transit funding Archives - Transportation For America

After spending over $1 trillion, the roads are still crumbling, unsafe, and congested. Does Congress care?

Congress is starting to talk about the next federal transportation bill, due next year. But they seem more concerned with how the money is distributed, to whom and how fast it is being spent rather than what the American people are getting for their tax dollars.

With the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) sunsetting in 19 months, Congress has to prepare a bill to reauthorize the federal highway, transit and rail programs. But numerous committees so far tasked with that work has not even started to consider the most fundamental question: how well is the highway system working?

The federal government has spent $1.5 trillion of American taxpayer dollars over the past 30-plus years to build a world-class surface transportation system. In 2012, a strong bipartisan majority—373 to 52 in the House and 74 to 19 in the Senate—passed a transportation reauthorization bill that refocused the program on national transportation goals, increasing accountability and transparency and improving project decision-making through performance-based planning and programming.

The seven national goals Congress wrote into law (23USC150) are safety, infrastructure condition, congestion reduction, system reliability, freight movement and economic vitality, environmental sustainability, and better project delivery. 13 years later, how have we fared on these goals?

Safety

The United States has the most dangerous roads in the developed world. By a lot. Twice as deadly as Greece, three times as deadly as Israel, and six times as deadly as Norway. In fact, the U.S. is twenty percent more deadly than Chile and 30 percent more deadly than Serbia. Most of these countries are getting safer, but not us.

Roads in the United States are so deadly and unsafe that our numbers change the narrative on worldwide traffic safety in the developed world. The 2024 roadway safety report on the 70 countries in the International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) notes that overall road deaths would have actually fallen by 12.8 percent if the US had been left out. We are dragging the performance of the rest of the developed world in the wrong direction.

For people walking, it’s even worse. Compared to a 29 percent improvement in the rest of these countries, pedestrian fatalities in the US have increased 75 percent since 2010, which you can find in the National Complete Streets Coalition’s report on pedestrian safety, Dangerous by Design.

While the federal transportation program has included a specific program to address safety, the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), which has existed since 1973, has always been a tiny part of the overall program—currently, 6 percent of the highway program. Add in the Transportation Alternatives program, which helps build sidewalks and other infrastructure to help people without a car get around safely, and you get up to 9 percent. Whatever constitutes our approach to safety is failing for everyone who uses the road.

Congestion reduction/Reliability/Freight

USDOT chose to assess congestion reduction, system reliability, freight movement, and economic vitality through overly simple measures of vehicle speeds, so we will address these areas together. One of the biggest excuses for not taking established steps to improve safety (the steps every nation doing better than us is taking) is the need to support the economy by eliminating congestion. Saving lives with slower speeds has taken a back seat in favor of trying to eliminate congestion at all costs, which has been the ultimate goal of all federal transportation spending for the last 30 years. Yet, no matter how you measure this effort, it has failed.

Between 1993 and 2017, the most populous 100 U.S. cities added 30,511 new freeway lane-miles, an increase of 42 percent. That rate of freeway expansion significantly outstripped the 32 percent growth in population in those regions over the same time period. So congestion should have gone down, right? Nope, it went up 144 percent. Congestion increased in every single one of these 100 metro areas. It went up in places that tried really hard to build their way out of congestion, like in Brownsville, TX, where the population increased 73 percent, they increased freeway lane miles by 287 percent and congestion increased by 1230 percent. It also went up in places that lost population, like in Detroit, MI, where the population decreased by 5 percent, they increased freeway lane miles by 15 percent, and congestion still increased by 45 percent. Let that sink in. Fewer people, more highways, and congestion increased—a lot!

Infrastructure condition

What have record levels of investment in infrastructure gotten us when it comes to the basic condition of our roads and bridges? USDOT’s Conditions and Performance Report for 2024 found that the share of federal-aid highway pavements with good ride quality improved during the 2008–2018 period—from 40.7 percent to 47.2 percent (not even half). But the share of federal-aid highway pavements with poor ride quality also worsened during that time, rising from 15.8 percent to 22.6 percent. In terms of bridges, the share of federal-aid bridges in good repair decreased from 47.8 percent to 46.0 percent; however, the share of federal-aid bridges in poor repair also decreased from 10.1 percent to 7.6 percent. Pretty lackluster results.

USDOT likes to note that the busiest roads (by amount of vehicle miles traveled) are in (slightly) better condition, as they likely have more repair dollars spent on them. While this is true, either all roads you’ve built are important enough to maintain, or they should not have been built in the first place. This claim also runs directly counter to rhetoric often deployed about the “importance” of rural areas—as if it’s ok if their less trafficked roads are poorly maintained.

Emissions

We covered this just two months ago. Based on current investment patterns, over the course of the current infrastructure law, federal surface transportation spending could increase emissions by nearly 190 million metric tonnes of emissions over baseline levels through 2040 from added driving. This is the emission equivalent of 500 natural gas-fired power plants or nearly 50 coal-fired power plants running for a year.

And we weren’t doing well before the IIJA either, as we showed in our 2020 report, Driving Down Emissions.

Speeding up project delivery

Why would we want to speed up the delivery of projects producing such terrible results? Slow them down. Stop them.

Members of Congress preparing the replacement of the IIJA this year and next should be warned that the collective failure to make improvements in these priority areas will be given as the primary reason to pump more money into the same programs we have been funding for decades. They may have changed names, shifted from formula to discretionary or vice versa, or seen their proportions change, but they are basically the same programs.

If you point out that the results have been truly disappointing, you will hear how the transportation agencies aren’t to blame, even as they ask for more money to do the same things. For example, we regularly hear that roadway fatalities are up because of the misbehavior of people using those roadways rather than the design or function of those roads. Their counterparts in other countries don’t feel that way, which is one reason they are successfully saving lives. If state DOTs aren’t able to improve safety, then we should give funding to other entities that can.

Senator Shelley Moore Capito, whose committee will be writing a large chunk of this law, is starting with the wrong questions and assumptions. She told POLITICO that she wants to look at formula vs. discretionary to see if the discretionary [grants] getting out and to determine kind of efficiencies need to be made. The most essential question to ask is whether or not the enormous amount of spending on transportation has resulted in better outcomes, like the goals Congress overwhelmingly supported and put into the U.S. Code: making the roads safer, reducing congestion, improving infrastructure conditions, and reducing emissions. If the answers are no, then clearly it’s time to stop throwing good money after bad.

Congress is looking at spending another $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. People will point to the overwhelming bipartisan support. Inevitably (as happens at every reauthorization), there will be calls for more money for the same programs, more flexibility for states to spend federal funds however they like, and less accountability overall.

This strategy has failed to deliver, and it won’t deliver anything different, whether we give it more money or less.

We shouldn’t spend another dime on a program that fails so completely to deliver on all of the priorities we have set for it. This is the issue that Congress should be grappling with over the next year as they prepare the next transportation law.

Perseverance pays off for Nashville

A purple WeGo Nashville bus travels down a city street

After well over a decade of effort, fast-growing Nashville finally passed a transit funding referendum, proving that patience, perseverance and learning from mistakes leads to success.

*A public bus in Nashville, TN (WeGo Transit)*

The November 2024 elections will leave a lot to unpack in the coming weeks and months. So it’s understandable that you might have missed that Nashville’s $3.1 billion “Choose How You Move” transit referendum passed resoundingly on Tuesday with 66 percent support. This half-cent sales tax increase for consolidated Nashville-Davidson County will fund bus rapid transit expansion, transit service and the construction of 86 miles of sidewalk, as well as safety improvements and Nashville’s first opportunity to meaningfully invest in smart traffic signals.

Nashville’s success comes after many years of work and a previous loss at the ballot box.

Back in 2015, Transportation for America (alongside TransitCenter) led a Transportation Innovation Academy with leaders from Indianapolis, Raleigh and Nashville to share knowledge, visit cities with inspiring success stories, and help develop the local leadership to advance their transportation and transit plans. Key business leaders from each region participated, along with mayors and city/county council members, real estate pros, housing industry experts and local advocates.

Both Indianapolis and Raleigh went on to pass transit funding measures in 2016. But Nashville’s first attempt—the “Let’s Move Nashville” referendum—failed hard in May of 2018, with 64 percent opposition. TransitCenter’s in-depth analysis of the ballot measure’s failure identified several key factors: The measure was developed in an insular fashion within the mayor’s office without broad community input, rushed forward without solid plans or robust public engagement, took African American support for granted, and failed to prioritize improving the city’s limited bus service.

This time was different!

Strong leadership and a good plan

Mayor Freddie O’Connell took ownership and took the lead, developing a plan that distributes benefits across the county. This included an emphasis on bus service that could deliver more transit to more neighborhoods, and synergistic improvements such as sidewalk infill, traffic signal upgrades and safety improvements that directly benefit non-transit riders.

Passengers in a shaded bus stop board the bus in Nashville, which is driving in a designated lane — *Passengers make use of public transit in Nashville (Choose How You Move)*

A large, diverse coalition of support

The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, a Transportation for America member, was a leading supporter just as they were in 2018. “This significant vote represents decades of work and is a triumph for Nashville’s future,” said Ralph Schulz, President and CEO of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. “Mayor Freddie O’Connell deserves a great deal of credit for building a broad coalition of partners and developing a plan that people could get behind. With this investment, the Nashville region is now prepared to better capitalize on the opportunities it can provide its residents.”

The Chamber was joined by leading community groups. Supporters included the Urban League of Middle Tennessee, Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH), and Shift Nashville, a coalition of three leading voices on racial justice, Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, Equity Alliance and Stand Up Nashville, announced their strong support for the measure in August.

In the campaign to win the ballot measure, the only substantive opposition was from a small anti-tax group “Committee to Stop an UnFair Tax.” This was in contrast to the 2018 measure, which had significant opposition from local and national conservative groups, as well as the Black faith community, who weren’t engaged on the substance of the plan nor brought into the process early enough. The campaign’s catchy but simple core message of “sidewalks, signals, service and safety” helped convey the broad benefits of the measure.

“For the first time in our city’s history, we will have dedicated revenue for transportation improvements, and that’s going to allow us to finally chip away at our traffic and cost of living issues,” said Mayor Freddie O’Connell. “We all deserve more time with our friends and family and less time just trying to get to them. Throughout this process, Nashvillians have been clear. They want to be able to get around the city we all love more easily and more conveniently.”

More good news

The money that will result from this successful ballot measure is paired with some encouraging policy developments in the city. Mayor O’Connell issued an executive order on Complete Streets and the city has adopted a Vision Zero Action Plan that will guide investments. T4America’s sister program at Smart Growth America, the National Complete Streets Coalition, has been working with Nashville’s department of transportation to train their staff and others on Complete Streets and Vision Zero implementation. Earlier this year, Nashville and the Tennessee Department of Transportation participated in Smart Growth America’s Complete Streets Leadership Academy, during which they developed quick-build demonstration projects to improve street safety while strengthening their approach to community partnerships.

Nashville is one of the fastest growing regions in the nation, but with infrequent and unreliable transit service and scores of city streets lacking sidewalks entirely, their approach to transportation has been stuck in the past. Voters were ready to do something. And on Tuesday, patience, perseverance and learning from past mistakes paid off.

Four ways our federal leaders can invest in the rest

Photograph of a street facing the U.S. Capitol with bike lanes down the middle and pedestrians utilizing a crosswalk

While we might have the most extensive highway infrastructure in the world, the U.S. is delivering pitifully poor results compared to our peers when it comes to cost, efficiency, emissions, and safety. What can Congress and USDOT do to invest in the rest?

Under federal transportation policy, funding for highways greatly outpaces transit. Worse, it is hard to overstate how little of total funding has been allocated to building sidewalks and bike routes. For Americans who are unable to drive or lack regular access to a car, the lack of alternative options has very real consequences. In addition, when we fail to invest in opportunities to walk, bike, and take public transit, communities lose out on the wide-scale benefits these options provide. Multimodal transportation investments that make transit and walking more practical options for people promote ecologically and fiscally sustainable options for economic development.

Our system today costs us much more than we think, with poor outcomes for all users, including public health and climate outcomes, which have a disproportionate impact on Black and low-income communities historically marginalized from transportation decision-making. We continue to invest in road capacity expansions as our go-to strategy to alleviate congestion or drive economic growth, despite proof that this strategy does not work. As a result, cities remain locked in a Sisyphean strategy that continues to leave us stuck in traffic, even after COVID-19, with more remote work options than ever.

A bar chart compares transit funding with highway funding in federal investments from 1991 to 2021. In every bill except the 2021 ARP that only funded transit ($31B), highway spending dwarfs transit spending, with the largest discrepancy appearing in the IIJA ($432B for highways and $109B for transit). Cumulative spending since 1991 is also significantly higher for highways than transit, with cumulative spending by 2021 reaching $1413B for highways and $359B for transit. — *Across recent major bills, federal investment in highway programs has vastly outpaced investments in transit.*

Instead of continuing oversized investments in the bloated federal highway program that fail to deliver results, the next transportation reauthorization bill needs to invest in the rest to build a world-class, multimodal transportation system. Here are some steps Congress and USDOT can take to get started.

1. Fix the data

We need quality data to make quality decisions. Transportation generates plenty of opportunities to collect data, from vehicular speed and throughput to how many miles of bike lane are being built. However, ensuring data quality matters much more than raw quantity of measures alone. While we have plenty of data-oriented solutions and measures to advance and plan specific transportation projects, the data underlying our system is full of holes.

Right now, it’s difficult for policymakers and advocates to determine how we are spending our money and to identify the actual effects of spending trends. Critical performance measure data tracked by the Federal Highway Administration can take years to update or be presented incomplete, missing data entirely. But even quality data is insufficient when we interpret it through the same old flawed processes that take us to the same old conclusions that lead us to the same bad outcomes.

We need better information to make better decisions at the federal, state, and local levels. Practitioners should have access to tools that effectively model and account for induced demand, land use changes, greenhouse gasses, and access to jobs and services in ways that can inform investment decisions away from strategies that have not worked in the past. Current and planned transportation investments should be reported on a more standardized basis in order for state advocates to understand where their funds are actually going.

2. Better utilize federal programs

The transformative investment levels required to provide a world class transportation system won’t be met with small, individual discretionary grant programs alone. The real workhorses of the federal transportation program—the Surface Transportation Block Grant and National Highway Performance Program—often provide a significant portion of federal funds for states to invest how they see fit, which almost always means building more roads. Spending on new road capacity is delivering diminishing returns and should be rededicated to opportunities to take public transit or walk, bike, and roll.

Under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), there are many programs available to create more transportation options. However, finding and applying for these funds can be a strain on communities. Congress should consider consolidating the number of programs and expanding the size of smaller programs that provide funding access for local communities to address local safety, access, and resilience priorities. In implementing these federal programs, USDOT should streamline grant applications for smaller localities and jurisdictions while continuing to provide specialized assistance and relevant application information for lower resourced communities.

3. Fund transit operations, and use funding to boost frequency

When properly supported, transit provides immense value to communities and users from all walks of life. Unfortunately, transit has received significantly less support over the years compared to highway projects.

In order to unlock the transformative economic, climate, and equity benefits that transit can bring to a region, transit service needs to be frequent and provide access to jobs and services. We can do this by helping to fund transit operations and structuring federal grant programs to provide a pathway for transit agencies to reliably increase service and frequency to get people where they need to go.

Pairing the above with walkable, denser development around transit and a method to raise revenues that captures the value transit brings to a region could help advance investments in building out our transit systems, making them even more valuable resources.

4. Build out the passenger rail network

The IIJA is proving to be a launchpad for a passenger rail revival in the United States. There’s no doubt we’ve come a long way. However, as projects develop, there’s still much more work to be done and it takes a long time to bring a train up to top speed. If we want to build off our successes, reauthorization should ensure that we don’t stop building our rail network commitments now. Continuing our investments in national connectivity, and service is the best path forward to a strong national rail system. Learn more about how federal leaders can help advance passenger rail here.

The stakes

Congress and USDOT can play a major role in supporting a multimodal, world-class transportation system. Providing a floor for consistent investment in transit and active transportation infrastructure will be vital in ensuring that every American can reach their destinations safely, conveniently, and efficiently.

It’s Invest in the Rest Week

Click below to access more content related to our third principle for infrastructure investment, Invest in the Rest. Find all three of our principles here.

Four ways our federal leaders can invest in the rest

While we might have the most extensive highway infrastructure in the world, our system is delivering pitifully poor results compared to our peers when it comes to cost, efficiency, emissions, and safety. What can Congress and USDOT do to invest in the rest?
Week Without Driving showcases the need to invest in the rest

Last week, Transportation for America joined organizations and advocates nationwide in the Week Without Driving challenge. During this week, all Americans, including transportation practitioners and policymakers, are encouraged to travel without a car, allowing them to experience local barriers to walking, biking, and taking public transit firsthand.
Time to tip the scales in favor of more transportation options

For decades, federal highway funding and funding for all other types of transportation (public transit, opportunities to walk and bike) have been severely unbalanced. In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, pedestrian deaths, and traffic, the Department of Transportation must invest in more transportation alternatives.

Two federal bills for better transit service

The U.S. Capitol from Pennsylvania Avenue, with people walking and driving on the road in the foreground

The Moving Transit Forward Act, introduced by Senators Chris Van Hollen (MD) and John Fetterman (PA), seeks to bolster public transit nationwide. While differing from Representative Hank Johnson’s (GA-4) transit operating bill in the House, both aim to address the urgent need for sustainable transit funding.

Millions of people across the country depend on reliable and consistent public transit to get where they need to go. To provide this service, public transit agencies rely heavily on federal, state, and local funding to maintain their system and improve service provisions. However, while federal funding covers capital expenditures for the construction and acquisition of infrastructure and equipment, the costs of operating the transit system are primarily procured from state and (even more often) local funding sources.

Transit agencies struggle to maintain service levels under this traditional model for operating costs. National lockdowns imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic caused ridership to plummet, exposing the extent of transit operating challenges for agencies. Revenue from fare collection drastically decreased, leaving little funding for transit agencies to cover their operating costs. Combined with rising inflation and stagnating local funding sources, transit agencies are faced with a self-reinforcing downward spiral of decreasing ridership and service cuts. Covid relief funds from the federal government offered temporary relief that prevented massive service cuts but with funding now being exhausted, transit agencies are facing a fiscal cliff due to this unstabling funding. This model creates a system that lacks the necessary resources and support to provide the reliable transportation services that communities need, and deserve.

On May 14, 2024, Senators Chris Van Hollen (MD) and John Fetterman (PA) introduced the Moving Transit Forward Act, with the legislation aiming to bolster public transportation services across the country. The bill aims to supplement the existing operating budgets of transit agencies to provide them with resources to expand routes, increase service frequency, and improve the experience of transit riders.

The Moving Transit Forward Act would create a federal formula funding program under the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to provide additional funding resources for service improvements and safety and security enhancements. This legislation finally represents a Senate bill addressing operating costs, similar to the Stronger Communities through Better Transit Act reintroduced by Representative Hank Johnson (GA-4) in the House in January.

Both the House and Senate bills authorize new federal formula funds for transit operations. However, they have some key differences.

An immediate variation between the two bills is in terms of funding authorization. The House bill specifies authorizing $20 billion per year through fiscal year 2027 whereas the Senate bill does not specify a dollar amount for transit operating. Furthermore, all transit agencies, both rural and urban, are eligible for funding under the House bill, but the Senate bill targets transit agencies within urban areas that have a population of more than 50,000. This discrepancy is likely due to the fact that, unlike urban areas, rural areas are already eligible to use federal funds to cover transit operating costs. However, denying rural areas additional resources to cover operating costs limits their ability to provide frequent and reliable transit service—which is sorely needed, considering that more than 1 million rural Americans do not have access to a car.

Despite these discrepancies, both of the bills demonstrate the necessity of addressing operating costs for transit agencies to ensure that public transit is available, accessible, and affordable for communities, particularly for those that are underserved. As these bills move through their respective chambers, it is crucial that a transit model that supports the vision of reliable transit for all is realized.

Avoiding Derailment: The Freights First Act in Perspective

Amtrak’s eastbound Texas Eagle train departs Dallas.

There is no denying that there are persistent issues that impact reliable freight service and the efficient delivery of goods nationwide. Yet, despite the discussion of the myriad service issues that affect the supply chain, Amtrak and passenger rail have not been identified as a cause of disruption, and have, in fact, been conspicuously absent from the conversation in general. Despite this lack of impact, critics argue that if the Freights First Act is enacted, it could jeopardize the growth of passenger rail and roll back vital infrastructure investment goals.

Amtrak’s eastbound Texas Eagle departs Dallas. (Matt Shell via Flickr)

The Freights First Act, introduced by Rep. Eric Burlison (MO), seeks to “eliminate Amtrak’s right of preference” over freight transportation in what is being portrayed as an attempt to prevent freight rail bottlenecks and expedite freight movement. Co-sponsored by U.S. Representatives Troy E. Nehls (TX), Scott Perry (PA), Andrew Ogles (TN), and Harriet M. Hageman (WY), there has been no evidence implicating passenger rail as an obstacle to freight service productivity.

In April 2022, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) held a public hearing to urgently assess freight rail service performance and how unreliability and inconsistency impact the supply chain. Stakeholders, including rail labor organizations and shipping companies, gave extensive testimonies regarding service concerns and their vision for a path toward service recovery. The STB found that decades-long practices such as reducing operating ratios and diminishing the existing workforce to cut costs are harmful to operations and stymies service.

Following the investigation, the STB issued a ruling that requires Class 1 freight railroads, namely BNSF, CSX, UP, and NS, to be put on an aggressive schedule to provide updates on their rail service, performance, and employment. This evaluation of progress is a significant step forward in monitoring improvements from freight railroads that urgently need to reform their precision scheduled railroading model as well as increase transparency and accountability.

Notably, passenger rail was not identified as a concern throughout this process—even by the freight provider’s own admission. This means that if enacted, this legislation will likely not improve delays and establish efficient freight service. What this legislation will achieve, is effectively dismantling a robust network of national and state-supported passenger rail service, and undermining the vision for growth and expansion of nationwide passenger rail service outlined in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).

The Freights First Act also contradicts the goals of the citizens whom proponents of this bill are supposed to represent while obscuring and ignoring the real obstacles that are hindering the improvement of freight service. Mayors of Houston, Austin, and San Antonio have looked into popular options to expanding passenger rail in the Texas Triangle in order to prioritize local economies and connect people to services. The current infrastructure funding presents an opportunity for these states to advance projects that can improve mobility in their region, including the extension of the Amtrak Heartland Flyer as well as the I-35 rail expansion. Similarly, Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga have declared interest in passenger rail opportunities throughout Tennessee to meet growth and mobility needs. The agenda being advocated for by the representatives sponsoring the Freights First Act is entirely misaligned with the tireless support for passenger rail exhibited by these states and communities.

The IIJA presents a momentous opportunity to act decisively and improve community connectivity through a strong network of passenger rail service, and our responsibility is to support this movement, not roll it back. The Freights First Act is presented as an aspiration for improving the nation’s supply chain performance but it is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to destroy intercity and commuter rail passenger transportation.

Inverting the IIJA’s double standard

Aerial image of a complicated highway interchange in Phoenix Arizona.

The IIJA and IRA are hailed as landmark pieces of climate legislation. Unfortunately, by prioritizing the status quo of flexibility and formula status for highway projects, the IIJA is set to see the gains of any individual emissions-reducing projects go up in smoke.

When the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) was passed two years ago, it was hailed as the biggest investment in our nation’s infrastructure in decades and included flexible funding that states and metro areas could use toward climate initiatives. When followed by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) last year, the first two years of the Biden presidency were described as making monumental gains on climate policy.

Unfortunately, as illuminated by an article this summer in the Washington Post, it’s clear that—on the transportation front at least— rhetoric is falling short of reality. The laws, frequently touted by legislators and administration officials as important means to reduce greenhouse gasses and slow climate change, while also providing funding for resiliency efforts, are set to do neither. Projects for private cars are getting the most money with the fewest strings—while transit, traffic safety, ADA accessibility, and other projects that could actually reduce emissions compete to share less money with more strings.

These laws are not a newfound paragon of sustainability and resilience. It’s the same double standard that got us into a climate crisis in the first place.

Some good money after a lot of bad money

The transportation sector accounts for a plurality of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States (28%), and every single attempt to add capacity to a highway—or increase the number of cars it can carry by widening it—increases these emissions. This is because of a concept known as induced demand, which is essentially the “if you build it, they will come” of transportation. As demonstrated by Transportation for America’s jointly-produced SHIFT Calculator, even adding a single lane mile of principal arterial roadway can lead to tens of thousands of additional gallons of gas being burned per year.

Unfortunately, these are exactly the types of projects that the IIJA allows states to spend money on. Out of over $600 billion dollars set aside for surface transportation, two-thirds is reserved for traditional highway programs. This includes over $200 billion combined for the National Highway Performance Program (NHPP) and the Surface Transportation Block Grant Program (STBG). Even if the $14 billion in two climate programs cited by the Washington Post weren’t being raided by states across the country (for projects that should be funded with NHPP and STBG dollars), it would still be dwarfed several times over by funding reserved for capacity expansion projects.

Putting the cart(e Blanche) before the horse

This discrepancy between how projects for cars and projects for all other transportation modes get treated extends beyond how much funding these programs receive to how those funds are distributed. The NHPP and STBG are formula programs which means that the amount line on these checks may already be filled in, but the memo line is effectively empty. States can use these pots of money to build new roads, make resiliency improvements, and build intercity bus terminals, among a long list of potential projects that include undergrounding utilities and controlling invasive plant life. Based on what they’ve done with the money that was specifically supposed to go to reducing emissions and increasing climate resiliency, I’ll let you guess what they continue to choose to spend this money on. (Hint: most of the arterial roads I grew up driving on are lined by above-ground power lines and kudzu-covered trees.)

In contrast, localities and states aren’t given the same carte blanche to reduce emissions. With the exception of emergency COVID relief funding, transit agencies receive effectively no funding for their operations. To build streets safe enough to walk or roll on, renovate transit stations so they’re accessible to people with disabilities, or improve the infrastructure of their transit systems so they can carry more people, many local and regional governments have to go through competitive grant application processes. And even when emission reductions get money through formula programs they often contain the exact loopholes discussed in the Washington Post, allowing their money to be moved to projects that increase emissions.

Flexibility is not a climate solution

This doesn’t mean that making infrastructure funding flexible or having competitive grant programs are inherently bad policy choices. Alaska and Florida are drastically different places with drastically different transportation needs, and it’s good to verify that projects are set up to succeed before spending significant amounts of money on them.

But transportation policy that provides endless flexibility and ensures that most transit, active transportation, and accessibility projects have to compete with other proposed projects to access federal funds is incompatible with climate goals. For decades, state DOTs have been focused on building more and more infrastructure for private cars at the expense of every other possible mode of transportation—if we give them a choose-your-own-adventure program like the NHPP and STBG, the adventure they’re going to choose is more lane miles and more emissions. That’s exactly what Transportation for America feared would take place with the IIJA—despite the significant progress in areas like passenger rail—and what the Washington Post confirmed has happened to just a small portion of the money that’s made its way from USDOT to the states.

To reduce emissions from the transportation sector, we have to recognize that flexibility alone is not a climate solution. When it comes to climate, the goal of good transportation policy must be to make it easier to complete projects that reduce emissions and more difficult to complete projects that increase emissions. That means inverting how much we fund different modes of transportation, so that transit, active transportation, and passenger rail projects get the majority of funds, instead of highways. That also means inverting how these funds are accessed, so transit, active transportation, and passenger rail projects are funded by formula dollars, and highway projects are forced to apply to competitive grant programs.

Puget Sound’s strategy to center equity in the new normal

A Black man begins to board a King County Metro Route 48 bus after waiting at a bus shelter

Spurred on by COVID-19 disruptions, leaders of the Puget Sound Regional Council found a new way to allocate federal transit formula dollars. Their equity-focused distribution could help the most vulnerable communities while also adapting to new travel trends.

The COVID-19 pandemic was, and remains, one of the most influential shocks to transit systems across the country. Transit agencies struggled with lost revenue and ridership paired with escalating operating costs. The federal government intervened during the height of the pandemic by investing billions in stimulus and relief through Federal Transit Administration (FTA) formula funding. But when those funds arrived in Puget Sound, it became apparent to some leaders in the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) that this funding was not flowing to disadvantaged communities that needed it most.

Rather than continuing on as is, members of the PSRC’s Transportation Policy Board (TPB) and local transit agency leadership came together to rethink how the region uses federal formula dollars to prioritize equity and build up service for disadvantaged communities.

Traditional distributions

The FTA apportions formula funds to regions around the country based on the services and operational data provided by transit agencies in the National Transit Database. Using that data, the FTA then applies the titular “formulas” of formula funds, distributing dollars to urbanized areas (UZAs) across the country.

PSRC serves three UZAs: the Bremerton, Marysville, and Seattle-Tacoma-Everett UZAs. As the Bremerton and Marysville UZAs are each served by a single transportation agency, the local UZA apportionment is simply distributed to those agencies. In the case of the Seattle-Tacoma-Everett UZA, the FTA distributes a lump sum of funds for the PSRC to allocate to eleven transit agencies.

In PSRC’s old distribution strategy, 86 to 88 percent of funds are distributed to each local transit agency in line with the FTA’s standard earned share formulas. The remaining percentage of formula funds was then doled out through regional competitions and preservation set-asides. In practice and in line with historical transportation priorities, this method tended to award agencies and services focused on moving commuters from suburbs to downtowns.

Equity first

For people who cannot afford the high cost of car ownership, access to high-quality transit remains a valuable method to access jobs and services.

Proposing a new, revised distribution policy, several members of the TPB, including Pierce County Councilman Ryan Mello and Tacoma Deputy Mayor Kristina Walker, pushed for a policy that would prioritize funding to equity focus areas, places where disadvantaged groups are concentrated and would benefit from better transit service. This change would allow PSRC to align their funding allocations with the region’s priorities, using a demographic lens to identify communities most in need of transit access.

Under the new methodology, PSRC would use federal census data to identify where people in equity focus populations are located, with an emphasis on serving people with disabilities, youth, the elderly, people with low incomes, people of color, and people with limited English proficiency.

After calculating the number of people in equity focus areas within half a mile from bus stops and a mile from rail stops, and with an adjustment to reflect the nuanced service provided by state and county ferries, the PSRC would proportionally distribute funds to the transit agencies that serve the underserved.

Funding for the new distribution formula comes out of what had previously been used for regional competitions and preservation set-asides. It represents about 14 percent of total funding, seriously boosting agencies serving equity focus areas. For Pierce Transit, the formula change resulted in a funding increase of approximately $9.8 million annually.

	Preservation Set Aside Funding (in millions)	Percentage of Regional Total*	Equity Formula Distribution (in millions)**	Percentage of Regional Total
Community Transit	$2.20	2.90%	$11.70	15.00%
Everett Transit	$0.20	0.30%	$2.80	3.60%
King County Metro	$15.90	21.00%	$33.60	43.10%
Pierce County Ferries	$0.20	0.30%	$0.20	0.30%
Pierce Transit	$1.20	1.60%	$11.00	14.10%
City of Seattle	$0.10	0.10%	$2.50	3.20%
Sound Transit	$11.20	14.80%	$12.90	16.60%
Washington State Ferries	$3.10	4.10%	$3.20	4.10%
TOTAL	$34.10		$77.90

* Not including regional competition funding ** Includes preservation set asides and former regional competition funding

Seattle-Tacoma-Everett UZA funding distributions changed significantly under the Equity Formula Distribution. Table developed using data provided by Puget Sound Regional Council.

Because these funding changes came out of a limited budget, the council had to make compromises. Since the new formula distributions came out of what had been money for regional competitions, some agencies and projects received less funding than before.

“Working through the exercise was of great value for folks to actually see, numerically and through mapping, where the equity focus areas are and where they are or are not being served by transit,” reflected Councilmember Ryan Mello, who helped lead the change.

In the post-pandemic “new normal,” local-level transit that connects people to everyday services maintains vital access for disadvantaged communities.

“We had the ability to have a conversation with the region. We say racial equity is a value—well, here’s an opportunity to put money into it. I had to rustle feathers to make the effort, but it pushed people hard to put the money where your values are, even at the expense of other things.”

By reorienting funding to prioritize transit equity, while also remaining adaptive to new travel trends, the PSRC’s Equity Funding Distribution can serve as an example for governments and agencies that claim to hold equity at the core of their mission.

Thanks to Grant DuVall for contributing to this post.

California is hanging transit out to dry

California’s transit agencies are bracing for a fiscal cliff, a real threat facing communities nationwide. If left unresolved, it could lead to drastically reduced service, cutting people off from jobs and services. But California’s legislature is preparing to vote on a budget that will do nothing to stop it.

Update 6/14: Governor Gavin Newsom has released a new budget, which will keep CA transit agencies solvent in the short term.

A crowd extends into the distance, lining the platform facing the East Bay BART train tracks. A train is arriving. — *Transit riders wait to board a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train. Wait times and crowding will likely skyrocket if Governor Gavin Newsom’s budget passes unchanged. (Wikimedia Commons)*

What is a “fiscal cliff”?

We wrote about the transit fiscal cliff issue back in January, but here’s the gist. When the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, many people stopped riding transit, so transit agencies saw a massive drop in their fare revenues. Transit operations depend on fare revenue to operate essential services, so Congress approved two rounds of emergency funding to keep agencies operating through the pandemic. The plan worked—agency operating funds remained solvent.

But over the past couple years, as that emergency funding dried up, fare revenue has not recovered enough to replace it. Ridership has increased, but not at a fast enough pace to cover all the costs involved with transit operations. For many agencies, it’s only a matter of time before they run out of money and need to cut their services.

The fight to save transit in California

According to a survey done by the California Transit Association (CTA), 72 percent of CA agencies face fiscal cliffs. Earlier this year, hundreds of transit agencies and allied organizations asked for $6 billion over the next five years to prevent major service cuts and regrow their ridership base by improving service. They also suggested several ways that the state could fund such an investment.

While we would love to see California adopt a robust transit funding package like Minnesota just did to avert their own fiscal cliff, there are easier alternatives at California’s disposal. The options suggested by advocates could easily raise $6 billion without significantly impacting other priorities.

The governor’s budget disregarded all of their recommendations, instead shifting only $2 billion away from transit capital projects to cover operating costs. Lawmakers have pointed out that this move is the worst of both worlds—it will force service cuts by short-changing operating support and it will defund major construction projects, forfeiting federal support.

The consequences of this proposal would be catastrophic. San Francisco’s Muni system would need to cut at least 20 bus lines. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) would see “trains only once an hour, no trains on weekends, no trains after 9 p.m. on weeknights, reduced service to San Francisco International and Oakland International airports, some stations closed, and entire lines potentially shuttered.”

72 percent of transit agencies statewide would face similar cuts. Unless the state acts soon to rescue its transit agencies, millions of Californians will be left stranded, disconnected from education, medical care, food, and jobs—especially low-income people and marginalized communities.

Highway-transit double standard

Let’s take a step back from this debate to examine its premise. California spends around $21 billion a year on roads while providing a paltry $2.6 billion to the state’s transit agencies—a more highway-slanted ratio even than what the federal government allocates. There is a transit fiscal cliff, but no “highway fiscal cliff.”

So while California hems and haws over $6 billion in transit funding over 5 years, it is more than happy to spend tens of billions per year expanding highways, contradicting its own policy that acknowledges the futility of highway expansions and aims to reduce driving. Governor Newsom’s current plan would not only short-change transit operations, but also leave up to $6 billion in federal transit capital dollars on the table. Highways are rarely forced to make such choices.

California could temporarily transfer some of these highway dollars from highway expansion projects to patch this temporary gap in transit funding. The federal government makes it really easy to transfer highway dollars to transit projects, so why isn’t California doing this? Why are they making transit agencies choose between capital and operations when highways get both, carte blanche?

Promises broken

California Governor Gavin Newsom has sworn up and down that he is a champion of climate action and equity, but words are cheap. His decision to gut transit service betrays those values.

Transportation emissions are the greatest single contributor to climate change, and state governments have a responsibility to lower those emissions by providing high-quality public transit options. We know that gutting transit and increasing driving will increase carbon emissions, even if we go all-in on electric vehicles.

Gutting transit is especially contradictory to commitments on equity. Americans who are lower-income, Black or Hispanic, immigrants, or under 50 are especially likely to use public transportation on a regular basis, Pew Research Center data shows. Gutting transit hurts California’s most vulnerable communities. And at a time of historically high cost of living in California, this is particularly harmful and puzzling.

Transportation for America is intent on holding leaders accountable for the promises they make about transportation decisions. Minnesota is keeping their promises. California is not. Governor Newsom cannot credibly call himself a climate champion or claim to be addressing equity or cost of living challenges while continuing to defund transit. It is up to all of us to call him out for it.

T4A Director Beth Osborne joined Nick Josefowitz of SPUR to discuss California’s transit crisis on Volts. Listen to the podcast.

How Minnesota set a national example in climate legislation

The metro green line light rail pauses at a station with a few people waiting for the train. The Minnesota State Capital watches on in the background.

Minnesota made waves last week by passing a landmark transportation spending bill that will fund transit expansions and passenger rail service while reducing transportation emissions. The law, which was passed by razor-thin margin, serves as a blueprint for transformative transportation legislation.

Master class in political will

Minnesota passed ambitious climate goals in 2007, as many states were doing during that era. But as with other states, Minnesota had a difficult time following through with concrete actions to meet those goals.

But far from giving up or taking half-measures, Minnesota legislators are willing to risk their seats to make big moves. For example, Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman and Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic prepared and executed an extensive legislative agenda that included a law to move Minnesota to 100 percent clean energy by 2040. That bill provided transportation champions enough momentum to pass other transformational changes, including a new transportation funding agreement passed last week.

This rare, fast-moving legislative push was made possible by the work of advocacy groups like Move Minnesota. Even when there was no hope of passing things like transit funding and limits on vehicle miles traveled (VMT), they worked with climate-forward legislators to draft, refine, and advocate for the provisions that eventually made their way into this law. They encouraged legislators to start from a vision for what the future of transportation can look like and work from there, rather than start from a dollar figure. Then during the 2023 legislative session, they organized a diverse group of transit users and supporters to testify at Transit Equity Day-themed hearings in both the House and the Senate. This was a crucial move in building momentum for this law, bringing in the voices of educators, students, cultural and faith leaders, economic development advocates, transit service providers and union leaders, mobility and disability justice advocates, bikers, elected officials, and both local and national environmental and transportation policy experts.

Not only did Minnesota legislators lap other states that call climate a priority, but they did it with the slimmest of majorities: one seat in the Senate and six in the House. There was strong opposition from the minority, which panned the bill as “regressive taxes that hurt lower-income Minnesotans the most.”

The passage of this legislation is a perfect example of why building capacity and investing in champions is a critical step in sparking change.

What’s in the law?

At a glance, the new law passed by the Minnesota legislature provides:

The authority for Metro Transit to deploy non-police personnel to check fares and issue administrative citations.
$195 million to design and build the Northern Lights Express, a new passenger rail route that will operate between the Twin Cities and Duluth.
$150 million to erase a transit funding deficit in the Twin Cities region.
$300 million annually to build out and improve the Twin Cities region’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system.
Means-tested tax credits for up to 75 percent of the cost on an electric-assisted bicycle.
$2 million for a pilot program to connect people experiencing homelessness or mental health and addiction issues to social services.

These provisions are funded by:

Increasing Minnesota’s gas tax by 5 cents/gallon by 2027 by indexing it to inflation. This provision will provide stable funding not only to transit and passenger rail, but the entirety of Minnesota’s transportation system.
Increasing the statewide sales tax by 0.25 percent to fund housing programs and projects.
Increasing the sales tax in the Twin Cities region by an additional 0.75 percent.
Imposing a $0.50 fee on deliveries over $100 in value.

It also requires that the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) assess proposed highway expansion projects for consistency with their established greenhouse gas reduction goals, specifically by reducing the VMT on Minnesota’s roads. If MnDOT authorizes a project that increases VMT, they will need to offset the increased emissions by linking the project with a portfolio of other projects that reduce VMT by the same amount or more.

While the transit and passenger rail funding provisions are exciting, this portion of the law may have an even greater effect. Many states have passed climate laws, goals, policies, and mandates, but few get at the real drivers of transportation emissions like this new law. In fact, Minnesota and Colorado are now the only two states to enact such rigorous processes to reduce transportation emissions. Some states enact ambitious goals, but fail to follow through.

Other states should take note—this move could yield Minnesota northwards of $91 billion in returns by 2050.

Takeaways for national politics

The actions of Minnesota’s slim majority stand in stark contrast with the 117th congress and Biden administration, who have taken a ham-handed approach to curtailing transportation emissions. Despite passing historic transportation investments through the IIJA, nationwide transportation emissions could still be poised to drastically rise in coming years. And when the Biden administration released a memo that merely suggested transformational change to transportation spending, they quickly cowed to Republican pressure and rescinded it.

Perhaps climate forward legislators in the states, federal government, and even the Biden administration could learn from MN legislators and move forward with transformative climate action.

Is the federal government squandering clean transit funds?

A new report shows splitting clean transit funds between zero-emission vs. low-emission is holding U.S. transit agencies back from cleaning up the bus fleet.

WASHINGTON—A new report by Transportation for America (T4A), “Greener Fleets: Meeting the Demand for Clean Transit,” examines the Low or No Emission Vehicle (“Low No”, “5339(c)”) and Buses and Bus Facilities (“5339(b)”) grant programs. The report finds that zero-emission projects were in high demand, representing 95% of Low No funds requested in applications last year, and relatively few project applications were funded. In comparison, low-emission projects made up such a small proportion of applications that nearly all applications were funded with money left over in that category.

Higher demand for zero-emission grants significantly lowered the probability of accessing zero-emission project funds. The report finds that this discrepancy could incentivize transit agencies to change their clean transit plans in favor of low-emission vehicles that still pollute. Click here to read the report, executive summary and access graphics.

“Seeing this kind of demand for electric public transit buses shows that America is ready for mass adoption, and we need to revise these programs to reflect that new reality,” said Chris Rall, outreach director for T4A. “Our number one recommendation to improve the programs is to remove the outdated and arbitrary split between zero- vs. low-emission categories to ensure 100% of the funds find their best use.”

U.S.-based transit fleets compete for Low No program grants to help them transition to the lowest polluting and most energy-efficient transit vehicles. Last year, the program received $1,105,329,750 in funding, of which 25% must go to low-emission buses and facilities such as diesel hybrid buses, compressed natural gas (CNG) buses and fueling infrastructure. The remaining 75% is for using electricity and/or hydrogen as a fuel for zero-emission buses and facilities. The report finds that this 75-25% funding split is unsustainable.

“As an industry leader in clean transit, we see Low No funds as essential for helping transit agencies like ours transition to modern electric buses that deliver service at a lower operational cost with zero tailpipe emissions,” said Corey Aldridge, CEO and General Manager of Mountain Line, Missoula, Montana’s transit agency, which has been transitioning its fixed route fleet to be fully electric since 2017. “The data in this report is intriguing. We encourage the legislature to consider its recommendations. Updates to the program could help fleet managers access the cleanest vehicle technologies that make the most sense for them.”

Using data collected from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the U.S. Department of Transportation, the T4A research team analyzed applications submitted by American transit agencies to the Low No and 5339(b) programs funding.

TOP FINDINGS

Overall, transit agency-requested funding exceeded awards by over 4.5 times in the combined programs. Requested zero-emissions project funding made up 86% of all requested funding.
Low-emission projects in the Low No program were so undersubscribed that every low-emission applicant received an award regardless of the project rating (Highly Recommended, Recommended, Not Recommended).
In contrast, applicants with zero-emission projects had only a 33% chance of receiving any funding. In the 5339(b) program their chances were even lower, at just 18%.

“Congress’s goal was not to drive a shift in demand and investment toward low-emission projects at the expense of investments in zero-emission transit,” continued Rall. “This trend could lock transit agencies into more polluting technologies for decades.”

The report concludes that this unbalanced dynamic creates a strong incentive for agencies to avoid applying for zero-emission projects and instead use the Low No program to apply for funding for diesel-electric hybrid buses. This is already evidenced by the fact that applications for low-emission projects are up for the 2023 application window.

Here is a summary of the report’s recommendations for improving the programs:

Eliminate the arbitrary requirement that 25% of Low No funding goes to low-emission vehicles.
Increase funding for both 5339(b) and Low No to meet the overall demand for buses and facilities.
Create incentives for both programs to leverage state, regional, utility, and local funding to encourage applicants to propose zero-emission projects at scale and increase the return on investment.
Reduce the matching funding requirements of Tribes and Justice40 communities.
Increase transparency by making basic application and award information available on the Federal Transit Administration’s website.
Simplify the application process and help agencies understand how to make their applications competitive.

“As the market of zero-emission vehicles grows and changes, so must our programs that support the transition,” said Rall. “The increased demand for zero-emission projects is a good thing. We can update these programs to make them better for transit agencies that want to save money and clean up their air.”

“The Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District has stepped out as a leader in transitioning to zero emission vehicles. Our hydrogen fuel cell electric buses run on hydrogen that we produce on-site utilizing 100% renewable solar energy, said Karl Gnadt, managing director for Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (MTD). “The remainder of our fleet is made up completely of hybrid buses so we have long appreciated the value of low emission vehicles as well. However, as zero emission technologies advance, we believe it is time to focus on a national transition to zero emission buses. Removing the dedicated low emission set aside within the Lo-No grant program will allow the program to be more responsive to transit’s needs.”

###

Think creatively, go bold, iterate time and again on transit

Three TransMilenio buses are waved on by a police officer in a brightly colored vest

Transit serves as the sustainable mobility lifeline for people in many communities around the world. Transit also serves as the great equalizer, transporting white collar workers, essential workers, tourists, as well as youth and seniors. Yet in the US, transit is still deemed over-resourced and undeserving. Traveling on Bogotá’s TransMilenio highlighted what matters most in transit service delivery: a willingness to think creatively in order to improve service.

A line of six red TransMilenio buses stream down a tree-lined street — *Various bi-articulated bus routes traversing a major Transmilenio trunk line in Bogotá, CO. T4A photo by Benito Pérez.*

Serving billions around the rapidly urbanizing world, transit is a mobility lifeline lifting people out of poverty and connecting them to jobs and services in their community. In many transit conversations, major cities like London and Tokyo are held in high regard for having stellar transit operations and infrastructure. What many decision makers in the United States take from comparing such examples is robust, permanently fixed, expensive infrastructure in transit to attract ridership, calling for the investment in the shiny new rail or streetcar line in their community.

Folks in the United States often assume that the transit systems are so good in other major cities because those cities are wealthy and come from the developed world. We would do well to consider how well cities in developing countries, like Colombia, are doing in providing high quality transit before letting ourselves off the hook. If we peel back the layers of any highly regarded transit system, we’ll see that they are seeded in decades of trial and error, flexibility, and low cost solutions improving frequency and reliability, before doubling down on capital intensive investments that many US decision makers look to replicate.

If leaders in the US want to have a serious conversation on how to evolve public transportation into the world class mobility option that is needed and deserved by all, then they should take a field trip down to Bogotá, Colombia. Within a week, I had a chance to be immersed with TransMilenio, a living lab of public transit innovation and evolution for world class transit that stands miles above and beyond many US transit systems.

What is TransMilenio?

Prior to 2000, Bogotá was a city of major congestion and very unreliable and incongruent transit mobility options. Transit that was available in the metropolitan area of 7 million people consisted of private on-demand shuttles and buses (informally creating fixed routes where there was regular demand for service). Those uncoordinated shuttles were subject to irregular schedules due to being stuck in traffic with all other vehicles. Planning in the city in the 1980s and 1990s called for the creation of wider boulevards, elevated highways to increase vehicle throughput, and construction of a heavy rail line.

However, in the 1990s, Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa changed the conversation on transportation in the Colombian capital, proposing and building an integrated transit system modeled after Curitiba, Brasil, which relied on bus rapid transit (BRT), a trinary road system (system of one-way circulating streets surrounding a smaller footprint two-way street that has exclusive bus lanes), and transit-oriented development. The TransMilenio project was to be larger in scale to Curitiba’s system, expansive in reach in the metropolitan area. It would enhance mobility reliability for all users to get to jobs and community services, but also accomplish this goal at a fraction of the cost of past proposals of highways and heavy rail.

About 13 different bus routes intersect across Bogota in a brightly colored map — *Map of TransMilenio in Bogotá, CO. Map from Wikimedia Commons.*

Since the first TransMilenio trunk line went live in 2002, the system has looked at ways to optimize service delivery to ensure people can reliably use the system and expect buses to arrive at stops every 3-5 minutes. Changes have included BRT serving all stops along the route and creating a local versus express route system, which ultimately evolved into a local paired with a tiered express route system (with different express routes serving different stops along the route). Every time a new trunk segment was introduced to the system, TransMilenio would reoptimize the system to integrate the new trunk route, while still preserving frequency and reliability. As of 2022, TransMilenio as originally planned is nearly built out, with final trunk lines finishing design and starting construction.

Today, the TransMilenio system covers 12 major trunk routes served by nearly 1800 buses (each can carry 300 people) and 152 stations. It includes 71+ miles with 3-5 minute headways, and it’s the foundation of the metro area’s tiered bus network. The TransMilenio system, carrying between 2.5-3 million daily riders, exemplifies the best of bus rapid transit, to include but not limited to dedicated lanes, off-board fare collection, a common fare structure ($2950 COP = $0.60 USD as of this writing), and accessible stations.

Redefining world class transit through iteration

To exemplify a stellar transit system, decision makers have to engage in a conversation and take steps in implementing seamless, integrated, and simplified mobility that elevates moving people. As Bogotá’s system enters its second decade of service, it is iterating on its trials and errors to better serve its customers and pursue its mission.

TransMilenio has heralded several successes as well as shortcomings through its operations and evolution. The system today is moving people through the region 32 percent faster than other modes and has reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the city by 40 percent. Safety in and along TransMilenio has also improved, with significant reductions (80-90 percent) in road injuries and fatalities attributed to the system. However, TransMilenio leadership have expressed regret in not integrating transit signal priority in earlier routes to improve reliability. Additionally, accessibility remains a hurdle for the tiered transit system that feeds into TransMilenio, particularly for customers with mobility impairments boarding buses and getting to and from bus stops. This accessibility challenge is compounded by the initial lack of dedicated bus lanes for feeder buses—this system has only started to leverage painted transit priority lanes during peak periods to access TransMilenio stations more reliably.

As TransMilenio enters its third decade of operations, the agency will need to confront these challenges to maintain reliable service, before continuing to embark on future expansion plans, which includes the initial construction of the Bogotá metrorail system.

The bottom line: If at first you don’t succeed, try try again!

Decision makers at transit agencies, local governments, state DOTs, as well as legislators both at state houses and Congress, need to take a hard look at the transit paradigm in the US. There has been quite a prevailing and concerning mindset that public transit is a costly endeavor that yields minimal benefits. As such, the paradigm for public transit has been to provide the bare minimum for essential community service, if at all. Transit service has been considered as secondary to auto-centric transportation policy, investment, and operations in the US. The challenge here is changing the decision maker mindset that transit investments are a quick agent solution, akin to a weight loss miracle that happens overnight, and deemed an immediate failure when immediate results for transit don’t emerge.

To move the needle forward for transit in the US, decision makers should look to the TransMilenio example, where Mayor Peñalosa laid out a long-term vision and strategy to achieve a sustainable and reliable transit system that can connect people to everywhere they need to go (and not just the peak job commute as is currently the US transit system modus operandi). Transit evolution in the US needs to start with a bold rethink of what transit is for and how it can benefit communities. Only then should we lay out the initial investments (only reaching for capital intensive investments after proven sustainable transit growth), and start iterating towards our achievable goals.

Follow the money: Where does your state stack up on supporting transit?

A passenger hops onto a bus on a sunny day

Even though transit service is a localized experience, the state you live in actually has a massive impact on your access to frequent, reliable transit. As with interstates, ports, or other vital parts of a state’s transportation network, state governments have a major role in supporting the planning, operations, and maintenance of public transportation service. But the financial commitment to transit varies widely from state to state.

In partnership with the National Campaign for Transit Justice, we assessed the quality of transit support and availability across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. We’ll unpack our four criteria in a series of blog posts. This first post focuses on the dollars and cents: transit spending and restrictions on state tax dollars.

At a time when transit agencies are facing heavy financial stress, state support can be a key source of funding that allows transit to continue delivering reliable service. Most large transit systems, many of which are vital for supporting the largest regional economy in a state, operate with some level of support from their state. But that’s not always the case. There are statewide policies that impact a state’s financial commitment to transit, which can range from robust support down to almost nothing.

Transit agencies across the nation are nearing a fiscal cliff in 2023 as Covid-era relief packages expire. Click here to learn more.

Transit spending

If you’ve ever wanted to know what your state’s priorities are, take a look at the budget. That’s one of the first places we looked to assess state support for transit.

The 2021 infrastructure law increased federal transit spending, but in almost every case (with the exception of small agencies), these funds are not permitted to be used on operations, which means they don’t cover expenses like bus drivers’ salaries or bus maintenance. These expenses account for two-thirds of transit agencies’ total expenses, and without federal support, the burden of this funding can only realistically come from a few sources: state funding, local funding, and farebox revenue. The amount of state funding can have a major impact on the reach and quality of transit, especially in rural areas that don’t have as much local funding to supplement state dollars.

Click here to learn how transit spending on operations impacts local driving habits.

In the first graphic below, transit spending refers to each state’s total spending on public transportation in 2021—adjusted to per person rates to fairly compare states of varying size. We identified six bands of state transit spending per person:

Less than $12
$12.50-$25
$25-$50
$50-$100
$100-$200
More than $200

To see where your state lands, take a look at the figure below.

Map of state transit spending. For more information, see the text under "Transit spending." A table showing each state's spending will be available in our upcoming report, The Transit Report Card. — *Map depicting statewide spending on transit per capita (or per person) in each state in 2021. Map is not drawn to scale.*

While the map above shows each state’s most current spending levels (from 2021) on public transit, it’s not a full picture. Annual transit spending is also volatile, subject each year to the whims of state legislators, so these numbers from 2021 could look very different today. To get a stronger sense of long-term transit funding, we had to take a look at one of the frequent key sources—gas taxes.

State restrictions on gas tax revenue

Gas taxes are the taxes you pay every time you fill up a tank, and they’re the bedrock revenue stream for most states’ transportation systems. In fact, this is how we fund transit capital improvements nationally, by devoting a small share of the 18.4¢-per-gallon federal gas tax to a trust fund for transit. Yet in many states, it’s illegal to use state gas taxes for public transit.

Restrictions on gas tax revenue create a counterintuitive cycle, where all gas tax funding goes only toward building more roads, resulting in people having to drive more, which means more gas sold, which means more money spent on only new roads and no other travel options—leading to more driving and more spending. Without the reliable source of funding fuel taxes would provide, many transit agencies have had to rely on sales taxes, which are an incredibly volatile funding source subject to the swings of the economy. As a result, transit agencies can be forced to raise fares or cut service to stay afloat.

Gas tax restrictions can come from state statutes or state constitutions. Statutes are laws that can be written, passed, and repealed by state legislators. On the other hand, to repeal any law in a state constitution, an amendment needs to be passed. It is more difficult to pass a constitutional amendment than to repeal a statute.

In seven states, gas tax revenue is restricted by state statutes. Though these prohibitions can be a frustrating roadblock for advocates and transit agencies, they can be repealed. In the figure below, these states are shown in medium blue.

23 other states have a clause in their state constitution prohibiting gas tax revenue from being spent on public transit. Edit 2/23/2023: Three additional states (MI, OK, and CO) have partial restrictions on the majority of gas tax revenue being spent on transit. All of these states are shown in dark blue below. Though constitutional restrictions are much more difficult to overturn, advocates who see their states have these restrictions shouldn’t give up. In some cases, the language may be vague or flexible enough to leave room for transit to receive funding, even if the law hasn’t been interpreted that way in the past. For example, Colorado advocates were able to win transit support by making their fight about the way their gas tax law was interpreted.

States with no restrictions, like California, Virginia, South Carolina, and New York, are shown in light gray. These states allow gas tax revenue to be used for transit, which can serve as a lifeline in times of economic stress.

Map of gas tax revenue restrictions by state. For more information, see the text under "State restrictions on gas tax revenue." A table of each state's restrictions will be available in our upcoming report, The Transit Report Card. — *Map depicting restrictions on usage of motor fuel tax revenues in each state as of 2022. Map is not drawn to scale.* **Edit 2/23/2023:** A previous version of this map erroneously included Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Louisiana as states with constitutional or statutory restrictions. These states have no restrictions.

The bottom line

State spending is a strong indicator of state priorities, and low spending (coupled with a lack of funding options) is a clear sign that transit service is not at the top of state legislators’ minds.

Across the country, the transit fiscal cliff is looming. To weather the storm, agencies require financial assistance, or they’ll be forced to cut valuable service. Now is the time to increase transit spending at the state level. States with statutory and constitutional restrictions on funding for transit will need to think critically about how well these restrictions are serving them and their residents.

Keep an eye out for our next post in this series, which will focus on transit access and driving levels in each state.

Transit fiscal cliff or transit fiscal doom?

When ridership plummeted at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, transit agencies across the country experienced substantial operating budget deficits. The federal government responded by rolling out multiple relief packages to help agencies make it through the worst of the pandemic. Now, in early 2023, funds are running out. We surveyed transit agencies nationwide to see where they stand as federal support dwindles.

*Baltimore Charm City Circulator. Photo via Flickr/Elvert Barnes Photography*

What is the transit fiscal cliff?

According to the American Public Transportation Association, in the five years leading up to the pandemic, ridership was slowly declining across a range of transit agencies. Even with relatively stable ridership, transit agencies were already struggling to make ends meet.

When the Covid-19 pandemic caused national lockdowns, ridership plummeted, causing revenues from fare collection to drop to almost zero. Without fare revenues, transit agencies no longer had the funding to cover their operating costs. And the federal government stepped in, rolling out three separate emergency relief packages, and incorporating increased support for transit agencies in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). (Learn more about what the IIJA could accomplish for transit here.)

However, this funding alone was not enough. Ridership still hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels, and workforce shortages have only applied additional stress. Some local and state leaders also misinterpreted the new influx of federal cash as an opportunity to cut back on their own spending on transit, further delaying the recovery.

These combined stressors have created the transit fiscal cliff: the operating budget deficit expected at transit agencies across the country once their federal relief runs out. And for many transit agencies, the cliff is coming very soon—in some cases, as early as next year.

Above is a depiction of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) operating budget outlook for Fiscal Year 2024. The area outlined in the red dashed line represents the budget deficit. This graph is just one example of the drop-off, or fiscal cliff, many transit agencies expect to experience when federal funds run out.

How bad is it?

The National Campaign for Transit Justice (NCTJ) and T4America conducted a sample survey to paint a picture of the fiscal health of transit agencies around the United States as they approach the two-year anniversary of the last emergency relief package. In an effort to hear from a representative sample, we contacted about 40 transit agencies across the country, operationally diverse in size, around the country.

Out of the agencies we contacted, we received 27 responses. Here’s what we found:

1. Urban ridership recovery lags behind rural ridership.

We started our analysis by separating agencies into groups based on geographic area. 5 survey participants serve rural populations, 19 participants serve urban populations, and 4 participants serve both rural and urban populations.

While there is a broad range, the majority of urban transit agencies report recovery levels lower than 75 percent of pre-pandemic levels. Rural agencies reported a range of ridership recovery as low as 60 percent and as high as 90 percent. Meanwhile, jurisdictions that serve both rural and urban populations hovered near the top, reporting ridership around 80 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

Increased workplace choice might explain the slow ridership recovery in urban areas. Workers who have greater workplace choice could have the option to work remotely and no longer rely on public transit to commute. We also found that urban riders are experiencing less reliable service due to workforce shortages. Service reliability is imperative to workers dependent on public transportation, and a lack of reliability could push riders to other travel options.

2. Most agencies are experiencing workforce shortages.

Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, workforce shortages have been a major issue across sectors, including public transportation. We knew that the agencies participating in our study might be experiencing shortages, but we were unprepared for the prevalence of workforce issues.

Of our 27 participants, 24 continue to experience workforce shortages, starting when the pandemic began. Some agencies are short over 800 operators and maintenance workers who are vital for the day-to-day operation of transit agencies. As a result of the limited personnel, some agencies have had no choice but to cut service.

To address these shortages, agencies are working to incentivize workers to join their team. See this blog post for more information on their efforts.

3. Two-thirds of transit agencies predict budget deficits by 2025.

We separated participants into three groups based on their timelines for expected operating budgets. An overwhelming majority of transit agencies expect budget deficits with start dates rapidly approaching. Transit agencies began running out of funds as early as Fiscal Year 2022, and only 5 of our 27 participants didn’t project an operating budget deficit.

10 out of 27 projected deficits starting in Fiscal Year 2024, and an additional 10 projected deficits starting in Fiscal Year 2025. Only 3 transit agencies projected operating budget deficits starting in the Fiscal Year 2026 or later and expected funds to last long term without intervention.

4. Transit agencies are implementing unique tactics to address budget shortfalls.

Participants varied in how they plan to address their deficits. Seven participants plan to increase fare prices, five plan to cut services, three are discussing ballot measures to increase funding, and the remaining are looking at solutions unique to their situations. One agency is looking to change service hours to reflect new traffic patterns. Another is looking to create a coalition of local businesses and institutions to philanthropically support the transit system, which would help replace missing fares.

It’s clear that transit agencies know the fiscal cliff is coming, and they’re not turning a blind eye. To continue delivering the service communities need, these agencies are offering creative solutions, showing a steadfast commitment to the operation of public transportation.

Help transit succeed

The Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act (H.R. 3744), sponsored by Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia, would allocate $20 billion annually to transit agencies’ operating budgets for four years, starting in FY23. The additional federal funding would empower agencies to make significant improvements to transit service. This could mean providing additional service or developing services for underserved communities. You can show your support for this legislation by calling your congressional representatives.

In addition to calling for federal funding, you can contact your state legislators and tell them to support similar legislation at the state level. In some states, that may mean advocating for constitutional and statutory changes that would allow the state to provide funding support for transit and alternative modes of transportation.

Another way to advocate for transit is by getting involved with your local government meetings. Providing feedback for members of local government is an integral step in improving transit service.

For too long, transit agencies have struggled to provide necessary service to our communities. So that all Americans are able to take advantage of this valuable resource, transit agencies must be given the support they need to deliver quality, reliable service.

Following through on the ADA: The All Stations Accessibility Program

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) released a notice of funding opportunity for the All Stations Accessibility Program (ASAP) that allocates $343 million in fiscal year 2022 (FY22). This program offers competitive grants to localities for the upgrading of legacy stations so they meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990.

Why do we need the All Stations Accessibility Program?

The transportation sector is a leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions nationwide, and the majority of its contributions comes from driving in private vehicles. As we wrote in our report Driving Down Emissions, in order to reduce transportation emissions, we need to give people the option to travel outside of a car.

One such option is transit—like buses, subways, and commuter rail—but many barriers prevent people from replacing their daily car trips with transit trips. (Read our blog series for more information on the impact increased transit access and funding can have on car trips.) The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 required transit stations to address one of these barriers: equitable access for people with disabilities.

Equitable access is pivotal for allowing people with disabilities to utilize other forms of travel outside of car travel. Walking and rolling to destinations presents its own challenges, because the majority of U.S. cities aren’t designed for walking and rolling. Destinations are spread out, and even nearby destinations might be on the other side of a wide, dangerous arterial road. In addition, many sidewalks aren’t accessible for people who use mobility aids, either due to obstructions like snow (and even EV-charging extension cords), poor maintenance, or inaccessible entrances and exits at intersections. For the 40 percent of people with disabilities who cannot drive, transit access can be an essential resource for daily trips.

However, even in cities with readily available transit networks, like New York City, people with disabilities do not have the access they need. That’s because, more than 30 years after the ADA was enacted, many legacy stations (public transit stations built before 1992 or commuter rail stations built before 1991) haven’t been updated to meet equitable accessibility standards.

Many legacy stations were built without consideration or guidance on designs that adequately served riders with disabilities. Once the ADA was passed, the law required that any capital improvements made to public transportation or commuter rail stations must satisfy requirements of the ADA. However, ADA compliance presented an additional cost to transit agencies, so rather than install the capital improvements their riders needed, they avoided making these necessary changes to their stations. As a result, many legacy stations not only remain inaccessible—they’ve entered a state of disrepair.

The lack of available options can pose major issues in the lives of people with disabilities. Limited transit access can mean that one small change—like the only elevator at the nearest accessible transit station being out of service—can create hours of delays as a wheelchair-bound rider waits for paratransit, attempts to hail an accessible cab, or chooses a less direct transit route that requires multiple connections. Such delays can make all the difference in whether riders reach essential services, like healthcare appointments or job interviews, or miss their window. And in the case of natural disasters like hurricanes and floods, these delays can make it impossible for people with disabilities to safely evacuate using transit. As Jean Ryan of Disabled in Action put it, “access delayed is access denied.”

Reliable, accessible transit is an important resource for people with disabilities to reach their daily needs. Considering that a quarter of the American population is disabled, improved access for all travelers is also central to getting more people on the bus, subway, and train—boosting transit revenues and lowering transportation emissions. ASAP gives localities the funding they need to upgrade legacy stations so that transit stations can make good on the long overdue promise of the ADA and better serve all riders.

Has your transit agency applied for an ASAP grant?

The Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the All Stations Accessibility Program was released on July 26, 2022. Applications for ASAP grants must be submitted for review no later than September 30th, 2022 at 11:59 p.m. States, local authorities (including MPOs), and other entities (like transit agencies) that operate or support legacy stations can apply for this grant. (Note: Even if local authorities miss their window for ASAP grants, they can seek federal funding for capital improvements to address accessibility. Learn more about transit funds made available by the new infrastructure law and check out our funding memo for more details.)

ASAP grants can cover up to 80 percent of the total cost of the proposed project. Localities must fund the remaining 20 percent of the total cost but localities can derive this funding from a variety of sources. The FTA has not released a maximum funding cap, but maintains the authority to cap funding during the selection process.

Localities can apply for two funding options: capital projects or planning projects. Capital projects include repairing, improving, modifying or retrofitting legacy stations while planning projects include developing or modifying ongoing projects to comply with ADA standards. If localities want to apply for both capital project funding and planning project funding they should submit separate applications for each project.

After the application process, FTA will assess applications based on criteria that consider the need for improvement, the benefits from the proposed project, coordination with stakeholders, local financial commitment, implementation strategy, and applicant capacity. The FTA will review this criteria as well as prioritize projects that address racial equity and barriers to opportunity.

Operators of legacy stations have the responsibility to create an equitable riding experience, and now the ASAP can empower these entities to meet their ADA obligations and adequately serve all riders. To encourage transit ridership, agencies need to provide riders with reliable, accessible service—applying for ASAP grants will help them do just that.

Transportation for America members have access to exclusive resources that provide further detail on this topic. To view memos and other members-only resources, visit the Member Hub located at t4america.org/members. (Search “Member Hub” in your inbox for the password, or new members can reach out to chris.rall@t4america.org for login details.) Learn more about membership at t4america.org/membership.

USDOT and Congress: Taking sides but not talking about implementation

Sheltered Richmond bus stop by a bus only lane

If we’re going to ensure that the historic amount of transit funding in the infrastructure law actually results in good, usable, high quality transit that improves access to jobs and services, Congress is going to need to do a better job of oversight and thinking through the very real and difficult issues at hand for transit, not just arguing about whether or not transit is a vital part of transportation and mobility in communities small and large.

Nearly two weeks ago, Secretary Buttigieg testified before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. On paper, the purpose was to discuss implementation of the infrastructure bill. However they instead wasted much of the hearing arguing about a harmless Federal Highways Administration memo calling for investment in repair and safety projects, improving equity, and reducing emissions. One side didn’t like the existence of these priorities on a piece of paper while the other side tried to point out that these priorities are all clearly laid out in the bill (even if the bill does little to further them). There was no real conversation about implementation ideas or needs, and the very real challenges of spending this money in a way that improves the state of our country’s infrastructure and helps connect people to opportunity.

Unfortunately, that trend continued this week during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing about public transit and the infrastructure law.

While the majority showed a willingness to ignore bad faith arguments from the minority and certain invited guests about whether or not transit should even exist, they will need to do far more in the future to address very real concerns about ensuring that transit money get appropriated in a timely way, that USDOT advance new capital projects smoothly, how to handle very real workforce challenges in the transit industry, aligning transit investments with equitable transit-oriented development, and positioning transit to be a reliable and competitive mode for people to use within their community. In fact, the Federal Transit Administration is currently seeking input on their rules surrounding the Capital Investment Grants, like New Starts—a topic that would have been good to discuss.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) described the vital service that public transit provides in our communities, highlighting the example of a worker spending a day’s wage on Uber or Lyft to get to/from work on a Sunday to keep their job, because there isn’t any transit service. The Senator painted a clear picture why transit needs more investment to improve the experience of existing transit riders and make the service viable for millions of new riders, connecting this need to the current pain of high gas prices, saying “if people had reliable public transportation then they don’t need to decide between gas and rent.”

_{Senator Brown during the hearing}

Unfortunately, ranking member Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) seems to have no real interest in ensuring that transit serves Americans well. He derided past investments in public transit, including the COVID relief funds that continued to connect essential workers to work during the pandemic, as wasteful spending and for not “paying its fair share. The senator incorrectly noted how vehicles pay gas tax to pay their fair share of the transportation system, seemingly unaware that the gas tax hasn’t come close to paying its share in 15 years or more. (Tens of billions in general tax dollars have been transferred into the highway trust fund after the gas tax declined in value and failed to cover what Congress was still sending out to states.)

_{Senator Toomey}

Rather than getting into the specifics of what all of the speakers said, it is frustrating that we have now finished the second Senate hearing about implementation of the infrastructure bill with little-to-no substantive conversation about implementation. How is this money going to be spent? What kinds of transit projects are going to be funded? How is USDOT going to speed up the dreadfully slow pipeline of transit capital projects (especially compared with relative ease for highway projects)? What’s wrong with the measures that the Federal Transit Administration uses to score projects for funding, and how could those measures be improved to prioritize access? These kinds of questions were completely absent from the day.

Congress has a vital role in oversight and accountability, and prodding the administration to update old vehicle-centric rules and standards and empower transportation agencies to reduce the impact of the system on the environment and communities and better connect people to jobs and necessities. (Many of our recommendations are listed here.)

While the rest of the speakers were a stark display of contrasts, the committee never really probed the implementation steps that USDOT or Federal Transit Administration could take to fill any holes in the legislation or better support the goals of the witnesses and needs of transit systems and riders. They didn’t even acknowledge that they exist.

Going forward, we need Congressional committees to lead oversight efforts that focus on specific implementation steps needed, any problems in implementation, and especially the results. To do that, the members will have to be an active participant and bring a probing skepticism to ensure we are doing all we can to get the most out of the law. And unfortunately, there will need to be a discussion about how to sideline histrionics about unenforceable memos as well as members or witnesses who are totally out of step with the mainstream and seemingly have no interest in delivering a strong transportation system for drivers and non-drivers alike.

Reducing emissions with better transit, part two: Improve transit access

Increasing funding for transit operations is a vital first step to help more people drive less, but there’s an equally important next step: connecting more people by transit to more of the destinations they currently reach by car.

*Bus riders wait at the Silver Spring Transit Center in Silver Spring, MD. Photo by BeyondDC*

This post was written by Rayla Bellis, Director of Thriving Communities at Smart Growth America, and Abi Grimminger, T4America Communications Associate. This is the second of a series of posts on this topic—find the full set here.

In our first installment of this series on the importance of transit to reduce emissions, we focused on increasing spending on transit operations—more buses, more trains, running more often (in the 288 urbanized areas with available data.) We found that by increasing federal support for transit operations across these areas, we can make meaningful progress in reducing driving emissions. But while that’s a crucial step in the right direction to meet our climate goals, we also need to consider how to expand access to transit and help more people use transit to get where they need to go.

Pairing expanded transit service with greater access to transit

For a second phase of our analysis of how investing in transit can help meet our climate goals, we looked at what we could achieve by improving transit access—in this case meaning how well transit connects people from their homes to available jobs in their region within a reasonable travel time. Improving transit access goes beyond simply expanding transit service. While offering more routes or more frequent service can certainly improve transit access, it won’t necessarily do so if those routes aren’t designed to connect the places where people live as directly as possible to the places they need to go

In the 288 urbanized areas studied, we examined the annual vehicle miles traveled (VMT) estimates for all 88.5 million households included in the 2017 National Household Travel Survey. We analyzed what share of their regions’ jobs (within 45 minutes from their homes) they could reach with existing transit service using data from the EPA’s Smart Location Database. Unsurprisingly the households that are unable to reach any jobs by transit within that time frame traveled quite a bit by car—averaging 23,090 miles per year.

Households that could get to work using transit drove significantly less, and the improvement came with even modest levels of access to jobs via public transportation. Households that could reach just 10 percent of jobs in their metropolitan area by transit drove 19,040 miles per year (an 18 percent drop). When that access increased modestly up to 10-20 percent of jobs, households drove 17,710 miles per year on average (a 23 percent drop), and when they could reach over 20 percent of all metro-area jobs with transit, average driving in those households dropped to 16,380 miles (or 29 percent less than households with no transit access).

Even improving transit access to connect people to up to 20 percent of metropolitan area (MSA) jobs leads to significant drops in average miles driven per year, reducing emissions.

Based on those results, we estimate that if we could manage to give all 88.5 million households we studied access to at least 20 percent of their region’s jobs by transit by 2050, we could reduce annual vehicle miles traveled by these households by 23 percent, leading to a total reduction in VMT (including non-household trips like deliveries and ridesharing) in those urbanized areas of 16 percent in 2050 compared to projected VMT based on our current trend. This is 377 billion fewer miles driven annually. Given that transportation emissions are the main perpetrators of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., this would be a major step toward improving climate outcomes.

Raising the bar

Providing all households in the 288 urbanized areas we studied with access to at least 20 percent of their region’s jobs by 2050 will require more than simply increasing investment in transit or even just running more trains and buses because of the existing low-density suburban development in many of these regions, which has contributed heavily to VMT growth and emissions in these cities. It will take a real push to make transit-supportive land-use decisions and provide the right transit service to connect people to the destinations they need. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. In fact, some urbanized areas are already providing a significant share of their residents with access to at least 20 percent of their regions’ jobs by transit today, raising the bar for communities across the country.

In cities like Champaign, IL, Bloomington, IL, Duluth, MN-WI, and Boulder, CO, more than 70 percent of households can currently reach more than 20 percent of metropolitan-area jobs using transit. Bringing all 288 urbanized areas we studied up to a level of access comparable to those regions by 2050 (in line with the current top 2 percent of cities in the graphic below) would result in an 11.9 percent reduction in VMT in 2050, compared to what is currently projected for that year. Though a slightly less ambitious target, bringing all 288 urbanized areas up to the level of access provided in the top 5 percent of cities would still have a sizable impact, resulting in a 9.5 percent reduction. That would significantly reduce both emissions and the amount of time Americans spend in their cars on average—a win for the environment and for commuters.

In cities with the best current transit access (those in the top 2 percent), about 70 percent of households can reach more than 20 percent of their jobs by transit.

Bringing all 288 urbanized areas to the level of access provided by the current top-performing regions could reduce annual VMT in 2050 by 11.9 percent compared to currently projected levels for that year.

If we brought all 288 urbanized areas up to a minimum level of transit access to jobs already achieved by the…	…we could achieve a reduction in annual VMT in 2050 of…	…meaning a cumulative VMT reduction over 30 years of…
Top 25% of urbanized areas	-3.7%	-2.0%
Top 10% of urbanized areas	-6.5%	-3.6%
Top 5% of urbanized areas	-9.5%	-5.2%
Top 2% of urbanized areas	-11.9%	-6.5%

Source: Estimated using data on household VMT from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey and data on transit accessibility from the EPA Smart Location Database.

It is important to note that the impacts of poor access to transit aren’t felt equally. People who most need an affordable alternative to car travel are often the same people who don’t have viable transit access. Black workers are four times more likely to take transit than white workers, yet transit access is roughly 24 percent worse in the quartile of urban areas with the most Black residents, compared with those with the fewest. Areas with high poverty rates get less frequent, reliable transit service than wealthy neighborhoods. If we want to face climate goals head-on, we also have to address these inequities in transit access.

But how?

Increasing access to jobs via transit will require an intentional policy and investment strategy, because it depends on several factors beyond just how much we spend on transit: how well transit serves different populations currently, development patterns in the region, and where jobs and services are clustered. And overall, to make the more ambitious scenarios possible, changes in local and metro-area land-use decisions need to go hand-in-hand with the increased transit investment.

Some cities would need to spend a great deal to significantly improve transit access in the more sprawling portions of their regions if development practices don’t change, which is all the more reason to change those development practices now. Yet scores of cities could likely make meaningful improvements to transit access with very little additional spending. For instance, some cities (like Columbus, OH and Houston, TX) have been able to expand transit access simply by reconsidering the way their routes are structured and reconfiguring their service from the ground up with a focus on improving access.

To address the pressing need to reduce emissions from transportation to meet ambitious climate goals, we’ll need to not only invest more money overall in running more buses and trains more often, but also consider how to expand that transit service into more places and serve more people—especially those who need it most. More on this in an accompanying report coming in the new year.

After COVID, who’s driving the bus?

As schools have returned to in-person learning and employment centers come back to life, mobility is grinding to a halt with a slow return of bus operators, the result of market pressures and ill-timed disinvestments.

A common sight across communities in America is the classic yellow school bus ferrying children to and from school and the public transit bus, circulating people of all walks of life to jobs and services in their communities.

We see buses everywhere because of the thousands of bus operators who undergo rigorous training and certification to operate these oversized passenger vehicles safely and efficiently. The operator training is supported via a network of training operators, who keep abreast of the latest safety and operational standards from the federal government and vehicle manufacturers.

Communities are facing a lack of operators and bus trainers, due to a cascading slew of factors exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

bus driver wearing mask adjusts mirror — *Image from Flickr/MTA NYC*

Transit drivers under pressure

From the perspective of the transit bus operator, driving a bus lent itself to job security, community respect, and in many areas, union representation. Most importantly, driving transit was an inclusive industry for those historically marginalized from the labor market.

However, the glamor of the job has eroded significantly over time, with stagnant wages, more arduous hours, contentious riders, more complicated roadways to navigate, and more complicated vehicles to operate. The industry was already struggling to both train and retain skilled operators.

COVID-19 presented further challenges to an already strained transit workforce. With the onset of the pandemic, transit bus operators were on the frontlines, providing mobility to fellow frontline workers and subjecting themselves to regular COVID exposure risk (and some losing their lives to COVID, such as 136 NYC MTA operators in the early days of the pandemic). For some operators, that was too much risk to bear.

To add to these challenges, transit systems facing dire budgets with falling riderships made draconian cuts to service (eliminated routes, lowered frequencies, reduced reliability) and then struggled to pivot the operators, bus trainers, and mechanics that remained into other roles. As a result, transit operations scaled down quickly, without a plan to scale back up. This cut off transit-reliant people (seniors, youth, persons with disabilities, persons with limited financial resources) from jobs and services. But when the fiscal picture for transit agencies started to look better, scaling operations back up took more time than scaling down.

Hampton Roads Transit (HRT), operating in southeastern Virginia and serving over 22 million annual passengers, is no exception. A spokesperson told T4A that “HRT is currently operating a reduced service plan in order to maintain a level of reliable service. The pandemic has had a significant impact on HRT staffing, beginning with a dramatic decrease in attendance that when added to the shortage of operators resulted in HRT at one point being down 30% of bus operators needed to meet service.”

Empty driver's seat — *Image from Wikimedia Commons*

Unpredictable workloads for school bus drivers

Faced with similar challenges to those of transit bus operators, if not worse, school bus operators are opting out of shuttling children to school. With split schedules (AM and PM stints), school bus drivers are unable to work enough hours to qualify for benefits, despite working more than half of their day. With COVID-19 requiring virtual learning, many districts were unable to pivot operators to other roles in the interim, forcing these drivers to be furloughed for more than a year.

Now as schools reopen to in-person learning, many bus operators have decided not to return, choosing to pursue steadier opportunities. Others are less able to work because of falling ill or succumbing to COVID-19. This has placed school districts across the country in a pinch.

The story linked above notes that some school districts are asking—even paying—parents to drive their children to school, contributing to daily congestion and eroding air quality. Other districts have had to delay starting school to give themselves time to find, train, and license new drivers . Yet others have required the state to intervene and call in the National Guard to drive children to school. To add salt to the wound, in many cities, children are shuttled to school by transit buses, which as noted earlier, are already stretched thin.

What we need

This developing crisis will require considerable intervention by municipalities to stem the tide. It will involve revisiting bus operator working conditions, and strengthened policies and procedures to protect the bus driver from health hazards as well as unruly passengers.

Most importantly, municipalities will have to invest considerably to ensure that compensation for a bus operator is competitive and marketable alongside investment in training resources and the staffing involved to support not only bus operator training, but also the maintenance of bus fleets. Hampton Roads Transit’s re-staffing issues reflect many of these national trends. According to their internal figures, “the number of applications received dropped by 48%. To attract new operators HRT is currently offering $4,000 sign-on bonuses, Commercial Driver’s License training, and referral bonuses. HRT recently negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement, increasing the starting pay by 20% in order to be competitive locally.” But these increased incentives require increased funding.

Tom Klevan, the manager of multimodal planning for the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, phrased the need for action well in an email to T4America:

“The bus operator shortage currently facing public transit providers across the country illustrates the growing and continuing need for both federal and state investment in multiple mobility options, as well as our nation’s road infrastructure. Further, we need to increase public understanding of the role that transit plays in the overall well-being of communities. The global COVID-19 pandemic has served to shine a bright light on the value of life-essential tasks—including operating and maintaining transit vehicles—as well as the fragile nature of our global and local economies if we collectively don’t take steps to focus resources both public and private on creating the conditions that promote equity.”

Lastly, municipalities and transit agencies will need to revisit protocol in addressing future resource strains. Those protocols need to prioritize not cutting transit service, training, and maintenance support, because as we’ve seen, those short-term solutions lead to steeper costs in the long run.

Want to save the climate? Start by funding transit operations

The current trend of more driving will make it harder for us to reach our emissions goals. Making public transit a more convenient and reliable option so people can access the things they need while taking shorter or fewer car trips is one way to reverse the trend of more driving.

MARTA buses in Atlanta. Flickr photo by James Williamor.

This post was written by Rayla Bellis, Director of Thriving Communities at Smart Growth America, and Abi Grimminger, T4America Communications Associate. It’s the first of a series of posts on this topic—find the full set here.

Transportation accounts for the largest share of emissions in the US, and cars and trucks are responsible for nearly all of it. To fully decarbonize transportation by 2050, we need to transition to electric vehicles (EVs). But that transition is still decades away, and in the meantime the cumulative impacts of more driving and more emissions will make it harder for us to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. We cannot afford to wait until the 2040s to start bending the curve on transportation emissions: we need to take real action now. And we won’t get there if we continue to do what we’ve been doing: driving more and more (measured as vehicle miles traveled or VMT).

We need to give people better options for getting around without needing a car. That means public transit, and a lot more of it. Public transit isn’t a reliable option for most Americans. While about 80 percent of people in the US live within areas classified as “urban” (which includes the suburbs of urban centers), less than 10 percent of Americans live within walking distance of reliable, high quality transit that comes every 15 minutes. And 45 percent of Americans have no access to transit at all.

Image from TransitCenter’s excellent video, The Case for Federal Transit Operations Support

Yet the federal government gives transit just 20 percent of surface transportation funding, and the rest goes to highways (which often funds highway expansions that make public transit even harder to use). Transit agencies can use this funding to repair and maintain their systems and to build out new services—but they can’t use it to help cover the cost of operating their systems, which accounts for two-thirds of a transit agency’s total expenses. This has put an enormous strain on agencies’ budgets, particularly as they continue to suffer from reduced fare revenue as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We can afford to do better

In partnership with Third Way, Transportation for America recently analyzed 288 of the largest urbanized areas in the U.S. to help us understand just how much we would need to increase transit operating funding in those regions to enable residents to drive less. 60 percent of all driving happens in these 288 urbanized areas. While the scale of CO2 reduction we need isn’t something transit—or EVs, or any other single strategy—can fulfill alone, it turns out we can make real headway with an achievable increase in transit spending.

While more than two-thirds of the urbanized areas analyzed currently spend less than $100 per person on transit operations, there’s a correlation between more transit operations funding and lower amounts of driving in these metro areas. Our analysis found less driving per capita in the areas that spend more on transit operations per person (keep an eye out for a full report soon with more detail on our methodology and analysis results). That means that if we increase operating spending per person across those urbanized areas and continue to scale that spending up over time, we can expect to see meaningful reductions in driving.

We estimate that if we doubled transit spending in all of those urbanized areas by 2050, VMT in those regions will be 6.1 percent below its current growth trajectory. If we triple our investment in transit operations, VMT would be 10.7 percent lower. That’s less time spent commuting, less time in traffic, and less emissions warming our planet.

In fact, doubling or tripling transit spending would be roughly equivalent to taking every single gas-powered car off the road for about an entire day every two months for the next 30 years. If we fail to reach our goals of 100% electric vehicles by 2050, it would be closer to a day every single month with no emissions whatsoever from gas-powered vehicles.

VMT reduction impacts of increased transit spending

The 288 urbanized areas we analyzed spent $48 billion on transit operations in 2019.

By 2050, if we ↧ ↧	By 2050, we would increase annual transit spending to...	And see VMT reduction across those urbanized areas in 2050 of...
...double transit operating spending in each urbanized area	$94 billion	-6.1% (143 billion fewer miles per year than projected)
...triple transit operating spending in each urbanized area	$120 billion	-10.7% (250 billion fewer miles per year than projected)

Estimated using 2019 transit operating spending from the National Transit Database and 2019 per capita VMT from the Federal Highway Administration. Scenarios doubling or tripling transit spending were capped at a maximum of $800 per person in each urbanized area.

While we won’t be able to double or triple transit operating spending overnight, these are investments we can—and need to—start making now. Unfortunately, the federal government is continuing to turn a blind eye to the need for better transit funding if we ever want to reach our climate goals. Though the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act increased federal spending on transit, this legislation provides an historic amount of money for highways and prioritizes car travel. That will encourage driving-oriented road projects and development decisions that make our investments in transit less effective and the service we do have more difficult to access. A transit stop that’s dangerous or difficult to reach is a transit stop that will be underutilized, only being used by those people willing to endure the difficulty or risk. A broad coalition of stakeholders is urging $10 billion more for transit in the budget reconciliation package, which can be used to cover operating costs. Though transit will ultimately need much more than this to enable us to meet our climate goals, $10 billion is an important step in the right direction.

There’s more to this story

It’s not just about pumping more money into transit—how we provide transit service matters. In order to reduce the amount we drive, we’ll need to ensure that transit effectively connects people to the places they need to go. We’ll be doing a series of blog posts analyzing what it would take to build a national transit system that helps get us to our climate goals.

Federal transportation funding opportunities 101

There are ample opportunities for the infrastructure law to support good projects and better outcomes. These five in-depth, detailed guides explain the available federal programs for funding public transportation, passenger rail, Complete Streets and active transportation, and EV infrastructure.

We boiled down the funding opportunities within the federal transportation program, with a focus on how much flexibility there is for transit, intercity rail, Complete Streets and EV infrastructure. These more sophisticated guides are especially helpful for very engaged advocates or agencies who are looking for in-depth specifics about funding and program eligibilities.

There are currently five funding guides:

Public transportation operating
Public transportation capital
Passenger rail
Complete Streets / active transportation
EV infrastructure
Micromobility

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (the IIJA, or 2021 infrastructure bill) is the law of the land, guiding all federal transportation policy and funding decisions through at least late 2026. On top of the infrastructure law’s $102 billion in competitive or discretionary grant programs, the established formula funding programs also have considerable but typically untapped flexibility for funding projects across the transportation infrastructure spectrum, such as the main source of highway funding going instead to certain transit projects.

View our guide to understanding the IIJA

More background:

In addition to the approved IIJA, the (stalled) 2021 budget reconciliation bill, the Build Back Better Act (BBBA), would bring additional major investment in sustainable and equitable transportation. While that bill is on hold for now, record investment is still on the way through the IIJA. ¹

While the bulk of the new IIJA funding will just advance the status quo, these bills, taken together, do better acknowledge the importance of climate change, equity, safety, and connecting communities.

Less than 30 days to speak out on transit funding

Last weekend, Congress gave themselves until October 31st to pass the infrastructure deal (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or IIJA) and the budget reconciliation (the Build Back Better Act). With cuts on the way for the Build Back Better Act, it’s more important than ever to raise our voices in support of transit funding.

In the Build Back Better Act, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee allocated funds to key programs that are critical for our nation to create and sustain good-paying jobs, strengthen our global economic competitiveness, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution. At the same time, these provisions will make real progress toward racial, economic, and environmental justice.

Passing the IIJA without these provisions in the reconciliation bill will leave the nation in a worse state than before—facing rising greenhouse gas emissions and worsened access to jobs and services, especially for communities that need this access most. Even so, Congress is negotiating major cuts to the reconciliation bill that could threaten these programs in the name of an arbitrary bottomline.

The programs we can’t lose

Investing in marginalized communities

A $10 billion transit program that includes operations funding and is specifically designed to connect residents of disadvantaged or persistent poverty communities to jobs and essential services
A $4 billion program to mitigate negative impacts of transportation on underserved communities

Investing in local communities

A $6 billion program that would advance local surface transportation projects

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions

$4 billion in incentive grants for states that show progress toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions, not only benefitting the environment but the local economy and public health

Increased funding for rail

$10 billion for the planning and development of public high-speed rail projects and $150 million for credit risk premium assistance, supporting jobs and providing for travel options

The Build Back Better Act increases transit funding by $10 billion, bringing transit spending up to $49 billion. If that number sounds familiar, it’s the amount transit was originally promised by a bipartisan group of Senators—before the Senate stripped out $10 billion without any explanation.

The funding provided by the Build Back Better Act promotes more local control and is flexible enough to include operating funds—a glaring omission in the IIJA. Adequate funding for transit, transit operations in particular, is crucial for mobility freedom and access to jobs, education, and community for all users, especially youth, elderly, people with disabilities, and all those unable to access a vehicle.

The Build Back Better Act makes meaningful investments in rebuilding communities harmed by transportation decisions, another area where the IIJA comes up short. Highway construction and suburban sprawl have repeatedly caused the uprooting and marginalizing of communities, particularly BIPOC communities. It is crucial for the government to facilitate rebuilding and reconnecting our communities.

The Build Back Better Act is far more serious than the IIJA about taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve infrastructure for all Americans. These are necessary programs that shouldn’t be cut to meet a last-minute spending goal. We encourage you to call your Congressperson and voice your support for these programs in the Build Back Better Act before time runs out.