The upcoming continuing resolution to fund the government and avert a shutdown won’t include transportation spending, piling on the pressure to pass the infrastructure deal and budget reconciliation. Congress could end up gutting the reconciliation package to make a deal.
Congress is currently negotiating a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government at current levels and keep things open and functioning through December 3, but, unlike most other CRs, transportation is not in the current CR. So the race is on to pass both the surface transportation reauthorization (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Senate’s infrastructure deal), and the budget reconciliation by the current September 27 deadline set by Congressional Democrats.
If passed, the current CR will fund only the FAA and the FHWA’s emergency fund, no other transportation programs. This means that without reauthorization, normal authorized funding provided to highways, transit, rail and other programs will come to a halt after September 30, even under this CR. Of course, these things will be funded by reauthorization and reconciliation if they pass, but that is not a given. So without the safety net of a CR, Congress must pass reauthorization by September 30 or risk a shutdown of much of US DOT. That date is coming fast, and the United States government has already begun shutdown planning procedures.
Speaker Pelosi’s dual-track approach has tied the fate of reauthorization to that of budget reconciliation. If Congress can pass reconciliation, they will most likely be able to pass reauthorization. But key Senators are debating the budget’s $3.5 trillion funding level, which may mean that in order to get both bills to pass, Congress could cut reconciliation funding for the transit programs we applauded last week.
For those who wish to improve the nation’s infrastructure, reconciliation is just as important as reauthorization.
If Congress passes reauthorization without the transportation funding in the budget reconciliation package, they will cut $10 billion in transit funding and remove all operations funding for transit agencies. They will fail to provide direct funding to localities, fail to connect affordable housing to services and amenities, and fail to address the impacts of U.S. transportation policy on communities of color.
As we said when the reauthorization text was released, the bill does not represent any sort of policy shift toward safety or connectivity that our communities so desperately need. In fact, it cements irresponsible highway expansion. The transportation programs included in the budget reconciliation package move this reauthorization in the right direction.
To avoid a shutdown that could cripple transportation projects and to improve the infrastructure deal, reconciliation is just as vital to pass as the deal itself.
The Senate’s infrastructure deal came up short on transit in two key ways. The House can address these concerns by restoring the funds cut from transit. More on this in our fact sheet.
Originally, the Senate proposed $49 billion in new transit spending in their infrastructure deal. But without any explanation, the final bill cut transit down to $39 billion. Reliable, accessible transit will be key to an equitable economic recovery after the pandemic, and there are two key reasons that the funding provided by the Senate is not sufficient and the $10 billion originally promised for transit is returned.
1. It isn’t the amount of funding, it’s the mix
From job creation to mobility, transit provides key benefits to communities, but highways routinely receive far more federal funding than transit. Before the bipartisan infrastructure package passed in the Senate, some policymakers finally started discussing altering the 80-20 highway-transit split, which provides 80 percent of new funds to highways and 20 percent to transit. Though the House’s INVEST in America Act altered the split to 77-23, when the Senate passed its bipartisan infrastructure bill, the 80-20 split remained in place and transit funding was cut from $49 billion to $39 billion—one of the only programs that was cut when compared to the original proposal.
$39 billion is still a historic investment in terms of funding levels, but it won’t lead to major shifts in transportation outcomes. With the highway program getting equally historic funding levels and the 80-20 split still firmly in place, we can expect the majority of funds to go to highway expansions, which can make transit more difficult to access and use. More funding for everything will just lead to more of the results we have today.
2. Operations funding
New funding for transit will help buy more buses or railcars, but these investments could be rendered useless without proper investment in operations costs. Operations funding pays for drivers and other labor, mechanics, and electricity to run the new buses and lines.
Transit, like other industries during the pandemic, has been put under economic strain due to low ridership cutting into farebox revenues. In the midst of the Great Recession, transit faced a similar situation. New funding paid for brand new buses or railcars at the same time that transit agencies were laying off drivers and cutting service because of the drop in sales taxes and other non-fare revenue sources. The irony is that proper investment in public transit can spur even more economic recovery and job growth compared to other types of spending.
As T4America Director Beth Osborne recently put it, “There’s a lot of money for new buses and updated facilities, and things like that. It still will likely be as dangerous and difficult as ever to reach that facility, but it’ll be real pretty.”
In the budget reconciliation, the House can restore the $10 billion taken from transit and make funds available for operations.
With the bipartisan infrastructure deal approved by the Senate, opportunities to shift long-term transportation policy will shift to the House and to program implementation. The opportunity in the House is through targeted investments via the budget reconciliation bill that will accompany the House infrastructure bill vote.
(UPDATE 8/18: Clarified details on the passage of the Affordable Care Act)
After a strong five-year reauthorization proposal was approved by the House, the Senate transformed their reauthorization offering into a larger bipartisan infrastructure deal, funding everything from broadband to water infrastructure, which passed the Senate last week. This deal, which was crafted and passed in the Senate with the White House’s backing, doubled down on maintaining the status quo in regards to transportation policy, focusing on highway construction and expansion without incorporating maintenance of roads and bridges as the priority, improving transportation safety, and better connecting communities.
Rep. Peter DeFazio criticized the deal, specifically citing the bill’s treatment of public transportation.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly refused to approve the Senate’s deal, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act without the Senate first approving a sweeping budget reconciliation bill that focuses on strategic national investments across a broad spectrum of infrastructure concerns, including but not limited to agriculture, environment (air and water), education, first responders, and public health. The Senate granted her wish, passing a budget resolution, kicking off the reconciliation process, and this bill provides an opportunity to invest more in transit funding, including transit operations.
What is budget reconciliation?
As noted in the graphic below, the Senate budget resolution provides key directions to specific committees on both the House and Senate side on how to program the specific budget called for in the resolution. (Budget reconciliation is often used to pass more controversial or partisan legislation. For example, the final Affordable Care Act package resulted from the House passing the Senate’s healthcare bill and then amending it through the reconciliation process. However, reconciliation only happens once each year as part of the annual budget-making process.) The House will return next week, with respective committees deliberating how they will program and craft legislative text to the directives of the Senate’s budget resolution, before cobbling together the final reconciliation bill for passage in both chambers of Congress.
As the respective committees in the House and Senate contemplate legislative text for the final reconciliation bill, there are key restrictions for what can be included. Unfortunately, introducing brand new policies or making major policy changes not connected directly to new funding are difficult if not impossible.
As the graphic illustrates, any legislative text in the final reconciliation must pertain to policy that has budgetary impacts and stays within the programming directions and funding limits of the budget resolution.
As it pertains to transportation, the resolution allocates $60 billion to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to program as they deem prudent, while also adding unspoken pressure not to revisit items called for in the IIJA. The resolution also calls for an additional $30 billion for respective Senate committees focused on surface transportation to program accordingly.
Within those constraints in place for this reconciliation process, T4America has outlined three key investments that need to be made to better connect communities and improve equity and climate outcomes.
1. Increasing public transportation funding levels by $10 billion
The original bipartisan infrastructure framework, agreed to and announced by the President and the Senator’s part of the negotiations in June, called for $49 billion for transit. As the final IIJA was set, transit was the only part of the plan that took a cut (of $10 billion) from that original proposal, down to $39 billion. Less money for transit means greater challenges for transit agencies, for keeping transit running, and making the necessary capital investments, including transit electrification. There is much more that can be done to improve transit, but advocating simply for restoring the agreed funding amount is an easy fix within the limits of the budget resolution.
2. Increasing funding for the reconnecting communities program by $12 billion
President Biden’s American Jobs Plan (AJP) contained approximately $24 billion for reconnecting communities (tearing down highways that separate marginalized communities, reintegrating community mobility and streetscapes). The Senate’s deal slashed that program down to just $1 billion. (The House’s INVEST Act allocated $20 billion.) By restoring at least some of this program’s funding, meaningful progress can be made to reconnect and reinvest in diverse communities across the United States.
3. Increasing funding for zero-emission vehicles and charging infrastructure by $7.5 billion
Currently, transportation is responsible for a significant portion of climate change-inducing emissions, but emerging technologies are making it possible for reliable zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). Meeting the moment with significant investments in ZEVs (especially medium and heavy duty vehicles such as transit, school bus, and municipal fleet vehicles) and their associated charging infrastructure will help drastically curb emissions. This funding would also involve investments in domestic manufacturing to help ramp up capacity and lower costs to deliver on ZEVs and their charging infrastructure.
While Congress is in recess and members are in their home districts, it is a great time for constituents to engage their members on these issues. Share these three simple, key investment priorities for reconciliation with your members of Congress, while explaining what these investments can mean in your local community in regards to jobs, equity, and climate change.
With the bipartisan infrastructure framework legislative text nearing a vote, unused transit COVID relief dollars have become a target for scrounging together enough money to pay for that deal’s cost. Our communities still need these funds—here’s why:
Most of the United States shut down last March 2020, as stay at home orders were enacted and many people were placed in remote work and school arrangements. However, our essential workers, including transit operators, continued to work on the frontlines. The CARES Act, Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act, and the American Rescue Plan provided vital funding to keep transit agencies and their communities moving. While overall ridership numbers drastically decreased, transit agencies continued to transport the essential workers who never stopped serving their communities every day through the pandemic. As our nation moves towards recovery, even amid growing concerns around the COVID-19 Delta variant, transit agencies will continue to need these funds to fully recover.
It will take a few years before transit ridership returns to pre-COVID levels. That is exactly why Congress allowed the American Rescue Plan’s transit relief funds to be available until 2024. While some agencies have fully exhausted all their relief funding, others have made plans to draw down those funds over time to avoid financial disaster. Taking this money away from transit agencies now, with so many political and public health unknowns, will put many of those agencies right back on the fiscal cliff Congress sought to avoid at the beginning of the year.
Here is what some transit agencies have spent their COVID money on:
Some transit agencies had the ability or need to fully utilize all of their COVID relief dollars while others have used different strategies to recover from stay at home orders. Why is that? Every transit agency’s financial flexibility is different. Many agencies pay for much of their operating costs through a combination of state and local taxes and fares. Many transit agencies moved to a fare free system in order to make drivers and operators safer by reducing interaction with riders. This decision to protect the public health of operators and riders had a strong impact on revenue. In addition, some parts of the country were hit harder than others by the economic downturn, greatly impacting the amount of taxes collected. Smaller agencies and larger agencies typically don’t depend on fare revenues to the same degree.
The labor market for transit agencies has also been severely impacted by the pandemic. The ability to train and hire new operators while implementing social distancing guidance has become a challenge while traditional retirements and attrition rates continue. If Congress were to pull these funds, it would put an even greater strain on transit agencies’ ability to recruit and retain operators and staff—right at the time when ridership is going to start picking up once again.
Investment in transit is investment in people, our communities, and our economy. COVID relief dollars have been and continue to be a lifeline to transit agencies that serve our communities and will drive economic growth through recovery. Yanking those relief dollars at this juncture would be pulling the rug out from under these agencies, driving their operations to ruin, deteriorating and cutting mobility for millions of Americans, and stymying the recovery of many communities reliant on public transit.
For decades, the federal government has only provided funding for public transportation maintenance and infrastructure projects—not the day-to-day costs of running trains and buses. This has to change in order to create the equitable and sustainable transportation system necessary to connect everyone to opportunities.
Credit: IndyGo
Senator Menendez said it best at a Banking Committee hearing a few weeks ago: “We subsidize roads and bridges. I don’t get how transit is any different.”
We don’t get it, either. For decades, not only has the federal government allotted just 20 percent of transportation funding to public transit, but they have limited that funding to only maintenance and capital needs—not operating dollars. This moratorium has been lifted for rural transit agencies since 1998, but large and mid-sized agencies still do not receive operating funds, which make up two-thirds of public transportation’s costs.
It wasn’t always like this. In the 1970s and 1980s, the federal government matched as much as $1 of operating assistance to transit agencies for every $2.25 provided by local and state governments, as we wrote with partners in the Green New Deal for City and Suburban Transportation. Now, agencies have to count on fare revenue and sales taxes to maintain and expand service. Yet these two sources of funding are far from reliable. These two revenue streams plummeted in March 2020, forcing many agencies to temporarily cut service until federal emergency relief arrived.
The current federal focus on building infrastructure, not providing service, leads many transit agencies towards spending “large quantities of federal funds upgrading or extending a handful of routes while neglecting the broader network of service, and ridership stagnates or shrinks” as a result, as we wrote in the Green New Deal report.
All Americans—no matter where they live—deserve transportation options that are convenient, affordable, sustainable and safe. Yet federal transportation policy makes it impossible for transit agencies to deliver this service. In fact, fewer than 10 percent of Americans live within walking distance of transit that runs every 15 minutes or less, TransitCenter found.
Funding public transportation is also a matter of equity. The lack of operating support for public transit—and the severe underfunding of transit in general—doesn’t impact everyone equally. People of color make up 60 percent of transit riders. Of that, 24 percent are Black Americans. In addition, 19 percent of Black households have no access to a vehicle, compared to 9 percent of households nationally with no vehicle access.
“A transit system that truly works has to be frequent and reliable,” said former Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater in a recent op-ed. “People should be able to depend on a bus coming every 10 minutes, no matter where in the country they live.”
Imagine a United States where every community has great transit service that can safely and conveniently get you to work, school, shopping, church or anywhere else you need to go; a place where you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars per year owning and operating a car. Putting every American within reach of frequent transit service is possible—we just need to fund it.
We urge Congress to include operating support for public transit in the next surface transportation authorization, the long-term law that determines how much we spend on transportation and what we spend it on. The current law, the FAST Act, expires this September, giving Congress a rare opportunity to fundamentally remake American transportation.
Last week, Senate Republicans released an infrastructure proposal in response to President Biden’s American Jobs Plan. Not only did Republicans cut public transit funding by $7 billion, but they missed the mark on the policy, pumping billions into the existing—and broken—federal transportation program. Here’s our take.
More of the same? No thanks. South Walton Boulevard in Bentonville, Arkansas, a fairly typical arterial state highway.
The pun in the headline is intended. Last week, Senate Republicans released a $586 billion “framework to improve the nation’s infrastructure” called the “Republican Roadmap.” As our director Beth Osborne noted, last Congress, the House passed legislation to fund all surface transportation programs at $494 billion over five years and the Senate passed $287 billion for highways alone. Considering that, this is quite a modest bump in funding.
But this is not our focus. Other people will talk more about the amount of money in this proposal, while to us, the money doesn’t matter as much as the policy. And Republicans got the policy wrong by seemingly failing to change anything about it, pumping billions into making our transportation problems worse—while severely cutting transit funding.
Even though we like the broad strokes released by the Biden administration on its infrastructure proposal—which we covered in-depth here—we’re not committed until we see the details. But we’re not even excited about the Republicans’ blurbs. Here’s our take.
Less public transit and passenger rail funding and no policy change
The Republican proposal provides substantially less transit and passenger rail funding than the Biden administration proposal, offering $61 billion and $20 billion respectively where President Biden proposed $85 billion and $80 billion. Even worse, Republicans included annual federal transportation funding in their $586 billion proposal, and ultimately cut public transit funding by $7 billion.
Yet the problem is not funding. If the money was being proposed to better purposes, we would support less funding. But here, Republicans propose to cut transit and pump $299 billion for roads and bridges in the same way we always have—the way that has produced unsafe roads especially for low income people and Black, indigenous, and other people of color; a huge maintenance backlog; ever-increasing congestion; and lack of access to economic opportunity without multiple cars per household.
Worse still,these funds only support maintenance and capital projects, not operating costs that would enable transit agencies to run more frequent buses and trains. (Some senators criticized this at last week’s Banking hearing.)
Another warning sign in the Republicans’ proposal is the emphasis on “partner[ing] with spending from state and local governments.” Currently, the federal transportation program limits federal transit funding from covering no more than 50 percent of a project’s cost, though 40 percent has been more common in recent years—while highway funding can cover up to 80 percent of a project’s cost—even 90 percent in some limited cases—forcing states and local governments to choose between costly transit projects and virtually free highway projects.
Fees for electric vehicles, but no change to the gas tax
In this proposal, Senate Republicans are ready and willing to levy user fees on electric vehicles in order to raise revenue for the highway trust fund. This fund is currently filled by another user fee—the gas tax—even though the gas tax is no longer able to cover trust fund expenditures on its own, requiring increasingly large influxes of general funds to stay afloat. This is because increasing fuel efficiency means that drivers are using less gas and because the gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1993, despite inflation.
We believe that both electric vehicles (EVs) and internal combustion engine vehicles should pay into the highway trust fund. But we don’t see the value of levying a tax on electric vehicles while failing to raise the gas tax.
In addition, there’s no funding in this proposal for charging infrastructure that supports electric vehicle deployment. Without widespread charging infrastructure across the country—something members of our new coalition, CHARGE, know is critical to getting more EVs on the road—we don’t even raise much revenue from an EV user fee.
No focus on maintenance or safety
Republicans propose spending $299 billion on roads and bridges, but wouldn’t require that states use those funds on maintenance. As we found in our report Repair Priorities, states still spend just as much on expansion as repair—states spent $21.4 billion on average on road repair annually and $21.3 billion annually on road expansion between 2009-2014 even as road conditions continued to deteriorate. That’s because the federal government doesn’t require states to spend their highway funding on maintenance before expansion—and the Republican proposal wouldn’t do so either.
This past year has been particularly deadly on American roads, with deaths increasing by 24 percent despite fewer miles driven, according to the National Safety Council. Yet the Republican Roadmap doesn’t include any funding for street design changes that would improve safety. It merely proposes $13 billion for federal agencies focused mostly on design to protect vehicle occupants and convincing pedestrians to wear neon when they cross the street.
Credit is not real money
Anyone who’s ever swiped a Visa knows that credit is (sadly) not real money. Yet Republicans try to pass credit off as real bucks in this proposal, noting that federal funding should encourage “the utilization of financing tools.”
When “financing tools” get mentioned, they’re rarely for highway projects, which the federal government usually covers for states almost in full. They are for transit and rail projects, signaling that investing in transit and rail is not a priority by making states and local governments pay for them by themselves.
Also, as Center for American Progress infrastructure expert Kevin DeGood pointed out in this expertly-crafted Twitter thread, “creative financing” doesn’t make a project cost less, and the hurdle to infrastructure projects isn’t lack of access to credit, but lack of revenue.
Now, and I can’t stress this part enough, even with all this financial “innovation” a $1 billion project STILL COSTS $1 BILLION.
No new vision for the transportation program—just the broken status quo
The Republican Roadmap is heavy with goals, arguing that this funding will improve quality of life, boost our economy, help us weather natural disasters, and more.
But as we’ve learned through decades of the same-old federal transportation program and the 2009 Recovery Act, you don’t get different outcomes by doing nothing differently. We can’t hope that more money will solve our problems if we don’t change how we spend that money.
The current federal transportation program is broken. It pumps billions into highway expansions that make congestion, emissions, safety, and equitable access to the economy worse. So why don’t we change the program to deliver the outcomes we want?
Last week, the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee held a hearing on investing in public transit in the next long-term transportation law. We were pleasantly surprised to see senators ask questions on funding transit and highways equally, transit operations, and rural transit.
Credit: Kyle Anderson, WMATA
Public transportation usually gets shafted in the long-term surface transportation law—so much so that lawmakers tend to call it “the highway bill.”
But not this year. Senators in the committee charged with writing the public transit portion of this law—up for reauthorization this September—surprised us at a recent hearing with questions that got to the heart of the policies keeping U.S. public transit behind. Many senators specifically asked our director Beth Osborne, who testified before the committee, about the 80/20 split between highway and transit funding, the value of funding transit operations, and rural transit needs.
We’ve long criticized the Senate Banking Committee for shirking its duty to write the public transit portion of authorization by taking a backseat to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which writes the highway title. But this hearing might signal a change in tactic. Here’s what we heard that surprised us.
The belly of the beast: the 80/20 split
Since 1982, spending from the federal Highway Trust Fund has followed this formula: 80 percent for highways, 20 percent for public transportation. The logic behind this was that since the Trust Fund’s funding came from the gas tax drivers pay at the pump, most of the funding should be spent on highways.
Besides a groundbreaking resolution from Rep. Chuy García (that you can support here), this faulty logic hasn’t been challenged much since—even though subsequent legislation, particularly the three COVID-19 relief packages, didn’t adhere to this formula. Which is why we were surprised to hear Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) ask Beth right out of the gate how funding transit and highways equally would improve transit service. “We’ve never made the kind of investment in transit at the national level as we did for highways,” Beth said. “But this is what we need to do to give people multiple modes of travel.”
Senator Menendez also noted that the federal transportation program subsidizes highways and bridges, so he doesn’t understand why transit is any different.
Funding transit operations—not just maintenance and capital
The only federal funding provided regularly to medium-sized and larger transit agencies is for maintenance or expansion projects—not the day-to-day costs of operating transit service. Transit agencies are on their own to raise this money, relying on a combination of fares, sales tax receipts, and other state level sources of support.
The three COVID-19 relief packages broke this tradition by providing operating support to transit agencies, giving us hope that lawmakers would make this a permanent component of the long-term transportation law. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) brought this idea to the committee by asking Beth about the value of federal operating support, even noting that investing in more frequent service will bring a return of more riders.
“People can’t rely on transit that comes every 45 minutes to an hour,” Beth responded. “We need the reliability that high-frequency transit service brings, and not just at the times that white collar workers need transit.” And the only way there is through federal operating support for transit.
An interest in rural transit
Both Senators Jon Tester (D-MT) and Tina Smith (D-MN) asked Beth about the types of investments needed to support public transit in rural areas, and how they might be different than investments in urban and suburban public transit.
This is an important issue: we found in an analysis of American Community Survey data that the majority of counties with high rates of zero-car households are rural. In fact, more than one million households in predominantly rural counties do not have access to a vehicle, as we blogged last year.
“When we think rural, we think wide open fields and farmlands. But we forget that there are concentrations of people who live in distinct towns, and that services they need—like hospitals and schools—are moving farther away, consolidating into centers that serve entire regions,” Beth responded. “We need transit that can connect people to those regional hubs.”
Lack of bipartisanship
Only one Republican member of the committee showed up to the hearing: Ranking Member Pat Toomey (PA-R), who spent his testimony criticizing the high amount of funding public transit received in the most recent COVID-19 relief package.
The lack of bipartisan participation in the hearing is both good and bad. On the good side, transportation has typically been an issue that both Democrats and Republicans agree to undermine for the sake of bipartisanship, regularly passing long-term authorizations that maintain the status quo and make our transportation problems worse. Breaking from this tradition is necessary to pass an authorization that will actually maintain our infrastructure, improve safety, and connect people with jobs and services sustainably and equitably.
Yet the lack of bipartisanship implies that these recommendations are partisan—when in reality, many of the changes to federal transportation policy needed would achieve both parties’ goals: improved economic competitiveness, access to jobs and services, sustainability and more. That’s why freshmen Democrat and Republican members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee supported many of Transportation for America’s recommendations in legislation passed by the House last summer.
Turning needed reforms to the federal transportation program into a partisan issue will fail to deliver the transportation system Americans deserve and overwhelmingly support. We urge senators on both sides of the aisle to take a hard look at the current transportation program and ask themselves: is this working?
Beth was “the belle of the transit ball”—but nothing is real until it’s law
It’s exciting to hear senators ask about policy proposals that would constitute a paradigm shift in U.S. transportation policy if enacted—which is why after the hearing, our chairman John Robert Smith called Beth “the belle of the transit ball.”
But the Banking Committee hasn’t released any bill text yet, meaning that we can’t assume that ending the 80/20 split, funding transit operations, supporting rural transit and more will make it into the bill. Talk without action is meaningless. Yet we’re glad to see that there’s talk at all, especially after decades of the status quo.
Over 100 elected officials, cities and organizations urge Congress to provide $39.3 billion in emergency funding for public transportation to preserve transit service through 2023
WASHINGTON, DC: With only three days’ notice, over 100 elected officials, cities and organizations signed a letter written by Transportation for America (T4America) and the Alliance for a Just Society (AJS) urging Congress to provide transit agencies with $39.3 billion in emergency funding over three years. This critical funding will allow transit agencies to avoid service cuts through 2023, ensuring that public transit will survive the pandemic and continue to provide safe and reliable access to jobs, schools, and services for millions of Americans.
Public transit has been devastated by the pandemic, with ridership losses and declining local revenue sources putting this essential service at risk. Without federal emergency relief, many transit agencies and paratransit service providers will be forced to dramatically reduce or eliminate critical service as soon as this spring, as found in an analysis by TransitCenter.
Transit agencies face a projected funding shortfall of $39.3 billion through 2023, according to an independent economic analysis highlighted by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). Without equivalent relief, “four in 10 agencies will have to consider additional service cuts to close their budget gaps. These cuts would come on the heels of 65 percent of transit agencies having cut service in 2020. Twenty-two percent of agencies will be forced to consider implementing additional layoffs,” according to APTA.
Last night, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved additional COVID-19 relief including $30 billion for public transit. This funding is a huge step towards helping transit agencies survive this crisis and continue powering our economic recovery. The additional and much-needed $9.3 billion can be provided in subsequent legislation.
Read the full letter here. For requests to interview Transportation for America Director Beth Osborne or Policy Director Scott Goldstein, please contact Jenna Fortunati at jenna.fortunati@t4america.org.
Last week, 30 members of Congress joined Reps. Jesús G. “Chuy” García (IL-4), Ayanna Pressley (MA-7), and Hakeem Jeffries’ (NY-8) groundbreaking resolution supporting equal funding for public transportation and highways.This marks the first time that members of Congress have joined together to end the arbitrary rule dedicating 80 percent of transportation funding to highways and just 20 percent to transit.
One of public transit’s biggest hurdles to providing convenient, affordable, and rapid service and maintaining its aging infrastructure is the fact that highways have been receiving the lion’s share of all federal transportation funding—at least 80 percent since 1982. This is all due to an arbitrary policy started in 1982 that limits transit to only 20 percent of these funds.
Today, three members of Congress took the first stab at ending this policy. With 30 cosponsors, Reps. García, Pressley, and Jeffires introduced a resolution to the House floor that supports funding transit and highways equally in the next long-term surface transportation authorization.
This is truly groundbreaking! The “80/20 split” has been the status quo for almost four decades, and in that time has never been challenged with so much support. This resolution is a real testament to the changing attitudes towards transportation policy, and a direct result of the powerful advocacy led by Representatives García and Pressley.
The resolution is also endorsed by 30 organizations. You can read the full list of cosponsors and organizations here.
This effort would not have happened without Reps. García, Pressley, and Jeffries, all three of whom are leaders in Congress on transportation policy. We’re lucky to have these powerful and passionate changemakers in Congress who understand the power of transportation to truly improve people’s lives.
In only two years, Rep. García from Chicago has made a bold impact on transportation lawmaking. García’s experience as a former urban planner led him to co-found the Future of Transportation Caucus with Reps. Pressley and Mark Takano and to push for status quo-breaking reforms in the House-passed INVEST Act, from a performance measure to ensure that transportation projects improve people’s access to jobs and services to a bipartisan fix-it-first policy for highway funding.
Despite not serving on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Pressley has made reforming transportation policy a key part of her advocacy and lawmaking because she has seen firsthand how instrumental transportation decisions are for determining basic issues of quality of life and access to opportunity in her district. She’s been a powerful advocate through her work on the Future of Transportation Caucus and her fight for at least $32 billion in emergency funding for transit, among other things. And as a member of Democratic leadership, Rep. Jeffries’ support for this resolution sends a powerful message. Thank you Representatives García, Pressley, Jeffries, and everyone who joined the resolution as a cosponsor.
We need to show strong support for this unprecedented effort to finally provide strong funding for public transportation! We can’t transform this resolution into policy and actually fund transit and highways equally in the next surface transportation authorization without strong support. Call your member of Congress and ask them to support the resolution.
WASHINGTON, DC: Today, 30 members of Congress joined Representatives Jesús G. “Chuy” García (IL-4), Ayanna Pressley (MA-7), and Hakeem Jeffries (NY-8) in a groundbreaking resolution supporting equal funding for public transportation and highways. The “Resolution for Transit-Funding Parity” is also supported by 30 organizations, demonstrating widespread support for ending an outdated policy that dedicates 80 percent of all federal transportation funding to highways.
For almost four decades, Congress has severely underfunded public transportation, leaving millions of Americans reliant on deteriorating transit systems with infrequent, inconvenient, and unreliable service. This particularly hurts people of color, who make up 60 percent of all transit riders, and over one million rural households that rely on transit.
“Public transit is a lifeline—for working people, marginalized communities, and our entire economy. Decades-long disinvestment has starved communities of adequate public transportation and created deep, physical barriers to jobs, health care, and education,” said Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04). “Simply put, breaking the status quo on transit funding is an urgent matter of equity and economic opportunity. Public transit systems like CTA and Pace Bus are the arteries that keep communities like Chicago thriving—keeping our frontline workforce moving even during a pandemic. Our resolution lays out a transformative vision for transportation policy—one that funds transit equitably like the vital public good and force for economic empowerment that it is.”
The origin of unequal transportation funding is a 1982 agreement where the majority of a gas tax increase was dedicated to highways, serving drivers through a “user fee.” But even though gas tax revenues are no longer the sole source of transportation funding—and haven’t been since 2008, when over $144 billion in taxpayer dollars were needed to supplement this user fee—the “80-20” funding split persists.
“We have never shown the vision or commitment to building a robust transit system that we have shown to highways; and that cannot change so long as we stay wedded to an outdated 1980s approach to transportation spending,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America. “We’re thrilled that Rep. García and so many cosponsors have confronted this broken policy head-on. We urge every lawmaker in Congress to join Rep. García in this fundamental rethink of transportation policy to finally deliver the transportation system Americans deserve and need — one that provides equitable access to economic opportunity and essential services, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and supports a strong national economy.”
The resolution is available to view here, and you can read the full list of cosponsors and endorsing organizations here.
Read more about the “80/20” split on Transportation for America’s blog here.
Last week’s election saw significant support for transit. While some of the larger local transportation ballot initiatives failed, voters approved the overwhelming majority of transit funding measures—several by a large margin. Here’s a rundown on how transportation ballot initiatives fared from Austin, TX to Wheeling, WV, and every place in between, updating our earlier blog.
The Mountain Line bus service in Missoula, MT. Photo courtesy of Mountain Line.
It wasn’t just the next president of the United States or the balance of power in Congress on the ballot last week: voters across the country decided on the future of transportation in their hometowns. From forward-looking proposals for transit expansion and renewals of existing transportation funding, here’s what passed and what failed on this extraordinary, pandemic Election Day. In short, it was a pretty great day for public transit funding.
(Before diving in, don’t miss our summary of how transportation ballot initiatives fared during the spring and summer primary elections. While some regions and states opted to delay or cancel ballot measures due to COVID uncertainties, a number of initiatives moved forward in the primaries, and the vast majority passed.)
One win, two losses: three big transit measures
PASSED (58%-42%): Voters in Austin, TX passed the first phase of Project Connect, a package of transit investments totalling $10 billion. This initial phase includes increasing property taxes to raise $3.85 billion and leverage federal funds for a total of $7.1 billion. As our colleague Rayla Bellis wrote a few weeks ago, the proposal includes new light rail lines, a tunnel for light rail in the downtown area, expanded bus routes, a transition to electric buses, and bus rapid transit service. It also includes $300 million for transit supportive investments, anti-displacement efforts and affordable housing along the proposed lines.
This win comes in the wake of Austin’s history of unsuccessful initiatives to fund light rail expansion. Project Connect was unanimously approved by the Austin City Council yet faced some opposition, both in response to the cost and relative permanence of new light rail lines compared to improved bus service.
FAILED (43%-57%):Voters rejected Portland, OR’sLet’s Get Moving measure(Measure 26-218), which would have levied a 0.75 percent payroll tax on businesses with more than 25 employees. The business community largely withdrew support for the measure, with a number of larger businesses contributing to a successful opposition campaign.
With the $4.2 billion generated by the payroll tax and an additional $2.84 billion in matching funds, the measure would have funded dozens of light rail and bus transit expansion and safety projects for people walking and biking along identified priority corridors. It also included funds for anti-displacement work in predominantly Black and brown communities along the corridors.
FAILED: In suburban Gwinnett County, GA in the Atlanta region, residents rejected a proposed 30-year, 1 percent sales tax for transit expansion in the county that would raise a total of $12 billion for bus and rail expansion. This rejection—failing by only a margin of approximately one thousand “no” votes, although a recount might be possible—comes less than two years after a failed measure to fund transit expansion for both Gwinnett County bus and MARTA rail that would also have integrated Gwinnett County transit into the MARTA regional transit system—a change that county voters have rejected several times over the past few decades.
Other local and state initiatives of interest
PASSED (82%-18%):Voters in Seattle, WAdecided to renew funding for the Seattle Transportation Benefit District via a six-year 0.1 percent sales tax and a car-tab fee that expires this year. The plan will reduce total service below existing levels, but it will focus the remaining service more heavily in communities of color. The measure would generate $20 to $30 million annually over six years.
PASSED (61%-39%): Voters in three small municipalities in Gratiot County, MIpassed a 1-mill levy (one dollar per $1,000 dollars of assessed value) to join their region’s Alma Transit system. The St. Louis and Ithaca city councils and the Pine River Township board all voted unanimously over the summer to put the measure on the ballot.
PASSED (59%-41%): Missoula, MT voters approved a property tax increase to expand Mountain Line bus service frequency, help fund the area’s zero-fare program, and support conversion to an electric bus fleet.
FAILED (45%-55%): Newton County, GA’s proposal for a 1 percent Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax for transportation was rejected by voters. Revenues would have been shared among the cities located within the county using a formula, and each city would have decided how to allocate its funds.
PASSED (70%-30%): Voters in the Bay Area, CApassed a 1/8 cent sales tax to provide dedicated funding for the region’s commuter rail, Caltrain. The tax is expected to generate an estimated $108 million annually, which will help provide a lifeline for the rail line as it faces the possibility of a shutdown during the pandemic due to low ridership.
WITHDRAWN: Residents of North Carolina were set to vote on a $1.15 billion bond measure to fund the construction and renovation of highways, roads, bridges, and related road infrastructure. The measure also included $1.95 billion in education bonds, but it was withdrawn.ALL PASSED: Voters passed measures to renew existing transportation and transit funding in the State of Arkansas (passed), Bellingham, WA (passed), Monroe, MI (passed) and Wheeling and Bethlehem, WV (passed). Similar renewals largely also passed in 2020 despite COVID uncertainties, as we covered in a blog earlier this fall.
With a new Congress preparing to take office—bringing hopes of an infrastructure stimulus with them—it’s time to end an outdated agreement keeping American transportation stuck in the ‘80s: restricting public transit to only 20 percent of federal transportation funding while highways get 80 percent. Sign our petition today to tell Congress to fund them equally.
Can you imagine what we could accomplish if transit was funded as much as highways? Photo of Metroway (bus rapid transit in Northern Virginia) by BeyondDC on Flickr’s Creative Commons.
It’s critical that Congress funds public transit and highways in the next transportation authorization, ending an outdated rule that makes it near impossible for states and local governments to deliver the high-quality public transportation Americans want. Sign our petition to urge Congress to fund transit as much as highways.
Since 1982, thanks to an agreement signed by President Reagan, spending from the federal Highway Trust Fund has followed this formula: 80 percent for highways, 20 percent for public transportation (though in reality, transit gets much less). The logic behind this was that since the Trust Fund’s funding came from the gas tax drivers pay at the pump, most of the funding should be spent on highways.
As our colleague Emily Mangan wrote this summer, this logic no longer applies because the Highway Trust Fund hasn’t been a trust fund by any definition of that term in a long time. It hasn’t been exclusively funded by the gas tax since 2008, when it ran out of money because the gas tax was no longer sufficient to cover expenditures. To stay afloat, the trust fund received huge infusions of general taxpayer dollars totaling over $144 billion—meaning that every taxpayer is funding transportation, whether they bought a single gallon of gas or drove a mile this year or not.
Yet we still applied this arbitrary funding split to the influx of new transportation funds in the Recovery Act of 2009, which was sourced entirely from deficit spending from the general fund and not a single dime from gas tax user fees. Yet roughly 75 percent of the Recovery Act dollars went to roads.
The consequences of not funding transit and highways equally
Even though highways receive the overwhelming majority of federal transportation funding, they fail to solve our transportation problems on their own. In fact, this huge amount of highway funding makes our problems—congestion, carbon emissions, dangerous roadways, reduced access to jobs and services—worse. Because there’s no rule requiring that states spend highway funding on maintenance before expansion, or any performance measures requiring that states improve people’s access to jobs and services by all modes, our highway investments wind up just increasing congestion and carbon emissions while disconnecting Americans from the daily services they need.
Guaranteeing that highways receive 80 percent of federal funding also reduces states’ and local governments’ freedom to choose for themselves what they want to build and how they want to solve their own transportation challenges. According to recent polling, voters overwhelmingly believe that their communities and the country as a whole would benefit from increased transit investment. But Congress has hampered states’ and communities’ ability to deliver this for decades by putting their thumb on the scale and incentivizing highway expansion with huge amounts of funding, making it incredibly difficult to choose a transit solution to a transportation problem.
This 80/20 split also leaves the transit infrastructure that already exists out to rot. According to the American Public Transportation Association, addressing the backlog of deferred transit maintenance backlog would cost $90 billion—or just two years of highway funding.
It doesn’t have to be this way. If Congress were to end the arbitrary 80/20 split and fund transit and highways equally, we could fix our aging public transportation infrastructure and provide the frequent and reliable service necessary to connect people to jobs and services. With more transit funding, states would be incentivized to make roadway investments that accommodate transit, not compete with it, such as investments in complete streets and land-use changes that make it safe and easy to bike and walk and therefore to access transit.
Meaningful and consistent investment in public transportation is critical to reducing our carbon emissions, improving public health, dismantling barriers to opportunity—especially those faced by people of color—and supporting our economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. It’s time for Congress to free states and local governments from this arbitrary 80-20 split in transportation funding and let them invest in transit.
Congressional leadership and junior members offer hope
There are numerous elected officials in Congress who understand the power of transportation policy to strengthen our economy, save lives, dismantle barriers to opportunity, and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. From the innovative Future of Transportation Caucus, to leaders like Rep. Peter DeFazio, and to bipartisan members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the incoming Congress has a real shot at reforming transportation policy to work for all Americans—regardless of if they drive or not.
The House of Representatives has a great jumping off point with the INVEST Act, a bill they passed this summer, that starts to finally connect transportation funding to the outcomes Americans want. Instead of pumping more general funds into the existing program, the bill employs performance measures and requirements to align funds with our goals: reducing our enormous backlog of roadway maintenance, decreasing congestion and carbon emissions, and making our streets safe for all road users. We strongly urge the incoming House of Representatives to pick up this bill again—and fund transit and highways equally this time.
To kick off that effort, next month Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (a founding co-chair of the Future of Transportation Caucus) will introduce a resolution to the House of Representatives urging members to support funding transit and highways equally in the next surface transportation authorization. A resolution like this would have been unthinkable just three years ago—a real testament to the changing attitudes towards transportation policy.
Tell Congress: it’s time to end the 80-20 split
With federal transportation policy up for reauthorization this year and hopes for an infrastructure stimulus hitting the floors of Congress running high, now is the time for our elected leaders to solve our transportation problems and fund transit and highways equally. Sign our petition to urge Congress to end the 80/20 split and fund transit and highways equally.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of ballot initiatives for transit and transportation funding passed during the 2020 spring and summer primary elections, and a surprising number will head to voters in November. Here is a look at some of the major initiatives to watch next month.
A Capital Metro bus in Austin. Photo courtesy of Capital Metro.
Providing sustained funding for transit is more important than ever with potential service cuts looming across the country. Congress has yet to step in to provide sufficient relief funding, but some regions have a shot at raising local transit funding in November.
A few weeks ago, we shared a summary of how transportation ballot initiatives fared during the spring and summer primary elections. While some regions and states opted to delay or cancel ballot measures due to COVID uncertainties, a number of initiatives moved forward in the primaries, and the vast majority passed.
Many of the successful measures earlier this year were renewals of existing funding, and we’ll see some similar renewals on the ballot in November. However, there are also a surprising number of larger, forward-looking proposals headed to voters to raise new funding for transit expansion. Supporters in these regions see transit as a key part of economic recovery. Here are a few measures we will be watching especially closely.
Three big transit measures to watch
Voters in Austin, TX will consider a proposal to fund the first phase of Project Connect, a package of transit investments totalling $10 billion. For this initial phase, residents will vote on a property tax increase to raise $3.85 billion and leverage federal funds for a total of $7.1 billion. The proposal includes new light rail lines, a tunnel to house light rail in the downtown area, expanded bus routes, a transition to electric buses, and bus rapid transit service. It also includes $300 million for transit supportive investments, anti-displacement efforts and affordable housing along the proposed lines.
The region has a history of unsuccessful initiatives to fund light rail expansion. This proposal received unanimous approval from the Austin City Council but has faced some opposition locally, including in response to the cost and relative permanence of new light rail lines compared to improved bus service.
Portland, OR’sLet’s Get Moving measure(Measure 26-218) would raise a 0.75 percent payroll tax for large businesses to fund dozens of light rail and bus transit expansion and safety projects for people walking and biking along identified priority corridors. The measure is expected to generate around $4.2 billion and leverage an additional $2.84 billion in matching funds. It also includes funds for anti-displacement work in predominantly Black and Brown communities along the corridors.
Supporters argue that the investments will create 37,000 jobs and help jumpstart economic recovery. Critics have argued that the cost is too great. The business community has largely withdrawn support, and a number of larger businesses have contributed to a campaign against the measure.
These initiatives in Austin and Portland share some commonalities, including a forward-looking transit vision for the future, an emphasis on racial justice and preventing displacement, and robust campaigns supporting the measures as well as vocal local opposition.
In suburban Gwinnett County, GA in the Atlanta region, residents will vote on a proposed 30-year, 1 percent sales tax for transit expansion in the county that would raise a total of $12 billion for bus and rail expansion. This vote comes less than two years after a failed measure to fund transit expansion for both Gwinnett County bus and MARTA rail that would also have integrated Gwinnett County transit into the MARTA regional transit system—a change that county voters have rejected several times over the past few decades. This time around, the proposed improvements will primarily expand the existing Gwinnett County Transit bus system, with bus rapid transit, more local and express service, and paratransit, and some local leaders hope to see a different outcome as a result.
We heard from Gwinnett County Commissioner Charlotte Nash at T4America’s Capital Ideas conference in 2018 about the region’s work building support for transit incrementally, so we are especially interested to see how this vote unfolds.
Other local and state initiatives of interest
Voters in Seattle, WA will decide whether to renew funding for the Seattle Transportation Benefit District via a six-year 0.1 percent sales tax and a car-tab fee that expires this year. The proposal will reduce total service below existing levels, but it will focus the remaining service more heavily in communities of color. The measure would generate $20 to $30 million annually over six years.
Three smaller municipalities in Gratiot County, MI are seeking a 1-mill levy (one dollar per $1,000 dollars of assessed value) to join their region’s Alma Transit system. The St. Louis and Ithaca city councils and the Pine River Township board all passed the measure unanimously over the summer. Voters in each locality will decide in November whether they are willing to pay a property tax for public transit service in their communities. All three jurisdictions need to pass the measure for it to move forward.
Missoula, MT will ask voters to approve a property tax increase to expand Mountain Line bus service frequency, help fund the area’s zero-fare program, and support conversion to an electric bus fleet.
Newton County, GA is seeking a 1 percent Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax for transportation. Revenues will be shared among the cities located within the county using a formula, and each city will decide how to allocate its funds—a decentralized approach in contrast to Gwinnett County’s package of proposed transit investments above.
Voters in the Bay Area, CA will consider a 1/8 cent sales tax to provide dedicated funding for the region’s commuter rail, Caltrain. The tax would generate an estimated $108 million annually, which could help provide a lifeline for the rail line as it faces the possibility of a shutdown during the pandemic due to low ridership.
In North Carolina, residents will vote on a $1.15 billion bond measure to fund the construction and renovation of highways, roads, bridges, and related road infrastructure. The measure also includes $1.95 billion in education bonds. The state is facing a potential $5 billion shortfall due to lost tax revenue from the pandemic.
It’s worth noting that a number of planned ballot measures have been postponed or canceled in response to COVID—see our previous post for a non-exhaustive list.
We’ll watch these scheduled initiatives closely as we head into the November election and will share updates on the results. Stay tuned!
Regional ballot initiatives are a powerful tool localities can use to raise funding for transportation projects, especially in the face of uncertain federal funding. The COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis are creating a different landscape for ballot measures than we have seen in the past, but many are still moving forward and a number have already passed.
Check out our latest blog in this series on transportation ballot initiatives to watch this November.
A bus in Anchorage, Alaska
We are big proponents of regional ballot initiatives (RBIs) here at Transportation for America. They can be transformative for localities, giving them more control over the growth of their transportation systems, making them less reliant on federal and state funding, and making voters partners in deciding the future of the system and contributing to maintaining it. In fact, we have been working for several years with our partners in Massachusetts to encourage the state legislature to grant localities the authority to go to their own voters seeking support for important infrastructure priorities. The state is one of only a handful of states that do not allow their localities this authority.
In the past, we have tracked ballot measures around the country during elections and profiled examples of successful initiatives, but this year is different and unprecedented. The COVID shutdown began right as the early spring primary elections were taking place, disrupting many of those votes. The economic crisis has raised questions about the wisdom of going to voters for additional funding at all right now, even as more funding for transit is sorely needed.
Despite those uncertainties, a number of ballot initiatives did move forward—and pass—during the spring and summer primaries. While it is difficult to predict what will happen in November based on those results, there are still some insights we can glean.
Here are our key takeaways from the local and state transportation votes that have already happened in 2020. Stay tuned for a follow-up post profiling the measures we’ll be watching in the November election.
Voters overwhelmingly approved renewals of existing transportation funding
A number of local property taxes that support transit were up for renewal this year, including for transit systems serving rural areas. Those votes have consistently passed—often by margins similar to prior pre-COVID votes based on the Center for Transportation Excellence’s transit campaign tracker. A few property tax renewals have also passed with small increases in the property tax rates to help keep up with existing service levels.
While those results may not be as exciting (or controversial) as big ticket campaigns to expand transit systems, the wins send a clear message. Many voters in smaller cities and rural areas served by transit want to see that service preserved, and they are willing to keep paying to make that happen despite today’s economic uncertainties. While some of these votes occurred in March before we had a sense of the extent or impacts of the pandemic, a number occurred over the summer with similar results.
For example, in Maine, which is heavily reliant on borrowing to fund transportation, voters approved a $105 million statewide bond measure during the state’s July primary, making this the sixth straight year of similar bond measures for transportation (and the 10th approved transportation bond measure in the past 13 years). The transportation bond will help plug the state’s funding shortfall by drawing down $275 million in matching federal and other funds. Most of the funding will go toward road infrastructure projects, while $15 million will be devoted to transit multimodal investments. Again, voters opted to continue funding their current system.
Voters approved new funding for transit in the Cincinnati region and Anchorage
In Hamilton County, home of the Cincinnati metro area, voters passed Issue 7 by a narrow (0.7 percent) margin during their April 28 primary election, approving an historic 0.8 percent sales tax increase for transit. These revenues will fund bus service improvements and transit-supportive infrastructure investments. It is expected to generate roughly $130 million annually, 75 percent of which will go to the Southern Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA), with the rest dedicated to road and bridge improvements along transit routes. SORTA will be able to begin implementing the Reinventing Metro plan to provide faster, more frequent service, extended hours, and better rider amenities.
Issue 7’s passage is remarkable—especially during COVID—because it marks the first time county voters have approved a sales tax hike to support transportation improvements or any sort of transit-related tax in nearly 50 years. The initiative had the backing of a strong coalition of local organizations and decision-makers.
Meanwhile, in Anchorage, voters passed Proposition 8 on April 7, approving a $5 million bond for transit and public safety improvements by a 59 percent vote. The bond will fund improvements to the City’s public safety radio network and purchase of cardiac monitors, as well as replacing public transit buses and improving bus stops. Previous transit funding initiatives in Anchorage have generally failed, though the City did pull together funding for a new route in early 2020 (pre-COVID) in response to residents and advocates. Grouping transit and public safety improvements together may have played a role in Proposition 8’s success.
While the results of these two initiatives are promising, it is worth noting that both votes occurred relatively early in the pandemic when many people still thought life might return to normal in a few months. They may not provide an accurate prediction of what will happen in November.
A number of states and localities have delayed or canceled transportation ballot initiatives
A number of localities and states have chosen not to put planned transportation measures on the ballot for their primary or November elections due to COVID uncertainties, citing more pressing priorities related to the pandemic and doubts about whether voters would approve tax increases. Transportation and transit funding votes have been delayed or canceled in Sacramento, San Diego, and the Bay Area in California; Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Orange Counties in Florida; Bend, Oregon; and several states, including Oregon, New Jersey, and Colorado.
Looking ahead
Despite the uncertainties, a number of transportation funding votes will be going forward in the November election, including several larger initiatives to fund new transit and transportation infrastructure. In this follow-up post, we profile some of the measures we’re watching especially closely leading up to the election.
When cities and states began shutting down in response to COVID-19, the financial impact to transit was swift and immense, but the immediate impacts only tell part of the story. Given the myriad ways that transit is funded around the country, the fiscal impacts of the pandemic will likely be varied and long-lasting. Congress and state legislatures should strive to find ways to adequately plan for and address those shortfalls in the long-term.
As businesses closed and non-essential workers followed the advice of health experts to stay home, transit lost a lot of riders and fares evaporated with them. On average, fares make up the single largest share (36 percent) of operating revenues for transit. But despite the fiscal cliff that a lack of riders presented, transit agencies actively began urging riders to stay home if possible—for the safety of riders and transit employees.
Combine the loss of fares with increased costs for cleaning (supplies, labor, and personal protective equipment) and it’s easy to see why transit agencies needed emergency operating funding.
But that’s only part of the story.
Public transportation is a public good and as such is funded by a variety of public revenues, like sales taxes, property taxes, and income/payroll taxes. Parking garages, advertising, and bonds are also sources of revenue for transit—both to operate and (especially in the case of bonds) for capital costs like new buses or a new rail line. All of those funding sources have been or will be adversely impacted by COVID-19 and the financial forecasts of transit agencies paint a grim picture.
In places where sales taxes make up a sizable share of funding (like Via in San Antonio, TX) the budget hole will appear fairly quickly. Sales dropped, taxes dropped, and funds stopped coming in. Those revenues will slowly begin to recover if and when businesses start to reopen and unemployment drops substantially—a hard thing to forecast in these unprecedented times. The CARES Act offered some support here, but more will be needed, especially as it becomes increasingly clear that the country’s economic recovery will not be as swift as it was assumed a few months ago.
“Projecting is tricky. There are so many variables and unknowns. It’s like throwing a dart at a fan,” says Karl Gnadt of the Champaign Urbana Urban Mass Transit District. “Our largest revenue stream is our state operating grant which is funded by state sales tax. Sales tax has tanked. The cuts will be significant and dramatic. The CARES Act is a band-aid over a broken bone.”
But the impact on property taxes and payroll taxes will be less immediate and potentially more troubling for that very reason. The impact of the pandemic on property taxes will likely be delayed by months or more given how they are collected. And budget holes from payroll or income taxes may not appear for close to two years from now.
TriMet in Portland, OR gets about 60 percent of its operating revenue from payroll taxes, while IndyGo in Indianapolis, IN receives about a third of its operating revenues from payroll taxes and another third from property taxes. In many other communities, these taxes make up smaller but significant sources of funding. The conversation in Congress and statehouses around the country aren’t taking into account these looming fiscal crises.
IndyGo in particular is expecting a 50 percent drop in revenues that will suddenly appear two years from now. The financial forecast in other cities is likely just as stark, but these projections are getting very little attention.
“The unknown is how deep this recession will be and the impact to property values,” says Elizabeth Presutti, CEO of the Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority. “We’ll see our impact 2-3 years down the road.”
Without action, service cuts are likely. Network expansions and improvements could be halted or abandoned. Old buses or trains might have to continue operating without funds to replace. Layoffs could come, further hampering the ability for transit to provide a useful public service. Degraded service will make it that much tougher for Americans hard-hit by the recession to get to jobs and services right when they most need an affordable option.
As the service suffers, ridership will be harder and harder to attract and our communities will pay the price with worsened traffic and pollution.
As Congress and state legislatures consider additional measures to help communities recover, the long-term transit impacts should be considered as well.
City and state budget deficits and a drastic decline in transit ridership have pushed transit agencies to the brink of collapse. Communities that were on the verge of expanding or building new transit may not be able to finance their projects if Congress doesn’t act.
Transit agencies across the country are facing huge operating and budget losses. While transit agencies are still operating to provide essential service, they are on track to lose billions this year due to revenue dwindling as a result of dramatically reduced ridership, increased cleaning costs, diminished local tax receipts, and other impacts from a contracting economy.
This has had a predictable impact on service, with every agency in the country making changes to reflect the drops in ridership. But also at risk are plans to expand or build new transit that have been in the works for years. These new services would yield significant mobility and economic benefits for communities in the years to come, but only if they can get off the ground.
Communities of all sizes apply to the federal Capital Investment Grants (CIG) program in order to secure federal funding for new or expanded transit projects—subway systems, commuter rail, light rail, streetcars, and bus rapid transit. Participating in the CIG program requires significant local political and financial commitment and years of dedicated work. But even with that comparatively high bar, there is still great demand for this funding, with over $23 billion in requests from projects currently waiting in the CIG “pipeline” for federal funding.
To access funding, Congress has recently required local communities to come up with at least 50 percent of the total cost, and under this administration, FTA has sought to make local communities pay even more. For many CIG projects, the local match comes from tax revenue and local community budgets. In many cases, communities have gone to the ballot to increase taxes to pay for these transit projects.
Now, all those carefully laid plans and contingencies could be for naught in light of the gaping hole that’s suddenly appeared in many municipal budgets—a 50 percent (or greater) local match could become an insurmountable challenge. Even projects that were on the verge of receiving a grant could see their “overall project rating” downgraded, which would prevent them from receiving a grant and delay critical projects which support jobs today, and long term economic development tomorrow.
Boosting CIG to create jobs
Back in March, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Emergency Security (CARES) Act, a $2 trillion relief package that gives transit agencies $25 billion in emergency relief. While providing transit operating support, as the CARES Act did, will continue to be important to keep transit running and allow service to rebound as economies reopen, ensuring that capital projects receive adequate federal support will spur our economic recovery in the long run. Transit is a job creator, and investing in CIG projects means investing in jobs in local communities and in the manufacturing sector across the country. The supply chain for public transportation touches every corner of the country and employs thousands of Americans who produce tracks, seats, windows, communications equipment, wheels, and everything else in between. More than 2,000 manufacturing facilities and companies are tied directly to the manufacture or supply of new transit systems and repairs and upgrades to existing systems.
Every $1 billion invested in public transit creates more than 50,000 jobs and economic returns of $3.7 billion over 20 years. And during the 2009 stimulus, we found that dollar for dollar, “public transportation produced 70 percent more job hours” than funds spent on highways.
Further, access to transit has proven to be critical to economic development, and any long-term economic recovery will be nearly impossible without transit service to help people get back to work after this unprecedented crisis subsides. Companies of all sizes are relocating to or deciding to start up in walkable downtowns and communities with transit to ensure access to a high quality workforce. Communities designed around transit are desirable for workers and businesses, which will boost economic growth and support our economic recovery.
Investments in transit create jobs directly, and lay the foundation for long term economic prosperity.
What Congress can do
Congress has already stepped up to help transit agencies get through the beginning of this crisis by providing operating support in the CARES Act, and while transit agencies need additional operating support, we must also think about other important challenges facing transit.
To support local community demands for transit, and job creation today while supporting the conditions for job creation tomorrow, we need CIG, and to save CIG, Congress must:
Provide no less than the FY19 funding level of $2.55 billion and $3.1527 billion in FY21 if Congress enacts the proposals below.
Eliminate the local match for new CIG projects for projects that demonstrate an inability to cover the cost of the local match.
Retroactively eliminate the local match for existing projects that demonstrate an inability to cover the cost of the local match.
Prevent FTA from changing overall project ratings due to changes in local commitments or ridership projections.
A proposal for the long-term transportation reauthorization released by U.S. House Democrats on June 3 would address a number of these points, at least partially. There’s nearly $1 billion for emergency CIG support in the first year and a delay in payment for local matches. The bill would also allow a 30 percent increase in the federal share of project funding (for a total of up to 80 percent) for new projects and projects that received their grant as far back as 2017.
These actions would reduce strain on local community budgets, allow them to proceed with building transit, and give USDOT the resources to fund more projects. In the long-term, this would ensure more robust transit service and greater access to jobs and services. But in the short-term, it would create jobs and put Americans to work. It would allow projects to continue to move through the “pipeline” and eventually receive funding.
What transit agencies can do
As we wrote recently, transit agencies need to track and publicize how COVID-19 is impacting their agency. They should quantify the impacts of low ridership and of keeping service running for essential workers and document stories from personnel and riders to make the case for continued federal funding and local support.
Tell Congress what your agency needs and what your experience of waiting for CIG funds has been like. Congress needs to hear that there is continued demand for CIG funding and sustained local support to continue expanding transit.
And most importantly, continue to engage with local advocates and riders. Ask them to call their elected officials to explain how important transit is, and how transformational new or expanded transit in the community could be.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed a COVID-19 relief bill that only included $15 billion in emergency support for public transportation. That’s not nearly enough; and it’s why over 160 organizations and elected officials signed our letter in support of $32 billion for transit on short notice. But we still need you to take action.
Public transportation is on life support. Without at least $32 billion in additional emergency funding, transit agencies can’t keep their workers healthy or safely return to service when this pandemic subsides. That’s why over 160 organizations and elected officials quickly signed our letter urging Congress to pass $32 billion for transit with less than 48 hours’ notice.
But the fight isn’t yet won. Last Friday, the House of Representatives passed a COVID-19 relief bill—the HEROES Act—that only includes $15 billion in emergency operating support for public transportation. That’s a start, but it’s insufficient for the scale of the crisis. We know that transit needs more, which is why we’re also calling on individuals to send a message to their members of Congress
A coalition of transit-related unions and transit agencies in New York City, San Francisco, New Jersey, and Atlanta have estimated that transit programs across the country will need an additional $32 billion through the end of 2021. In March, research group TransitCenter estimated that transit agencies would experience losses between $26-$38 billion this year due to impacts from COVID-19. Agencies are predicting losses that far outstrip the one-time emergency funding they received in March from the federal government.
As the HEROES Act stalls on Capitol Hill, we need you to send a message to your congressional delegation: the next COVID-19 relief package must include $32 billion for transit.
If we don’t act now, millions of Americans—including millions of essential workers, such as nurses and grocery clerks—will lose access to jobs, healthcare, and other critical services. And any long-term economic recovery will be nearly impossible without transit service to help people safely get back to work as this unprecedented crisis subsides. We can’t afford for transit to stop running, or be unable to pick up when the economy does. We need Congress to act. Send your message today!
The $25 billion in emergency funding provided for transit agencies in the first COVID-19 relief package was a great start—but as the crisis continues, agencies (and rural agencies in particular) likely need more funds to keep their personnel safe and return to normal service when stay at home orders loosen. Here are four powerful actions transit agencies can take to fight for more funding.
Public transportation budgets are currently in freefall. With revenue dwindling due to dramatically reduced ridership, diminished sale tax receipts, and other impacts from a contracting economy, transit agencies might lose between $26-$38 billion this year. This severely constricts agencies’ abilities to run enough service to get essential workers to their jobs and to keep their personnel safe from contracting COVID-19—and all but annihilates the possibility of returning to normal service when stay at home orders loosen.
The $25 billion in emergency operating assistance for transit included in the first coronavirus relief package—the CARES Act, passed last month—will support agencies for a little while, and even helped Grand Rapids’ transit agency postpone 300 layoffs. But it’s not enough. If transit agencies, riders, and advocates don’t speak up, the choice to cut transit funding at the federal and state level may not be too hard.
Transit agencies can make sure that doesn’t happen. Here are four powerful actions transit agencies can take to push Congress to pass more emergency funding for transit.
1. Track and publicize how COVID-19 is impacting your agency
COVID-19 is having a massive impact on every aspect of public transportation—so if you aren’t already, track these impacts. Quantifying costs and recording stories from personnel and riders will help you make the case for funding.
Some items worth tracking are COVID-19’s impacts on your budget, particularly:
Whether funding from the CARES Act is sufficient to help you maintain frequent, uncrowded service for essential workers, and how long existing funding will last;
If your needs have changed since receiving CARES Act funding;
If you are considering layoffs and what it would cost to avoid layoffs;
Rates of staff illnesses, quarantines, and fatalities.
2. Work with reporters to cover these impacts
What’s happening to public transportation—and what will happen if transit agencies don’t receive anymore emergency funding—is an incredibly important and newsworthy story. Be open with reporters: share COVID-19’s immediate impacts with them, and how COVID-19 is affecting your ability to provide transit service now and in the future. You have a story that deserves to be in the news.
3. Call your elected officials
As an essential industry on the frontline of the pandemic, transit agencies are some of the only entities that can give elected officials accurate and detailed accounts of how COVID-19 is impacting public services and hurting their personnel. And as recipients of federal funding, transit agencies have a responsibility to communicate to Congress particularly that your ability to connect essential workers to jobs is shrinking due to dwindling resources.
We recommend just picking up the phone and calling your Congressional delegation, your state representatives, your governor’s office, your mayor’s office, and your city council—it is their job to listen to you. Tell them about staff illness and quarantines, and what you need to get essential workers to jobs. Tell them what you’re doing to protect employees and the public, and what you need to keep them safe. Tell them that frankly, you don’t know what COVID-19 means for your agency.
4. Engage your local advocates and riders
Passionate transportation advocates and riders—especially essential workers who are using transit to get to their jobs—are one of your greatest resources. Tell advocates and riders that if they want transit service to exist now and when stay at home orders loosen, they need to call their elected officials to secure more emergency operating funding for transit. Share how COVID-19 is impacting your agency to arm advocates and riders with the tools to help you.
For inspiration, Oklahoma Transit Association’s Faces of Transit project is a terrific example of using riders’ stories to promote increased funding for transit.
Psssh, there’s one more thing: Tell T4America how we can help you: Email us (or ask to hop on the phone) to tell us what you’re experiencing. The more we know, the more we can help.
COVID-19 is costing transit agencies billions in lost revenue and increased costs to protect personnel. And unfortunately, the $25 billion in emergency funding Congress gave transit in the CARES Act isn’t enough—especially if stay-at-home orders continue indefinitely. The next relief package needs to give transit agencies more emergency assistance in order to keep transit workers safe and make sure that transit will be there when this crisis is over.
Last month, President Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Emergency Security (CARES) Act, a $2 trillion relief package that gives transit agencies $25 billion in emergency relief. This is great, especially since the first draft of the bill included not one cent for public transportation.
But as transit agencies across the country report mounting losses, we know that the CARES Act likely isn’t enough. Congress needs to give transit more emergency assistance. If they don’t, agencies won’t be able to keep their personnel safe from the virus, and they might not be able to return to normal service when this crisis ends.
Federal emergency funds are lower than transit’s losses
In March, research group TransitCenter estimated that transit agencies would experience losses between $26-$38 billion this year due to impacts from COVID-19. That range seemed huge at first, but no longer: agencies are predicting losses that far outstrip the emergency funding they received from the federal government.
The $25 billion in emergency assistance from the CARES Act was apportioned to urbanized areas—not directly to transit agencies—through existing formula programs, meaning that we don’t yet know how much money individual transit agencies received. However, in New York’s case, the total sum for the urbanized area is smaller than the amount the region’s largest transit agency is losing. With ridership and revenue from sales taxes plummeting, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) announced in March that the agency is anticipating losing approximately $10 billion in revenue this year—almost $5 billion more than the entire region received from the CARES Act. TransitCenter also recently estimated that MTA faces a shortfall of at least $4.4-$8 billion.
Many other urbanized areas are also home to multiple transit agencies, further splintering each region’s CARES Act funding. Each region typically follows their own protocol for distributing federal funding among its transit agencies. But this unprecedented loss of revenue—and first ever infusion of federal support for operating expenses, not capital costs—might throw that protocol into chaos, meaning that agencies might not receive the percentage of federal funding they normally get.
The San Francisco Bay Area has over 27 transit agencies, with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) the largest of all. COVID-19 has created a budget shortfall between $258 million to $452 million for the agency, yet the entire region only received $822 million from the CARES Act.
It’s a similar story in the Washington, DC region, home to over 20 transit agencies. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) is anticipating a “$67 million deficit, including $17 million in unanticipated expenses for gloves, sanitizer, disinfectants and other supplies the agency ordered to protect against the pandemic and $2.5 million a day in lost fare revenue,” according to the agency’s general manager. Yet given other regions’ unprecedented losses, WMATA’s deficit is likely much larger. Funding from the CARES Act for the DC region—a total of $1 billion—likely won’t cover their needs.
It’s not just big city transit agencies that are in trouble, though: rural transit agencies, already operating on very tight margins with unstable support, might not survive COVID-19 without more emergency assistance than they received through the CARES Act. The modest pay and part-time nature of driving for a rural system means it doesn’t pay the bills but can supplement retirement income. Because of this, rural transit drivers are more often older—most are over 65—and therefore at greater risk of complications or even death, should they be infected by COVID-19.
“The federal funding may get us through the peak of this pandemic,” Karl Gnadt, the managing director of the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District in Illinois, said to the New York Times. “The real concern is what’s next. At a time when unemployment is going to be rising and public transit becomes more and more critical, our funding is going to be going away. And we will be seeing significant service cuts.”
Without emergency funding, transit workers are at risk
Lost revenue isn’t the only strain on transit agencies’ budgets. Without funding, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for agencies to keep transit workers safe from COVID-19.
Over 2,500 employees of New York City’s transit agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), have tested positive for COVID-19—and 68 have tragically died from the disease. With 5,000 employees quarantined, maintaining already-reduced service for essential workers is even more difficult. “If you have 10 people on a [transit] line and three of them are sick, you are going to have a schedule that’s not working and leads to overcrowding,” a spokesperson for the Transport Workers Union (TWU) told The Chief.
It’s not just New York that’s struggling. According to the TWU, transit workers have also died from COVID-19 in Detroit, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, DC, Rocky Hill, CT and Everett, WA. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidance for transit agencies on keeping personnel safe, but they know more guidance is needed—which is why they have invited transit agencies to submit feedback on improving these safety protocols.)
Nobody should die doing their job—which is why transit agencies are pouring resources to keep personnel safe. Transit agencies all over the country are suspending fare collection to minimize riders’ interactions with operators, allowing rear-door boarding, and distributing thousands of masks and gloves every single day—all incredibly costly but necessary measures.
But it’s still not enough. Transit agencies need more emergency funding from the federal government to make sure that workers are protected from the virus. Funding transit isn’t “infrastructure”—it’s protection for frontline workers, and a guarantee that essential personnel, from healthcare to grocery workers, can get to their jobs now and when this crisis is over.
Congress has suggested that they may focus on infrastructure in an upcoming stimulus bill. It’s not entirely clear what Congress will do—or if spending on infrastructure is the right way to stimulate the economy right now—but if Congress does want to pass an infrastructure package, they should stop spending money like it’s 1982.
Upset about this broken status quo? Sign our petition urging Congress to fund public transit and highways equally.
For decades, the U.S. has funded transportation based on the idea that the user pays for the infrastructure through a fee—the gas tax, which has filled the Highway Trust Fund since 1956. In 1982, Congress struck a deal to raise the gas tax, but 1 cent of the 5 cent increase would be dedicated to transit, with the remaining spent on highways. This established the infamous “80-20 split” in transportation spending: highways get 80 percent of funds, and transit only gets 20 percent (though in reality, transit gets much less).
Since then, transportation spending has essentially stayed the same. In the most recent spending bill, Congress appropriated $48.6 billion for highways and only $10.2 billion for transit. But the entire logic behind highways receiving a substantially larger portion of the pie—i.e. drivers were paying for it—came crashing down in 2008, when the trust fund ran out of money because the gas tax was no longer sufficient to cover expenditures. To stay afloat, the trust fund has received huge infusions of general taxpayer dollars totaling $144 billion.
Our transportation dollars are no longer based on a user fee paid by drivers, yet the 80-20 funding split persists. This no longer makes any sense. Even the influx of transportation funds from the Recovery Act in 2009 all came from deficit spending from the general fund—not a single dime came from gas tax user fees—yet the vast majority of funding (roughly 75 percent) went to roads.
Why should we continue to honor a nearly 40-year old system based on a nearly defunct user fee? If Congress pursues an infrastructure package or reauthorization as part of a stimulus bill, it will be wholly outside a user fee construct. Considering that, why shouldn’t transit receive more than 20 percent of transportation dollars? Why shouldn’t transit receive 80 percent or even 100 percent of transportation dollars? We are not saying that other modes should not receive any money. The point is that all assumptions should be questioned and funding should go to projects that create jobs quickly in a stimulus bill and support today’s needs and goals, not those of 40 years ago.
It’s time for Congress to abandon this obsolete, untenable split in transportation funding.
Congress has already upended status quo
Whether legislators realized it or not, the recently passed $2 trillion CARES Act has already disrupted the status quo to deal with immediate needs. The act includes $25 billion in direct, emergency assistance for transit at a time when revenue is plummeting. That’s more than double what the federal government usually spends on transit in a year. Normally, transit agencies have been barred from using federal funds for operations, typically only providing funds for maintenance and capital (like building new stations, or buying new buses).
With the passage of the CARES Act, Congress broke with precedent and provided essential funding for transit operations. But we should go further, and end the baseless 80-20 funding split. After all, this pandemic has made it obvious that transit is essential, and it should be funded as such.
With 2.8 million essential workers relying on transit to get to their jobs and countless others depending on it to access food and health care, we need transit to be robust, reliable, and frequent. And we’ll need transit to get tens of millions more people moving once this virus is contained. But giving transit only 20 percent of the pie just won’t cut it.
According to the Federal Transit Administration, our transit systems face a $98 billion backlog in deferred maintenance. Unlike the road maintenance backlog which has more to do with state DOTs prioritizing new roads instead of maintenance, the transit backlog is due to insufficient funding. There is also great demand for more transit capital funding, and operating support will be critical to ensure that agencies can continue to provide this invaluable service and limit crowding.
We have underfunded transit for decades, and doing so has left too many communities with deteriorating systems and infrequent, unreliable service. It’s time to get rid of the 80-20 split. To get through this crisis and build a robust economy again, we’ll need to fund transit equitably and treat it like the vital public good that it is.
