just easier to get someone to pay up for something they are scared about.

For the latest industry news, check out MassTransitMag.com’s Daily News section.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

It’s a week before the Super Bowl (next Tuesday) and the rhetoric is already flying fast and furious. On the NFC (Republican) side you have allegations of dirty tricks being leveled and on the AFC (Democrat) side you have a locker room that’s fallen apart as its two leaders take to sniping at each other. Meanwhile the Commissioner (President) stepped up to the mic and made his State of the Union Address.

I like having the State of the Union during that week off between the NFL Divisional Championship games and the Super Bowl. It gives you something to focus on other than the minutia that the sports media scrutinizes for five days. And really, how much like the NFL is the political spectrum these days.

The presidential election playoffs are in full swing with several teams dropping out in the last week and the remaining candidates are making their last minute game plans. So how is the league these days?

Well, when it comes to transit, it is like being the fan of a team in the playoffs. Take for example this line from President Bush:

“To keep our economy growing, we also need reliable supplies of affordable, environmentally responsible energy….And my budget provides strong funding for leading-edge technology…”

(Waves pennant.) Whoo!

There you go, he’s talking about transit. What better way is there to showcase affordable, environmentally responsible energy? Think of the gas savings by riding transit! And the greenhouse gases that will be cut! And no other industry is leading the way with alternative fuels as much as transit!

“…from hydrogen-fueled cars, to clean coal, to renewable sources such as ethanol.”

(Lowers pennant.) Oh.

So I guess he’s still talking about cars. But what about last year’s whole discussion on America’s addiction to foreign oil. Remember this from last year:

“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.”

Hrm. Hybrid vehicles? Check. Clean diesel? Check. Bidodiesel? Check.

Last year as I watched the State of the Union I was waiting for the President to mention public transit. So much of the speech revolved around America’s burgeoning energy crisis and transit seemed a logical part of the solution. Of course, he didn’t mention it.

Now think back since the last State of the Union and all that happened. The escalating gas prices. The I-35 bridge collapse. The National Surface Transportation Commission’s report that basically said we need infrastructure assistance at every level.

And this year’s State of the Union didn’t mention public transit … again.

It’s not a matter of why didn’t the President mention it; it’s more along the lines of how couldn’t he.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com