Last week, amidst the din in Congress over debt ceilings, budget deals and spending cuts, 25 senators spoke up for the critical role of transit in helping Americans get to work, look for work and actually get work. In a letter sent to Finance Committee leaders, the senators (including all six from the tri-state region) demand that public transportation gets its fair share of federal funding in the next transportation authorization bill: “As $4 per gasoline hampers our nation’s economic recovery and public transportation continues to experience its highest ridership levels of the past five decades, we request your help in address the transit crisis our rural, suburban, and urban communities are facing.”
The urgency for federal transit funding comes at a time when the House of Representatives is developing its own transportation bill which follows Rep. Ryan’s budget direction to cut transportation funding by 31%.
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, who chairs the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Transit, rallied his colleagues to speak up for transit funding. As Streetsblog readers quickly noticed, not a single Republican senator signed on to the letter even though the demand for affordable transportation options is not just an urban phenomenon on the left coasts. As previously reported in MTR, rising gas prices has lead to spikes in transit ridership in rural, suburban, small towns as well as large cities.
What’s Next for T-Bill?
It remains to be seen if Congress can come to agreement on the size, scale and scope of the next federal transportation bill before the 7th extension of the existing bill, SAFETEA-LU, expires on September 30. As Sen. Menendez notes, “If spending continues at current levels, the highway account could run out of money next year and the transit account shortly thereafter.”
The goalposts on when the House’s Transportation and Infrastructure and the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committees will unveil their transportation proposals are ever-changing. Yesterday, Tanya Snyder of Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported that House leadership “has put the kibosh on Transportation Committee Chair John Mica’s plans to get a bill out of committee and to the House floor in July.” Last week, the Journal of Commerce reported that the Senate will likely introduce a 2-year bill that holds the line on existing SAFETEA-LU funding levels. That would make the proposals from the House and Senate very different.
Business Leaders Pump Up the Volume for Infrastructure
While it is all too easy to feel hopeless at the prospects of federal transportation bill this year given the partisan distance on spending, those who believe we should cut our way into the future are not the only ones making noise. Calls from business leaders for a greater sense of urgency for robust infrastructure investment are making waves. Bill Ford, Chairman of Ford Motor Company recently spoke on the impact of traffic jams around the world and the need to develop better mass transit systems as a solution to global warming and economic competitiveness.
Earlier this month, MarketWatch asked economists, financial analysts, bankers and CEOs to comment on the relationship between America’s prosperity and its transportation system. It found an overwhelming consensus from the business community (big and small) that the economy relied on sound infrastructure:
“Substantial under-investment [in infrastructure] will also mean higher transportation costs, whether rail, trucking or shipping, and that will make American-made goods more expensive overseas and less competitive,” said Gus Faucher, an economist with Moody’s Analytics. […]
“Our existing transportation network is deteriorating. This is happening now. It is happening today, said Martin Wachs, a researcher with the Rand Corporation. “In the short run it is construction companies, but in the longer term it is those that operate any business because their efficiency and operating costs are affected by the congestion.”
Even General Motors Co. and the generally tax-averse U.S. Chamber of Commerce have recently called for a federal gas tax hike in order to pay for necessary improvements to our country’s aging infrastructure network. And one of the most influential investors in the world of finance is saying it’s time for deficit-obsessed Congress to rejoin the real world. Bill Gross, co-founder of investment management giant PIMCO, adds, “Government must take a leading role in job creation. Conservative or even liberal agendas that cede responsibility for job creation to the private sector over the next few years are simply dazed or perhaps crazed… An infrastructure bank to fund badly needed reconstruction projects is a commonly accepted idea…”
While it’s unclear if those that support robust infrastructure investment are outnumbered by those that support additional cuts to transportation spending, one thing is clear – it’s time for the former to pump up the volume.
Photo: Sen. Menendez’s official website.
