Transportation For America

Despite new challenges, Americans continue flocking to public transportation

June 16, 2009
By Andrew Bielak

This week, the American Public Transportation Association released their ridership numbers for the first quarter (January through March) of 2009, and confirmed something that we’ve been suspecting: Despite facing a dismal economy, deep cuts in service, and painful fare increases, Americans are continuing to use public transportation in near record numbers.

As we’ve been documenting on our transit cuts page and interactive map, nearly 100 transit agencies have already cut service, raised fares, laid off workers — or are considering cuts of some kind to cope with the severe budget crises facing counties, towns and cities across the country. Nevertheless, as the new report from APTA shows, total ridership reached 2.6 million in the first three months of 2009 — nearly matching last year’s record numbers — and proving that public transportation is critical to American’s livelihood, even if it has become less accessible and affordable for many.

While these cutbacks have caused many agencies to lose some riders, many others are doing more than just hanging on in these tough times:

King County Department of Transportation in Seattle reported a 16.8% increase in light rail ridership, despite increasing fares earlier this year.
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority in Boston logged a 5.4% increase in ridership on its commuter rail system, in spite of a budget crisis that is prompting talks of a 15 to 20% fare increase, along with service cuts.
The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System experienced a 5.3% jump in ridership on its bus system, despite eliminating numerous bus routes and cutting others earlier this year.

While this crisis is causing extreme hardship for many agencies, most of them (specifically, those that service metro areas with more than 200,000 people) are not allowed to use federal dollars to help run their buses and rail systems. Congress recently approved legislation that allows 10 percent of the stimulus funds to be used on operating assistance, but this will not continue once those recovery funds run out.

U.S. Representative Russ Carnahan of St. Louis — one of the cities hardest hit by transit cuts — is sponsoring a bill that would allow transit agencies to plug the holes in their operating budgets with federal dollars on a permanent basis. Let’s make sure we get behind Rep. Carnahan and the others are working to rebuild our economy with a revitalized transportation system.

CNN finds out just how much transit cuts are hurting communities across the U.S.

April 1, 2009
By Andrew Bielak

As painful transit cuts cripple more and more agencies across the country, major national networks are gradually tuning in to the story and seeing just how bad things are. CNN is the latest to cover the transit cuts phenomenon that’s wreaking havoc on the largest and smallest of our public transportation systems.

In a four-minute segment last week, CNN used Transportation for America’s handy map — which we created to document the 85 communities that are being forced to either cut service, increase fares, or lay off workers due to budget crises at the local and state level — and took an in-depth look at some of the impacts of cutting back public transportation at a time when Americans are riding transit in record numbers.

In case you hadn’t heard recently about the story at a local level, check out what’s going on in places like New York and San Francisco, where officials are desperately searching for ways to avoid massive fare increases or eliminations of entire routes, or in cities like St. Louis, which had already suspended service to 2,300 bus stops as of March 30.

If you are being affected by these cuts, know anyone who is, or simply want to push for a more affordable and more effective transportations system, urge Congress to make sure that the next six years of transportation spending charts a course for a bold new direction.

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Filed Under: Campaign Blog
Tags: cnn, fare increases, featured, service cuts, st. louis, transit cutbacks

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The United States of Transit Cutbacks

Driving is down and transit ridership is at record highs. Yet transit agencies across the country are considering layoffs, service cuts and fare hikes. Find out more and learn what you can do to help at t4america.org/transitcuts