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Monthly Archives: December 2020

Greasing the Gears of Deficit Spending

By | | Transportation
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Washington Metro says it will have to end weekend train service, close 19 rail stations, and reduce bus service by 45 percent if Congress doesn’t give the transit industry $32 billion (on top of normal federal funding of $13 billion) in 2021. In order to keep from making similar cuts, San Jose’s Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) says it will spend money that voters had approved for roads on transit instead. All over the country, transit agencies are preparing for doomsday, when they run out of the $25 billion that Congress gave them (in addition to the normal $13 billion) in 2020.

The New York Times editorial board thinks it has found the solution to problems like these: pork barrel. “Nothing greases the gears of government quite like pork,” it says. Specifically, the Times calls for a return to earmarks, which were banned in 2011 when a Tea Party-dominated Congress rebelled against wasteful spending.

During most of the twentieth century, Congress appropriated transportation dollars in general categories, such as airports, highways, and railroads, and gave them to state agencies to decide how best to spend them within broad guidelines. This was based on a philosophy of government that the local people understand their problems better than people sitting in offices in Washington DC. Continue reading →

Let the Banks Pay for the Subway

By | | Transportation
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Everyone knows that New York City is the heart of the United States, Manhattan is the heart of New York City, and the subways are the arteries that keep that heart pumping. Thus, when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) warns that it will have to make “doomsday cuts” if Congress doesn’t give it another $12 billion, and that such cuts would “devastate the city for years to come,” people listen.

At the same time, New York officials say that subway riders should not have to suffer any fare increases to keep the system running. After all, the whole country benefits, so why should the lowly subway riders have to pay the full cost of their rides?

But who really benefits from the New York City subway? The extensive subway network has allowed Manhattan to grow to and maintain population and job densities found nowhere else in the country. So Manhattan property owners benefit, but how does that benefit the rest of the country? Six years ago, the land alone in Manhattan was estimated to be worth more than $1.7 trillion, which is more than $120 million an acre, and a considerable portion of this value is due to the subway system. Continue reading →

How Transit Subsidies Harm Poor People

By | | Policy brief
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The nation’s transit agencies received nearly $56 billion in subsidies from taxpayers in 2019. One frequently used justification for these subsidies is that transit provides mobility to low-income people. Yet in reality transit subsidies do far more harm than good for low-income people.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

Most of the taxes used to support transit are regressive, which means low-income people pay disproportionate shares of their incomes to keep transit going. Yet the goal of most transit capital spending has been to attract upper-income people to ride transit, a goal which apparently has been met as transit commuters have significantly higher median incomes than other workers. Meanwhile, the mobility that transit provides to people who don’t have cars is pathetic, as the typical urban resident can reach 30 times as many jobs in a 30-minute auto drive as a 30-minute transit ride and can actually reach more jobs on a bicycle ride of 40 minutes or less than a transit trip of similar length. Continue reading →