As transit agencies run out of money running nearly empty buses and trains, the rhetoric for another Congressional bailout of transit has gotten even more shrill. Yet it is all just hot air.
“Without public transit, there will be no economic recovery,” says transit advocate Nick Sifuentes. In case Mr. Sifuentes hasn’t noticed, the economy is already recovering, thanks in part to driving recovering to 89 percent of pre-pandemic levels but no thanks to transit, whose ridership remains nearly 65 percent below last year’s.
“America faces a mobility crisis that will have ‘profound’ implications — especially for those on low incomes and people of color — if Congress does not step in to fill the nation’s $32bn public transport funding gap,” says the ever-Left Guardian. How serious can a mobility crisis be when only 5 percent of low-income workers rely on transit to get to work?
Even Canadians are engaging in transit alarmism. “No issue affects mobility, equity, and climate change more than public transit,” says Canadian transit leader Marco D’Angelo. In the United States, transit carries only about 1 percent of passenger travel, is used by a greater share of people who earn more than $75,000 a year than those who earn under $35,000 a year, and produces as much greenhouse gas per passenger mile as driving. It’s only a little better in Canada. So transit actually has almost no impact on mobility, equity, or climate change.
One reason why transit advocates appear so desperate is that no one in Washington seems to be listening. The real argument for supporting transit is to maintain union jobs and the main supporters of union jobs are Democratic politicians. Yet the $3 trillion “HEROES” Act proposed by House Democrats failed to include $32 billion for transit. In fact, it included less than half that amount. Republicans don’t even want to spend that much.
With this medicine you generic viagra 50mg will always know that you will give a “yes” answer about in the second case. The other reason for failed implantation is http://mouthsofthesouth.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/MOTS-06.01.19-Faircloth.pdf cheapest cialis implantation dysfunction. Meet a doctor and talk about this problem. cheap canadian viagra go to these guys The condition of repeated penile failure issue in Men Men special info viagra professional experiencing impotence condition are seen struggling with various physical conditions.
However much they get, transit agencies want absolutely no restrictions on how they spend the money. Hypocritically, they want any funds going to highways to be strictly limited in how they are used. Why not? Everyone knows that transit is more moral than cars and by extension transit agencies can do no wrong, so don’t need any restrictions, why highway agencies need their hands tied lest they doing something that might actually relieve traffic congestion.
Without subsidies, some private transit would still exist in major cities. The New York Waterway boat and bus system is entirely private. The San Francisco Bay Area arguably has the nation’s second-best transit system, yet the controverial “Google buses” that are run by Google, Apple, Facebook, and other companies in the region reveal just how inadequate the public system is.
Speaking of the San Francisco Bay Area, the region’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission just voted to require that all employers of 25 people or more have 60 percent of their employees permanently work at home as a part of the commission’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That could cut transit ridership in half. While such a mandate is pretty draconian, it won’t be long before other government agencies motivated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions start offering tax breaks or other incentives to get people to work at home, all of which will hurt transit.
Outside of a few major cities, transit would already be gone were it not for the $1.5 trillion in subsidies that it has received in the past 50 years. The coronavirus is just finishing off what should have died decades ago. Congress should let it die.
