To pass it, churches, faith-based groups and local organizers teamed up with businesses and institutions.  As we’ve seen in similar local measures, they won by explaining exactly what taxpayer money would buy, building a diverse coalition and getting out the vote.

This in-depth story is part of our Transportation Vote 2012 coverage. Communities across the country are preparing to vote on the people, plans and projects that will set the tone for transportation progress in the months and years to come. These are the places that will provide the energy, innovation and inspiration for the next national vision for transportation. Transportation Vote 2012 will help educate voters, advocates and candidates and keep abreast of transportation-related issues as they unfold.

A crisis point

Even before the prolonged fiscal crisis hitting governments everywhere, Baton Rouge’s Capital Area Transit System (CATS) struggled to do more with less. Over the last few years, service had degraded to the point that the wait for a bus exceeded 75 minutes and average rides were over two hours long. The system was saved repeatedly only by last-ditch city budget shuffles, creative grants and even private donations.

The biggest recent blow came when Louisiana State University backed out of the CATS system after years of student complaints and contracted with a new (more expensive) private operator. That meant a loss of $2.4 million from the CATS annual budget.

In 2010, a parish-wide tax to support the transit system failed at the ballot box, in part because large parts of the parish (same as counties in other states) don’t use or have access to the service. When projections came in that the transit agency would be so far in the red they’d have to shut down in summer 2011, it became painfully clear that something major needed to be done.

After cobbling together grants and funding to make it through 2011, the mayor appointed a Blue Ribbon Commission to make recommendations not only to save the service, but to create something much better. But the first job was to save the system, as Rev. Raymond Jetson, the chair of that commission, told the Baton Rouge Advocate:  “Before there can be a robust transit system, before you can do novel things like light rail between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and before you can have street cars from downtown to LSU, you have to have a backbone to the system,” he said. “And that backbone is a quality bus system.”

The commission learned that Baton Rouge was the largest city of its size in the country to have a transit system without a dedicated revenue source, subsisting on annual local government appropriations.

But before putting a funding measure to voters, the commission recommended significant reforms to the composition of the transit board and an end to the ability of the Metro Council to veto the board’s decisions. “Governance reform and long term accountability … helped separate it from the previous failed measures,” said Broderick Bagert of Together Baton Rouge, a broad, multi-racial, faith-based coalition of institutions backing the measure.

Photo courtesy of Frank McMains, www.frankmcmains.com

So how did they do it?

Coalition building

The first step was to build the core coalition that would push this measure to victory.

Enter Together Baton Rouge, a relatively new organization of churches, faith-based groups, social workers, and university students and groups. Together Baton Rouge led the way as the grassroots behind the measure, coordinating call banks, get-out-the-vote rallies, more than 120 educational “transit academies” and door-to-door canvassing of tens of thousands of homes by hundreds of volunteers. (Note that LSU students chose to get actively involved even though CATS was no longer the provider of their transit service on campus.)

They began with three informational meetings with 300-400 people each, where “community members told other community members why things were bad and what the new plan was,” said Bagert.

“We asked two questions on the sign-in card: ‘Do you want to be part of a voter outreach campaign?’ and, ‘Are you part of an organization and would you be willing to organize one of these sessions?’ We built a strong base of people that wanted to help do outreach and educate their fellow community members.”

Photo courtesy of Together Baton Rouge

In part because of the groundwork of the Blue Ribbon Commission and other partnerships, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber got on board along with other business groups. Hotels and hospitals, whose leaders realized how much of their workforce depended on CATS each day, joined in.

Colletta Barrett, vice president of missions for Our Lady of the Lake hospital system told the Advocate that 10 percent of OLOL’s staff, or 400 people, use CATS.

It is imperative, she said, that a transit system is available to move people from North Baton Rouge to the medical corridor in the southern part of the parish.“It’s unacceptable that it takes an hour and 45 minutes to get to this side of town,” she said. “We have told our employees that we have an individual social responsibility to take care of each other.”

And:

Ralph Ney, hotel general manager for Embassy Suites [hotel], said about 15 percent of his workforce uses CATS to get to work, which sometimes results in his employees being late.

“It’s difficult to hire and maintain employees who don’t have transportation,” said Ney, who was a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission. “It’s evolved to where a lot of our employees don’t even take the bus because they can’t get to work on time, so they’re riding bikes or catching rides.”

A key part of the coalition was the Center for Planning Excellence (CPEX), a T4 America partner and non-profit that helps Louisiana communities with planning issues and addressing complex problems with effective, forward-thinking, implementable solutions. They became involved through their CONNECT initiative to build a diverse coalition across the New Orleans to Baton Rouge super region to advocate for smarter housing and transportation investments. The CONNECT initiative concluded that one of the critical pieces for regional connectivity is a viable, robust transit system serving the metro area. This was also strongly recommended in the new comprehensive plan for Baton Rouge, called FutureBR.

CPEX worked with many of the former members of the Blue Ribbon Commission to create the Baton Rouge Transit Coalition, a diverse set of partners who provided information, resources and conducted educational outreach to the Baton Rouge community.  They hosted numerous outreach meetings, advocated for the changes to CATS governance in the state house, created a website that became a clearinghouse for facts and research during the campaign, and worked closely with the Baton Rouge Area Chamber to solicit support from the business community — in addition to being a strong part of the grassroots effort led primarily by Together Baton Rouge.

In the end, the boosters of the transit measure had built a coalition that had strong grassroots, wide reach, and a diverse range of interests. Without the participation of any one of the core coalition members — Together Baton Rouge’s grassroots and trusted community members, CPEX and their coalition of transit boosters and others, and the area Chamber and the business community — the effort would not have had the same success.

Trusted messengers — and message

Broderick Bagert of Together Baton Rouge summed up this strategy simply: “We let the community leaders be out front leading the way. Not professionals, not paid staff, not elected officials, not transit officials.”

“One of the strengths of this effort was that the plan was created by community leaders and many of the important people were already behind the plan,” said Rachel DiResto of CPEX. “It certainly took some effort to get new folks on board, but the important pillars were already on board. We didn’t need to convince them.”

For the message, especially in the key districts with heavy transit usage and service, the campaign kept it very basic. “Save our system.” They noted that Baton Rouge was the only city of its size without a decent transit system, and talked about the people who depend on it each day: Perhaps the nurse who cares for your mother at the hospital, or your neighbor or friend. The campaign steered clear of some of the typical statistics in transit campaigns about reducing traffic congestion, gas prices or environmental impacts.

The above story about the hospital and hotel workers shows how the advocates built a larger, inclusive narrative and a vision for the community’s future. The events were filled with personal stories and made the impact of the system (and the potential impacts of not having it or having it improved) clear to everyone, regardless of who they were, where they lived, or whether or not they rode CATS.

Success wasn’t due to being the smartest person in the room armed with the most data and facts. It was about making the impacts real and relatable through powerful stories helping people realize the bonds and impacts of community.

“Outreach, outreach, outreach”

To deliver that message, Together Baton Rouge and the coalition held an insanely ambitious number of community outreach sessions they called “transit academies” or “civic academies” in churches, community centers and other venues. In the four-month campaign leading up to the April 21 vote, they hosted 120 of these sessions.

“Anywhere anyone wanted to hear more, we did a presentation,” said DiResto of CPEX. “And it paid off with more people who hadn’t been active voters showing up at the polls for a special election.”

Photo courtesy of Together Baton Rouge

These meetings were largely targeted to areas and precincts where support and heavy turnout would be needed to shift the outcome of the vote. “The diversity of those meetings was a huge plus,” DiResto said. “People who would never ride CATS were sitting in the same meetings with those who ride it every day. And their stories really impacted the former.”

The Advocate told one such story, about Fred Skelton, a 70-year-old Baton Rouge homeowner who had never ridden a CATS bus before. But during one community meeting he said he would be “first in line at his voting precinct to support” the 10-year, 10.6-mill property tax. The reason, he said, is because before his mother died, she used to stay at a nursing home where he’d visit her. When he visited, he said, he remembered frequently seeing groups of employees waiting for the bus.

“Those people who were waiting for the bus are the people who were taking care of my mother,” he said. “If we shut down the transit system, who will take care of those people?”

Strategic precinct targeting

Resources are always limited in a campaign, and therefore best deployed where they can make the most impact. The overall strategy — change minds of people on the fence, increase support from typically opposed groups, or focus primarily on the base — determines where resources should be targeted.

One of the biggest differences between this successful measure and the recent failed measure in 2010 was the use of more strategic targeting of resources in key precincts. Though the campaign did deploy some resources in suburban areas with small amounts of service, mostly to blunt opposition, the brunt of their efforts focused on getting out the vote in their strongest precincts.

Canvassing team. Photo courtesy of Together Baton Rouge

“We did detailed analysis of the electorate,” said Bagert of Together Baton Rouge. “We referred to the recent failed measure for background, which helped analyze the lay of the land. We focused our direct energy on turning out the strongest [most supportive] precincts, leaving out voters that had no voting history in the last 4 years. We tried to get 10 percent of the 2008 presidential election voters to vote for the measure.”

As a result of this strategy, the campaign was well poised to bounce back and succeed when The Advocate threw a curveball late in the game and editorialized against the transit tax, which likely cost the campaign a significant amount of support in precincts with already low support or people and groups that were undecided.

Making the benefits tangible and measurable

Whether it is the federal program or a local ballot measure, voters need to know what our dollars are really “buying” at the end of the day. Are they going to fix our bridges? How will they better connect workers with jobs, make their lives eaier, save them money?

On this count, the coalition in Baton Rouge did an admirable job of making this crystal clear — backed in large part by the commission recommendations that had large buy-in from day one. In every meeting they offered a list of promised CATS improvements:

CATS promises the following changes if the tax passes:

• Decreased average wait times for buses from 75 minutes to 15 minutes.
• Eight new express and limited stop lines, serving the airport, universities, mall and other areas.
• GPS tracking on the entire fleet, with exact arrival times accessible on cellphones.
• New shelters, benches and signage at bus stops.
• Expanded service to high-demand areas and increased routes, from 19 to 37.
• Three new transfer centers operating in a grid system to replace the outdated route system that leads all buses back to Florida Boulevard.
• A foundation for Bus Rapid Transit, a system in which buses get their own right-of-way lanes.

The ambitiousness of the promised changes was part of the success. Given the (somewhat unfair) perception that CATS was a poorly governed money drain, simply offering up a plan to pour money into CATS and hope for the best was not going to fly. People had to be inspired to believe that things actually would get better.

Similar specificity and transparency, including a long-range map of projects, helped win 67 percent of the vote for Measure R in Los Angeles. Supporters in Atlanta hope that a pre-approved list of transit and road projects will help convince voters to support a regional sales tax this July. The Baton Rouge formula – specific improvements, accountability reforms and relentless grassroots engagement – could offer a path to similar success.

Wrapping it up

The transit ballot measure was approved on April 21 in Baton Rouge, 54 percent to 46 percent and the municipality of Baker, 58 percent to 42 percent. In Zachary, a more suburban area with little service, it was rejected, 79 percent to 21 percent. Early returns showed the measure losing with only 40 percent support, but “then the precincts we had worked came in and voted in historic levels, supporting the measure at around 90 percent in those key precincts,” according to Bagert. “The key was really getting strong vote in supportive precincts.”

The story isn’t over, however.

The governance reforms for CATS, including changing the Metro Council’s veto power, are still passing through the state legislature. (The council’s veto power over changes in fares, routes, schedules and other operations was cited by the Blue Ribbon Commission as a key factor crippling the transit system.) The board nominating process will also change so that 13 different groups that have a stake in transit system (hospitals, businesses, etc.) can nominate members to the board.

Though some groups that were opposed are considering some legal challenges to the tax itself, the Baton Rouge story shows us a great success story of how a community rallied around their important transit system, fought to save it and improve it, and built a winning campaign to do exactly that.

Advice for others

Facing a ballot measure in your area? Planning one? Here are four last smart pieces of advice to take with you from Rachel DiResto from the Center for Planning Excellence.

• Bring core partners to the table early and find your champions who have to be willing to speak well to various audiences and who are willing to expend time and energy for your cause;
• Frequent communication with other partners is critical to maximize resources and not duplicate efforts;
• Focus on the voter outcome – grassroots advocacy is essential – target those folks who are supportive and mobilize them to show up to vote instead of spending all of your energy combatting those opposed.
• Frequent outreach to different sectors – know your message for various audiences

The election day team for Mid City. Photo courtesy of Together Baton Rouge

Excited? Encouraged? Learn something that you didn’t know before? Let us know in the comments.

Our sincere thanks go out to Broderick Bagert of Together Baton Rouge and Rachel DiResto and Lacy Strohschein of the Center for Planning Excellence for their time and information for the behind-the-scenes story of their success. And also to Rebekah Allen of the Advocate, whose solid reporting on the issue for the last few years was invaluable for understanding and background, as well as the source of valuable quotes.

Follow all Transportation Vote 2012 coverage here.

The initial House bill proposed eliminating all dedicated funding for public transportation, ending a bipartisan agreement that’s been in place since 1982. Though the current rumor is that the House will restore that funding after massive opposition from across the country, other provisions are still in place that will cut funds from larger transit agencies, create unneeded bureaucracy, and also result in a fragmented system of moving freight.

Under H.R. 7, transit providers that operate both bus and rail services would be barred from a program used to buy buses or build bus facilities.

The ironic consequence, under a bill advertised as reducing streamlining bureaucracy, is that large transit agencies — rather than forego $900 million in aid — would be forced to split into separate rail and bus agencies.

Rep. Gerold Nadler, who represents part of New York City, pointed this out during the markup of the bill in the House Transportation Committee, a fact that no one quite seemed to realize up to that point. It wouldn’t prevent large transit agencies from getting these grants for bus service, it would just employ a host of lawyers, he said, as every large U.S. transit agency like New York’s MTA splits into two agencies.

This shortsighted provision means that tax dollars that should be providing much-needed transit services in local communities are diverted to bureaucratic overhead instead. Amendments offered by several members (numbered 17, 59 and 136) would reinstate current law and eliminate this provision.

H.R. 7 also would foster bureaucracy in freight planning, according to Leslie Blakey from the Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors, via a guest post at Transportation Issues Daily:

The new movement to relinquish federal responsibilities to states stands to fracture a comprehensive system of interconnectivity.

Our goods movement system is not confined to politically-designated state borders – rather, it is an expansive, holistic system that stretches from coast-to-coast and across international boundaries. Along our commerce system, bridges serve to connect states, single freight hubs provide service to several states in a 5-mile radius, and roads weave back-and-forth over state lines.

One key provision…encourages states to compose their own freight advisory committees and develop their own freight plans. Emphasis on the need for freight planning is a welcomed notion; however, planning for our national freight system must take place at the federal level.

So instead of having one national freight plan to keep goods flowing, H.R. 7 would create 50 different state freight advisory boards, with 50 state plans for freight movement. This fragmented, scattershot approach stands in stark contrast to the clear national focus for freight in the Senate bill.

Moving freight across the country is a national issue that needs a national plan, and if the House truly wants to streamline and cut unneeded bureaucracy, they should look closely at the national approach in MAP-21 and abandon their fragmented approach that would do neither.

—

With the House in recess and the Senate poised to pass a bipartisan transportation bill this week, we’ll be taking a longer look at a few other issues with the House transportation bill in the coming days — and how some of those issues can be fixed. Though they may have addressed one issue by restoring dedicated transit funding (reportedly, though not publicly confirmed), there are still other issues that need work to improve the bill and get a bipartisan majority of House members to support it.

The Ways and Means Committee, which is responsible for writing the funding portion of the bill, approved their financing plan along almost party lines this morning, 20-17. (Two GOP reps voted against the bill.)

This plan attacks three decades of successful investments in mass transit by ending the historic guarantee for dedicated funding for public transportation — originally started under President Ronald Reagan almost 30 years ago — placing every public transportation system in immediate peril and leaving millions of riders already faced with service cuts and fare increases out in the cold.

The proposal would take away the 2.86 cents out of the total 18.4 cent motor fuel tax currently directed into the transit account of the Highway Trust Fund and redirect that 2.86 cents into highway spending. Transit would no longer have a guaranteed and protected funding source, instead becoming subject to yearly appropriations fights and the need to find offsets for funding — all while highway spending continues to be guaranteed with protected funds for half a decade at a time.

In just 12 hours after hearing the initial news, we gathered signatures from more than 600 groups, notable individuals and elected officials.

More than 75 national organizations signed the letter — including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, AARP, the American Public Transportation Association, the National Rural Assembly, American Society of Civil Engineers, LOCUS (real estate developers), National Association of Counties— and a huge list of other individuals and state & local groups, including the governors of Oregon and Washington, several state DOTs, state and local Chambers of Commerce, and hundreds of state and local organizations nationwide.

Unfortunately, the committee chose to ignore this broad opposition — including opposition from other groups like the conservative Club for Growth and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) — and went ahead with their short-sighted plan.

The markup wasn’t quite as contentious as yesterday’s in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, though it was about 16 hours shorter. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, with several years of experience on the transportation committee under his belt, took it as his job to educate his fellow members on this finance-focused committee about transportation — many of whom may not have ever taken up the transportation financing portion before due to how rarely it comes up.

Rep. Blumenauer noted that for 30 years, having a Trust Fund in place — a mechanism with some degree of certainty — has been crucial for transit agencies’ “ability to make multiple year commitments that allow them to operate with some degree of certainty.” (For more specific comments, check this Streetsblog Capitol Hill summary of the markup.)

This Ways and Means bill now moves to the House floor, along with the more substantial portion marked up yesterday by the transportation committee. That floor process could begin as early as late next week, but more likely the week of the 13th.

This morning we sent this letter (below) to the Ways and Means Committee and the entire House of Representatives in strong opposition to this House leadership plan to end a 30-year precedent of providing dedicated funding for public transportation from the federal fuel tax.

In less than 12 hours, we gathered signatures from more than 600 groups, notable individuals and elected officials. More than 75 national organizations — including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, AARP, the American Public Transportation Association, the National Rural Assembly, American Society of Civil Engineers, LOCUS (real estate developers), National Association of Counties— and a huge list of other individuals and state & local groups, including the governors of Oregon and Washington, several state DOTs, state and local Chambers of Commerce, and hundreds of state and local organizations nationwide.

Read the full letter here, where you can see the full list of all groups that signed.

Although Ways and Means markup is about to begin this morning, there’s still time to contact your House rep and let them know that you stand against this raid on transit funding.

—

Dear Chairman Camp and Ranking Member Levin:

For the past thirty years, Congress has provided dedicated funding for highway and transit programs through an excise tax on gasoline dedicated to the Highway Trust Fund. This funding structure has successfully provided highway and transit programs with secure, dedicated revenues and budgetary firewalls dating back to the Reagan administration. The success of this approach is without question: The Trust Fund has been critical to our nation’s ability to build an efficient and multimodal transportation system. With record transit ridership, now is not the time to eliminate guaranteed funding for our nation’s public transportation systems, which saved Americans close to $19 billion in congestion costs in 2009. For the first time in thirty years, the pending legislation H.R. 3864, the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Financing Act, removes the certainty of a continued revenue source for our transit systems as well as the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program.

Specifically, we are deeply concerned about the provision in H.R. 3864 that would terminate funding from the excise tax on gasoline and replace it with the Alternative Transportation Account. In place of gasoline tax revenues, the legislation would provide a one-time $40 billion transfer of General Fund revenues to the Alternative Transportation Account. Not only is this level of funding insufficient to fully fund the proposed authorized levels for the Alternative Transportation Account, but it would subject transit and CMAQ funding to the annual appropriations process. This change will make it impossible for public transit systems across the country to plan for the future. It will also make it impossible for the FTA to honor grant agreements.

In addition, this legislation does not make clear how the $40 billion in General Fund revenues will be offset in the U.S. budget. As a result of this funding gap, we are concerned that the $40 billion general revenue transfer may not occur leaving transit programs out in the cold.

We strongly encourage the Committee to reject H.R. 3864 and work to continue to fund highway and transit programs through dedicated funding.

Stop the House’s unprecedented assault on public transportation. There are just a few hours left before their vote Friday morning.

Send an urgent message to your representative today.

Will we be stuck waiting for the bus, or just tossed underneath it?

A key House Committee is threatening to kill three decades of successful investments in mass transit — originally started under President Ronald Reagan — by ending the guarantee for dedicated funding for public transportation, leaving millions of riders already faced with service cuts and fare increases out in the cold.

In a stunning development late last night, House leadership and the Ways and Means committee made a shocking attack on transit that would have huge impacts for the millions of people who depend on public transportation each day.

They proposed putting every public transportation system in immediate peril by eliminating guaranteed funding for the Mass Transit Account and forcing transit to go begging before Congress for general funds each year — all while highway spending continues to be guaranteed with protected funds for half a decade at a time.

Get involved. Can you take just a moment and tell your representative that this short-sighted idea is intolerable for their voters?

This incredible move would roll back 30+ years of bipartisan federal transportation policy and reverse a decision made by President Reagan in the 1980’s to fund our nation’s transit system out of a small share of gas tax revenues. This change would mean no more guarantee of funding each year and no long-term stability for public transportation. States, cities, communities and their transit systems could lose billions.

We released a statement earlier today decrying this unprecedented attack on transit.

“We are deeply concerned that if this measure passes, Americans who use public transportation, or who would like that option in the future, will be thrown under the bus,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America. “This couldn’t come at a worse time for people who need an affordable, reliable way to get to work, or for employers who need workers.” Corless noted the demand for transit has been rising as the economy slowly recovers and people are using public transportation to get to jobs and to avoid volatile gas prices. Over the course of the five-year transportation program, America’s population will continue to age rapidly, and a growing number of seniors will be looking to transit services maintain their independence.

It’s not just us, though. Even the association of state DOT heads submitted a letter to the committee urging them to reconsider their ill-advised plan.

The Mass Transit Account has been in existence since 1982 and AASHTO has continuously supported this account as a critical component of the Highway Trust Fund. AASHTO has long supported the principle that 20 percent of the gas tax revenues that have been put in place since 1982 be allocated to a dedicated mass transit account. We believe that the two complementary accounts need to be maintained in order to support a well-funded, multimodal transportation system.

We respectfully request that the current Highway Trust Fund structure with its two accounts and respective revenue allocations be retained.

Transit is unquestionably a critical component of our nation’s transportation system, and one that millions of people (or voters, if you’re reading, committee members) depend on each day to get around. More people on transit means less congestion, less pollution, and fewer cars on the road.

Tell your representative that this unprecedented attack on transit won’t stand.

Reversing policy begun under President Ronald Reagan, House Ways and Means Committee – at the direction of House leadership — could move Friday to end guaranteed funding for public transportation, and leave even today’s inadequate funding levels in doubt.

The proposal to bar public transit from receiving funds from the federal motor fuels tax is part of a bill coming before the House Ways and Means Committee Friday morning. That bill sets the revenue levels for the five-year surface transportation bill making its way through the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee today.

“We are deeply concerned that if this measure passes, Americans who use public transportation, or who would like that option in the future, will be thrown under the bus,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America. “This couldn’t come at a worse time for people who need an affordable, reliable way to get to work, or for employers who need workers.” Corless noted the demand for transit has been rising as the economy slowly recovers and people are using public transportation to get to jobs and to avoid volatile gas prices. Over the course of the five-year transportation program, America’s population will continue to age rapidly, and a growing number of seniors will be looking to transit services maintain their independence.

Since Ronald Reagan was president, Congress has supported dedicated funding for both highways and transit. For the last 30 years, transit riders and the services they use have been able to depend on guaranteed funding from a mass transit trust fund replenished by a share of federal gasoline taxes. As congestion rose in urban areas, and rural areas saw their share of car-less, low-income families rise, bipartisan support grew for providing transit as a dependable relief valve. Removing the guaranteed funding would mean that transit would have to compete each year for general fund revenues that are in line for deep cuts in coming years.

“American workers and their employers already are dealing with deep uncertainties in these times of fiscal crisis,” said John Robert Smith, co-chair of Transportation for America and President of Reconnecting America. “As local tax revenues have dropped, transit service is being cut, fares raised, and maintenance is being deferred. Seniors in rural areas are waiting hours for a ride to the doctor, veterans have very few transportation options to get them to VA centers, and workers in cities don’t know when the next bus is coming. Putting these services in jeopardy would be a cruel blow to these Americans.”

###

In a carbon copy replay of exactly what happened last year, a big change will go into effect on the first day of January that could have big ramifications for anybody who takes advantage of the federal tax benefits to help consumers pay for their commutes.

If Congress does nothing by the end of the year, if you take transit to get to work each day you could be paying more out of your own pocket when the tax benefit for transit is cut in half. If that wasn’t enough, drivers will keep enjoying the same great parking benefit ($230) – nearly double what transit commuters will be eligible to receive. We don’t think that’s fair, and Congress needs to hear about it.

So if you spend more than $120 a month on your commute in a vanpool, train or bus, the federal government will be sending a message loud and clear: they’d like you to start driving to work, where you can get $230 for parking deducted from your paycheck tax free.

The transit benefit and the parking benefit were once at different levels, but a provision in the stimulus raised the transit benefit so that everyone could enjoy the tax relief for their commute, no matter how they choose to get to work. When it was due to expire last year at this time, Congress extended it last December after thousands of people — including many of you — wrote and called Congress.

Transportation is the second largest household expense for many households. The millions of Americans who depend on transit to get to work each day shouldn’t have to pay more, and certainly not for something that also saves us energy, reduces congestion and emissions, and uses less oil. Americans need more low-cost transportation options.

Tell Congress to keep things fair by extending the transit benefit and keeping it equal with the parking benefit.

Note: we’ve received a few emails and comments asking about why we’re not pushing for other changes, like lowering the parking benefit to the current level of the transit benefit instead — as well as ideas about including a much more flexible parking cash-out program so people who work for a company with a parking fringe benefit can “cash-out” that money to pay for a transit ride instead. It’s not that we don’t necessarily support those other ideas, but it’s not likely that any of them would make any progress in these last few weeks of the year. The best immediate plan is to ensure that the transit benefit isn’t slashed in half.

Quite a few in Congress have discussed ways to improve the commuting benefits in the long-term transportation bill. Rep. Blumenauer introduced a bill to implement the parking cash-out and equalize the benefit levels, which Streetsblog covered back in May. A more comprehensive and balanced program of commuter benefits is definitely something that we, along with some of our key partners like the Association for Commuter Transportation, are working hard to improve in the reauthorization.

But for now, let your Senators and Representative know that cutting the transit benefit in half come January isn’t a good idea.

If you ever doubt the need for public transit in rural areas, or need reaffirmation of the resilience and ingenuity of frontier America, make a trip to Havre, Montana (or second best, watch the short video below.) We had a chance to make that trip this week and, man, was it inspiring.

A group of us from T4America and the American Public Health Association traveled to Montana to meet with people working in health, transportation and local government in the state’s small cities and rural areas. They are vitally interested in the federal transportation bill because in many cases it literally could determine whether these places live, thrive or die.

One of those places is Havre, Montana, a town of about 10,000 roughly 30 miles from the Canadian border, nestled between two Native American reservations, Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy’s. There we met Barbara Stiffarm, the executive director of a scrappy organization called Opportunity Link. The aptly named group’s mission is to connect people in the isolated communities of north central Montana to jobs, job training, affordable housing, medical care and other services that help residents of small towns and reservations “achieve independence, prosperity and a better way of life.”

“We quickly discovered that we can’t do any of that without transportation service,” Stiffarm told us. Working with numerous local communities and the reservations, Opportunity Link has cobbled together federal resources, private grants and scant local funds to connect several different transportation services into an integrated network. To fill gaps in service, Opportunity Link two years ago led the creation of North Central Montana Transit.

NCMT is miraculous for a number of reasons.

First, it offers fixed-route service. Many rural transit services are “on demand” – covering the vast distances separating communities from employment, education and health care centers.

“Every day we cover an area about the size of the state Maryland,” said Jim Lyons, the director of NCMT. They started the service with modest expectations for ridership, but have been blown away by the unmet demand they discovered. Rather than riders in the low hundreds per month, they are instead into the thousands; one in ten is an elderly person who simply could not get to health care, activities and other services without it.

IMG_4340 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.

The Dean of Montana State University-Northern shows off some of the seeds used to make the biodiesel for the NCMT buses during last week’s tour in Montana. They hope to use these seeds to help refuel trains passing through Havre from Seattle to Minneapolis.

Second, they also discovered they were being eaten alive by fuel costs, and they were disturbed by the effect that burning all that fuel had on their desire to be a “green” operation.

That led to an exciting research and development project with Montana State University-Northern to grow their own biodiesel fuel. The idea is to get local wheat growers to rotate in crops of an oil-seed plant known as camelina. A recent break-through in the local research effort has raised hopes that camelina, which has the advantage of being an extremely hardy, non-food crop, can produce biodiesel that can fuel buses as well as the freight trains that use Havre as a refueling stop between Seattle and Minneapolis. More exciting still, a by-product of that process could also be a component in jet fuel.

And all because an ingenious local group set out to connect people to opportunities through rural transit!

As inspiring as it was, an eye-opening aspect of our trip was to see just how vulnerable these communities are, and how large a role the federal transportation bill plays in their operation.

The local leaders and service providers we met in Montana are mindful that changes to programs being considered in Congress could strengthen such services, and lead to greater coordination and efficiencies, or throttle them altogether. As one tangible example, the HUD Sustainable Communities program that awarded Opportunity Link the $1.5 million grant today was axed last week in the budget for 2012. They also are deeply concerned that changes to programs such as transportation enhancements, now being considered in the Senate’s MAP-21 version of the bill, could leave them no way to fund the community projects that have been vital to economic development and safety.

Further changes would reduce the input that these communities have into how the state sets transportation priorities and allocates funding. The level of alarm was high, and it served to strengthen our commitment as a coalition to continue to emphasize the needs of rural and frontier America and push for measures that will help them, as the bill makes its way through the House and Senate.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder (pictured at right), a Republican elected in 2010, is one of those leaders. And his new $1 billion blueprint for the state’s infrastructure, released earlier this week, does a commendable job of ditching ideological gestures in favor of common sense.

One of the more ground-shifting components of Snyder’s plan is his preference for rapid bus service in the Detroit area to complement and expand on the Woodward light-rail line already in the pipeline. As the Detroit Free Press discussed in an editorial this morning, it is likely that some will dismiss bus service as inferior to rail. That distinction is for Michiganders to decide, but Snyder’s willingness to consider a medley of transportation options should induce a healthy discussion.

He’s also willing to discuss revenue, which remains the most major hold-up in Congress. Under Snyder’s proposal, voters would get to decide at the local level whether to raise vehicle license fees by $40. Allowing for local debate and deliberation would likely increase the chances of new revenue being secured.

Snyder would also shift Michigan’s current gas tax to a levy as percent of the price per gallon, rather than a flat fee, a shift that is expected to increase overall receipts.

The additional revenue from both of these measures would fund road repair and public transportation, including enhanced bus and rail service in Detroit and its surrounding suburbs.

Now that Snyder has outlined his preferences, it is up the state legislature to make the next move. As the Free Press put it:

The governor has not solved southeast Michigan’s transportation problems. But in laying out a practical plan for providing — and paying for — rapid transit service, he has given leaders a road map to a better transportation future.

Photo courtesy of AnnArbor.com

“Representatives Carnahan and LaTourette have hit the nail on the head with this bill. In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with gas prices wildly fluctuating, hard-working Americans need affordable transportation choices. But transit agencies across this country are having to cut service, leaving people stranded without a way to get to work, or to school, or to the doctor. This bill will help to ensure that people in cities large and small can continue to rely on public transportation to get them where they need to go.”