**Table of Contents Contents 1ac – Mass Transit
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EXT: InherencyFederal government spending is misguided, hasn’t kept up with changes and privileges highways over urban mass transit 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 Government transportation spending, at all levels of government, is overwhelmingly directed toward roads. Since 1956, the largest portion of public funding for transpor¬tation infrastructure was dedicated to building and maintaining highways.1 Although a small portion (15%) of the federal gas tax is dedicated to a fund for mass transit, the vast majority of federal gas tax revenue is spent on highways. The same is true for state gas taxes: 30 states are actually constitutionally or statutorily required to spend 100% of their gas tax revenues on roads. The disproportionate channeling of transportation dollars toward highways has encouraged more and more construction of roads, even as the demand rises for other forms of transportation. Status quo focused on highways 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 In contrast to its highway funding programs, USDOT encourages greater state contribu¬tions to transit projects. Since the majority of states are constitutionally or statutorily prohibited from using state gas taxes for public transit projects, USDOT’s funding requirements are a tough imposition on states. Unwilling or unable to match federal contributions with general revenue funds, states may be more inclined to seek funding for more road projects than for new transit projects. The problem is that we cannot build enough roads to meet our growing transportation needs. We’ve built enough new roads between 1988 and 2008—an additional 131,723 miles of roads—to circle the globe more than five times.3 But despite all of the resources expended on new highways, we haven’t fixed the roads and bridges that are falling apart, and we haven’t solved our congestion problems. Merely expanding our already extensive highway system is not a plan for the future. We need a new national vision for building and maintaining an efficient transportation that meets the needs of a 21st-century economy. Current transportation spending is heavily tilted towards highways Milkowsky 2011(Brina Milikowsky, researcher, Building America’s Future Educational Fund, BUILDING AMERICA’S FUTURE: FALLING APART AND FALLING BEHIND, Transportation Infrastructure Report 2011, p. 16.) Government transportation spending, at all levels of government, is overwhelmingly directed toward roads. Since 1956, the largest portion of public funding for transportation infrastructure was dedicated to building and maintaining highways.1 Although a small portion (15%) of the federal gas tax is dedicated to a fund for mass transit, the vast majority of federal gas tax revenue is spent on highways. The same is true for state gas taxes: 30 states are actually constitutionally or statutorily required to spend 100% of their gas tax revenues on roads. The disproportionate channeling of transportation dollars toward highways has encouraged more and more construction of roads, even as the demand rises for other forms of transportation. Funding low now for mass trans – all the funding is going to highways Milkowsky 2011(Brina Milikowsky, researcher, Building America’s Future Educational Fund, BUILDING AMERICA’S FUTURE: FALLING APART AND FALLING BEHIND, Transportation Infrastructure Report 2011, p. 16.) Meanwhile, underinvestment in airports, in commuter and freight rail, and in ports costs us jobs, economic growth, and access to overseas markets. Compared to the significant sums dedicated to roads, government spending on other modes of transportation is relatively meager. The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) spends about $10.2 billion a year on public transit, or less than a quarter of what it spends on highways. **Harms Extensions**RacismTransit policy reflects deeply ingrained racism—it is fundament to the symbolic and practical manifestation of racism in the U.S. Environmental Justice Resource Center, “Suburban Sprawl and Transportation Racism,” The Black Commentator, September 23rd, 2004 (http://www.blackcommentator.com/106/106_transportation_racism.html) In the United States, all communities do not receive the same benefits from transportation advancements and investments. "Suburban sprawl is in part driven by race and class dynamics. Transportation spending has always been about opportunity, fairness, and equity," according to Clark Atlanta University professor Robert D. Bullard. The modern civil rights movement has its roots in transportation. For more than a century, African Americans and other people of color have struggled to dismantle transportation apartheid policies that use tax dollars to promote economic isolation and social exclusion. The decision to build highways, expressways, and beltways has far-reaching effects on land use, energy policy, and the environment. Similarly, the decisions by county commissioners to limit and even exclude public transit to job-rich suburban economic activity centers have serious mobility implications for central city residents. Writing in the Foreword to Dr. Bullard’s and Angel O. Torres’s book, Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism & New Highways to Equity, Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) states, "Our struggle is not over. Today those physical signs are gone, but the legacy of "Jim Crow" transportation is still with us. Even in a city like Atlanta, Georgia, a vibrant city with a modern rail and public transit system, thousands of people have been left out and left behind because of discrimination. Like most other major cities, Atlanta’s urban center is worlds apart from its suburbs." The cash-strapped Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) is the nation’s ninth largest transit system and the only major transit system that does not receive any regional or state funding. By comparison, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (Boston) gets 20 percent of the state’s sales tax, or about $680 million dollars a year. Clearly, MARTA is regional only in name – covering only Fulton and DeKalb Counties and the City of Atlanta. From its inception in the 1960s, race blocked MARTA from becoming a five-county regional system. For many suburban whites, MARTA stood for "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta." Several suburban Atlanta counties have set up their own "separate and unequal" bus systems, some with the assistance of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority or GRTA, that are marginally linked to MARTA. Follow the transportation dollars and one can tell who is important and who is not. Between fiscal year 1992 and 1999, states had more than $33.8 billion in federal funds available to spend on either highways or public transit, but spent only 12.5% of that sum on transit. Georgia and twenty-nine other states restrict the use of the gasoline tax revenue for funding highway programs only. Because Atlanta-area jobs have moved to suburbs, where public transit is minimal, they are virtually inaccessible to non-drivers. Thirty-nine percent of all black households in Atlanta do not have access to cars, and in 2000, only 34% of the region's jobs were within a one-hour public transit ride of low- income urban neighborhoods. The current federal funding scheme continues to be biased against metropolitan areas. Generally, states spend less than 20 percent of federal transportation funding on transit. Public transit has received roughly $50 billion since the creation of the Urban Mass Transit Administration over thirty years ago while roadway projects have received over $205 billion since 1956. From 1998-2003, TEA-21 transportation spending amounted to $217 billion. This was the "largest public works bill enacted in the nation’s history." Although local governments within metropolitan areas own and maintain the vast majority of the transportation infrastructure, they receive only about 10 percent of every dollar they generate. Lack of mass transit prevents people of color from escaping in times of disaster. Center for Social Inclusion 2006. (“Racism and Racial Discrimination in the U.S.: Federal Disinvestment in Opportunity for Marginalized Communities”. The Center for Social Inclusion is a national policy strategy organization that works to dismantle structural racial inequity and increase well-being for all. http://www.assetfunders.org/library/documents/CSIonUSandCERD.pdf) Poor people of color are more vulnerable to disasters than even poor Whites, because they are more likely to live in concentrated poverty neighborhoods and rely much more on public transportation. Because they are less likely to have insurance and access to credit, poor people of color also have a harder time rebuilding their lives after a disaster. In New Orleans, a history of racial exclusion led to the isolation of poor Blacks in the floodprone Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. Historically, the Lower 9th was undesirable land – a swamp – where poor freed Blacks and immigrant laborers from Ireland, Germany and Italy, unable to afford housing in other, higher, areas of the city, were forced to endure rampant flooding and disease.23 Over time, suburbanization policies and racial preferences helped Europeans to move, while redlining and other forms of racial segregation kept African Americans stuck in the Lower 9th Ward. Prior to the broken levees, the Lower 9th Ward was almost exclusively Black and 36% of its residents were poor.24 Systematic disinvestment in federal disaster management poses risks to many Americans, especially as climate change increases the risk of hurricanes along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, and tornadoes and other severe weather inland. But given that many poor people of color are trapped in concentrated poverty neighborhoods, they are at greater risk of damage, injury, and death and less able to rebuild their lives after a disaster. These areas tend to be more geographically vulnerable, and residents often have less access to cars and other means of escape. The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been and continues to be under-resourced to meet the needs of its citizens in times of disaster, often with devastating consequences for marginalized communities. Two years prior to Katrina, in 2003, FEMA became part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Government Accountability Office documented a decline in funding for all-hazards programs within DHS, and predicted a further decrease of more than $200 million from 2005 to 2006.25 Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 325.66 Kb. Share with your friends:
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