The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has formally quit its membership in the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the nation’s principle transit lobby. In a harshly worded seven-page letter, MTA accused APTA of poor governance, an undue focus on small transit agencies, and having an embarrassingly large compensation package to APTA’s president.
The MTA and its affiliates, Metro North, the Long Island Railroad, and New York City Transit, together carry 35 percent of all transit riders in America. Since MTA’s ridership has been growing while transit elsewhere has declined, this percentage is increasing.
Yet APTA’s focus has been on lobbying for increased funding for smaller agencies, including building new rail transit lines in cities that haven’t had rail transit and extending transit service in smaller cities and rural areas that have had little transit at all. As a result, says the letter, MTA has been short-changed by roughly a billion dollars a year in federal funding that it would have received if funds were distributed according to the number of transit riders carried.
This accords with the finding of a paper co-authored by the Antiplanner last year that found that New York was shorted half a billion dollars a year in discretionary transit funds. Since discretionary funds make up less than half of all federal transit funds, it is easy to imagine that the nation’s largest urban area is losing a billion dollars a year to smaller cities that are not making effective use of those funds.
The letter observes that APTA’s executive committee, which makes most month-to-month decisions for the group, has up almost no representatives of “legacy systems,” meaning transit systems that had rail transit before 1980. The committee is thus biased towards smaller systems where transit spending is less needed and/or less effective than in big urban areas such as New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
The legacy systems, the letter notes, all have “State-of-Good-Repair needs that are an order of magnitude greater than the non-Legacy rail systems.” Yet APTA’s focus has been on building more rail lines rather than funding the maintenance needs of the legacy systems.
Panic attacks comprise of an episode of ‘The Inbetweeners’ buy tadalafil canada to know this to be true. Hormonal problems such as overproduction of the hormone called prolactin, produced by cialis tablets australia the pituitary gland, could be a factor. Chiropractor chooses to go on a different path by providing patients with manual therapy in order to enable you to choose between the two most prominent prescription drugs for ED, discussed below are some points that should not be ignored before thinking to act.* If you want to make a shift from other anti-impotency drug to Tadalis cheap viagra prices then maintain a gap and start fresh course. * If you. If you find only the feed back cialis viagra generico form instead of a tablet. MTA’s APTA membership fee of more than $400,000 a year is only about 2 percent of APTA’s annual budget. The transit agency that carries more than a third of the nation’s transit riders could get away with contributing only 2 percent of the transit lobby’s budget because APTA has lots of “associate members” that aren’t transit agencies. Yet even this is a sore point with the MTA, as those associate members are mainly contractors, many of whom make their money from designing and building new rail transit lines, so their influence further dilutes the interests of the MTA and other legacy systems.
The letter concludes with what it calls the “elephant in the room,” the subject of which (it says) was the cause of “acrimonious discussions at the board level” over the compensation for APTA’s president and CEO. APTA’s 2014 IRS report reveals that it paid its president a whopping $892,471 in 2013, not counting another $57,248 in benefits. To many agency officials, this extremely high salary seems incongruous at a time when most transit agencies are having to cut their spending in response to the reduced tax revenues associated with the recent recession. For MTA in particular, this excessive compensation seems particularly galling considering it hasn’t resulted in greater federal funding for MTA at a time when MTA’s ridership is growing relative to that of the rest of the country.
This letter reflects an age-old battle within the transit industry: should the industry concentrate on providing transit in areas where transit usage is highest, or should it focus instead on trying to generate new transit riders in areas where usage is minimal? On one hand, per capita transit ridership is falling almost everywhere, even New York, so if the industry is to grow some efforts must be made in attracting new customers. On the other hand, the industry is clearly subject to diminishing returns: that is, the cost of getting each new customer is increasing.
One reason for that increase is the industry’s questionable strategy of spending huge amounts of money on high-cost infrastructure including light rail, streetcars, and exclusive bus lanes. Far more riders could be gained by spending the same amount of dollars on improvements to basic bus transit. But here is where APTA’s associate members come in, as they have a clear interest in promoting new infrastructure construction rather than expanded operations on existing infrastructure.
To be fair, APTA has to deal with the political environment in Washington, DC, an environment that favors new construction over maintenance and at the same time favors distributing dollars to as many states and congressional districts as possible. In this environment, it could be argued, the natural outcome is to favor smaller urban areas over big ones such as New York.
But if this outcome is preordained, MTA might ask, then what good is APTA in the first place? The answer appears to be that APTA spends $20 million a year churning out press releases taking credit for decisions and results over which it, in fact, has little or no control. At least some transit supporters think that APTA could have done more to help its members find ways to spend money in ways that would more effectively attract new transit riders, although doing so might have lost APTA some of its associate members.
Since MTA’s annual fee represents such a small part of APTA’s budget, its departure will have little impact on APTA’s funding unless it is followed by similar resignations by other legacy systems. But the dent in APTA’s reputation may be more severe and may force APTA to reconsider its policy of promoting new construction over operation and maintenance of transit systems in the cities that most heavily use transit.
If transit was funded by transit users, this problem wouldn’t exist. The Feds have no business funding transit with highway user revenue. Eisenhower must be rolling over in his grave.
Surely one of the most encouraging things I’ve heard about any transit agency.
Reminds me of Life Safety Code authorities also. So sprinkler contractors make up a huge proportion of National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) so is it any wonder NFPA code documents require fire sprinklers in practically everything (including detached single family homes)??
The Antiplanner wrote:
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has formally quit its membership in the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the nation’s principle transit lobby.
This is rather like New York City without the MTA subway network. I recently asked (with tongue in cheek) if the transit propaganda and statistics churned out by APTA will no longer include MTA ridership data.
The legacy systems, the letter notes, all have “State-of-Good-Repair needs that are an order of magnitude greater than the non-Legacy rail systems.” Yet APTA’s focus has been on building more rail lines rather than funding the maintenance needs of the legacy systems.
I disagree with the MTA on this – both the San Francisco Bay Area’s BART and the Washington, D.C. area Metrorail system already have enormous (and enormously expensive) unfunded maintenance backlogs (BART here and here; and Washington Metrorail here and here), even though they are years newer than the MTA’s subway and commuter rail systems (and, for that matter, newer than other legacy rail transit systems in places like Philadelphia (SEPTA), Boston (MBTA) and Chicago (Chicago Transit Authority)).
Henry Porter wrote:
If transit was funded by transit users, this problem wouldn’t exist. The Feds have no business funding transit with highway user revenue. Eisenhower must be rolling over in his grave.
Blame the Ronald Reagan Administration for this state of affairs.
Reagan signed into law the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982, which increased the federal motor fuel tax by 5 cents per gallon, and codified the diversion of 1 cent of that revenue to transit projects.
C.P. Zilliacus,
The MTA letter counts BART as a legacy system, but not the Washington Metro. Even though Metro has a huge backlog, except for it at Atlanta, almost all other systems are less than 40 years old and in some cases are only beginning to suffer from maintenance shortfalls.
Don’t blame the Reagan administration. Blame Congress. They’re the ones who agreed to divert gas taxes to transit. Reagan vetoed the first bill they passed because, horrors, it contained 10 earmarks.
I would be more inclined to have a gas tax system structured where metropolitan areas get to keep more of the gas taxes their residents pay ,which largely goes to subsidize rural and exurban roadways, then those regions could spend it on what transportation projects they think would best benefit their residents and could raise and lower the gas tax as they see fit.
http://www.ewg.org/research/gas-tax-losers
http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2003/03/transportation-hill
http://streets.mn/2015/01/14/map-of-the-day-state-highway-taxes-vs-state-highway-spending/
From APTA’s perspective, does it even make sense to devote its attention to New York and other legacy systems? If they’re already growing, and doing so mostly without the kinds of costly, capital-intensive projects that APTA seems to favor, should APTA spend time on them? Or should they devote their efforts to expanding their membership and growing the constituency for their lobbying efforts? That’s a serious question, and it seems to point to the outsized influence of APTA’s associate members in setting the agenda.
I would be more inclined to have a gas tax system structured where metropolitan areas get to keep more of the gas taxes their residents pay ,which largely goes to subsidize rural and exurban roadways, then those regions could spend it on what transportation projects they think would best benefit their residents and could raise and lower the gas tax as they see fit.
You seem to presume that metropolitan areas would be better suited to spend federal funds. I think that is highly questionable.
A better solution is to get the federal government out of the picture entirely. No more administrative waste. No more costly federal government requirements imposed on virtually all projects. No more diverting gas taxes to APTA-flavored transit pork.
The APTA is, in effect, a tax imposed upon transit riders.
If you took away the funds paid to the APTA and the misuse of transit funds which results from its efforts, the transit systems which handle the bulk of riders would have more than enough funds for proper upkeep and maintenance.
@ MJ
Even if you get the federal government out of the picture cities and metros would still get shafted from rural, usually republican, politicians trying to siphon taxes from them weather it be gas taxes or other types of taxes.
Take for example the state of Georgia which forbids any gas taxes to be used for transit, so after the gas taxes residents in the ATL region get pennies back on the dollar in gas tax expenditure which alot of thier money goes to subsidize the rest of rural Georgia roadways and the residents who are serviced by MARTA have to raise their sales tax a penny to pay for their transit system.
lets also take the state of North Carolina which just passed a bill shifting more sales tax revenue from urbanized areas to support rural areas, then those same politicians capped the amount of funding the state would pay for transit projects in those same urbanized areas.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article14513189.html
I don’t agree that exclusive bus lanes are inherently disadvantageous. Given the circumstances, they may prove fruitful. Like many transit systems, often their maximum capacity or filling potential is only fully utilized during rush hour or within the timeframe of major public events (Ball games, concerts) and during times like afternoon and late nights they’re fairly empty or devoid of passengers. But unlike rail, a bus lane is a dedicated highway. During periods of traffic or minimal bus usage, car poolers, taxi cabs and shuttles can be given permission (assuming they haven’t already) to use them or toll single occupancy drivers or use them to give a clear path for 18 wheeler trucks. Or do as you see fit. The benefit is you can experiment with how you utilize your resources; the difference with rail is you have no choice…but to put trains on them. I’m not aware if rail systems like lightrail/subway/streetcars are compatible with being utilized in the same rail or even have the same rail gauge. But given their different means of power and some narrow gauge street cars…that scenario seems, unlikely.
So instead of a massive, corrupt national government you’d have some corrupt state governments. 50 laboratories of democracy and all that. The big, blue states are closest to bankruptcy and probably won’t like eliminating this federal largess but it would be healthier for the country as a whole to move as much taxing and spending as possible from the national level to the state or even local level. More accountability that way.
Take for example the state of Georgia which forbids any gas taxes to be used for transit, so after the gas taxes residents in the ATL region get pennies back on the dollar in gas tax expenditure which alot of thier money goes to subsidize the rest of rural Georgia roadways and the residents who are serviced by MARTA have to raise their sales tax a penny to pay for their transit system.
Why should Georgia allow gax taxes to be used to pay for transit service? Where is the evidence that they get “pennies back on the dollar” in gas tax expenditures? If the residents who are served by MARTA don’t like having to pay a sales tax to fund MARTA’s massive deficits, then they should insist on higher fares.
lets also take the state of North Carolina which just passed a bill shifting more sales tax revenue from urbanized areas to support rural areas, then those same politicians capped the amount of funding the state would pay for transit projects in those same urbanized areas.
Again, what is the problem here? The amount of funding that the state should provide for local transit projects is zero, since the benefits are entirely local. They want to change the distribution of sales tax revenues in order to return more revenues to the consumers who actually pay the tax. This is a matter of basic fairness.
CapitalistRoader
I would be curious if you factored in how much money those states get back from the federal government versus how much they put it, in thinking that those “Big Blue State” won’t like eliminating their federal largess.
For example New Jersey, California, New York and Massachusetts all had very low rankings but every study I’ve read show that they all get pennies back on the dollar in terms of federal tax expenditure vs. revenue. Whereas as states like Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama all ranked higher then my previous stated states but receive more money back from the federal government then they put in
Lazy Reader wrote: The benefit is you can experiment with how you utilize your resources; the difference with rail is you have no choice…but to put trains on them. I’m not aware if rail systems like lightrail/subway/streetcars are compatible with being utilized in the same rail or even have the same rail gauge.
As a novel observation: I was truly shocked when I came up onto the subway platform in Tokyo on their subway system and saw a huge freight train rolling through the station! I guess I was actually riding some commuter rail above ground that just felt like it was the subway.
@MJ
So you think its “Fair” for more of sales tax revenue to go back to the location where the user of the sales tax is from but not the gas tax?
@MJ
I thought I provided the article which shows how much 20 MSA’s are losing in the gas tax revenue but here you go and sorry the article is a little dated
http://www.ewg.org/research/gas-tax-losers
So you think its “Fair” for more of sales tax revenue to go back to the location where the user of the sales tax is from but not the gas tax?
If there were an easy way to do this with the gas tax, then yes. But gas taxes are collected by states at the wholesale level. This helps keep collection costs low and is thus an efficient way to raise revenue. Beyond this, many state highways are not confined to a single county or metropolitan area. Determining what the “correct” share was for each local unit would be difficult.
I thought I provided the article which shows how much 20 MSA’s are losing in the gas tax revenue but here you go and sorry the article is a little dated
The data is old, but that’s not the biggest problem. The authors have no way to validate their estimates and ensure that they are correct. They claim to have generated their expenditure estimates by examining millions of records from federal expenditure reports. I doubt that many federal agencies would have the staff time to do something like this, much less a smaller nonprofit.
More importantly, more recent federal transportation bills have introduce provisions to ensure that “donor” states don’t receive less than 90-95% of the revenues they send to the federal government back in the form of spending. This helps curb some of the worst redistributive abuses, but earmarks still created significant problems up until about 2008. This is just part of the reason why devolution is a preferable alternative.
“Don’t blame the Reagan administration. Blame Congress.”
The diversion is now up to 2.86 cents per gallon. Blame the current Congress, which continues the 15.5% transit diversion while whining about not having enough highway funds for highways.
It can never be argued that it is a responsibility of drivers to support transit that cannot support itself, while highways and bridges crumble.
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/safetealu/factsheets/htft.htm
“Again, what is the problem here? The amount of funding that the state should provide for local transit projects is zero, since the benefits are entirely local.”
This is a dubious unsupported assumption. How do you think the state of New York would fare if New York City collapsed? Can Statesboro, GA step up and provide the state of Georgia with the equivalent economic production if Atlanta ceased to exist? In any case, depending on how you measure it the Atlanta metropolitan area is 60% of the total state of Georgia population, so by the numbers anything that benefits Atlanta benefits the state – since Atlanta is most of the state.
This is a dubious unsupported assumption. How do you think the state of New York would fare if New York City collapsed? Can Statesboro, GA step up and provide the state of Georgia with the equivalent economic production if Atlanta ceased to exist?
Quite the straw man you’ve constructed. I’d say that believing that New York City would collapse if it no longer received federal transit subsidies is a pretty dubious assumption. The city could continue to subsidize it if it chose to. MTA’s bus and rail operations could also probably be successfully privatized with some combination of fare increases, service rationalization and labor reforms.
Atlanta is a far weaker case. MARTA accounts for only a token share of travel in the region. The notion that the region would grind to a halt if the federal money spigot were turned off is just not plausible. The most likely outcome in that case is that Atlanta would probably raise its sales tax a bit and cancel or indefinitely delay some of the less cost-effective expansion projects it has planned. I don’t think Statesboro or any other outstate towns are staying up at night worrying about what will happen if the federal government doesn’t fund any more heavy rail lines.
The Antiplanner wrote:
The MTA letter counts BART as a legacy system, but not the Washington Metro. Even though Metro has a huge backlog, except for it at Atlanta, almost all other systems are less than 40 years old and in some cases are only beginning to suffer from maintenance shortfalls.
I find it curious that MTA calls BART legacy but not WMATA (and I concede to missing the reference to BART when I read the MTA letter) – because BART and the Washington Metrorail system are considered by many as “twin” systems – post-World War II heavy rail on which construction was started a few years apart from each other. At one point, it was possible to use fare media sold on one system on the other (even though the fare collection systems were not interconnected [why should they be?]).
Don’t blame the Reagan administration. Blame Congress. They’re the ones who agreed to divert gas taxes to transit. Reagan vetoed the first bill they passed because, horrors, it contained 10 earmarks.
I think you know I am no fan of Reagan. But I will concede that both were wrong in this case. Reagan should have kept on sending the bill back until the proposed statutory diversion to transit was removed.