HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE JANUARY 2009 ISSUE
Breaking News
Traffic & Market Trends
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Commentary
New billions for passenger rail?
Rail and other transit systems are in line for a vast infusion of new capital improvement dollars—not in spite of, but because of, the troubled economy.
Rail passenger systems rolled into the New Year with trainloads of problems requiring urgent attention. Many have seen their local finding sources shrink or even dry up and are raising fares and slashing service just to pay operating bills. The resulting headlines in local newspapers picture an industry in profound trouble.
That is not, fortunately, the case. Help is on the way, in a very big way.
Working with both sides of the aisle in Congress, President-elect Barack Obama and his transition team late in December were putting together a bipartisan economic stimulus package estimated to cost $850 billion to $1 trillion. The goal is to put three million people to work, fast, and at the same time build projects of lasting value to the country.
In mid-December, the American Public Transportation Association asked for a transit stimulus package of no less than $47.8 billion. APTA President William Millar told Congress and the Obama transition team: “A newly updated survey of APTA members has identified $12.2 billion of ready-to-go transit projects that could be advanced within 90 days, and a recent transit needs estimate shows that $47.8 billion in supplemental transit projects could be initiated within the next two years.”
These prospects explain why Bill Millar could tell Railway Age in a year-end interview: “I have not been as optimistic for the future of transit since the 1970s.”
Through the National Conference of Mayors, 427 cities around the country have submitted their own wish list. It includes $7 billion for transit projects and $1 billion for Amtrak.
Governors meeting with the President-elect estimated they could offer $136 billion worth of ready-to-go projects that would extend beyond normal bridge and road requirements to include public transit and water and sewage systems
APTA has also proposed an unspecified amount of operating assistance dollars for transit systems whose local funding is jeopardized by the declining economy.
How the transit stimulus package will be divided among the modes is one of many unknowns that cloud a fast-developing picture.
Traditionally, rail projects have accounted for more than half of all transit capital spending. In 2006, capital spending from all sources reached $13.3 billion, of which 43% came from the federal government. Bus systems received 28% of the total; metro rail, 27.7%; light rail, 22.5%; and commuter rail, 18.7%.
Sponsors of the stimulus plan are anxious to see that it arrives at the Oval Office uncontaminated by the odor of pork—as demanded by the President-elect—and in this respect transit spending should run into little trouble.
Public transit came to be widely viewed as a national treasure during the fuel-price crisis of last year. More than 2.8 billion trips were taken on public transportation in the third quarter of 2008, an increase of 6.5% over the third quarter of 2007, and the largest quarterly increase in 25 years. Eighteen rail systems showed double-digit increases. Even when fuel prices began to drop, transit ridership remained strong—a 27% increase in October in Los Angeles, for example.
The Federal Highway Administration, meanwhile, reported that in September 2008 Americans drove 4.4% less, almost 1.1 billion fewer miles—the 11th straight month of declining driving.
Even before the economy began to go south, transit—and rail transit in particular—was gaining favor with Congress. One result was an Amtrak authorization double that of last year. Not long after that, voters across the country approved transit-related ballot initiatives authorizing expenditures of nearly $75 billion, a notable vote of confidence for transit in a time of deep financial crisis. At the same time, a newly elected president told the nation that rebuilding the national infrastructure was a way to “convert this moment of crisis into a moment of national opportunity.”
Cynics will tell you that nothing is certain in Washington except debt and taxes. Washington hopes in the near future to put some of that debt and some of those taxes to very good use.
Copyright © 2007. Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corp.