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States are spending only a fraction of available federal funds for pedestrian safety, according to a new national report. (Click to download.) A new report from Transportation For America and the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership, Dangerous by Design, finds that pedestrians continue to suffer from alarmingly high fatality rates in much of the [...] Total traffic fatalities have fallen over the last 3 years to all-time lows. But cyclist and pedestrian deaths have actually risen slightly, and the management report does not track injuries. Last week, Mayor Bloomberg released the fiscal year 2009 edition of the Mayor’s Management Report, a numbers-heavy “report card” that evaluates city agencies [...] New Jerseyans are driving less and taking transit more, according to a just-released update of the Campaign’s The State of Transportation: Benchmarks for Sustainable Transportation in New Jersey. The number of miles New Jersey residents traveled by bus and rail grew by 45 percent from 1997 to 2007, while driving grew by less than [...] Transportation Alternatives’ recent report, “Executive Order: A Mayoral Strategy for Traffic Safety,” confirms with hard data what is apparent to anyone who has walked, ridden a bicycle, or driven in New York City recently: that the streets can resemble a scene from Escape from New York, with little enforcement of the most basic traffic [...] Yesterday, TSTC board member Charles Komanoff presented the newest version of his masterpiece Balanced Transportation Analyzer (BTA) to a packed room at the Manhattan headquarters of Sam Schwartz Engineering. The Analyzer estimates how different tolls and transit fare incentives would influence commuter behavior in NYC, and calculates the resulting travel speeds, revenues, and other [...] NJ Transit’s $1.79 billion FY 2010 operating budget, approved last week, avoids a fare hike and major service cuts despite a $62 million reduction in state operating aid. NJ Transit is filling the gap by slashing administrative costs, a laudable achievement, but one that may be hard to repeat in future years. MTR has written before that the bigger problem is that NJ Transit lacks a dedicated source of operating funding and must annually go begging to the state legislature. Because the legislature consistently underfunds the agency, NJ Transit diverts significant funding from its capital budget to operations. In the most recent budget, diverted capital funds made up 21% of the operating budget — over $350 million in mostly borrowed money that should be going towards maintenance, new buses and train stations, and the like. Transit agencies across the country, including those listed below, are grappling with budget cuts and rising operating costs. But NJ Transit is the largest transit provider in the country without a dedicated source of operating funds, making it especially vulnerable to fiscal woes. Here’s how some of NJ Transit’s peers keep their buses and trains running.  All figures are from 2007, the most recent year in the FTA's National Transit Database. (Note that California no longer has a dedicated state transit tax -- see below.) Chicago’s Regional Transit AuthorityThe RTA was established in 1974 to provide oversight of Chicago’s transit system. A decade later, the RTA’s responsibilities shifted giving it authority over the operating and fare responsibilities for the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra commuter rail and Pace suburban bus. At that time, a county sales tax was enacted to support transit operations, and a state match of 30% of tax revenues was imposed. Cook County’s rate was set at a higher level (now 1 and 1/4 cent after a 2008 increase) than the surrounding 5 counties (now 3/4 cent) and one-third of the suburban tax revenues was set aside for the suburban counties. The tax currently brings in about $1 billion annually. More recently, the state legislature passed in January 2008 a real estate transfer tax in the City of Chicago, which brings in between $20 and $100 million annually. The state match for both taxes amounts to approximately $300 million. Importantly, the law which established the RTA requires that half of operating expenses be serviced through fares, advertising, investment income and concessions. This forces the RTA to periodically raise fares. The widely-reported Urban Mobility Study from the Texas Transportation Institute, released today, finds that nationwide travel delay due to congestion declined slightly from 2006 to 2007. In the 25 years that the study examines, this represents one of the few years that travel delay has declined. TTI points to spiking gasoline prices and the [...] Today, Smart Growth America released a new report detailing states’ progress in meeting the Obama administration’s goals of jump-starting the economy and laying the foundation for future economic growth. The report, “The States and the Stimulus,” finds that almost one-third of the flexible ARRA Surface Transportation Program funding committed by states so far is [...] The Federal Highway Administration wants its money back, and NYSDOT is obliging at the expense of two environmentally friendly federal grant programs: Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) and Transportation Enhancements (TE). In the diagram above, each glass represents the amount the state can potentially spend (the apportionment) on a specific federal program. The [...] |
 
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