Economy – Manufacturing Links

Government support of mass transit is key to save American manufacturing

The bottom line is that the United States needs to focus on high-end manufacturing. A strategy for doing so is to link manufacturing to other policy goals. Countries in both Europe and Asia have successfully linked the development of state-of-the-art public transit systems to manufacturing. These countries are now exporting or producing technologically sophisticated transit vehicles around the world. It is time for the United States to become a producer, rather than a consumer, of transit vehicles. But no single industry will save U.S. manufacturing—the country needs a coherent industrial policy. In reports such as this one, the authors are con- strained by the boundaries of current policy debate if they expect to be taken seriously. As a result, even though the above analysis indicates that the level of funding proposed under the International Competitiveness scenario would most forcefully accelerate the development of a strong U.S. transit industry, the less-ambitious Increased Domestic Investment level is recommended here—and even this is an aggressive funding scenario given the current political climate. Nevertheless, the analysis in this report plainly suggests that if U.S. manufacturing is to experience a serious revival that produces more than fragmented show- case projects and scattered jobs, public policy needs to think much bigger and more boldly than it currently does.

Expansion of mass transit spills over to many manufacturing sectors

Feldman 9 (Jonathan Michael, “From Mass Transit to New Manufacturing,” American Prospect; April 2009, Vol. 20 Issue 3, pA12-A16, 5p)

Our multiple crises suggest that a Green New Deal must mean more than one-shot investments. Support for mass transit and its supply industry can help promote domestically rooted system integrators, manufacturers, employment, and wealth creation. The expansion of domestic production, based on expanded investments in mass transit, could help link recovery plans centered on public works to a more comprehensive reindustrialization program

Economy – Congestion Links

Mass transit investments are key to end road congestion that costs the economy billions – small successes spillover

Worthen, 11 – Resource Architect for Sustainability at the American Institute of Architects, (Bill, “Putting the Masses Behind Mass Transit”, Reuters, 3-30-11, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/30/idUS188765760220110330)//AWV

But our communities and our economy can't afford to be stuck in this figurative traffic jam for much longer. Rising energy prices, environmental pressures and population growth are taxing our current infrastructure to its limit. Devastating malfunctions, such as the New Orleans levees during Hurricane Katrina and the Minnesota bridge collapse, are a few of the tragic fallouts of less-than-stellar maintenance. And this doesn't include the dozens of small-town stories that will never reach the eyes and ears of the nation, such as major potholes in roads or broken neighborhood dams. Without change, we can surely expect more occurrences like these. Additionally, according to a study commissioned yearly by the Texas Transportation Institute called the Urban Mobility Report (bit.ly/dJl62), traffic congestion caused by problems on our roadways costs our economy an estimated $80 billion per year. This number, along with the aforementioned collapses, will only continue to grow until we fix what's broken. Now, we understand that the road to this transportation utopia is not as simple as investment in projects. We also need a sea change in the way people think about mass transit - particularly those in less populated areas where the use of mass transit is a foreign concept in terms of commuting to/from work or for leisure or business travel. We do, however, see a beginning hunger to get these types of projects off the ground. As previously mentioned, in Florida, the public is keeping a high speed rail project alive despite setbacks from the state government. A proposal to build a high-speed rail line connecting the beaches of Tampa to the tourist haven and theme parks of Orlando (and ultimately include an extension to Miami) was in the works throughout 2010 until Governor Rick Scott rejected a proposal for $2.4 billion in federal funding for the project. Now the leadership of Tampa, with the support of its citizens, is working to draft a proposal to privatize the rail to keep it off the chopping block. (Although it would be great to see state government eventually reinsert itself into the initiative and help bring it to fruition.) A first-of-its-kind rail connecting two major metropolitan areas would signal a big change for the southeastern U.S. Another example is in my hometown of San Francisco, where we've successfully reduced traffic and congestion within the city by making mass transit a better, faster option for connecting its various parts. It's actually faster for a San Francisco resident to get to San Francisco International Airport via the BART system rather than car. This is an incredible incentive for our residents, who then become ambassadors for the public transit efforts when they travel outside the community. The road - no pun intended - is long and there is a tremendous amount of work to be done. We must continue to show why mass transit is worthwhile for all communities, ask the current administration to keep this issue at the forefront and continue to take the steps to make this a reality. It's a road worth traveling.

Mass transit increases worker productivity and increases jobs

Tomer 12- (Adie, Elizabeth Kneebone, Robert Puentes, and Alan Berube, “Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America”, Brookings Institute, May 2012 http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2011/5/12%20jobs%20and%20transit/0512_jobs_transit.pdf)

More immediately, transportation matters for establishing a broad-based economic recovery. Improving transportation connections to jobs enhances the efficiency of labor markets for both workers and employers.3 Years of study, research, and practice have tried to address the vexing logistical problems stemming from lack of access to transportation in major metropolitan areas.4 Today, transportation analysts increasingly consider accessibility to be a better measure of system performance than traditional mobility.5 It is at least as important for metropolitan residents to be able to access a range of activities, such as jobs, via the transportation system, than it is for systems to simply move vehicles faster and reduce travel times.6One important way workers get to work is via public transit. While three out of four commutes occur alone in a car, recent statistics show that the share of Americans commuting to work via public transit grew during the 2000s for the first time in decades.7 Each of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas offers some form of public transit service. Many of the places with the largest recent increases in transit usage, such as New York and Washington, offer extensive rail networks. Other metro areas that recently opened light rail lines such as Charlotte and Phoenix also saw upticks, as did others that rely almost exclusively on buses for transit commuting, such as Colorado Springs and Albuquerque. A high quality public transit network can allow employers to benefit from the clustering and agglomeration of people and businesses, and thereby raise productivity in metro areas. One recent analysis recommends using access to jobs and labor as a measure of the economic benefit of transportation to metropolitan areas.8 Transit also supplies travel choices for workers, and is thus especially important to populations who depend on such service because they are too old or poor, or otherwise choose not to own a car. Metro areas with a high number of transit commuters, such as Los Angeles, Honolulu, and Philadelphia, also stand out for having small per capita carbon emissions due to transportation compared with more car-dependent areas such as Nashville and Oklahoma City.9 In some metropolitan areas, transit can help workers avoid severe rush hour traffic congestion, and reduce the costs of their commutes relative to driving.

Investment in mass transit helps the economy by reducing congestion and increasing productivity

APTA 12-(American Public Transportation Association), March, “Economic Recovery: Promoting Growth” http://www.apta.com/resources/reportsandpublications/Documents/Economic-Recovery-APTA-White-Paper.pdf)

Investment in public transportation can reduce traffic congestion by shifting people away from their cars. And it can carry many people in a smaller space on the street or along a corridor. For example, a single bus can carry 60 people and a full train car can carry more than 1,600. A high quality rail or bus line can carry as many people as seven lanes of highway or 17 lanes of urban street. By moving more people in a smaller space, public transportation allows cities to increase their economic output while maintaining a smaller footprint at lower cost of transportation infrastructure than would be required without public transit. Cities can, therefore, achieve more growth for less money with high quality public transportation. As previously discussed, public transit availability and density are interconnected. “The locations of downtown office districts—often focused on financial services and related business sectors—usually coincide with the location of greatest public transportation availability and usage.”9For example, in the Washington, DC, metropolitan service area, 28 percent of the area’s tax base is located on 4 percent of the land area that is within one-half mile of a Metrorail station.10 In Portland, OR, developers built 7,248housing units and 4.6 million square feet of office space within two blocks of the Portland Streetcar line between 2001 and 2005. As a report on transit oriented development said of the Portland project: “Properties closest to the streetcar developed at 90 percent of permitted density, compared to 43percent 3 or 4 blocks away.”11All of this development means an improved tax base for communities that invest in public transportation. In fact, investment in public transit generates business expansion and economic growth worth more than the monetary value of the initial investment. APTA estimates that every $1 billion invested in public transportation produces $3.6 billion in added business sales volume, which in turn generates nearly $500 million in federal, state, and local tax revenues. For every $1 invested in public transportation, $4 in economic returns are generated.

Road focus makes congestion inevitable

Pollard, 4’ – Senior Attorney and Director, Land and Community Program at Southern Environmental Law Center (Trip, “Article: Follow the money: transportation investments for smarter growth,” Temple Environmental Law & Technology Journal, Spring, 2004, 22 Temp. Envtl. L. & Tech. J. 155)//AWV

Transportation policies have succeeded in providing an incredible level of mobility. The number of vehicle miles traveled in the United States has increased substantially in the past few decades. Americans drove over 2.85 trillion miles in 2002, an average of over 7.8 billion miles each day. n9 The mobility gains resulting from transportation infrastructure investments, however, are being undercut by escalating traffic congestion, and it is becoming more difficult to reach desired locations in many areas. A study of 75 metro areas found that the annual number of hours of delay per person due to traffic congestion was almost four times higher in 2001 than in 1982. n10 Congestion is rising despite continued road building. Experience has shown that while new highways can provide temporary traffic relief, for the most part it is not possible to build our way out of congestion. Although it is intuitively appealing to think that increasing the supply of roadways will meet travel demand and relieve congestion, demand does not stay constant. New roads actually generate additional driving, both by opening new areas to development and by leading motorists to change their behavior, such as encouraging people to drive rather than use alternative means of transportation. n11

Transit reduces traffic congestion

Weyrich and Lind 3 (Paul M. and William S., “How Transit Benefits People Who Do Not Ride It: A Conservative Inquiry”, October, http://www.apta.com/gap/policyresearch/Documents/how_transit_benefits.pdf)

Is there generalized evidence of rail transit reducing traffic congestion, as opposed to single examples? Yes. An FTA Policy Paper, “Transit Benefits 2000 Working Papers: A Public Choice Policy Analysis,” looked in great detail at how rail transit reduces hours of delay in the corridors it serves in six different cities. It looked at three kinds of commuters who benefit from rail transit: those who ride it, people who drive to the same destinations served by the rail transit line, and drivers who are driving parallel to the transit line but not necessarily to same destinations. The study found that: In these six corridors, transit passengers saved 17,443 hours daily. By removing these would-be motorists from highway segments with the same destinations as transit, transit saved motorists an additional 21,981 daily hours. Other highways on the local network received spillover savings of 20,691 daily hours.25 In other words, not only does rail transit benefit people who do not ride it, non-riders benefit more than twice as much, in terms of time saved from traffic congestion, as do the people who are riding the trains! The study went on to convert the time savings into dollar savings, at a rate of $15 per hour (somewhat less than the hourly rate of all those lawyers, doctors and accountants caught in traffic, we would guess). It found annual savings of more than $225 million provided by rail transit, with transit riders getting $65 million, people driving to the same destinations $82 million, and drivers in parallel corridors $78 million.26 In dollar terms, people who still drive benefited almost twice as much as the transit riders. If that isn’t an argument why people who don’t ride rail transit should support it anyway, we don’t know what one would be.

Public transit increases income and jobs, decreases congestion, and lowers consumer costs

United States Department of Transportation, 9’, (“Public Transportation Delivers Public Benefits”, http://fastlane.dot.gov/2009/06/public-transportation-delivers-public-benefits.html, 6-2-09)//AWV

President Obama was elected to harness a national will to do things better. One thing I think Americans would like to see improved is how transportation serves the communities in which they live. We love our cars, but sometimes there can be a better way to get to work or to the beach, or simply to the drug store. And providing Americans with those choices can also be good for the economy. In one study done in the San Antonio, each 1% of regional travel shifted from automobile to public transit increased regional income about $2.9 million, resulting in 226 additional regional jobs. Other economic benefits include increased productivity, employment, business activity, investment and redevelopment. Cities with well-established rail system, according to a study produced for APTA, have less traffic congestion, lower traffic death rates, lower consumer expenditures on transportation, significantly higher per capita transit ridership, lower average per capita vehicle mileage, and higher transit service cost recovery than otherwise comparable cities with less or no rail transit service.

Mass transit comparatively better than alternatives

United States Department of Transportation, 9’, (“Public Transportation Delivers Public Benefits”, http://fastlane.dot.gov/2009/06/public-transportation-delivers-public-benefits.html, 6-2-09)//AWV

Rail travel consumes about a fifth of the energy per passenger-mile as automobile travel. Electric powered rail produces minimal air and noise emissions. Many criticisms of rail transit investment are based on inaccurate or incomplete analysis. For example, transit critics often cite operating costs. This overlooks the significant returns that rail transit offers. In 2002, for example, rail transit required about $12.5 billion annually in public subsidy. However, these costs were offset several times over by $19.4 billion in congestion costs savings, $8.0 billion in roadway cost savings, $12.1 billion in parking cost savings, $22.6 billion in consumer cost saving, and $5.6 billion in reduced crash damages. Developing public transportation increases choices, for drivers as well as riders. Developing public transportation makes sense.

Directory: files
files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2
files -> Integer programming and game theory
files -> 4 Integer Programming
files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective
files -> Pop Warner History
files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose
files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d
files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal
files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations

Download 0.91 Mb.

Share with your friends: