Observation Four: Solvency

Observation Four: Solvency

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A clean fuel, bus-centered mass transit system As a model, the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union plan proposes the deployment of 600 buses and 50 community jitneys, covering hundreds of miles and hundreds of thousands of riders, for a $1.5 billion price tag, which includes capital and operating costs. This plan is in sharp contrast to the typical ‘light rail’, which covers six to eight miles and serves no more than 15,000 riders for the same price. The efforts of the rail lobbyists to characterize the Riders Union and other civil rights groups as “narrow and protest-based” (read Black, Latino, Asian, female, and low-income, as opposed to the white, suburban, privileged, car-riding constituencies who supposedly embody the “broader” view) can easily be repudiated. Plus, a growing number of transit planners are coming around to accepting the idea that replacing automobiles on the existing highways and surface streets with a clean fuel, bus-centered, rapid transit system, is the way to go. Paying attention to dirty-atsource clean fuels As Clayton Thomas-Muller from the Indigenous Environmental Network has pointed out, many clean fuels, such as compressed natural gas and hydrogen, are very dirty at the source. There are growing violations of Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty and impacts on public health from coal mining, oil exploration, the extraction of natural gas, and other ‘dirty-atsource’ energy schemes. We need less energy altogether and a focus on truly renewable energy sources. We need to place public health and the survival of Third World nations at the center of our U.S. environmental organizing work. The U.S., with just six percent of the world’s population, consumes and abuses 25 percent of the world’s resources. We need a radical restriction of this toxic lifestyle, beginning with a major challenge to the auto industry. As nations around the world face devastating extreme weather events, we have to take this message to the Black, Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Indigenous communities, as well as the white middle-class and workingclass communities: the future of the planet is at stake. Mass Transit: The Heart of the New Revolution Transportation is a great multifaceted issue around which to build a movement, because it touches so many aspects of people’s lives. Transportation affects public health, access to jobs, childcare, housing, medical care, education, and more. It is inextricably tied to the history of the civil rights movement now and in the past. Now it has taken on a life and death urgency because of the public health crisis and global warming brought on by the automobile. Public transportation can be a great unifier—bringing together people of all races and classes who seek a saner, healthier world in which wars for oil and energy are exposed and opposed.

EXT: Inherency

Metro areas are increasing in population and economic importance, but mass transit not up to the task

BAF, 2011 Transportation Infrastructure Report 2011 Building America’s Future Falling Apart and Falling

Behind Building America’s Future Educational Fund Building America’s Future Educational Fund (BAF Ed Fund) is a bipartisan coalition of elected officials dedicated to bringing about a new era of U.S. investment in infrastructure www.bafuture.com

And it’s not just business that has changed faster than our infrastructure. America’s transportation network is not set up to accommodate the needs of our 21st-century lives. Passenger travel is expected to rise as the economy recovers and our population grows, with total vehicle-miles traveled likely to increase by 80% in the next 30 years.11 An additional one billion commercial air passengers are expected to fly each year by 2015, a 36% increase from 2006.12 The vast majority of this increased traffic will occur in the urban centers and surrounding suburbs where the U.S. population—and its economic activity—is overwhelmingly concentrated. The 100 largest U.S. metropolitan regions house almost two-thirds of the population and generate nearly three-quarters of our GDP. In 47 states—even those traditionally considered ‘rural,’ like Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa—the majority of GDP is generated in metropolitan areas.13 And over the next 20 years, 94% of the nation’s economic growth will occur in metropolitan areas.14 Metropolitan areas are already home to the most congested highways, the oldest roads and bridges, and the most overburdened transit systems—and the strains on the transportation system are only bound to get worse. By 2035, an estimated 70 million more people will live in U.S. metropolitan regions. More people bring more commerce and greater transportation demands. Every American accounts for about 40 tons of freight to be hauled each year—so an additional 2.8 billion tons of freight will be moved to and from major metropolitan regions in 2035.15 Our transportation system is simply not up to the task. Our transportation system has also not adapted to the energy realities of the 21st century. Air pollution and carbon emissions—the majority of which in the United States are generated by transportation—threaten the environment. Reliance on foreign oil has imperiled our national security. And fluctuating gas prices are making Americans’ car-dependent lifestyles simply unaffordable. We are increasingly aware that for all these reasons a trans-portation system largely run on gasoline is environmentally and economically unsustainable. In a global economy, businesses need access to manufacturing plants and distribution centers, to international gateways like ports and airports, and to consumers in both metropolitan and rural regions. People need reliable and efficient ways to commute to work and go about their daily lives. We need a modern infrastructure system if we are to meet both needs. And if we don’t create a transportation system that functions reliably and cost-effectively in the 21st century, companies operating in this globalized world can simply choose to do their business elsewhere—taking U.S. jobs and revenues with them.


Federal mass transit spending decreasing – the House just gutted mass transit funding

Building America’s Future, 12 – a bipartisan coalition ofelected officials dedicated to bringing about a new era of U.S. investment in infrastructurethat enhances our nation’s prosperity and quality of life (“BAF Strongly Opposes House Effort to Slash Mass Transit Funding,” 2/3, http://www.bafuture.org/news/press-release/baf-strongly-opposes-house-effort-slash-mass-transit-funding)

 The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee overturned 30 years of bipartisan policy today by removing the certainty of funding for our public transit systems. This change will make it impossible for transit systems to plan for the future and serve their ever growing constituencies. In response, Building America’s Future co-chairs Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I-NYC) and former Governor Ed Rendell (D-PA) issued the following: Mayor Bloomberg: "The bill passed by the House Ways and Means Committee today illustrates once again how dysfunctional Congress has become. By removing the gas tax as the method of funding mass transit, House leadership is threatening the future of a program, in place since the Reagan administration that is actually working well. The lifeblood of New York City is our buses, subways and commuter rails. Eight million people take mass transit every day in New York which helps to cut traffic, reduce pollution, spur our economy and improve public health. The bill passed today ignores the needs of cities across the country by relegating transit to an "alternative" transportation with an uncertain funding stream. Our country is being left behind as the world races ahead with 21st century infrastructure investments, this bill would take us even further from our competitors.”Former Governor Rendell: “Transit has had a vital role to play in our nation’s transportation system. At a time when our roads are choking under growing traffic congestion, it makes no sense to take away a dedicated source of funding and force public transportation to compete against education and other important programs for increasingly scarce dollars. A transportation bill without transit is no transportation bill at all. The nation’s millions of transit riders deserve better than this.”

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