Actions by members of the U.S. House over the past week suggest that Republican opposition to the funding of alternative transportation has developed into an all-out ideological battle. Though their efforts are unlikely to advance much past the doors of their chamber, the policy recklessness they have displayed speaks truly poorly of the future of the nation’s mobility systems.

By Friday last week, the following measures were brought to the attention of the GOP-led body:

• The Ways and Means Committee acted to eliminate the Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund, destroying public transportation’s source of steady federal financing for capital projects, first established in the 1980s. The members of the committee determined that to remedy the fact that gas taxes have not been increased since 1993,* the most appropriate course was not to raise the tax (as would make sense considering inflation, more efficient vehicles, and the negative environmental and congestion-related effects of gas consumption) but rather to transfer all of its revenues to the construction of highways. Public transit, on the other hand, would have to fight for an appropriation from the general fund, losing its traditional guarantee of funding and forcing any spending on it to be offset by reductions in other government programs.** This as the GOP has made evident its intention to reduce funding for that same general fund through a continued push for income tax reductions, even for the highest earners.
• The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved a transportation reauthorization bill on partisan lines (with the exception of one Republican who voted against it, Tom Petri of Wisconsin) that would do nothing to increase funding for transportation infrastructure in the United States over the next five years despite the fact that there is considerable demand for a large improvement in the nation’s road, rail, and transit networks just to keep them in a state of good repair, let alone expand them to meet the needs of a growing population.
• The committee voted to eliminate all federal requirements that states and localities spend 10% of their highway funding on alternative transportation projects (CMAQ), such as Safe Routes to School, sidewalks, or cycling infrastructure, despite the fact the those mandated investments are often the only ones of their sort that are actually made by many states.
• The committee eliminated the Obama Administration’s trademark TIGER program, which has funded dozens of medium-scale projects throughout the country with a innovative merit-based approach. Instead, virtually all decisions on project funding would be made by state DOTs, which not unjustly have acquired a reputation as only interested in highways. Meanwhile, members couldn’t resist suggesting that only “true” high-speed rail projects (over 150 mph top speed) be financed by the government — even as they conveniently defunded the only such scheme in the country, the California High-Speed Rail program.
• The same committee added provisions to federal law that would provide special incentives for privatization of new transportation projects — despite the fact that there is no overwhelming evidence that such mechanisms save the public any money at all. And under the committee’s legislation, the government would provide extra money to localities that contract out their transit services to private operators, simply as a reward for being profit-motivated.
• Meanwhile, House leadership recommended funding any gaps in highway spending not covered by the Trust Fund through a massive expansion in domestic energy production that would destroy thousands of acres of pristine wilderness, do little for decreasing the American reliance on foreign oil, and reaffirm the nation’s addiction to carbon-heavy energy sources and ecological devastation. New energy production of this sort is highly speculative in nature and would produce very few revenues in the first years of implementation. As a special treat, the same leadership proposed overruling President Obama’s decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline by bundling an approval for it into the transportation bill.

This litany of disastrous policies were endorsed by the large majority of Republicans on each committee, with the exception of two GOP members in House Ways and Means*** and one in the Transportation Committee who voted against the bill, though the vote was entirely along party lines for an amendment attempting to reverse course on the elimination of the Mass Transit Account.

Fortunately, these ideas are unlikely to make it into the code thanks to the Senate, whose members, both Democratic and Republican, have different ideas about what makes an acceptable transportation bill. I’ll get back to that in a bit.

The House’s effort to move forward on a new multiyear federal transportation bill — eagerly awaited by policy wonks for three years — follows intense and repeated Republican obstructions of the Obama Administration’s most pioneering efforts to alter the nation’s transportation policy in favor of investments that improve daily life for inhabitants of American metropolitan areas. As part of that process, federally funded high-speed rail, streetcar, and transit center projects have been shot down by local politicians as a waste of money, even as road construction has continued apace.

The Tea Party’s zany obsession with the supposed U.N. plot to take over American land use decisions through Agenda 21 seems to have infected GOP House members and even presidential contenders. Michele Bachmann’s claim in 2008 that Democrats are attempting to force people onto light rail lines to travel between their housing “tenements” and government jobs may have made it into the mind of Newt Gingrich, who recently made the claim that the “elite” in New York City who ride the subway and live in high-rise condos don’t understand “normal” Americans. What kind of language is this?

In the Senate, there is clear evidence that the hard-core proposals of the House will not become law. The upper body’s Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously endorsed a different type of transportation reauthorization, one that would last only two years but that would reform and simplify the grants provided by the Department of Transportation so that they are more based on merit in such matters as ecological sensitivity and the creation of livable communities.

Similarly, in the Senate Banking Committee, the transit portion of the proposed bill (approved unanimously) would maintain funding guarantees and allow transit agencies to use federal dollars for operations spending during periods of high unemployment, which would be an excellent policy if pushed into law. How the Senate will be able to compromise with the House in time for the March 31st deadline set by the current legislation is up in the air.

The strange and laudable part of the Senate side of the story — at least as compared to the House — is the bipartisan nature of decision-making there. Why are Republicans in the Senate promoting a transportation bill that explicitly would promote multimodalism as a goal, in a contrast to the highway focus of their peers in the House? Why are they accepting environmental criteria as appropriate measures of quality in transportation policy? Perhaps the Democratic Party’s control of the Senate makes fighting such ideas a waste of time. Or perhaps longer Senate terms in office allow clearer, more reasonable thinking.

Whatever the reason, in the long-term, it is hard to envision reversing the continued growth of the GOP’s strident opposition to sustainable transportation investments in the House. As I have documented, density of population correlates strongly and positively with the Democratic Party vote share in Congressional elections; the result has been that the House Republicans have few electoral reasons to articulate policies that benefit cities. Those who believe in the importance of a sane transportation policy need to make more of an effort to advance a sane transportation politics to residents of suburban and rural areas, who also benefit from efforts to improve environmental quality, mobility alternatives, and congestion relief, but perhaps are not yet convinced of that fact. Doing so would encourage politicians hoping for votes outside of the city core — Democratic or Republican — to promote alternatives to the all-highways meme that currently rules the GOP in the House.

In the face of such actions, it becomes imperative in the short term not only to ramp up citizen opposition to the defunding of transit and associated programs, but also to full-throatily endorse those leaders who will stand up to fight. Not working for their election in the fall risks policies like those being advanced in the House being passed by an acquiescent Senate and signed by a future president. Such actions would put in question the potential improvement of existing programs and turn back on the policy strides that must be made to contest the vision some have of an all-automobile America.

* The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that based on current tax receipts, the government will run out of funding for new highways next year and for new transit in 2014.

** I have in the past frequently cited the failings of the current user-fee based transportation funding system. By taxing people based on their automobile use and using some of the funds for transit, we are of course attempting to counteract the negative externalities produced by pollution and congestion. But in the process, we are charging drivers — even in places with no alternatives — a regressive tax that limits the mobility of the poor. Thus we are directly tying funding for transit to revenues from automobiles, a perverse relationship. Yet the alternative to the user fee is guaranteed funding from the general fund, not arbitrary annual appropriations to transit that House Republicans seem to be promoting.

*** Erik Paulsen of Minnesota and Vern Buchanan of Florida, both of whom represent districts just outside city centers.

» A private push to build a short line down Woodward may find itself in official plans once again.

Just three weeks after Detroit leaders announced that they had abandoned efforts to build a 9.3-mile light rail line down Woodward Avenue, the city’s central strip, Mayor Dave Bing revealed on Friday that he would allow a shorter link funded by a private group to move forward if it submitted an acceptable business plan within 90 days.

The project will have to be built right: Even at just 3.4 miles, the line could serve as a quick, reliable connector between the waterfront and the New Center, via Midtown, but that will only be possible if trains run in their own lanes, if they run frequently, and if they are funded with no negative effect on the city’s already under-financed bus system. There is evidence that those conditions will not be met. Yet the project’s design has yet to be completed — Detroit transportation advocates could successfully fight for the appropriate implementation of this first stage of Woodward Light Rail.

But the circumstances in which the project’s reactivation has occurred speak to a continued dysfunction not only in the City of Detroit but in American transportation politics in general.

The rail project was put on hold last month because of the sense that the City of Detroit — already mired in debt — would be unable to afford the operations costs of the corridor (estimated at $10 million a year) without sacrificing bus service. Repeated plans for a regional transportation authority, and associated funding, have been in the air for decades. Only a plan that served the suburbs well would be acceptable, since they would have to agree to increasing financing for transit, and so Governor Rick Snyder, Mayor Bing, and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood agreed to refocus efforts and money on city-suburban improvements to the bus network.

The latest move is backtracking at its best. Seemingly overwhelmed by calls from influential congressmen and the executives of downtown businesses like Quicken, Penske, and Compuware, who have already lined up $80 million for a $125 million short version of the line (which they call M1-Rail and which was actually proposed in advance of the longer corridor), the deal from last month will be amended. That is, if business leaders are able to find an effective way to cover the remainder of the capital costs and provide for the continued operations of the line, which they have said they could pay for through a tax-increment financing (TIF) district. They also want to take back the $25 million TIGER grant promised by LaHood in early 2010, then pulled back in December.

Why the sudden change in prospects for the line? Why weren’t these investors — willing to put up a surprising amount of money — consulted before their project was abandoned? What assurances do we have from the mayor and governor that suburban interests won’t be yet again frustrated by the fact that Detroit gets rail and they get rapid buses — and veto a regional transit authority? Where is the communication and where is the consistency in policymaking?

Just as we have seen with the Obama Administration’s high speed rail program, or New Jersey’s ARC rail tunnel, or a variety of maglev projects, this country specializes in spending years studying projects, then partially funding them, then effectively abandoning them. This results in years of delays and extra spending. I have been clear in the past that the Woodward rail line is a questionable priority for the region, but the move back and forth on decisions helps no one. Downtown Detroit’s leaders have been waiting patiently for the rail line, planning ahead around its development; were they forced to reconsider their options last month? Now what do they do?

There is nothing clear, after all, about the future of this project.

Nonetheless, the line does show some promise, because if Detroit is going to grow at all (it lost more than 230,000 people between 2000 and 2010), it will be in the small area bordered by the Chrysler and Lodge Freeways on the east and west, by Grand Boulevard and the waterfront on the north and south — and that’s exactly the neighborhood the short light rail line is supposed to serve. In that area, within 1/2 a mile of the Woodward corridor, are already 123,000 jobs (map of employment density in corridor) and about 20,000 residents, according to the U.S. Census. Most of the city’s major cultural institutions, including Wayne State University, the sports stadiums, and several casinos, are within walking distance. Connections will be possible not only with the existing bus lines and Amtrak but also with the new BRT services proposed by Governor Rick Snyder last month, meant to link Detroit with the suburbs and the airport, via Michigan, Woodward, and Gratiot Avenues.

As I referenced at the start of the article, however, a light rail line within this area could be an appropriate addition to the transportation landscape of the city — or it could be the second coming of the much-maligned People Mover, which makes a quarter-mile-radius circle in one direction downtown. That system attracts few riders. But the Woodward corridor, serving real trip needs, could work — under certain conditions.

Light rail vehicles must be designed to run in their own lanes and be able to take advantage of traffic signal prioritization to ensure that they make the journey between destinations quickly. But the M1 group has been adamant that trains run next to the sidewalk in shared lanes to “boost tourism and redevelopment.” I was not informed that tourists and developers were particularly enamored of slow trains that have the propensity of being stuck in traffic.

Meanwhile, such a short corridor must feature trains running very frequently. While many of the riders will be residents commuting to and from work, a significant share is likely to be made up of people transferring from other transit modes and of people who drove into work and need a downtown circulator. For the latter groups, waiting more than five minutes for a train in the middle of the day would represent a significant impediment to using the system, as they have other options, such as walking or buses. But the tenuous nature of financing for transit in metropolitan Detroit suggests that it will not be easy to fund such services, even if a TIF district is established. Once it becomes clear that the light rail line hasn’t solved the city’s woes, can we be sure that the business lobby won’t switch its interests to funding parks or other amenities?

For the sake of the city’s bus system and its future BRT network, operations funding for the light rail project cannot be derived from expenditures meant to be devoted elsewhere, such as from the proposed regional transit authority, as Mayor Bing and Governor Snyder have already made clear. Making it over this hurdle will be difficult.

Within ninety days, the city should make a very clear, final decision about its interests in the future of the Woodward Corridor, giving the M1 group a definitive answer about the future of the light rail line. The rail project should be built only if it can be funded without affecting bus financing and provide excellent transit service downtown. No more dilly-dallying.

Image above: Detroit’s Campus Martius, adjacent to Woodward Avenue where rail line will run, from Flickr user jodelli (cc)

One of the unique features of the American transit funding system is that the federal government chips in significant sums each year for capital expenses, such as for the purchase of new buses or the construction of new rail lines, but the law forbids significant involvement in subsidizing operating expenses. This means that local and state governments must find the means to pay for service day-in and day-out.

This could offer the benefit of a considerable range of local political decision-making: Some cities may choose to prioritize transit, while others don’t — people can choose to move between cities based on whether or not they want to take advantage of such transportation offerings. Yet the provision of transit for impoverished people is a redistributive service, and there is considerable theoretical support for the argument that redistributive public functions should not be funded by local governments. Cities that choose to aid their poor, scholars like Paul Peterson have argued, will simply attract more of the needy into their city limits; other municipalities without such aid will be able to escape with lower taxes and no aid to the poor.

A review of evidence from American cities on transit operations funding suggests that neither of these arguments is substantiated. Rather, the current funding system results in highly inequitable results that result in worse transit service in places with higher poverty rates and lower median household incomes. Differences in metropolitan wealth are highly positively correlated with levels of funding for transit service. In other words, the places where residents need transit service most are those that are providing the least of it. Median household incomes, at least based on the regions reviewed here, are prime determinants for the level of public services offered.

To conduct this quick study, I considered data from 15 American cities. I selected all central cities with populations of between 600,000 and 1,000,000 in the 2010 U.S. Census, producing a broad sample of cities throughout the country with varying demographic profiles.* I assembled data at the metropolitan (MSA) level (from 800,000 to 5.6 million in population) from local transit systems (for operating funding data), the Brookings Institution (for 0-vehicle households, metropolitan area poverty rates and median household income), the American Public Transportation Association (for ridership in July 2011), and the U.S. Census (for central city population, poverty rates, and median incomes).

Comparing statistics across this group of cities indicates that by requiring operating funding to be assembled at the local level, people living in poorer metropolitan areas are likely to be denied the quantity of transit services that their peers in wealthier regions are offered. This will only increase the transportation costs faced by people living there. This indicates that there is a strong equity argument to shift operating funding of transit services away from the local level and towards the federal government, which would be more likely to spread resources equally across metropolitan areas, regardless of local incomes.

Click on images above to expand.

The most devastating data, as shown in the charts above, demonstrate that metropolitan areas with higher poverty rates and lower median incomes are likely to spend less on operating their public transportation networks than peer cities with lower poverty rates and higher median incomes (R-squared correlations of positive 0.72 and negative 0.49, respectively). A 50% increase in the poverty rate is associated with a 49% decline in per-person transit operations funding. The differences in transit funding are even more significant when compared with differences in income. The regression shows that a 50% increase in regional median income is associated with a 220% increase in per-person transit funding.

This suggests not only that less-wealthy metropolitan areas do not have the funding capacity to ensure good transit for their populations, but that they are providing disproportionally less public transit than their wealthier peers.** Local funding results in considerably varied service provision, based almost directly on the wealth of each respective region.

Click on images above to expand.

This is not to suggest that people in poor areas are not able to get around at all. The evidence in the chart above shows that there is no correlation between the poverty of metropolitan areas and the rate of zero-household vehicles (R-squared correlation of 0.07). People who live in areas with poor transit offerings will simply find the means to drive. This comes with a grave consequence: Driving costs the average person more than using transit, so impoverished people in transit-poor areas are in effect forced to spend more for transportation than their peers in transit-rich areas.

On the other hand, there is a strong relationship between the number of zero-vehicle households in a region and the ridership on transit there (R-squared correlation of 0.66). The regression implies that a 50% increase in the rate of zero-vehicle households in a metropolitan area is associated with a more than five-fold increase in transit ridership. This suggests, perhaps unsurprisingly, that people are more likely to abandon their private vehicles when good transit is offered. Giving up on using personal cars lessens personal transportation costs, but ironically the evidence shows that this is more feasible in regions with lower poverty and higher median incomes. Regions that are already well-off are making themselves better off, while those that are poorer are reinforcing their economic problems.

Click on images above to expand.

Nonetheless, the relatively strong correlation between transit operating dollars spent per person in the metropolitan area and voting share in the relevant county for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race (see above; R-squared correlation of 0.66) suggests that through political action, people have the ability to alter the level of service offered by transit services in their area. More strongly Democratic-voting populations appear to benefit from better transit offerings.

There is a direct correlation between investing in improved transit and the rate of ridership in the regions evaluated (R-squared correlation of 0.85), suggesting that higher funding for public transportation services is associated with more users. This is hardly a surprising result (one would hope that transit funding is roughly proportional to the number of riders!), but it reinforces the contention that transit ridership levels are not simply a result of socio-economic conditions and land uses, but also a consequence of direct political decision-making about how much to spend on transit.

Click on images above to expand.

I also considered another possibility: That transit funding in regions is to some degree dependent on differences between central city and suburban populations within each metropolitan region. This question seems particularly relevant considering the recent situation in Detroit, in which suburban reluctance may have led at least in part to the canceling of a light rail line down Woodward Avenue. But a comparison between the central city share of zero-vehicle households (when weighed in terms of the city’s share of the metropolitan area population) and transit funding — where a larger share of zero-vehicle households in the city should theoretically indicate less funding — shows a weak positive correlation (R-squared of 0.34), which is unexpected. An increasing divergence between central city and suburban poverty rates and transit funding shows the expected negative correlation (R-squared of 0.33), indicating that a significant difference in poverty rates within the metropolitan area is associated with somewhat of a decline in transit funding, though it cannot account for most of the differences between regions.

This evidence is purely correlative, not causative. This means that I cannot conclusively show from these data that the lower level of transit funding in poorer metropolitan regions results from those regions’ economic difficulties.

Even so, these data suggest strongly that people living in cities with high poverty rates and low median household incomes are likely to suffer from inadequately funded public transportation systems compared to their peers in low poverty rate and high median household income metropolitan areas. This produces an inequitable funding distribution that further disadvantages lower-income households in lower-income regions by forcing them to resort to the use of expensive private automobiles rather than cheaper transit. This certainly should put in question the assumption that it is in the best interests of residents for funding decisions about public services to be made at the local level.

We should reevaluate whether it is reasonable for metropolitan areas to take responsibility for funding transit, or whether such funding concerns would be better placed in the hands of national government decision-makers, who might be more likely to prioritize equal spending on transit across regions.

* This list includes Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Columbus, Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Memphis, Nashville, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Washington. I did not include Baltimore because I could not find funding data for Baltimore’s transit services apart from those of Maryland in general, since the state has a unified transit system. I did not include Fort Worth because it shares its MSA with larger Dallas.

** One could also argue that the lack of transit provision is strongly correlated with a reduced median income in the regions studied.

In the case of Charlotte, necessity may be the mother of invention.

Lacking sufficient revenues to construct the planned Red Line commuter railroad designed to connect Center City Charlotte with its northern suburbs, planners working for local transit agency CATS have developed a unique vision for its financing.

The $452 million upgrade of the existing Norfolk Southern O Line would allow a significant expansion of capacity not only for passenger trains, but also for freight trains running on the same tracks. In doing so, this agency’s planners are suggesting that the sometimes rivalry between the two types of transportation should really be approached hand-in-hand, especially for a project whose primary right-of-way extends far beyond dense urban neighborhoods that characterize the zones around most successful transit links. Perhaps for the first time so directly, transit-oriented development is proposed to be joined by “freight-oriented development.”

Charlotte’s ambitious transit plans — once scheduled to include five rapid transit lines radiating from downtown — have been significantly scaled back by the economic downturn, which hit this financial hub especially hard. Sales tax revenues have fallen far below initial expectations, delaying the completion of anything other than the initial Blue Line light rail corridor, which opened in 2007 between downtown and the southern suburbs. While the northeastern extension of the Blue Line and a short version of the downtown streetcar will move forward thanks to federal funding guarantees, the Red Line’s ridership forecasts of about 4,000 to 5,000 a day were not sufficient to meet relatively tough guidelines from Washington.

The Red Line’s 25 miles of new service, though, will be made possible thanks to a combination of state contributions (25% of the cost), local sales taxes already collected by CATS (25%), and value capture (50%), which would come in two forms. A tax-increment financing (TIF) district around stations would allow increases in property values in the area to be directed toward paying back the cost of the project. This would be done with no increase in the property tax rate but rather through a redirection of increases towards the project.

Similarly, a special assessment district is being considered to pay for the service. Unlike TIFs, these districts* would require property owners to agree to pay a marginal increase in their property taxes to be devoted directly to the Red Line.

The new “Unified Benefit District” that would be affected by these value capture mechanisms would take advantage of both the significant population growth expected north of Charlotte over the next few years and encourage freight-oriented development — which would together make the project financeable. The plan would include significant space to locate new development around stations — indeed, 10,000 housing units are either already under construction or planned. Certain developments would be built in collaboration with CATS.

More intriguingly, businesses that require rail freight access would be encouraged to locate between stations. They would be able to connect their own tracks directly to the main rail line. The argument made by the project’s planners is that the area along the line’s right-of-way includes plenty of space for infill industrial space. Why not take advantage of the increase in rail capacity?

As the map below demonstrates, it does seem logical to encourage walkable residential and office space around stops and freight-based industrial space between the stations.

Transit services, taking a total of 40 minutes, would be provided every half-hour at peak and every hour off-peak. The improvements planned for the corridor would therefore make it possible to run more freight trains at off-peak hours without disrupting the primary travel needs of riders. Operations will have to be coordinated, but with positive train control and other safety measures in place, it is hard to see what would prevent this project from adapting to the needs of both passengers and freight.

Ten stations, several of which will be within Charlotte city limits but others of which will serve suburban towns including Huntersville, Cornelius, Davidson, and Mooresville, will be connected by 2017 if construction begins as planned in 2014. In order to make that possible, however, each of these municipalities — in addition to Mecklenburg and Iredell Counties — will have to get on board with the tax plan. That will not necessarily be an easy task, at least considering debates in recent years over the relative importance of different transit projects in the Charlotte region. Commissioners of Iredell County, significantly, have been less than thrilled at the idea of sacrificing tax dollars to aid CATS.

In addition, the special tax districts that will be necessary to complete the line will require at least half of affected property owners, controlling two-third of land value, to agree to the deal. It is not altogether evident that there is universal agreement on the need to improve access for passenger and freight railroads in the metropolitan area. Will they agree that the benefits of the new rail line are worth the increased taxes they are being asked to contribute to construct the project?

Nonetheless, these plans point to a potentially groundbreaking financing deal that could reshape the way commuter rail lines are built throughout the United States. Running along a corridor that is not particularly dense, it would likely be too costly and inefficient to provide very frequent passenger trains between stops. Yet connecting Charlotte to its northern suburbs, allowing the central city to expand its core and promoting dense downtown districts in the outlying town, is in the region’s interest.

Freight rail transport is more ecologically friendly than its truck-based competitor, but there is not enough capital in industrial activities in the Charlotte area alone to invest hundreds of millions in new tracks.

By combining the Red Line project’s public transport mission with that of encouraging economic development in industrial activities, the project becomes more realistic. Half a billion dollars in track improvements will go not only to passengers but also to freight. Incentives for new development will go not only to residential but also to warehousing. Those represent an exciting pooling of resources towards mutually beneficial goals.

* Similar to those often used in downtowns as Business Improvement Districts, or BIDs.

Image above: Red Line corridor map, from CATS

» A 30-year plan to bring increased bus service and three new rail lines to the Research Triangle gets off to a promising start with an election in Durham.

In 2000, North Carolina’s two largest metropolitan regions each planned big transit improvements, and each had received preliminary approval to do so from the Federal Transit Administration.The Triangle’s leaders wanted to build a diesel multiple unit-powered regional rail line connecting Durham and Raleigh while Charlotte’s elected officials planned an electric light rail line linking downtown with its southern suburbs.

Ten years later, Charlotte’s Blue Line has been up and running for almost four years, attracting higher than expected ridership. The Triangle’s efforts were flummoxed in November 2005 by an FTA ruling that the regional rail project was not cost effective, and the project was cancelled.

Yet the passage yesterday of a half-cent sales tax increase dedicated to transit in Durham County offers strong evidence that the region’s electorate is ready to invest in new public transportation options — the referendum passed with a large 60% majority in approval. Durham’s endorsement of the transit improvement program, like similar efforts in cities from Los Angeles to Denver, provides clear evidence that voters are willing and even excited to pay higher taxes in exchange for tangible improvements in transportation.* If in the U.S. Congress future funding for mobility remains tenuous at best, local level support for such policies is clear.

For the Triangle, this is the first step towards the completion of what will not only be a vast upgrade over current transit offerings in the region but also a significant improvement on the 2000 regional rail plan.

Triangle leaders have learned from Charlotte’s success. Realizing that the FTA would be unwilling to commit to a project without a stronger demonstration of local funding efforts, politicians pushed the North Carolina State Assembly to allow counties to submit sales tax increases to their voters, an option that had been reserved for Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County until 2009. Charlotte’s half-cent sales tax provided a quarter of the light rail line’s cost, while the Triangle’s 2000 plan could cover less than 10% of costs with local revenues, which came from a tax on rental cars and vehicle registrations.

Durham (population 270,000) is the first of the three Triangle core counties to put a transit sales tax referendum up to voters; Wake County (whose 900,000 population includes the cities of Raleigh and Cary) and Orange County (130,000 inhabitants, many of whom are in Chapel Hill) are likely to follow up next year now that the transit plan has received its first public backing. Each county will receive improvements roughly in proportion to the taxes locals pay; if one county’s voters reject the referendum, the other counties will keep their revenues and continue work on their own projects. (Update: Durham County Board members may have said they will not levy the tax unless Wake and or Orange County does as well.)

The implementation plan, developed by Triangle Transit the Triangle Regional Transit Program, will be implemented over the next thirty years as long as tax revenues come in as expected. It will offer big improvements in bus service soon and new rail links beginning a decade or so from now.**

Upgrading the region’s bus network is a top priority and is the ideal first step towards a big investment in fixed-guideway transit. Charlotte, which substantially increased bus services once its half-cent sales tax was approved in 1998, more than doubled its daily transit ridership over ten years, mostly thanks to bus riders (though the light rail project helped as well). Some of the $17.2 million in sales tax receipts Durham expects to collect annually beginning in April 2013 2012 will immediately go to 25,000 additional annual bus service hours, with another 25,000 new hours planned by 2015 2013. This represents a 28% increase over current service levels and it will allow 15-minute peak frequencies on several routes. Similar improvements are planned for Orange and Wake Counties if and when their voters approve their respective referenda. (The Town of Chapel Hill wants to use some of its future funds to pay for a bus rapid transit project along Martin Luther King Boulevard, its primary north-sout thoroughfare, by 2017.)

In the meantime, Durham and the rest of the region will continue their work on the long-term fixed-guideway rail projects that are the headliners here. In the 2000 plan, the whole point was the intercity link between Raleigh and Durham; in the past few years, Triangle planners decided to realign — and broaden — their focus. Not only would a commuter rail line running at limited frequencies be developed to connect the two big downtowns by 2018, but two light rail lines sharing parts of the same corridor will run from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to Durham and from suburban Cary to northeast Raleigh, via that city’s downtown.

Unlike the regional rail plan, which would have had twelve stations spread across 28 miles of service — more like commuter rail than urban service — the two light rail lines will have a total of 38 stations along 35 miles of service, meaning most people along the route will be within walking distance of a stop. In addition, the light rail lines will run partially in the existing railroad right-of-way (as would have the regional rail plan) but also within street medians in some urban sections, such as the newly developed Erwin Road near Duke University Hospital and N.C. 54 in and around Chapel Hill’s new urbanist Meadowmont development. Street alignments are generally cheaper and more pedestrian accessible than their peers in independent rights-of-way.

Together, these projects would attract roughly 32,000 daily riders by 2035 at a cost of $3.5 billion, thus making it far easier and more reliable to get around these cities by transit.

Instead of rushing to complete the rail connections as soon as possible, the plan is designed to build up a reserve fund for capital costs and slowly pass through the FTA’s grant process. This is an appropriate response to unexpected changes in the economy and the delays that are likely to be encountered when dealing with Washington. Thus the 2025 completion dates for the light rail projects may seem far off but they are realistic.

In order to sponsor these projects, regional officials are counting on the passage of the sales tax referenda in each of the three Triangle counties. They will also use a $10 vehicle registration fee and rental car tax (both already in place), as well as 50% capital program support from Washington and 25% support from the State of North Carolina (roughly what Charlotte received for its light rail project). Collectively, the three counties would locally raise more than $2 billion in year-of-expenditure dollars by 2035 (Durham County, for instance, will collect about $730 million), enough to pay for the local share of all of these projects and the operations costs not only of the rail lines but also of the improved bus network.

Compared with the 2000 program, this is a far more comprehensive set of improvements that will do more to change the transit access of the typical resident of the area — especially since much of the funding is designed for bus service, which was ignored in the previous plan. Despite the fact that they will attract new riders into the transit system, the rail services as currently proposed are not perfect. One hopes that the long planning process will allow further refinements that ensure that the program is as cost-effective and traveler-oriented as possible.

The biggest trouble with the plan, like the previous one, is that it attempts to impose what is effectively radial transit on a multipolar region whose most prominent employment center is actually a series of isolated office blocks in the zone between Durham and Raleigh, the Research Triangle Park (RTP). Though RTP has been the region’s growth generator for decades, its radically suburban form makes it difficult to envision efficient transit there.

Meanwhile, there is relatively little commuting between Raleigh and Durham. The cities are too far apart to be true suburbs of one another; most people who work in Downtown Durham live in Durham County and most people who work in Downtown Raleigh live in Wake County. This means that the $650 million commuter rail line expected to pass through RTP and between Durham and Raleigh will have limited value — this was, after all, the problem with the 2000 regional rail proposal.

For the same reasons, the new focus on light rail connecting Chapel Hill to Durham and Wake County’s suburbs to Downtown Raleigh is much more reasonable. There has been significant growth in both residential and worker populations in downtown Durham and Raleigh since 2000, so there is both demand and interest in getting into these cities more easily. Connections to Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University, which have a collective student body and staff of more than 100,000 (not including their medical centers), are likely to make the rail services quite popular, especially for people who live nearby but cannot afford parking in expensive university lots.

Nonetheless, the access provided to the respective downtowns is weak according to current plans. While Durham’s downtown will be within half a mile of two stops, no station will be directly next to the city center; in Raleigh, a lively debate this summer over the appropriate alignment for rail through downtown resulted in a compromise that puts some much of the business district a full mile away from the nearest station. Meanwhile, while the UNC Hospital is at the terminus of the proposed Durham-Chapel Hill light rail line, the main sections of the University and Chapel Hill’s downtown are both about a mile away. These could be fatal flaws in terms of attracting ridership.

Just as problematic is the choice of light rail for the Durham-to-Chapel Hill corridor. The alternatives analysis completed for the line suggests that a true bus rapid transit alternative with an independent guideway would actually attract more total riders at a far lower cost, with only slightly slower travel times. How is this possible, when studies have shown that more commuters will ride rail than bus when similar services are offered? Because the analysis included the possibility of interlining local bus routes onto the fixed-guideway for parts of their route (see map below from the study). This would effectively make travel faster and more reliable even for people whose origins and destinations are not directly along the fixed guideway line.

But local officials have recommended light rail, primarily because of its perceived transit-oriented development potential. This may be a short-sighted decision, since it denies the conclusion that overall transit ridership would be higher with an interlined system. But it also reflects the fact that the route includes several stations in greenfields (at Leigh Village and Gateway) that are poised for significant growth if developers heed the call. Would they do so with a BRT system?

One additional point: If the commuter rail project and light rail projects are completed, they should be developed jointly, not independently. The current proposal recommends four rail tracks in some sections of the Durham-to-Raleigh corridor to allow for two light rail tracks and two shared between the commuter rail line, Amtrak, and freight trains. The section of line between the Ninth Street and Alston Avenue Stations in Durham, for instance, would require the installation of two new light rail tracks and a new commuter rail track (there is currently only one track there). This is overkill considering the proposed train frequencies (maximum 10-minute headways) and will cost more than is necessary.

With the advent of positive train control, the physical separation into different corridors between light rail and freight trains will no longer be necessary. Were the Triangle granted a waiver from the current Federal Railroad Administration rules, it could use tram-train vehicles for its light rail routes and use the same tracks as the commuter rail, thus reducing the necessary expenditures in the shared portions of the line.

Despite these objections, the overall transit plan for the Triangle appears mostly well thought-through. The light rail routes would run through the densest sections of the area and would stop at most major destinations. For a quickly growing region with few public transportation options today, that’s great news.

Thanks to the efforts of Durham’s citizens yesterday, the plan is also actually fundable. Simply proposing a tax cannot be enough to have it approved, of course. Like other cities that have passed transit taxes, Durham benefited from the near-universal support from public officials and the creation of an active supporter group promoting a clear, exciting plan. Wake and Orange Counties will need similar efforts to make the full regional plan possible.***

Bottom image: Interlining BRT on Durham-Chapel Hill high capacity transit project, from Our Transit Future

Update, 11 November 2011: I was contacted by an official who noted that the tram-train idea would be impossible considering current rules of the North Carolina Railroad (a private company 100% owned by the state), which owns the track. The company has so far been unwilling to consider having light rail run along its tracks. Thus the issue here is not only the FRA but also the opinions of the host railroad.

* This is apparently not true in suburban Cleveland, where two separate efforts to maintain bus service were roundly defeated in votes yesterday. But it was true in Vancouver, Washington, where voters endorsed a sales tax for transit, and in Cincinnati, where an effort to block work on the streetcar was ignored.

** Though the rail system will be developed by Triangle Transit, a regional authority that operates intercity buses, Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh each have their own bus services that at least for now will remain separate. These agencies will receive proportional tax funds to improve operations and will be expected to coordinate with the rail services once they are running.

*** Feel free to blame the length of this article on the fact that I am a native of Durham.

» Over the long run, California’s fast train project remains within an acceptable range of costs, despite recent increases.

The release of the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s revised business plan on Tuesday underlined concerns about the future viability of the nation’s biggest proposed transportation project: Not only would its completion have to be delayed significantly — to 2033 or later — but projected costs have risen dramatically, to $98 billion in year-of-expenditure dollars. In a political environment where making a large long-term commitment to anything other than the military is almost impossible, the increasing costs required to pay for the program put in doubt its future. This fast train project designed to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2h40 is not dead, but its completion is less likely now than it was last week.

The steadily rising nature of the public expenditures that would be required to build the project as now designed have been roundly criticized in some quarters, and it is true that the project’s increasing reliance on very heavy and expensive infrastructures like viaducts and tunnels may be unnecessary by international standards. But the project’s per-mile costs — even with the cost increase — are not hugely different from those in other developed countries for rail systems offering speeds of up to 220 mph.

Yet the broader issue is how the project’s price compares to that of existing public sector transportation investments and the economy as a whole, and as the chart above demonstrates, its ostensibly enormous price is, well, relatively small.

Between now and 2033, the rail project would cost between $65 and $75 billion (in 2010 dollars). Over the same period, Caltrans, California’s Department of Transportation, can be expected to spend at least $286 billion (also in 2010 dollars), mostly on roads projects, assuming that its current annual budget of about $13 billion (including federal and state outlays) stays intact. In truth, considering that there is considerable support for increasing infrastructure spending in general, that figure is likely to go up considerably.

Compare those figures to the state’s GDP, which is estimated at about $1.9 trillion a year. Over the course of twenty-two years, the state will produce $42 trillion in output (again, in 2010 dollars) — assuming no growth in the economy, despite the fact that California’s population is expected to grow by seven to seventeen million people by 2040.

This very conservative* estimate, then, suggests that a high-cost rail project would not only represent only 0.18% of a heavily depressed state economy over 22 years, but also that it would only account for 21% of the broader state transportation budget, which would remain mostly focused on highway construction and maintenance, as in the status quo. On average, the U.S. invested between 2.5 and 3% of its GDP on publicly sponsored infrastructure between the 1950s and 1990s. The full cost of the California project thus comes to appear far less dramatic.

The project becomes even less problematic considering it is, like almost every high-speed rail project, expected to be operationally profitable, and that its benefits to the society will be larger than its costs. The analysis done by the authority, based on decreased travel times, lower use of fuel, reduction in pollution, increases in productivity and reliability, and a decline in traffic accidents, suggests a decent benefits-cost ratio of 1.5 to 1.8. This does not include other benefits, such as the ability to avoid building hundreds of lane-miles of new highways and expanded airports to accommodate the mobility needs of millions of new California residents.

Nor is such a significant investment in one project out of the international norm. The Grand Paris Express, designed to connect the suburbs of the French capital with a circumferential rail network, will cost about $40 billion to build (including ancillary improvements in the existing system). This alone will represent about 0.4% of the Paris region’s GDP between now and 2025. Both the Paris and California projects will contribute massively to the economic growth of the regions in which they are being built.

The question, then, is two-fold: First, what level of investment should the country make in its transportation system? Second, are other transportation projects more valuable than the California rail project?

The first issue is political: Is there sufficient support among electoral constituencies in California to allow for the continued sponsorship of what will be a drawn-out process with plenty of controversy? California Governor Jerry Brown appears to remain on board, as does, surprisingly, at least one member of the state GOP delegation. The rail authority’s attempt to stage the project — beginning with a segment between the Central Valley and either the Los Angeles Basin or Bay Area, and then moving for a full-length line — is one way to make the project more palatable in the short term.

More broadly, the state must make a decision about how it wants to invest in its transportation future. As already noted, the state department of transportation is likely to invest about $300 billion in mostly highway infrastructure over the next two decades. With so much spending directed towards the roads network, it cannot be easy to dismiss a large spending commitment to rail. But the difference between the two is obvious: Because the rail line is a single project (despite its statewide implications), it is viewed in terms of its huge costs and long-term lifecycle; the roads improvements likely to occur during the same period are four times as expensive — but broken into much smaller, shorter-term projects, so they are far less politically vulnerable.

And the system will surely need further support from the federal government, which the authority hopes to convince (over the next few decades) to chip in $20 billion or more in grants. Because of the insecure fiscal situation, private funding for the project will have to wait. Nevertheless, a future Congress that considers high-speed rail an acceptable mode of transport will likely fund projects nationwide; remember that earlier in 2011, President Obama proposed entirely seriously investing $53 billion in fast trains. Though that effort was not successful, the idea is clearly on the minds of policymakers.

None of this suggests that it would be a bad idea to reduce the costs of the project. The cost of the line cannot continue to increase infinitely (though the authority’s math in this business plan is based on the considerable preliminary engineering completed since the last plan in 2009, so that doesn’t seem likely). The whole line cannot be put into tunnels or onto viaducts in order to avoid community opposition, or it will become impossible to fund.

At a certain point, the question is therefore whether there are other programs that would provide better societal benefit than the high-speed rail system, and this is a valid conversation worth exploring. From my perspective, moving the money into roads infrastructure would be simpleminded considering the need to expand mobility options and decrease levels of pollution. It could also be possible to use the funds for local transit expansion, which has plenty of unmet capital needs, especially in California’s largest cities. But who in the state is proposing a comprehensive effort to upgrade rail and bus networks? And how would that spending address the needs of intercity travel?

* And admittedly back-of-the-envelope, but the point is to highlight proportions here, not specific values.

» Despite an excellent proposal and significant state support, the project cannot hope to attract private investors without a larger commitment of aid from Washington. Meanwhile, Europe continues to invest.

The long hoped-for private financing necessary to construct the California High-Speed Rail project will not come as easily as originally planned.

That, at least, is the conclusion of the authority empowered to build the project, the nation’s single-largest infrastructure program. According to the Los Angeles Times, in a letter to legislators this week the agency warned that the private money that it had counted on to cover a third of the project’s more than $45 billion costs would likely not be available until after parts of the line were up and running. The problem is that investors are concerned about the fact that of the expected major contribution from the federal government, only $3 billion has been authorized so far — and opposition in Congress to President Obama’s high-speed rail program means more money will be difficult to get, at least until after the 2012 elections.

The letter was essentially a preview of the authority’s new business plan, which is due to be submitted November 1. The plan must be approved by the state legislators in order for state funding to be spent on the 220 mph line, which is designed to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco, with future links to San Diego and Sacramento.

The news is embarrassing for the authority, which has been arguing for years that it could attract billions in private funds before the project was ready to be built, but it is not altogether surprising given the situation in which it has been placed. As I argued in mid-2009, California may well “never receive a guarantee that the feds will fully fund their prescribed share of the entire corridor’s construction costs. This is a huge problem, because a public agency shouldn’t be expending massive amounts of money on sections of a train system it doesn’t know it can finish completely. The private partners California hopes to interest in its program will not be excited about helping out on a train line they aren’t sure will ever open.”

And indeed, this has been a legitimate concern about the Obama Administration’s high-speed rail program since it was first formulated. Though it is designed to sponsor major projects like California’s, its small appropriation ability means that the commitments it should be making — California wanted upwards of $10 billion from Washington, equal to the full amount thus far appropriated by Congress to the national program — cannot be distributed. The fact that the House and Senate have yet to agree on a long-term transportation bill, and the fact that Republicans have shown no interest so far in funding more intercity rail programs using the public purse, suggests that the situation is unlikely to get better for now.

This is likely to put a dent in plans to open the new rail line by 2020.

The California authority has developed a series of potential solutions to the problem, which must be solved if the agency wants to use the federal grants it has received thus far, since they must be spent by 2017. One option is to use federal loan guarantees and tax credits to provide an incentive for private investors to put their funds into the project or to leverage the $9 billion in state funds (authorized by the public in a 2008 vote) through the bond market, which could allow a tripling of available money. This would all have to be paid off eventually through public sector tax funds or user fees. While the California network is to be operationally profitable like virtually every high-speed rail system, it is unclear whether receipts will be large enough to cover capital costs.

The other possibility is to shorten the planned route, replacing what was originally supposed to be a full new line from San Francisco to Los Angeles with a feeder line that would speed up existing Amtrak trains. Because the federal government has committed to a Central Valley segment between Merced and Bakersfield as the first section fo the route to be constructed, it seems likely that the authority would have to concentrate its resources on this project.

In some ways, this could be a reasonable approach. Trains between Oakland and Bakersfield currently take six hours to complete their journey, but the high-speed line would allow 52-minute trips between Merced and Bakersfield, compared to three hours today. Thus constructing just this segment would reduce Oakland-Bakersfield trips to less than four hours — a massive reduction in journey times — if the appropriate rolling stock were available.

Of course, this would do little to address the greater concern, which was supposed to be linking San Francisco and Los Angeles in 2h40. Currently, there are no direct trains into San Francisco, and the coastal route along which Amtrak trains run from Oakland to L.A. requires 11 to 12 hours of journey times. There is no train link between L.A. and Bakersfield. Because of the federal government’s previous decision to concentrate its resources in the Central Valley, resolving this issue will have to wait for another time if more funding is not found in the short term. But one wonders whether a link between Oakland and Bakersfield will be enough in itself to generate profitable ridership that convinces private investors to commit to the project, as the authority seems to be implying.

This news comes just as the European Union announced its most recent Ten-T program, which is investing €31.7 billion in ten E.U.-scale corridors, most of which are designated for high-speed rail. Member countries have committed to hundreds of billions of euros more to build the projects, and indeed, there are active plans for new lines in most European countries. This is a prime example of governments thinking seriously about how to invest their limited resources in transportation projects that will pay off in the long-term.

Some might argue that the United States and Europe are simply different, that private investors here recognize that Americans will not ride trains and thus will not commit to funding irrational projects. But the ability of European countries to attract private partners to cover up to half of the costs of their new rail lines has a lot more to do with the fact that there has been a solid commitment from governments there to invest in those programs, whereas American policy on the issue has been erratic at best.

The problem is that California has been shunted into an impossible position: forced to make due with very limited federal funds despite a large commitment from state voters, the authority cannot attract private dollars. This is not, I would argue strongly, the fault of the authority or the Department of Transportation, which has funded it so far; blame rests entirely on a Congress that has been incapable of having a serious discussion (and making a final decision) about the merits of major investments in the nation’s transportation infrastructure. Instead, it continues to hand out small amounts, enough to keep projects like California’s alive but not enough to actually implement them.

But California is still in a bind. It must either must cancel work — a dead-end proposition that will inevitably require unearthing the proposal in a decade — or build a much-shortened segment with far fewer benefits to the state. While it would be nice to get from Oakland to Bakersfield more quickly, the advantages of such a project pale in comparison to those of a full San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line.

None of this news should be cause for celebration for opponents of spending on government infrastructure. The millions of people who are expected to ride the high-speed rail system every year will have to get between their destinations by some mode, and California’s air and roads infrastructure is at capacity. No high-speed system means spending just as much — or more — public dollars on upgrades to the existing system. Meanwhile, even if the financial costs of upgrades to highways and airports were similar to those of building the new rail network, the society’s economic costs of doing so are completely different: The high-speed rail system would offer an ecologically friendly alternative that reinforces the city centers of the state instead of furthering sprawl.

Without a real sign of commitment from the federal government, however, projects like California’s simply will not be able to be constructed in the United States. This speaks volumes of the ability of the American public sector to invest in projects that are beneficial to the society as a whole from a long-term perspective.

Image above: California High-Speed Rail, from California High-Speed Rail Authority

» Congress isn’t able to do much in terms of passing new legislation — but the Department of Transportation hasn’t hesitated to move forward to fund intercity rail projects.

Americans are frustrated with the Congress: Over 80% of the population disapproves of the job the national legislature is doing. And no wonder. With the unemployment situation out of control and the economy still on the skids, this is the time for government action.

All we seem to be getting, however, are repeated demands from Republicans to reduce spending drastically — and meek replies from Democrats worried about upsetting the electorate. President Obama’s Jobs Bill, introduced twenty days ago, would provide a real, albeit too small, stimulus to the economy, specifically through the construction and refurbishment of infrastructure.* But the legislation has yet to be introduced in either house of Congress. Meanwhile, getting any transportation spending approved other than short-term extensions of the previous multi-year bill (which expired 729 days ago) has been impossible thanks to disagreement between the parties and a general reluctance to identify funding sources.

When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives early this year, they promised to fight to eliminate previously approved grants for states across the nation to invest in intercity rail projects. Facing a Democratic Senate, that would not be an easy proposition, but the intense effort to reduce government spending over the past year could have meant the loss of funds already promised to states — but for projects not quite ready for prime time.

In the meantime, the Department of Transportation has been pushing grants out of the federal government’s hands as quickly as possible so that they can not be rescinded.

In September alone, the Federal Railroad Administration has approved hundreds of millions of dollars for intercity rail upgrades nationwide: $149 million for New York State, $116 million for New England, $49 million for Texas, $48 million for North Carolina and Virginia, $35 million for the Northeast Corridor, $31 million for Washington State, and $13 million for Oregon, among others. Earlier this summer, hundreds of millions of dollars were appropriated to California and the Northeast. Unless states turn back the money, unlikely considering that the projects have gotten so far and their pro-rail sponsors, these funds cannot be taken back by Congress.

It’s worth questioning how ready most of these states are to use these funds now that they have them, or how quickly they’ll be able to get construction started. The first high-speed rail grants were announced in January 2010; other than the project to upgrade tracks between Chicago and St. Louis, has any major construction begun?

The DOT, perhaps, wouldn’t be rushing these grants out to the states if it were completely confident that the high-speed and intercity rail funding program were alive and well. Under an Obama Administration and a fully Democratic Congress, that would be likely.

But the Senate came very close a week and a half ago to approving a fiscal year 2012 budget that had no money at all for high-speed rail — and Mr. Obama seemed ready to go along, in the spirit of budget-cutting bipartisanship. The compromise that was eventually reached last week saved $100 million for the mode (a pittance compared to years passed), though even that could face considerable obstacles in the House.

Though Republicans now seem willing to spend a bit more money on transportation than they did a few months back because of an outcry that set in once it became clear that initial plans would reduce funding (and therefore transportation-related jobs) by 30%, their investment strategies would do little to increase the annual federal appropriations now spent on mobility. We are at a standstill, unable to make a big move.

What has been made manifest over the past few months is that President Obama’s efforts to alter American transport policy have been far from universally accepted, that their long-term effect on U.S. mobility is unclear, and that the DOT has been forced to descend into a defensive mode in which it has no choice but to push grants out as quickly as it can for fears that legislators will change their minds mid-stream.

Mr. Obama’s affection for high-speed rail is well-known, and he has included it as an integral element of his transportation plans from the beginning, unlike former President Bill Clinton, who said he cared about intercity rail during the 1992 campaign but then proceeded to forget about it. Yet, possibly because of low approval ratings stemming from other issues, the current Administration has been unable to convince other politicians — especially many Republicans — that such projects are worthy of investment. Mr. Obama’s message, rebooted several times (first as a way to “win the future,” then as part of the Jobs Bill), simply has not come across loud and clear.

These difficulties, along with the GOP-Governor-forced destruction of three marquee projects in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida, has once again reinforced the idea that Americans simply cannot handle the idea of spending government funds on intercity rail — despite the quite positive effects it has produced abroad. The fact that the Congress continues to debate transportation investments in terms of mode, with a certain pot of money reserved for roads, another pot for transit, etc., suggests that few in power have taken seriously the concept that transportation decision-making should be mode-neutral and oriented towards providing the best-possible mobility, economic, and environmental benefits. The fact that future rail investments are predicated on getting specific outlays for that mode is a sad reflection of the way we currently invest in our travel corridors and in our cities;  we seem to be considering mostly vehicles, not the passengers in them.

So the DOT moves forward, articulating a strategy to distribute the funds it does have as quickly as possible. This is not a long-term approach and it is not a sustainable one.

* The U.S. Department of Transportation recently announced how Mr. Obama’s Jobs Bill dollars would be distributed: $27 billion for rebuilding roads and bridges; $9 billion for rebuilding transit systems; $5 billion for TIGER-like competitive grants; $4 billion for high-speed rail projects, $3 billion for aviation improvements; and $10 billion for an infrastructure bank.

Image above: Albany-Rensselaer Station, set to receive aid from the Federal Railroad Administration for improvements, from Flickr user mava (cc).

People are armed with powerful tools that often determine quite directly the future of our society: Their wallets. With the flick of a credit card or the passing over of a wad of cash, an individual aids the society as a whole in determining which products are most desired and which services are most needed. This is an incredible tool of the market economy which — though seriously skewed by the influence of powerful economic interests whose primary goal is increasing personal wealth accumulation — allows for the modern world to be pretty efficient in offering people the things they need to survive.

The market’s power to determine what sorts of things to produce and what sorts of things to discard is an important element of a transportation practitioner’s toolkit, as the value individuals confer on mobility as compared to other aspects of their lives should play a role in deciding how much services to provide and where to do so. It would be nonsensical to promote the construction of busways no one wanted to use or buy trains no one needed to ride in, thus we estimate demand and then alter provision of transport based on use.

If the market can and should be used to determine what transportation offerings to provide, why not charge the full cost to provide those offerings to the person demanding mobility and adjust services to adapt to need, instead of subsidizing trains and buses as we have come to do in almost every city around the world? This, in essence, is the argument transportation economists frequently make and it is one that David Levinson of the University of Minnesota repeated this week. “Maybe you want transit,” Levinson writes. “But maybe you would rather have the cash I am spending to provide you subsidized transit service so you can do something else with it. The only way to know what the best allocation of resources is, is to charge for things what they cost.”

In theory, this seems like a valid line of thought. Here’s an example. You have two choices: Take a ride to your city’s most beautiful park for a fare of $2 on your local bus (with the aid of a $2 subsidy chipped in by your local government), or walk to the nearest, less exciting park and buy an ice cream on the way for $3.00. Thinking about the relative merits of the two possibilities, you might determine that the trip to the better park is actually the best deal (since it is cheaper for you), but for the society at large, it’s more expensive. If you were charged the full $4 cost of providing the bus ride to the park, you might think twice and pick the ice cream option instead — which is cheaper for the society as a whole. But the mobility subsidy is providing an inappropriate incentive to do just the opposite and is causing people, as Levinson writes, “To behave inefficiently.”

But we provide subsidies nonetheless, generally because we believe it is important to provide affordable mobility. This is a political and welfare goal shared by most modern societies. Is this a mistaken policy? Would it make more sense to encourage transit providers to be fiscally independent, so that they do not have to rely on limited allocations of public funds?

The answer comes down to two questions — whether or not the subsidy provided to transit is appropriate considering other transportation offerings; and whether a situation in which there were no subsidies would produce the appropriate social environment from the perspective of social equity.

Jarrett Walker tackled the first issue yesterday, noting that there are significant subsidies provided to highways and local roadways and their users, so eliminating aid to public transportation alone would be poor policy. In addition, he noted that there are significant positive externalities generated by transit — like more efficient land-use patterns, lessened pollution, freer-flowing roads, and decreased traffic fatality rates — that deserve to be compensated by subsidies.

While a surface-level analysis might suggest that the fares for transit should simply equal the cost to provide a ride, a more serious discussion would recognize that moving people away from transit and into automobiles would have negative side effects. This suggests that we either tax the alternatives to transit — the automobile, primarily — at their full cost to society, or we do not have an economic rationale to eliminate subsidies to public transportation. There are few if, ands, or buts around that.

The second question — whether a situation without subsidies would be acceptable — is an ideological one. Levinson describes transit providers as “Transportation organizations first, not welfare organizations. They should be considered public utilities rather than departments of government, which provide a useful service for a price to their users.” Instead of forcing bus and rail operators to run services that are less-than-efficient from a profit-maximizing perspective, politicians should be forced to directly vote and choose to subsidize those services that they consider most important. “This would entirely change public and political perception of transit services,” Levinson writes. ”It might also result in fewer bad routes being funded, since it would be crystal clear where the subsidies lay.”

In my mind, this is an appealing solution in some ways, since it would take advantage of the democratic processes we already have to make what are important societal decisions about mobility. If people want better, subsidized transit services, they can vote in politicians who support such offerings in addition to the routes that are profitable.

On the other hand, isn’t that what we have done already? There is a constant battle over funding for transit, and it is because of political differences over whether and how much bus and rail routes should be subsidized. Our current situation — as topsy-turvy as it may be — is reflective of democratic conflict over transportation funding. What is the alternative? Removing transportation from the democratic sphere and simply providing those services that are directly profitable?

This would be disastrous, both for the reasons cited above by Jarrett Walker but also, and even more importantly, because the fundamental logic that underpins Levinson’s argument is flawed. While it might be nice to imagine a world in which every individual has the ability to act as a rational actor in a fair marketplace full of decisions that reflect efficiency and true costs, we do not inhabit it. Whether we like it or not, social inequality in American society has increased significantly over the past forty years, and poverty is a real problem.

Why bring up these issues? Because Levinson describes a situation in which everyone has the option to pay the true cost of transportation services, but in fact many do not. A more efficient approach to ensure that people make the most cost-effective decisions might be one in which everyone got a reasonable amount of money to begin with, but we do not live in a particularly redistribution-inclined society.

So we are left with alternatives along the sidelines. We can crusade for the elimination of transportation services that cannot pay for themselves and in the process eliminate essential mobility for people who need to get around now, all the while hoping that the poor will at some point be handed adequate funds to make economically sound decisions. Or we can recognize reality and admit that transit services are at their core not just transportation organizations but also welfare providers.

This may be a disappointing conclusion, since it provides no insight as to how the state of funding for transit could be improved, but it does suggest that there is no way of getting around the fact that subsidies will continue to be needed in the running of public transportation unless some future technological advance reduces operations costs dramatically. There are plenty of ways to improve the performance and cost effectiveness of transit systems, but we cannot ignore the fact that transit plays an important redistributionist role.

Update, 21 September: David Levinson responds, writing that “I expect that the places that would see service dropped once you went to an appropriate funding model are not the poor inner-city areas, which are (or ought to be with appropriate management/regulation/etc.) profitable given the relatively high densities, but instead the suburban routes.” The problem, in my mind, is that those suburban places are increasingly impoverished themselves. We can no longer associate density with poverty as we have in the past.

A year and two months away from the United States’ next big election, politics in Washington are at a virtual standstill, with Democrats and Republicans completely at odds with one another when it comes to government policies. The situation has aggravated an already difficult funding situation for the nation’s transportation, which lacks an adequate funding source and faces a murky future. Meanwhile, the unemployment situation worsens.

President Obama’s speech tonight, in which he introduced a proposed American Jobs Act, was designed to stake a strong ground in opposition to the anti-investment GOP. In addition to a number of other policies, it promoted transportation investment as a great opportunity for reducing the rate of joblessness and improving the sometimes miserable condition of the country’s highways, rail, and transit. While the speech is unlikely to result in much Congressional action — Republicans do not seem inclined to support any of the President’s initiatives — it came across as thoughtful and in line with the nation’s great economic needs of the moment.

For transportation, the bill would direct $50 billion to the construction of highways, transit, rail, and aviation. Another measure would deposit $10 billion into an infrastructure bank. Both funds would identify and sponsor the projects most likely to spur job growth as quickly as possible. Though the proposal was not laid out in further detail tonight, it represented another variation of the ramp-up in investments in transportation the Obama Administration has been attempting to promote for several years now.

Even so, the project was a clear step back from the far more ambitious proposals Mr. Obama made at the beginning of the year, when he suggested directing $70.4 billion to highways, $18.5 billion to transit grants, and $8.0 billion to high-speed rail in 2012 alone.

In response to the President’s new plans, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) criticized him for being unwilling to describe how the investments would be paid for, evidently unwilling to accept the Keynesian evidence that in difficult economic periods it is a good idea for governments to use deficit funding to support the economy. Chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee John Mica (R-FL) immediately articulated a position against the plans for the infrastructure bank, arguing that states should take on the responsibility.

Just yesterday, the Republican leaders of the House Appropriations Committee unveiled their proposals for massive reductions in spending at the U.S. Department of Transportation, reducing highway expenditures to $27.7 billion in 2012 (from $41.8 billion in 2011) and transit formula spending to $5.2 billion (from $8.3 billion). No new New Start or Small Start transit capital grants would be funded. The high-speed rail program, which had once been one of Mr. Obama’s signature policies, would be entirely cut. These are austerity measures completely out of step with an economy desperately in need of stimulus, job creation, and infrastructure improvements.

Alternatives to Mr. Obama’s plan that would continue to limit transportation funding from the federal government have little credibility — at least if we believe that keeping the nation’s mobility networks in a condition of acceptable repair is an important national goal. States have limited ability to increase their indebtedness, and the cutbacks that have followed the recession have demonstrated that governors and state legislatures have been almost universally unwilling (or unable) to invest their own funds to shore up their roads and transit lines — in spite of a decline in support from D.C.

At this point, with a Congress that has now dithered on the matter of transportation funding for 709 days, the President’s proposal is about as good as it gets. That doesn’t mean, however, that it has any chance of making it into law.