transit operations Archives - Transportation For America

Two federal bills for better transit service

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why we need the Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act

A diverse set of passengers (women and men, young and old) rides a bus down a sunny street

Representative Hank Johnson (GA-04) reintroduced the Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act, which would establish a federal funding program for transit operations, providing $20 billion in annual funding over four years ($80 billion) to expand the service of buses and trains. We are joining the National Campaign for Transit Justice, the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU) and the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) in support of this bill.

Public transit is essential to communities, local economies, and the lives of millions of people across the country. As they work to deliver frequent and reliable service, transit agencies can use federal funding to repair and maintain their systems and to build out new services—but they can’t use it to help cover the cost of operating their systems, which accounts for two-thirds of a transit agency’s total expenses. Agencies have to turn to local taxes, fares, and fees to cover this gap.

Faced with fiscal cliffs in the years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic plus escalating inflation, many transit agencies have been forced to reduce service rather than focusing on increasing ridership back to—and beyond—pre-pandemic levels. This crisis has demonstrated that the current approach is failing to meet the needs of millions of Americans who rely upon transit to reach their essential destinations.

The Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act would modernize transit operations funding by creating a new formula grant program that can be used to make “substantial improvements to transit service.” Furthermore, the bill aims to allot funding for places that need it most, clearly defining funding for areas of persistent poverty and underserved communities—places where transit ridership tends to be highest.

“Getting people to work and providing essential services is the primary purpose of the transportation system, and it fails if it can only do that for people who have the money and ability to drive. With the Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act, Rep. Johnson not only offers needed support for increased transit service to connect people with the things they need, but for the high quality, dependable transit service that people require for true access to opportunity.” —Beth Osborne, Director of Transportation for America

The U.S. relies on public transit to make our economy work. Americans depend on transit to get to where they need to go and help their businesses thrive. The U.S. needs to invest in frequent, reliable, and affordable transit, and the Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act is a crucial step forward in achieving this vision.

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

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

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

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

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

Pairing expanded transit service with greater access to transit

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

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

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

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

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

Raising the bar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But how?

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

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

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

After COVID, who’s driving the bus?

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

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

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

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

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

Transit drivers under pressure

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unpredictable workloads for school bus drivers

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

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

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

What we need

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

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

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

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

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

Want to save the climate? Start by funding transit operations

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

MARTA buses in Atlanta. Flickr photo by James Williamor.

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

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

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

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

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

We can afford to do better

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

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

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

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

VMT reduction impacts of increased transit spending

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

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

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

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

There’s more to this story

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

Why the House and Senate owe transit $10 billion

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.

Download the fact sheet about why “Congress and the White House owe transit $10 billion cut in the infrastructure deal.”

Build transit back better with more trains, more buses, more frequency

As more Americans begin returning to work and daily life, we need transit to be there, running reliably and frequently, getting us where we need to go. There’s an exciting new proposal to fund increased transit service across the country, but time is short to build support for this important legislation.

*Photo by T4 supporter Richard Rabinowitz.*

While the INVEST 2.0 awaits a vote by the full House later this month, there are ongoing efforts to make further improvements to that already strong bill. Rep. Hank Johnson’s (GA) Stronger Communities through Better Transit Act is a must-have bill that would produce higher quality transit in communities of all sizes across the country. This vital piece of legislation would create a new program to fund transit operations costs, available to all transit agencies, rural and urban, in order to:

Increase service frequency so that people don’t have to wait so long for the bus;
provide additional hours of service so that those who don’t work white-collar hours can still get to their jobs; and
add new, frequent service to underserved communities in the region.

We have a tremendous chance to build an engine for equitable economic growth across the country through more robust transit service and systems. The more support this bill gets, the more likely that House leadership will include it in whatever final transportation and infrastructure product they consider later this month.

The Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act is a game changer:
💰Authorizes $20 billion annually for FY2023-FY2026
🚍 Requires funds be used for projects that that boost frequency of buses, trains and increases routes
✅ Requires funding go to underserved communities pic.twitter.com/Ys0MzW2M9q
— Rep. Hank Johnson (@RepHankJohnson) June 9, 2021

Why we need more funding for operating transit

For decades, not only has transit gotten only 20 percent of federal transportation funding, but that funding has been limited by Congress to only maintenance and capital needs—not the day-to-day costs of running trains and buses. This moratorium was lifted for rural transit agencies in 1998, though it’s not a big benefit to rural transit agencies to make them choose whether to fund existing service or develop additional service with their limited funds. They don’t need flexibility: they need more robust funding. Beyond these rural agencies, large and mid-sized agencies still do not receive any operating funds, which make up two-thirds of public transportation’s costs.

This has to change in order to create the equitable and sustainable transportation system necessary to connect everyone to opportunities.

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 this report. The current federal focus on only capital needs instead of providing quality 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 as a result, “ridership stagnates or shrinks.” In fact, following the stimulus bill in 2009, numerous transit agencies received money to buy new buses or railcars at the same time they were cutting service and laying off employees because of the Great Recession, putting many agencies in the ludicrous position of having tons of money to buy vehicles they could not afford to operate.

All Americans—no matter where they live—deserve transportation options that are convenient, affordable, sustainable and safe. But this arcane policy makes it an uphill climb for transit agencies to deliver that kind of service. In fact, fewer than 10 percent of Americans live within walking distance of transit that runs every 15 minutes or less, TransitCenter found.

The lack of operating support for public transit—and the severe underfunding of transit in general—also 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 convenient, reliable, frequent transit service that can safely and conveniently get you to work, school, shopping, church or anywhere else you need to go; where you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars per year owning and operating a car if you don’t want to or can’t afford to. Putting millions more Americans within reach of frequent transit service is possible, and Rep. Johnson’s bill is our best opportunity to start to realize that vision.

Use the form above to tell your representative to support this bill.

Ed. note: the second half of this post was adapted from this related post we wrote back in May.

Why we need federal operations funding for 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.

Person in a wheelchair inside a bus. — 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.

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.

Building a better stimulus package: here’s how

With the $2 trillion rescue plan approved, Congress is already eyeing another COVID-19 relief and recovery package later this month. Based in part on what we learned from the 2009 stimulus, Transportation for America contributed infrastructure proposals to Smart Growth America’s detailed recommendations for economic stabilization and recovery. We must ensure that any further stimulus empowers communities to be economically prosperous, socially equitable, and environmentally sustainable.

After passing the largest stimulus in United States history last week—$2 trillion, with $25 billion in aid for transit agencies and $1 billion for passenger rail—members of Congress know that more is needed to protect the country from the immediate and long-term impacts of COVID-19, and plan to work on another stimulus later this month.

With the economy crumbling and millions of Americans’ lives at risk, the U.S. can’t afford to waste this opportunity for relief. We can’t squander our money on programs that fail to create the most new jobs or build lasting economic prosperity. It’s critical that this funding go to investments that give all Americans the opportunity to live in places that are healthy, prosperous, and resilient.

As part of Smart Growth America, we contributed to a new short SGA report outlining 20 recommendations for any economic recovery package that will boost our economy and give Americans equitable, accessible, safe and low carbon transportation options into the future. Here’s a summary of the transportation-related recommendations —read the full list here.

Invest in projects that create the most jobs: that means maintenance, not expansion

Road or bridge repair and maintenance projects actually create more jobs than building new capacity. One reason is that with a new roadway project, a huge share of the cost goes toward buying property—an activity that has little to no stimulative or reinvestment value while also creating future liabilities (new roads) in the process. Meanwhile, maintenance projects spend money faster, are open to more kinds of workers, spend less money on equipment and more on wages, and spend less time on plans and permits. In fact, roadway maintenance creates 16 percent more jobs per dollar compared to roadway expansion.

And luckily, the U.S. is swimming with potential roadway maintenance projects, as found in our report Repair Priorities. It would be a win-win to require states to actually make progress on our repair backlog—something too few states did with 2009’s stimulus. Doing so would create the most jobs while finally addressing our “crumbling” infrastructure—instead of just using that rhetoric to approve new money that then gets spent on new roads.

Give transit and passenger rail operating support, not just capital funds

The limited federal funds that public transportation receives are only for maintenance and construction. With ridership plummeting and costs for cleaning vehicles and protecting personnel skyrocketing—as well as the fallout from a rapidly contracting economy—transit and passenger rail need operating support now more than ever.

The $25 billion for transit and $1 billion for passenger rail Congress provided in last week’s stimulus is a great start. But with TransitCenter estimating COVID-19-related losses to transit agencies between $26 and $38 billion, and Amtrak experiencing unprecedented drops in ridership, both public transportation and passenger rail will still need more. Congress should increase the amount of emergency operating funding in the next stimulus, and target transit agencies that need it the most.

Expand transit and passenger rail

An economic stimulus is a rare and powerful opportunity to invest in the infrastructure that has the most potential to reduce our carbon emissions, increase access to opportunities, and make our country more equitable. But the focus of any stimulus package should be creating the most jobs per dollar, and capital funding for transit and rail creates far more jobs than road projects, according to research on the 2009 stimulus.

Public dollars devoted to making capital improvements to public transportation systems also support thousands of manufacturing jobs, in communities small and large, in nearly every state across the country. Every $1 billion invested in public transit creates more than 50,000 jobs and economic returns of $3.7 billion over 20 years. 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.

T4America has other specific recommendations for how to increase funding for expanding transit and passenger rail—including increasing the federal share of projects to 80 percent (the same as roadways). You can check those out here.

Final thoughts

Infrastructure will be an obvious topic for any stimulus, but we need a more comprehensive solution. Smart Growth America’s proposals for housing and community development are focused on the highest-returning investments that can also give more Americans a shot at opportunity. Check out the full list here, and stay tuned for ways that you can help us get these recommendations to Capitol Hill. To get updates, subscribe to T4America’s email list and follow us on Twitter.

Catch up and learn about what’s at stake for small and rural transit providers in the budget

Smaller cities and rural areas are facing potential funding reductions, phase-outs or the total elimination of vital federal programs they depend upon to provide transit service — whether as a lifeline or a powerful economic development tool.

A few weeks ago we released a new detailed memo (pdf) to explain these specific threats facing rural areas, and detail the efforts by the administration and Congress to cut or eliminate vital funding programs for public transportation.

Earlier this week, we held a short webinar with our federal policy experts and some sharp local leaders that have experience in providing transit service in rural areas to explain that memo in more detail. We talked through the status of the current appropriations process, what you can do today, the impact on formula transit grants and the Small Starts capital program, and the overall outlook for the transit program.

If you missed the session, you can catch up with the full recording here:

Transit providers of all sizes, in all parts of the country, should band together and start making the strongest possible case for preserving the federal transit program. Read our full summary and learn how you can take action.

What’s at stake for small and rural transit providers?

Federal transit funding is still on the chopping block. Those who operate or depend on transit — whether in small, rural areas or large, urban ones — must band together to convince both Congress and the President of the vital nature of public transportation services.

While we’ve frequently highlighted the ongoing, existential threats to the main source of federal funds for helping cities expand or create new public transportation lines or service, smaller cities and rural areas are also at risk of funding reductions, phase-outs or the total elimination of vital programs they depend upon.

In this new detailed memo (pdf), T4America lays out the specific threats facing rural areas and explains Congress’ and the administration’s efforts to cut or eliminate vital funding programs for public transportation. Get the full summary on:

What the president has proposed and the status of the current appropriations process
What you can do today
Formula transit programs, Small Starts, the TIGER competitive grant program, and
The outlook for the transit program

Join us on October 23 for a live webinar discussion

Our team of experts will discuss rural transit providers, the projects that are at risk from these cuts, and what you can do to defend transit in your region. Join the live discussion on Monday, October 23, 2017 from 3:00-4:00 p.m. EDT. Register today.