Last weekend, Congress gave themselves until October 31st to pass the infrastructure deal (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or IIJA) and the budget reconciliation (the Build Back Better Act). With cuts on the way for the Build Back Better Act, it’s more important than ever to raise our voices in support of transit funding.
In the Build Back Better Act, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee allocated funds to key programs that are critical for our nation to create and sustain good-paying jobs, strengthen our global economic competitiveness, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution. At the same time, these provisions will make real progress toward racial, economic, and environmental justice.
Passing the IIJA without these provisions in the reconciliation bill will leave the nation in a worse state than before—facing rising greenhouse gas emissions and worsened access to jobs and services, especially for communities that need this access most. Even so, Congress is negotiating major cuts to the reconciliation bill that could threaten these programs in the name of an arbitrary bottomline.
The programs we can’t lose
Investing in marginalized communities
A $10 billion transit program that includes operations funding and is specifically designed to connect residents of disadvantaged or persistent poverty communities to jobs and essential services
A $4 billion program to mitigate negative impacts of transportation on underserved communities
Investing in local communities
A $6 billion program that would advance local surface transportation projects
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions
$4 billion in incentive grants for states that show progress toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions, not only benefitting the environment but the local economy and public health
Increased funding for rail
$10 billion for the planning and development of public high-speed rail projects and $150 million for credit risk premium assistance, supporting jobs and providing for travel options
The Build Back Better Act increases transit funding by $10 billion, bringing transit spending up to $49 billion. If that number sounds familiar, it’s the amount transit was originally promised by a bipartisan group of Senators—before the Senate stripped out $10 billion without any explanation.
The funding provided by the Build Back Better Act promotes more local control and is flexible enough to include operating funds—a glaring omission in the IIJA. Adequate funding for transit, transit operations in particular, is crucial for mobility freedom and access to jobs, education, and community for all users, especially youth, elderly, people with disabilities, and all those unable to access a vehicle.
The Build Back Better Act makes meaningful investments in rebuilding communities harmed by transportation decisions, another area where the IIJA comes up short. Highway construction and suburban sprawl have repeatedly caused the uprooting and marginalizing of communities, particularly BIPOC communities. It is crucial for the government to facilitate rebuilding and reconnecting our communities.
The Build Back Better Act is far more serious than the IIJA about taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve infrastructure for all Americans. These are necessary programs that shouldn’t be cut to meet a last-minute spending goal. We encourage you to call your Congressperson and voice your support for these programs in the Build Back Better Act before time runs out.
Update 9/21: This post was updated to include progress made in the House since its original post date.
Congress’ final infrastructure deal (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) didn’t live up to the original bipartisan package announced with pride by the White House and Senate on June 24, cutting transit funding by $10 billion while almost all other areas matched the original proposal. The House’s budget reconciliation package takes steps to restore this funding, while also going further to provide equitable access to goods and services, improve climate outcomes, and reduce the negative impacts of the transportation system on disadvantaged communities.
The House’s reconciliation package includes a new $10 billion transit program, helping to rectify the $10 billion taken from transit in the final bipartisan infrastructure bill. This funding includes flexibility for operations support, which will be key for transit agencies hit hard by the pandemic. It’s also specifically designed to connect residents of disadvantaged or persistent poverty communities to jobs and essential services.
Another win for equity: the budget also provides $4 billion for communities negatively impacted by transportation. These funds can be used to improve walkability, reduce the public health impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and improve road safety.
There’s an additional $4 billion for incentive grants for states that reduce GHG emissions significantly or adopt targets to reach zero emissions by 2050. Funding is also included for USDOT to institute a GHG emissions performance measure to help prioritize projects that reduce travel time and emissions. Former President Trump repealed this measure and reinstating it is one of our key tasks for the Biden administration.
To help address needs at a local level, the House added $6 billion to advance local surface transportation projects.
The House also added $10 billion for the planning and development of public high-speed rail projects and $150 million for credit risk premium assistance, making it easier for smaller railroads to access and benefit from these funds. This funding will help improve passenger rail service, making it a more convenient and reliable form of transportation.
We enthusiastically support these programs and encourage you to tell your senator to include them in the final budget reconciliation package.
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 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.
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.
With the House’s INVEST in America Act being considered in committee on Wednesday, it’s a good time to look at what else beyond our core three principles in the bill are worth praising and potentially even improving.
Photo of Metroway (bus rapid transit in Northern Virginia) by BeyondDC on Flickr’s Creative Commons.
Most of the time, when we evaluate long-term transportation policy proposals or infrastructure bills from Congress, we start with a “good, bad, and ugly” post, but this House bill doesn’t fit well into that rubric. There’s a lot of great, some good, a few things that could use further refinement, and a couple of missed opportunities; but nothing that falls into the category of “bad,” much less “ugly.” It also has a lot of the same language in the INVEST Act introduced in the last Congress which stalled before a Senate vote, which also went 3 for 3 (after some modifications) on our scorecard.
With that in mind, here are nine specific things in the House bill (INVEST 2.0 for shorthand) that we wanted to highlight. Bear with us, this is a longer post!
1) Avoids the Senate’s cardinal sin of creating small, new programs to fix mistakes actively being perpetuated by the larger, unchanged, status quo transportation program
The overall approach of the last 30 years has been to create small, exciting new programs to fix established problems (safety, pollution, etc) while allowing the much larger core program to exacerbate and further those same problems. This was our biggest complaint about the Senate’s bill from a few weeks ago.
If you want to create a program to fix the issues created by running interstates through neighborhoods, you should also stop actively running interstates through neighborhoods. Or consider the issues of repair and maintenance. As we noted in our scorecard post, this bill doesn’t just create some new repair programs, it requires states to produce a plan to maintain any proposed new capacity while making progress toward their state of repair goals anytime they spend money from the biggest pot of highway funding. That’s the kind of new approach that the Senate completely missed, but the House is proposing to implement for key issues like repair, climate change, and others.
2) It recognizes that transportation is primarily about people and connecting them to what they need
The current federal transportation program does not require that states actively improve access to jobs and services for the real people who use the system every day. Say what? This is why the bulk of current transportation funding goes toward increasing vehicle speed, a “goal” that focuses on concrete and steel instead of the needs of actual people and where they need to go. This House bill kickstarts a huge shift toward focusing on people instead of vehicles by instituting a new performance measure that requires project sponsors to improve access to jobs and services by all modes.
Under the House bill, state departments of transportation and regional planning organizations would have to measure whether all people traveling (not just driving) can reach jobs, schools, groceries, medical care, and other necessities. Further, states and MPOs would have to project the impact their projects would have on access and USDOT will review and publicly report their targets and progress. USDOT also has to collect that data and make it available to help with the measurement of multimodal access, and there are requirements to analyze the accuracy of the models and update direction to states and MPOs on how to improve access.
While seemingly minor and perhaps a little wonky, this would mark a big shift in how transportation projects are evaluated. Measuring access—not vehicle speed—is a people-first way to consider the impact of the billions we spend on transportation each year. With this, we can create more equitable access to economic opportunity, lower transportation costs, and reduce emissions and the damaging climate and health impacts of them.
3) Nails all three of T4America’s core principles
Click to read our scorecard post
As we’ve done with every infrastructure proposal or long-term policy proposal for the last few years, we’ve produced a scorecard to evaluate how it starts to redirect transportation policy toward T4America’s three core principles of 1) maintaining the current system, 2) protecting the safety of people on the roads, and 3) getting people to jobs, schools, groceries and health care. This bill nails all three of these principles Read more about how the House bill advances these three simple priorities in this post with the scorecard.
4) Advances our proposal to start tearing down divisive infrastructure and repairing the damage
Since 2020, with help from Third Way, T4America has been advancing a policy to undo the damage of “urban renewal” projects that have displaced more than a million Americans since construction of the Interstate Highway System and that continue to harm communities of color today. Our plan focuses heavily on creating a competitive grant program to redesign or deconstruct things like divisive highways, and creating strategies to prevent displacement so that this work generates wealth for the communities that suffered most, in addition to a few other strategies.
What the sunken, divisive Rochester Inner Loop used to look like, before being filled in and replaced with a surface boulevard. The House bill would kickstart efforts like this across the country. Flickr photo by Friscocali
The House runs with our proposal through a $3 billion ($600 million a year) Reconnecting Neighborhoods program, which is six times larger than a similar proposal in the Senate bill. This program will analyze neighborhood barriers (like interstates) and identify candidates for remediation, repurposing, or removal. In addition, part of that money can also be used to establish a community advisory board or a land trust to preserve the new wealth for those most affected by the divisive infrastructure. There are some details we’d like to enhance, but this idea has gained incredible traction over the last year and we are excited about the possibilities for the future.
5) Recognizes that you must address climate change within the entire transportation program
Download our report on lowering emissions through better land use and transportation
Transportation is the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States, and the majority of them come from driving. The bill addresses the entirety of the transportation program by establishing a new greenhouse gas performance measure and requiring states to set positive targets to reduce emissions. It gives states the latitude to figure out their own preferred path to hitting those targets, but we know that infrastructure investments that give people more options than hopping in the car are key to reducing these emissions. INVEST 2.0 creates programs to fund these projects at both the state and city levels.
While making it easier to drive less overall should be central to our short-term climate and transportation strategy, we do need to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles as well. This is why we’re part of a unique coalition called CHARGE—the only “electric vehicle” coalition where improving and expanding public transit is the first priority. This bill creates a new program to build electric vehicle charging stations along corridors and sets standards to require them to be open to the public and work with all kinds of electric vehicles.
There are also some good provisions targeted at making the transportation system more resilient to climate change and making resilience an eligible use in the largest highway programs. One place where the bill could be improved is to require resilience to be built into the design of all projects.
6) Measuring access to jobs and services is one of the best ways to address equity, but this bill includes others
As noted above, requiring agencies to measure and improve access to jobs and services for all people is perhaps the single greatest change to remake transportation policy in a more equitable way. But INVEST 2.0 would also improve equity in other ways—something we wrote about at length last summer in the context of the House’s very similar 2020 proposal. Prioritizing access, investing in more and better transit, building safer streets for people, and investing in what we have would all have an impact on equity. Considering the similarities between that bill and this year’s INVEST in America Act, that evaluation still stands.
7) Support for expanded national passenger rail
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) addresses an enormous crowd in Gulfport during a rally for restoring Gulf Coast passenger service. Photo by Steve Davis / T4America
Expanding and improving our nation’s passenger rail network to bring better, more reliable passenger rail service to more people is one of the best ways to improve access for millions of Americans in big urban areas and small rural ones alike. This bill creates a new $5 billion a year program for high speed and intercity rail investments, triples the funding for the existing program for improved safety and efficiency in passenger and freight rail service, and funds Amtrak at $32 billion over the life of the bill.
The House incorporated several of our other recommendations, including updating the Amtrak Board to have better representation from riders and the national network as well as the Northeast Corridor. More importantly, it allows for the formation of more multi-state rail commissions like our partners the Southern Rail Commission, which has been the key to (almost!) restoring passenger service along the Gulf Coast, and provides funding for them to operate.
There is some opportunity to strengthen the authorities for the Federal Railroad Administration and the Surface Transportation Board to prevent the freight railroads from obstructing or interfering with that service.
8) A strong commitment to transit…
INVEST 2.0 provides over $21 billion for transit, a sizable increase over the current $13 billion program, and it also includes some funding for operations—a major win, as operations funding has typically been a no-go with federal funds. Funds from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program and even the core Surface Transportation program can be used for transit operations. There’s also a new one-time competitive grant program to support capital and operations costs associated with addressing transit deserts through better, more frequent transit service.
Improving service frequency is a big focus of the bill. There is a new $100 million competitive grant program for transit agencies collaborating with state or local governments to increase bus frequency and ridership by redesigning urban streets to better move transit (and more people) in congested areas. There is also a change to the funding formula that prioritizes frequency.
9) But with opportunities for greater improvements on transit
While the bill makes some important changes and does slightly increase its share compared to highways, the bill does not hit T4America’s priorities of equalizing transit funding with highway funding, nor does it create long term support for keeping transit running. We will be once again turning to leaders on Capitol Hill to move these efforts forward. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia of Illinois has led the effort to invest in transit as strongly as we do highways, and we hope he uses this bill as an opportunity to push that effort forward.
On the operations side, Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia is leading an effort to create a federal program for transit operating support. The Stronger Communities through Better Transit Act would create a new grant program available to all transit agencies, rural and urban, to increase service frequency so that people don’t have to wait so long for the bus; to provide additional hours of service so that those who don’t work regular hours can still get to their jobs; and to add new, frequent service in the region. We are proud supporters of that bill and we encourage you to tell your House rep to join Rep. Johnson as a sponsor.
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, 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.
Electrifying vehicles is critical to reducing transportation emissions, but they can’t get the job done on their own—Americans need the freedom to drive less. In honor of Earth Day, we hosted three webinars diving into this issue, including one with former USDOT Secretary Anthony Foxx and Rep. Nikema Williams (GA-5).
Transportation is the largest source of U.S. emissions—and they’re going up. Yet electric vehicles (EVs) are not enough on their own to reduce these emissions due to the slow rate of fleet turnover and the increasing rate of vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Americans are driving more and more every day, and policy can’t keep up.
But Americans aren’t driving more by choice. Our transportation investment decisions make driving many people’s only option, forcing people to drive everywhere by prioritizing projects that make it easier to drive fast. This cuts off millions of Americans who can’t afford or operate a vehicle from reaching jobs, schools, and other essential services.
To truly reduce transportation emissions and make transportation accessible for everyone—no matter who you are or where you live—we need to give Americans more options than just driving. We need to go #BeyondEVs.
Tuesday, 1:00 pm ET: Undoing the Damage of Urban Freeways
This two-part, joint panel event with Third Way examines the lasting impact of urban freeways and how our next infrastructure investments must be different.
Transportation investments shape our communities — not always for the better. For decades, transportation planners invested in urban freeways that destroyed many communities of color. Recently, the Department of Transportation halted a planned expansion of I-45 in Houston, a project that would have displaced not only families, homes, and businesses but historic Black and brown communities.
Changing the way we invest in transportation is part of how we’ll make the U.S. more equitable and sustainable. The new American Jobs Plan presents a once-in-a-century opportunity to do that — if we do it right.
Check out our superstar lineup of speakers:
Former US Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, Lyft’s Chief Policy Officer
Josh Freed, Senior Vice President for the Climate and Energy Program, Third Way
Representative Nikema Williams (D-GA)
Mayor Ben Walsh, Syracuse, New York
Former Mayor John Norquist, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Beth Osborne, Director, Transportation for America
Tanya Snyder, Reporter, POLITICO
Molly Cook, Stop TxDOT I-45, Houston
Keith Baker, Executive Director of Reconnect Rondo, St. Paul
Amy Stelly, Claiborne Avenue Alliance, New Orleans
Wednesday, 3:00 pm ET: Driving Down Emissions: Why reducing how much we drive is critical for our climate
The heart of our transportation climate strategy needs to hinge on making it easier, safer, and more convenient to take shorter routine trips and meet daily needs without a car, whether those vehicles are electric or not. We’ll never achieve our ambitious climate targets in time—or create more livable and equitable communities—if we don’t.
This webinar will draw from Smart Growth America’s 2020 report, Driving Down Emissions, and highlight new research and state action to reduce emissions from the transportation sector. Speakers will discuss why it’s so critical to reduce the need to drive in the US, how policy changes can get us there, and what steps California and Minnesota, two leading states, are taking to make it happen.
Thursday, 1:00 pm ET: Transforming Transit: Fund transit at the same level as highways
Expanding public transportation is necessary to help give Americans more transportation options than just driving and building an equitable economy post-COVID-19.
This webinar will unpack hurdles to a transformational investment in public transit embedded in existing federal transportation policy—notably the “handshake deal” limiting public transit to only 20 percent of the transportation budget. Our speakers will break down the consequences of this policy—something we’ve expanded upon here—and help chart a path forward.
Angry about the 80/20 split between highway and transit funding? Send a message to your legislators!
If you’ve been following Transportation for America for a while, you know that electric vehicles on their own aren’t enough to reduce emissions from the transportation sector—the largest source of U.S. emissions. That’s why we joined CHARGE, a new coalition of cross-industry stakeholders advocating for a holistic approach to electrifying the U.S. transportation network.
A Washington, DC Metro platform. Credit: Kyle Anderson, WMATA
Transportation is the largest source of U.S. carbon emissions, and most of them come from driving. Electrifying cars would seem like a sure bet to reduce these emissions, but with the dramatic rate vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is increasing coupled with the slow pace of vehicle fleet turnover (cars are lasting longer and longer!), there’s no way we can electrify cars fast enough to prevent devastating outcomes of climate change.
And why would we want to? A transportation system where your only “option” is to drive everywhere—even to destinations less than a mile from your home—is far from equitable. Requiring that every working adult spend $10,000 per year on average on a car to participate in the economy isn’t good for our businesses, quality of life, or ensuring that everybody—regardless of your ability—can access the things they need.
That’s why we joined CHARGE, a new coalition of 37 transportation, industry, environmental, labor, health, equity, and civic organizations that support smart policy to electrify America’s transportation system. With CHARGE, we created three policy principles and a set of concrete policy recommendations for Congress and the Biden administration to develop smart zero-emission transportation policy for the next stimulus or infrastructure package.
The unique thing about CHARGE is that it’s the only “electric vehicle” coalition where public transit is a priority—the number one priority, in fact. CHARGE knows that electrifying vehicles is critical, but it isn’t enough to reduce our emissions: we need to give Americans more zero-emission transportation options by expanding and electrifying public transportation.
Creating a $20 billion annual operating support program to incentivize more and more frequent and expanded service, particularly for communities of color and low-income communities;
Incentivizing transit agencies to develop and support equitable multimodal transit systems, operations and infrastructure;
Significantly increasing funding and financing available to support conversion to, maintenance of, operation of, and workforce training to support electric fleets and related infrastructure as rapidly as possible while simultaneously increasing service.
POLITICO Pro reported last week that $25 billion of President Biden’s American Jobs Plan (which analyzed in-depth here) will go to electrifying public transit vehicles, an early win for our new coalition.
Also according to POLITICO Pro, two-thirds of the $85 billion for transit in the American Jobs Plan will go to maintenance, with the rest set for expansion and improving accessibility for people with disabilities. This is huge, but we definitely need ongoing, federal operating support for public transit in order to provide frequent, high-quality service necessary to reduce transportation emissions.
We’re thrilled to team up with organizations across the transportation policy spectrum on recommendations to holistically electrify transportation—not just maintain the same car-dependent paradigm but with electric vehicles. We urge you to check out CHARGE’s principles and policy recommendations, and if you represent an organization, sign on to support these ideas!
We can have it all: a federal transportation program that reduces carbon emissions while boosting our economy. The House of Representatives led the way last summer with the INVEST Act, a bill that starts the work of connecting federal funding to the transportation outcomes Americans—including our businesses—need. Here’s how.
A Washington, DC street in June 2020. Photo by Ted Eytan in Greater Greater Washington’s Flickr pool.
Transportation is the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States, and the majority of them come from driving. Infrastructure investments that give people more options than hopping in the car are key to reducing these emissions. And luckily, these investments are great for our businesses, too.
When the House of Representatives passed the INVEST Act last summer—a transportation bill that took huge steps toward aligning funding with the outcomes Americans want (getting to where they need to go)—we took a deep dive on the parts of the bill that do the most to reduce emissions. It’s not just one “climate title”—reducing emissions is in the bill’s DNA.
With the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee holding a hearing this Wednesday on the “business case for climate solutions,” let’s revisit the climate measures in the INVEST Act to see how they boost our economy.
Investing in public transit = good for business
As our partners Smart Growth America found in their report Core Values, businesses are relocating to transit-accessible downtowns to attract talent, bringing economic development with them. Yet the federal transportation program works against this trend. Public transportation has been underinvested in for decades, with the few federal funds transit receives undermined by overwhelming highway funding that doubles down on sprawl—an environment where transit can’t succeed.
The INVEST Act increases transit funding by 47 percent, while also overhauling policies that have long obstructed transit as a truly viable option in communities, as we wrote last summer. The bill incentivizes transit agencies to increase service frequency, reversing policies that in practice incentivized agencies to do the opposite in order to decrease operating costs to the detriment of transit service.
Members of Chambers for Transit—our coalition of over 35 local chambers of commerce fighting for robust public transit investment—know that increased transit investment improves access to jobs, sparks new development, and creates the kinds of vibrant communities that can attract a talented workforce. (That’s why Chambers for Transit sent a letter to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week.) It also improves access to the economy for people of color and low-income people, who make up larger shares of transit riders.
Measuring access, not vehicle speed = good for businesses
Businesses want the federal transportation program to invest in projects that improve people’s access to jobs and services—not increase vehicle speeds. That’s why so many of our Chambers for Transit members support using new technologies to prioritize projects that improve people’s access to the things they need. (This is one of our three principles for transportation policy).
For decades, the federal transportation program has done the opposite, measuring the success of its investments by vehicle speed. This doesn’t take into account whether or not people actually arrived at their destination. And it encourages states and planning organizations to build more and wider roads. This pushes homes and businesses farther apart from each other, making it much more difficult to walk, bike, or use transit, while in the long-haul, making congestion worse and increasing vehicle miles traveled and emissions. It also limits access to the economy to people who can afford to and are able to operate a car.
To build the type of communities where you don’t have to drive everywhere, we need to measure success by access: how many destinations you can reach from your home by any mode. The INVEST Act transitions the federal transportation program to just that.
Through a new performance measure, the INVEST Act requires recipients of federal transportation funding to improve people’s access to jobs and services, whether they drive, take transit, walk or bike. This will direct more funds to projects that shorten or eliminate the need for driving trips. The bill also requires states to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their transportation system. States that reduce emissions can be rewarded with increased flexibility, while states that fail to reduce emissions will face penalties.
Improving safety to make it easier to walk and bike = good for business
Connected, walkable neighborhoods vastly economically outperform neighborhoods where the only way to get around is by driving—especially in terms of real estate. For-sale housing in dense, walkable neighborhoods in the 30 largest metropolitan areas were valued nearly double more than the rest of the for-sale housing market in those regions, as found in Foot Traffic Ahead, a 2019 Smart Growth America report.
It’s not just real estate: businesses thrive on streets safe for biking and walking, as expertly highlighted (with great photos, too) by our friends at Strong Towns. You’re much more likely to cross the street to grab a cup of coffee if it’s safe and easy to do so. And with pedestrian fatalities skyrocketing across the country, there are too many streets where that is impossible.
The INVEST Act takes a comprehensive approach to make walking and biking safer through a combination of increased funding, policy reform, and better provisions to hold states accountable, as we wrote last year. Some of the bill’s safety provisions include:
Requires states to adopt Complete Street design principles and makes $250 million available for active transportation projects including Complete Streets
Changes to how speed limits are set to prioritize safety results over a faster auto trip.
Requires states with the highest levels of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities to set aside funds to address those needs.
Prohibits states setting annual targets for roadway fatalities that are negative—in other words, targets that assume the current trend line of increased fatalities is unstoppable, essentially accepting more fatalities every year as an unavoidable cost.
Reducing transportation emissions has a host of other benefits
To reduce transportation emissions, we have to give people more viable transportation options than driving. That means public transportation, biking, walking, and incentivizing community growth where destinations aren’t sprawling.
Not only are these investments good for our businesses, but they improve equity too, by removing the $10,000 barrier to enter the economy—the average annual cost of car ownership. These investments also increase transportation access for people with disabilities or people unable to drive, and they significantly reduce air pollution, too—one of the largest risk factors for bad cases of COVID-19.
If Congress wants to help our businesses embrace the 21st century and fight climate change, it’s time to invest in transportation that works—not new roads to nowhere.
Public transit is one of the safest indoor spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic for a plethora of reasons. But the perception of transit’s safety is lagging. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a lot of power to change the narrative and pursue vaccination sites that are transit-accessible, as we wrote in a joint letter to the agency with our partners.
New York MTA’s Mask Force distributing free masks to subway riders. Photo courtesy of the MTA.
Public transit is incredibly important to our pandemic response, connecting riders and essential workers to jobs, groceries, healthcare and more—safely. With proper precautions such as wearing a mask, transit is one of the safest indoor spaces for COVID-19 transmission, with a plethora of studies failing to link disease spread to transit.
Why is transit so safe? Buses and trains are highly-ventilated; riders must wear masks (thanks to a new requirement from the CDC); vehicles are cleaned frequently; and riders tend to spend a short amount of time on vehicles and in stations.
But the CDC isn’t clearly communicating transit’s safety to the public. In fact, last summer the CDC actively encouraged Americans to avoid transit—guidance they updated after criticism from Transportation for America and our partners.
While we’re grateful that the CDC updated this guidance and last month instituted a mask requirement on transit and other forms of transportation, the CDC needs to do more. CDC guidance that does not make it clear that transit is safe undermines public confidence in this essential service and ultimately undermines our communities today and our recovery tomorrow.
We urged the new CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, to communicate transit’s safety in a new letter written by Transportation for America and signed by our partners the Transport Workers Union, TransitCenter, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), and the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). You can read the full letter here.
It is also critical that the CDC considers transit access as a determining factor in choosing vaccination locations, and to provide guidance to states to ensure no one is denied access to a vaccine. As we wrote in our letter, no one should be denied access to a vaccine because they do not have access to a car. Public transit can and must play an important role in providing Americans with safe, convenient, and equitable transportation to vaccination appointments.
We urge the CDC to clearly communicate how safe transit is to the public, and make transit access a factor in determining vaccination sites. Americans need transit—the CDC shouldn’t undermine it.
Many Americans want to live in walkable neighborhoods that are served by rapid public transportation. But these neighborhoods are few and far between and incredibly expensive to live in. That’s because in many cities and towns, building walkable neighborhoods is illegal, putting a premium on the few dense communities that exist.
A neighborhood in San Diego.
The following blog is adapted from an excerpt of Smart Growth America and Transportation for America’s recent report, Driving Down Emissions, which explores how changing transportation policy and land use patterns are key to lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
It may appear that the United States’ typical car-oriented suburbs and exurbs that we’ve been building for the last 60-plus years—where often the only way residents can access what they need is by car—is the most in-demand style of neighborhood.
This isn’t true. For the past few decades, the demand for compact and walkable neighborhoods connected to jobs and services by transit has skyrocketed, but the housing market hasn’t kept pace. That’s because local zoning rules often make building more of these types of neighborhoods illegal.
In 2017, 62 percent of Americans reported that living near transit was important in choosing their home, and 54 percent cited their desire to live near bike lanes and paths, as found in the National Association of Realtors’ Community Preference Survey. And despite numerous news stories warning of a mass departure of residents from U.S. cities due to COVID-19, data has shown the opposite: Zillow’s research showed that, during the pandemic, “suburban housing markets have not strengthened at a disproportionately rapid pace compared to urban markets.” Even during an unprecedented pandemic, large numbers of people are not fleeing the cities for the suburbs, and cities will endure.
Millions more Americans want to live in compact, transit-connected communities than can find or afford a home in one. And those who do pay a premium to be there. Yet in many towns and cities, local zoning regulations artificially constrict the number of these communities that can exist. By limiting how densely housing can be constructed or requiring minimum lot sizes, zoning interferes and prevents the market from meeting the demand for walkable, transit-served communities. In fact, it’s illegal to build anything except single-family detached houses on roughly 75 percent of land in most cities—which might explain why in the 30 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., walkable neighborhoods account for between 0.04 percent and 1.2 percent of land area.
The consequences of making housing like duplexes or multi-unit apartment buildings illegal are severe. For one, the artificial dearth of compact, walkable neighborhoods dramatically increases property values in these types of communities that already exist—often to levels that make them unaffordable to those who could benefit from them the most. This trend has pushed low-income people out of compact cities to more affordable suburbs, where fewer transportation options fail to thoroughly connect them to jobs and services. Their transportation costs immediately go up, sometimes wiping out the gains of the more affordable housing. One study found that residents in low-income suburban neighborhoods with some transit access can reach just 4 percent of metro area jobs within a 45-minute commute. This means many people without access to a car can’t reach most jobs, further trapping them in a cycle of poverty.
In addition, it’s an immense challenge to efficiently serve a neighborhood of only single-family homes by transit. This fact, combined with the way that destinations spread farther apart, trips become longer or more frequent, and roads become wider and less safe to walk along or cross, results in more greenhouse gas emissions. Driving contributes the majority of transportation sector emissions in the United States, making transportation the largest source of U.S. carbon emissions and the only sector of the economy where emissions are rising, not decreasing.
One solution? Permit the construction of more housing and neighborhoods that people want by reforming zoning rules to allow more homes, and more types and sizes of homes. More housing near transit and communities where people can live, work and play is needed to meet the demand and reduce the price pressure.
Many cities are already updating their zoning to help build these walkable neighborhoods. Consider this:
In San Diego, where housing prices have gone up 70 percent in the last six years, the mayor is seeking to address this issue by making it easier to build more housing near transit.
Minneapolisalso passed a comprehensive plan in 2018 that allowed duplexes and other types of housing citywide and eliminated parking requirements, which together could have a substantial impact on transportation emissions in the region.
South Bend, Transportation Secretary Buttigieg’s former domain, eliminated parking requirements citywide, halting the practice of requiring developers to build expensive extra new parking that residents often don’t want or need but which ends up being rolled into the cost of a new home or apartment.
In Portland, OR, the city recently moved to allow up to six homes on almost any residential lot.
In these cities, anyone is free to continue building single-family homes in almost any neighborhood, but now more home types are legal. These changes will encourage compact urban development and make it more affordable to live in these cities, mitigating future sprawl and the additional driving it would cause.
However, local zoning regulations don’t exist in a vacuum: many zoning decisions are made in response to federal incentives. Federal transportation policy’s disproportionate investment in highways encourages many local governments to double down on sprawling land use patterns that best accommodate the high speed roads their state is building everywhere, pushing destinations further and further apart.
Federal transportation policy can help reverse this trend by allocating funding to programs that increase access to jobs and services the most, regardless of mode—as is the case in the INVEST Act, the surface transportation bill passed by the House this past summer. The federal government can also commit to funding public transit and highways equally.
Cities and towns should reform their zoning so that everybody who wants to can live in a walkable neighborhood connected to jobs and services by transit. Allowing the market to meet the demand for more homes in places that naturally come with lower emissions is a powerful climate change strategy. We’ll never reduce our carbon emissions, dismantle barriers to opportunities (particularly those faced by people of color), or rebuild our economy if we don’t make it easier and more affordable to live in great places.
With transportation accounting for the largest share of carbon emissions in the U.S., we’ll never achieve ambitious climate targets or create more livable and equitable communities if we don’t find ways to allow people to get around outside of a car—or provide more housing in places where that’s already an option. Our new report shows how we can reach those targets while building a more just and equitable society.
Join us on October 28th for a short online discussion about what’s in Driving Down Emissions. We’ll be walking through the report briefly and sharing some stories about how one state has had some success—and the limitations of electric vehicles. Register here.
It seems like climate-focused policymakers have a single-minded obsession with the silver bullet solution of everyone in America buying a brand new electric car, while ignoring an underlying system that requires everyone to drive further every year, kills people walking in record numbers, and creates communities that cuts people off from jobs and opportunities. Yet the simple truth is that we’ll never achieve our ambitious climate targets or create more livable and equitable communities if we don’t find ways to allow people to get around outside of a car.
We need a different set of solutions to pair with one day being able to convert our current gas-powered vehicle fleet to electricity. Driving Down Emissions, a new report from Transportation for America and Smart Growth America, explores how our land-use and transportation decisions are inextricably connected, and unpacks five strategies that can make a significant dent in the growth of emissions while building a more just and equitable society:
Getting onerous government regulations out of the way of providing more homes where people naturally drive less;
Making safety the top priority for street design to encourage walking, biking, and shorter driving trips;
Instituting GHG reduction and less driving as goals of the transportation system;
Investing heavily in other options for getting around, and;
Prioritizing access to destinations.
Reducing transportation emissions and reducing the distance we drive is both needed and possible. The vast majority of Americans are clamoring to spend fewer hours behind the wheel, not more. Only a cynic would declare that Americans want to drive more and more each year to accomplish all they need to do each day. Polling and consumer preference research has consistently shown that millions would prefer to live in walkable, connected places where trips are short and there’s a menu of options for getting around.
Yet that demand is going unmet, and some of the biggest obstacles to meeting it are onerous government regulations and policies (at all levels) that make it nearly impossible to build more housing in places that fit this bill, or to retrofit streets to make more areas safe to walk or bike in. These factors combine to make existing housing in walkable places unaffordable and unattainable.
Let that sink in: millions of Americans would love to live in places that guarantee shorter trips, fewer trips, more ways to get around, and less emissions—whether climate change is their motivating factor or not. But millions can’t find a place they can afford because of zoning requirements that make it either incredibly difficult or downright illegal to meet this demand, and because transportation designs and objectives that make it dangerous to try to get around elsewhere without a car.
If lower-income Americans can’t afford a car then they have no choice but to limit the possibilities for their lives to what can be reached on dangerous streets by foot or bike, or via infrequent buses or trains on underfunded transit systems that fail to connect them to opportunity, even if the emissions are low. Finding ways to put more housing in places where people can drive less—and making those homes attainable and affordable—will be a key aspect of transitioning to a low-carbon economy without placing a new burden on lower-income Americans.
This report shows that reducing emissions from transportation is entirely doable—which is a good thing, because there are other areas where making significant reductions will be far more difficult. While we don’t want to repeat the economic conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the massive drops in traffic and emissions during the shutdown showed us the potential benefits of lowering driving rates, even if just a modest amount. And while we have no idea how to completely electrify our fleet of vehicles or how long that transition will even take, we can absolutely lower emissions in a short timeframe by meeting the demand for more housing in smart locations—helping millions of Americans who want to live in places where they can emit less and drive less find ways to do so.
Public transportation is in an unprecedented crisis, with the double whammy of falling ridership and a contracting economy crushing transit agencies’ budgets. Massive cuts to transit service are imminent if agencies don’t receive the emergency funding they need to survive. There will be no economic recovery if transit evaporates. Congress needs to #SaveTransit.
Join us on Twitter all-day tomorrow (Thursday, September 17) for a #SaveTransit Tweet Storm. Tweet at your member of Congress to #SaveTransit using our social media toolkit, and send an email to your members using our action page.
Public transit is essential to millions of people across the country who rely on it everyday to reach doctor’s appointments, jobs, grocery stores, and other vital services. It’s an elevator of economic mobility, providing access to the economy to those who cannot afford to or can’t drive—including many who lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 crisis.
Without transit, millions of Americans will be unable to get to work or find new jobs, potentially trapping them in economic stagnation. Without transit, businesses may not be able to reopen, or have customers to serve. Without transit, our pandemic response—and our hope for a strong economic recovery from this pandemic—vanishes.
Yet Congress has passed zero emergency dollars for transit since the first COVID-19 relief package in March. And that money has already run out for many agencies, due to necessary and expensive measures meant to keep employees and riders safe—at the same time they’re losing funding from decreased fares and local sales taxes.
Congress has hardly even proposed emergency funding for transit. The Senate’s latest COVID-19 relief proposal included zero dollars for transit, and the relief plan passed by the House of Representatives includes only half of what transit needs to survive.
This is unacceptable. Public transit agencies are calling on Congress to provide agencies with at least $32 billion in emergency relief. This critical funding would allow agencies to restore and safely operate the transit service that so many Americans need.
We need you to take action to #SaveTransit. Please, tweet at your member of Congress to #SaveTransit using our social media toolkit, and send an email to your members using our action page.
Want to learn more about the transit crisis? Check out some of our blog posts:
As we slowly settle into a new normal, transit agencies across the country are making big changes to their operations to keep employees and riders safe. We checked in with our transit agency members across the country to see how they’re adapting to COVID-19 and what they need to keep going.
Join us on Twitter all-day tomorrow (Thursday, September 17) for a #SaveTransit Tweet Storm. Tweet at your member of Congress to #SaveTransit using our social media toolkit, and send an email to your members using our action page.
A transit rider wearing a mask on the Washington, DC Metro. Photo by Elvert Barnes on Flickr’s Creative Commons.
It’s been almost six months since COVID-19 radically altered our lives, and public transportation remains both vital and in a major crisis. The pandemic has shattered transit agencies’ funding sources, with necessary shutdowns and social distancing measures depleting revenue from fares and sales taxes.
It was already a perpetual challenge for agencies to keep trains and buses operating in pre-pandemic times, thanks to limited federal funding and a national transportation program that prioritizes driving over all other modes. But the added (and costly) challenge of keeping transit employees and riders safe from contracting COVID-19 has made operating transit safely and efficiently even more challenging. Transit agencies across the country are announcing major cuts to service, a consequence of plummeting revenues.
Transit agencies have a vital role in connecting people to jobs, healthcare, grocery stores and other essential services. Here’s what Transportation for America’s transit members are doing to keep employees and riders safe and connected to the things they need—and what will happen if the transit industry doesn’t receive at least $32 billion in emergency relief from the federal government.
Innovating on the fly
With limited federal guidance, transit agencies across the country often acted on their own to implement COVID-19 safety measures. Many transit agencies decided to suspend fare collection to reduce contact between riders and bus operators, and only allow rear-door bus boarding and install plexiglass shields at bus operators’ seats for the same reason.
Both Mountain Line (Missoula, MT) and DART (Des Moines, IA) began running “plug buses”—running two buses in tandem—to provide riders with more space to social distance on buses. Mountain Line, Pierce Transit (Tacoma, WA), and the Sacramento Regional Transit District also parked some of their buses to create community WiFi hotspots, providing another service essential to weathering the COVID-19 crisis, especially for students lacking internet service at home to continue their studies remotely.
Spending more than ever
Most transit agencies are spending more than they ever have on cleaning transit vehicles and personal protective equipment to keep their employees safe. Pierce Transit hired temporary employees to increase sanitizing buses. King County Metro (Seattle, WA) committed to cleaning buses every night, with special attention paid to ensuring the safety of cleaning staff. Most transit agencies acquired sanitizing wipes, hand sanitizer, and washable masks for employees—but struggled with procuring these essential items in the early days of the pandemic.
Cleaning isn’t the only category increasing costs—many transit agencies are giving employees more paid leave to ensure the health of themselves and their families. DART found that many of its bus operators fall into high-risk health categories, causing the agency to increase leave for high-risk employees and employees dealing with childcare issues as a result of school closures. Pierce Transit also allowed high-risk employees to take four to five weeks of leave, and took advantage of the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act to provide employees with an additional 80 hours of paid leave for childcare. That’s good for employees, but it has also left some agencies without enough workers to provide essential service.
Without federal emergency relief, transit can’t go on
The double whammy of increased costs and decreasing revenue is slamming transit agencies—to the point where if they don’t receive emergency relief soon, they’ll have to drastically reduce service (or even cease to exist). While March’s CARES Act provided some relief ($25 billion in operating support), the financial hole public transportation is falling into has gotten much, much larger—at least $32 billion.
Transit agencies across the country are calling for at least $32 billion in emergency relief from the federal government, but Congress isn’t listening. Senate Republicans’ most recent COVID-19 relief proposal didn’t include any emergency funding for transit, and the House Democrats HEROES Act provided less than half of what transit needs. And both chambers of Congress are no closer to reaching any agreement whatsoever on a desperately needed relief package to provide support for transit, unemployment, the Payroll Protection Program, or other critical mechanisms for supporting Americans during this economic crisis.
Without transit, millions of people across the country will lose access to essential jobs, healthcare, and grocery stores—in the middle of a major, deadly pandemic. Losing transit service also erodes the prospect of any long-term economic recovery, with limited and infrequent transit service unable to connect people to opportunities and essential services they need.
Congress must include at least $32 billion in emergency operating relief for public transportation in the next COVID-19 relief bill, or leave your constituents stranded.
Tell Congress that they needed to pass emergency relief for transit yesterday. Email your members of Congress using our action page and tweet at your Congressional delegation to #SaveTransit using our social media toolkit.
Public transportation is in crisis. Transit agencies are suffering tremendous losses in ridership and farebox revenue, as well as state and local revenues, with no end in sight. Meanwhile, the multi-year transportation bill passed in the House of Representatives that includes some relief for public transit won’t pass anytime soon. Here’s what Congress must do to truly save transit from collapsing.
Public transportation is facing an existential crisis.Transit agencies across the country are making drastic cuts to service to cope with depleting budgets, severing millions of people from access to essential jobs and services, including healthcare and grocery stores. Any long-term economic recovery will be nearly impossible without transit service to connect people to opportunities and these essential services.
But recent transportation and stimulus bills didn’t supply transit agencies with sufficient emergency funding, nor make critical, short-term policy changes to help agencies weather this crisis. The HEROES Act, House Democrats latest economic stimulus measure, included $15 billion for public transit, less than half of the need. The INVEST Act, a long-term transportation authorization passed as part of a large infrastructure package in the House earlier this month, fundamentally changes the programs at the heart of federal transportation policy to help communities improve access, safety, and their maintenance backlogs. But it only provided transit agencies with $5 billion in emergency assistance—a far cry from the $32 billion over 160 organizations, including Atlanta’s MARTA and New York City’s MTA, have asked for.
Last week, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) released their proposal for fiscal year 2021 spending levels. While the subcommittee supplied transit construction programs, like New and Small Starts, with emergency funding, there is no funding for direct emergency operating support for transit agencies like was provided in the CARES Act.
We can’t afford for transit to stop running. If Congress does nothing, public transportation won’t be able to provide Americans with a convenient, affordable, rapid and sustainable transportation option when our country needs it the most. Here’s what Congress can do.
NOTE: while some of these recommendations are included in the HEROES Act, the INVEST Act, or the House FY21 appropriations, no bill includes all of these recommendations and none of these bills have been signed into law (or even stand a chance of consideration by the Senate). Transit agencies are hurting now, and urgent action is required. Each of these recommendations work together, and we urge Congress to consider this as a package.
Provide at least $32 billion for emergency operations support and allow transit agencies to use 2019 ridership data to receive formula grants in FY21 and FY22.
Public transportation is the bedrock of our transportation infrastructure, connecting millions of Americans to jobs, schools, services and opportunities every single day. Yet this essential service might not survive COVID-19. Transit agency revenues are dwindling due to dramatically reduced fare collection, diminished local funding sources, and other impacts from a contracting economy. Further, ridership levels are plummeting as transit agencies actively discourage non-essential travel. With recurring federal transit funding based in part on ridership, these historic low ridership levels put future funding at risk. Without emergency help today, and a guarantee of long term stability, essential transit service will suffer.
To ensure that transit agencies can continue to operate, Congress should: (1) provide at least $32 billion for emergency operating support, and (2) allow transit agencies to use 2019 ridership data to receive formula grants in FY21 and FY22, holding transit providers harmless for the loss of ridership due to COVID-19, as is allowed in the recently-passed INVEST Act.
Require detailed, directive, guidance on how to safely operate, and provide necessary personal protective equipment (PPE)
Over 100 U.S. transit workers have died from COVID-19. In New York City, transit workers are dying at three times the rate of police and fire emergency personnel combined. Yet thousands of transit personnel work everyday to connect Americans to jobs and healthcare, many doing so without access to adequate personal protective equipment (PPE).
Another factor contributing to transit workers’ greater risk of contracting COVID-19 is underwhelming federal guidance for transit agencies regarding the purchase, distribution, and use of PPE, and how to safely operate during this crisis. The CDC guidance for transit operators, maintenance workers, and station staff does not provide clear enough instruction, leaving local communities, states, and transit agencies to develop a patchwork of rules. The lack of prescriptive, national regulations, means some transit workers and riders will be more protected than others and leaves safety to the discretion, and political whims, of local communities.
To improve safety for the essential transit workforce, Congress should (1) require detailed, directive, federal guidance on how to safely equip personnel and work environments and operate transit services, (2) supply transit workers with PPE.
Eliminate the local match for existing and upcoming projects in the Capital Investment Grants (CIG) pipeline and increase annual funding for CIG
COVID-19 is decimating state and local governments’ budgets, constricting local governments’ ability to raise matching funds to receive funding from the CIG program. There are $23 billion worth of projects in the CIG pipeline, demonstrating the demand for additional public transit across the country. These projects create manufacturing jobs and support local economic development. To reduce strain on local budgets and support local economic development, Congress should (1) Provide no less than the FY19 funding level of $2.55 billion and $3.1527 billion to cover the additional proposals; (2) eliminate the local match for new CIG projectsin the pipeline and retroactively reduce or eliminate the local match for existing projects, and(3) prevent Federal Transit Administration from changing overall project ratings due to changes in local commitments or ridership projection.
Provide at least $7 billion in public transit formula funding to save jobs and protect transit’s future
Some kinds of spending create more jobs, faster, than others. Transit maintenance has proven to be an effective job creator because less money is spent on equipment and permits and more on wages. Transit agencies face a $99 billion maintenance backlog due to chronic underfunding. By investing in transit maintenance, we can improve essential service and create jobs quickly.
To create jobs and repair essential public transit systems, Congress should (1) provide $7 billion in formula maintenance funding, (2) eliminate the local match for these funds in FY21 and FY22.
Provide a fair share for transit by ending the “80-20” split and funding transit at the same level as highways
Investing in transit creates jobs quickly and supports service essential to our economic recovery; yet, since 1982, Congress has provided transit with only about 20 percent of dedicated surface transportation funding. This “80-20 split” in transportation spending has left transit chronically underfunded for decades and has created the perception that highways are more deserving of support, and more affordable, than transit. With the gas tax increasingly unable to support transportation spending, the rationale for the 80-20 split no longer applies. To support our economic recovery, Congress should (1) not default to the 80-20 split, and (2) provide funding for transit at least at the same level as highways.
Two weekends ago the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly revised their guidance for using public transportation after an outpouring of criticism from Transportation for America, NACTO, TransitCenter, the American Public Transportation Association, and others that the CDC was contradicting years of their own guidance that encouraging more driving incurs massive public health costs in pollution, respiratory illnesses, obesity, and preventable traffic deaths.
We will eventually get more of the country back to work as the pandemic subsides (in some places, even as it likely springs back in others.) Some parts of the country are already reopening in phases. But when we do start things up again, we will need public transportation to continue moving millions of people. And as we have throughout the pandemic, the country will look to the CDC for advice.
Yet, when the CDC first issued their guidance for public transit their lone, astonishing recommendation for employers of people who commute using public transportation was to offer those employees incentives encouraging them to drive and park, and allow flexible hours to commute when it’s less busy. Needless to say, we were aghast. As Beth Osborne, T4America director, told E&E last week in a story about the updated guidance, “I find responding to this guidance so frustrating and befuddling, I don’t know where to start.”
As former NYC DOT head Janette Sadik-Khan chimed in along those same lines, “The CDC telling workers to drive alone assumes that everyone owns a car and that cities can handle the traffic. This is a fever dream. There’s no reopening cities w/o reopening transit. Ruling it out doesn’t make it safer.”
Scores of public letters were written to CDC. And then rather quietly two weekends ago, the CDC made some notable and encouraging changes to that guidance.
What changed?
They have added “if feasible” to that first part, as well as expanding upon the kinds of transportation that help avoid close contact like biking, walking, or riding with other household members. But much more importantly, rather than just urging transit riders to start driving—which is not possible for millions of Americans, would destroy our cities, and (by CDC’s own admission) would make air pollution worse and traffic fatalities increase—they direct employees to read other valuable guidance CDC has produced on protecting yourself on transportation. That guidance could also use some improvements but it’s at least they are pointing to practical advice for helping riders use transit and stay safe doing so as the country reopens.
CDC still needs to go further on transportation, such as encouraging drivers to clean their cars to make carpooling safe, providing more (new, quick, flexible) facilities for bike parking, petitioning cities to create new safe space for biking/walking, but this was an important recognition by CDC of the ways that their previous guidance actually contradicted their own incredibly valuable, decades-long work to help address health by encouraging more walking, more biking, and more transit use in metro areas across the country.
MTA's emphasis on universal mask-wearing comports with evidence emerging from Seoul and other cities where millions of people ride transit each day and COVID transmission remains low. https://t.co/t5mtV7Xgfi
As TransitCenter has been documenting, other affected countries (Japan, South Korea, and even France.) have restored all or part of their transit service and have seen passenger counts return to pre-pandemic levels, all without an outbreak. It’s clearly possible to bring transit back safely, and CDC should be the ones helping to make this possible.
Our cities won’t function without it.
As the struggle in New York is already demonstrating—the mayor with social distancing vs. the MTA with universal mask-wearing—even with better guidance from the CDC (which they should still improve), it can still be a battle because of jurisdictional issues endemic to transit, which is rarely controlled by one city or locality. These changes are a good step but the CDC should be leading the charge with good recommendations that also weigh the relative short- and long-term risks of safely reopening transit systems and encouraging riders to return vs. millions more cars on the road.
Update, 4/17:Our friends at TransitCenter are leading a sign-on letter to the White House Coronavirus Task Force requesting personal protective equipment for transit workers. If you represent an organization, please sign TransitCenter’s letter by end of day Monday, April 20th.
With costs rising to protect transit personnel from the pandemic and revenue streams simultaneously coming to a halt, public transportation likely needs more emergency funding than the $25 billion passed three weeks ago. Transit agencies have a responsibility to communicate their needs—and the major steps they’re taking to save lives—to their Congressional delegations.
Transit workers—the bus operators, train operators, station managers, and other personnel that make public transportation thrive—are on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic. Without them, scores of essential personnel wouldn’t be able to get to work; at least 35 percent of riders during regular times work in healthcare, grocery, and other essential industries.
But with revenue screeching to a halt, transit agencies don’t have the tools to protect their employees from this pandemic, let alone return to normal service after this crisis ends. The $25 billion in emergency assistance for transit provided by the federal government is a great start, but it’s almost certainly not enough—especially with TransitCenter estimating losses between $26-$38 billion.
The best way to ensure that Congress provides transit with additional emergency assistance is for agencies to communicate these needs with their Congressional delegations. As an essential industry on the frontline of the pandemic, transit agencies are some of the only entities that can give Congress 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 that their ability to connect essential workers to jobs is shrinking due to dwindling resources.
Congress hears from airlines. Congress hears from automakers. Congress hears from state DOTs. They don’t hear from transit agencies as frequently. Congress’s minimal understanding of transit agencies’ needs might partially explain why the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 only provided transit agencies with capital funding, meaning that they could use that money for maintenance or constructing new infrastructure, but not for the costs of actually running transit service. The lack of operating support meant that transit agencies across the country had to cut service—at a time when Americans needed an affordable, convenient, and safe connection to jobs the most.
Transit agencies need funding to protect personnel from COVID-19
Nobody should die doing their job—which is why transit agencies are pouring resources into efforts 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 without robust funding, transit agencies can’t do enough to protect employees. Over 1,500 employees of New York City’s transit agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), have tested positive for COVID-19—and 41 have tragically died from the disease. With 5,000 employees quarantined, maintaining already-reduced service for essential workers 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.)
The $25 billion in federal emergency assistance for transit agencies will certainly help agencies weather this unprecedented crisis, but with TransitCenter estimating that COVID-19 will cost public transportation between $26-$38 billion, agencies will almost certainly need more. A lot more.
Transit agencies, please tell your Congressional delegation what COVID-19 is costing you. Tell them if funding from the CARES Act is or isn’t enough to get you through this crisis. 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. Just talk to Congress. They need to hear from you.
If you’re not a transit agency but still want to tell Congress that transit is important, send Congress a thank you message for providing transit agencies with $25 billion in emergency assistance—and a reminder that more is needed.
With COVID-19 throwing public transportation into an existential crisis, Transportation for America mobilized to preserve America’s most essential transportation service—and we did, with Congress agreeing to $25 billion in emergency assistance for transit operations last week. But while the news has understandably been consumed by COVID-19, the pandemic hasn’t been the only thing on our plates.
March Madness might have been cancelled, but it’s certainly been a crazy month in America—and crazy busy at Transportation for America. We started the month in report-a-palooza, gearing up to release two landmark reports—and then the global pandemic struck the United States.
Even though we’ve been working from home, we’re still laser-focused on our mission: to work towards a transportation system that safely, affordably and conveniently connects people of all means and abilities to jobs, services, and opportunity through multiple modes of travel. So here’s what else we’ve been up to.
Exposing the congestion con
The U.S. spends billions every year to “relieve congestion.” But building new and widening existing highways only makes traffic worse.
The Congestion Con, our report released earlier this month, found that congestion increased in regions that built new and widened existing freeways, regardless of population growth. Between 1993 and 2017, the U.S. increased the number of lane-miles in the largest 100 urbanized areas by 42 percent on average, significantly outstripping the 32 percent population growth in those regions over the same period. Yet this strategy has utterly failed to “solve” the problem at hand—delay is up in those urbanized areas by a staggering 144 percent.
You can read our full report or check out our webinar on the report with T4America Director Beth Osborne, Strong Towns Co-Founder and President Chuck Marohn, and Los Angeles DOT Transportation Planner Mariana Valdivia.
A Green New Deal for Transportation
The original Green New Deal, released in February 2019 by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) and Senator Ed Markey (MA), catapulted discussion about an equitable transition to a carbon-neutral economy into the mainstream. But it had one glaring omission: how federal transportation policy and development patterns make it impossible to reduce transportation emissions.
A new report—A Green New Deal for City and Suburban Transportation—fills those gaps. Co-written by T4America, TransitCenter, Data for Progress and the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology, this Green New Deal gives transportation policy the same visionary makeover other sectors received in the original plan to show what we could achieve if our transportation and climate goals were aligned. Download the full report.
New polling shows that Americans support expanding public transit by 77-15 margin
What we always knew to be true is now backed up with polling: Voters want more transportation options. This month, T4America—alongside the same partners behind the Green New Deal for Transportation—released a new polling memo that found exactly that.
The data reinforces many of the same results we’ve seen in our polling over the years: voters are prepared to spend more on public transit and want to orient government spending toward improving existing infrastructure. While many rely on cars, a majority said they want to have other options to get around each day. Democrats and Republicans agree that the government should be prioritizing fixing our roads and helping with congestion in our cities.
You can download the full polling memo here, and get the highlights in this post from Emily Mangan.
