Transit Bill Needs Senate Help
The House of Representatives passed a good bill back in June to give federal support to local transit agencies feeling budgetary squeeze from the downturn, and Hillary Clinton introduced a Senate version of the bill that’s garnered support thus far from the New York and New Jersey delegations. But as Ben Fried points out “The problems that the bill addresses are not confined to two states.”
News of service cuts and fare hikes keeps pouring in from places as far-flung as San Diego, Corpus Christi, Cleveland, and Burlington. All are getting squeezed by fuel costs while handling ridership surges as great as 35 percent or higher.
Keeping service running smoothly while new riders switch to transit is not solely the concern of one party, either. Republican Senator George Voinovich of Ohio just directed a $1.5 million earmark to Dayton’s transit agency, saying “it is critical that we continue to make our public transportation systems more efficient and accessible.”
Organizing needed funding through earmarks, however, is not an especially sound way to proceed. Far better to pass a proper, widely applicable bill that uses the federal government’s ability to engage in deficit spending to help provide some transit stimulus. At a time when booming energy prices are the main factor driving an economic downturn, cutting back on alternative transportation services is extremely foolish and will only prolong economic problems.
16 Responses to “Transit Bill Needs Senate Help”
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August 15th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
I guess a rational approach would be to have some formula to distribute aid, partly to support the existing, partly to expand and modernize.
I would also create a novel budgetary procedure to finish earmarks once for all. Each Congresscreature would have, say, a billion to spend as he or she sees fit. The rest of the budget should have no earmarks whatsoever, everything by formula etc.
So, a bridge to nowhere could be build, but if you blew half of your billion on something benefiting only 1/1000th of your constituents, the other constituents could be rather cross. By making what is currently an earmark a zero-sum game, we would make some incentive to be rational.
August 15th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
At a time when booming energy prices are the main factor driving an economic downturn, cutting back on alternative transportation services is extremely foolish and will only prolong economic problems.
Whether or not it’s a good bill, in general transit users, especially people who commute by transit, should be paying a much, much larger share of the cost of providing the service than they do now. Higher transit ticket prices are a good thing and should be encouraged.
August 16th, 2008 at 6:46 am
And meanwhile, the Secretary of Transportation is trying to move money from the mass transit portion of the Highway Trust Fund to fund road upkeep (NY Times, July 29).
August 16th, 2008 at 11:57 am
There’s really not much point in passing any legislation now. If McCain wins, the downward spiral of our society will get faster and more downward. The game is rigged, there’s no point in playing right now.
Is that tough on the American people? Damn straight it is. People are dying and being disabled and just going crazy from the stress.
But that’s the price we’re paying for thinking we could be happy idiots and leave the governing to our betters. Call it a learning curve, call it a wake-up call, whatever.
As for Mixner, if he isn’t getting paid for his drum-beating propaganda comments, he really is a poor sap.
August 16th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
I quite agree. The first step, of course, is to charge car drivers something closer to 100% of their cost of driving than 66%, so that its possible to ratchet up the fares on the transit commuters to expand transit systems without the yellow bellied surplus suckers just abandoning transit for the other partial free ride of driving.
That way we get more cycle commuting, more transit funding, and less driving, all in one policy package … nirvana.
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