APTA Demands $39.3 Billion More for Transit

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) has proclaimed that transit agencies will need nearly $40 billion more in subsidies, on top of the tens of billions in subsidies they already get, to survive through the end of 2023. It backs this up with a so-called “independent study” that is hardly independent as APTA paid for it. APTA also points out with distress that 65 percent of transit agencies were forced to cut service in 2020.

This $39.3 billion is part of a $111.3 billion transportation package being sought by unions and other interest groups. The package includes $40 billion for school buses, motor coaches, and ferry companies; $15 billion for airline employees; and $17 billion for airports. Note that almost none of this money will end up assisting any actual travelers; it is all for unions and bureaucrats.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised to include $30 billion for transit in the next COVID relief bill. This is $10 billion more than President Biden asked for in his $1.9 trillion relief bill. Transit agencies like the New York MTA are already rubbing their hands in gleeful anticipation of these funds.

APTA has become thoroughly shameless in its demands for taxpayer dollars. So what if ridership has declined by 60 to 80 percent? Transit agencies shouldn’t have to cut service. So what if the downtown jobs that transit once served are no longer downtown? The purpose of cities should be to serve transit’s needs, not the other way around.

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Rather than mourn that 65 percent of agencies cut service, someone should ask why 35 percent of agencies didn’t cut service. Thousands of small businesses are shutting down due to pandemic-related lockdowns, but transit for some reason expects to be immunized from such economic variations by ever-growing subsidies.

Even before the pandemic, transit was the most inefficient and wasteful form of transportation in the United States, spending more than five times as much to move someone a passenger-mile as the average automobile. Many corporations are using the pandemic as an opportunity to rethink their office structures and whether to allow more people to work at home. In the same way, transit agencies could have used the pandemic to rethink their route structures and focus on the routes that people really use. Instead, they are relying on heavy subsidies to insulate them from any such changes.

At some point, people are going to realize that transit isn’t environmentally friendly; in fact, it is far more destructive than motor vehicles and highways. At some point, people are going to realize that transit doesn’t help poor people out of poverty; in fact, before the pandemic its main customers had above-average incomes. At some point, people are going to realize that, far from taking essential workers to work, transit could disappear tomorrow in most cities and no one would notice. APTA is counting on the expectation that we haven’t yet reached those points.