Transit Agencies vs. Transit Unions

A recent article in the Washington Post highlights new tensions within the transit industry. Most federal transit grants are legally dedicated to capital improvements, but the recession has left most transit agencies short of operating funds, so they have been lobbying Congress to allow them to use more federal funds for operating subsidies.

The main opposition to such legislation, it turns out, comes from what the Post describes as “the biggest transit agencies, such as New York’s MTA and Washington’s Metro.” The Post explains that “The big transit systems argue that letting them use federal funds for their basic operations would reduce their leverage — unions would invoke the funds to seek bigger raises, transit advocates would argue against service cuts, and local and state lawmakers might limit their share of transit funding.”

In reality, this isn’t a tension between big and small agencies; it is a tension between agencies with older rail systems — meaning Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington — and agencies with newer or no rail systems. The agencies with older rail systems desperately need money to bring their systems up to a state of good repair. Since such maintenance is included in the FTA’s definition of capital improvements, they are happy to have federal monies dedicated to capital.

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