There are two interesting transit actions in Congress:
First, Streetsblog reports (via Yonah Freemark at the transport politic) that the Senate version of the war funding bill has a provision that 10% of transit stimulus funds may be used for operating, rather than capital, expenses. A bunch of Congressmen, led by Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR), is urging the conference committee to include the provision. The only Washington rep to sign (pdf) is Jim McDermott.
Freemark is surprisingly down on this, because he believes that local authorities should step up and find more stable funding models. I think it depends on what revenues are going to look like going forward. It’s unrealistic to think that revenues will return to the unsustainable boom year of 2007, but if things bounce back pretty quickly, a brief period of stimulus could bridge the gap with minimum disruption.
Locally, Metro is receiving $71m over two years from ARRA. Given that the gap is $91m in 2009-2010 (including some of the stimulus), $7.1m towards operating savings is not going to save the day.
The other action is H.R. 2724, the National Transportation Objectives Act of 2009. It’s co-sponsored by Washington’s own Rep. Jay Inslee. This is a fairly high-level bill that requires USDOT to have a plan to do lots of desirable things.
It’s unclear whether this just shuffles the deck of existing FTA and intercity rail funds, or if it would lead to the diversion of funds from what we would consider counterproductive uses (ie, highway expansion). It could even be bad for agencies if it increases the hoops that local transit agencies have to jump through, and therefore delays projects, without doing anything about the structural shortfalls agencies face.
It’s now in the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
“Locally, Metro is receiving $71m over two years from ARRA. Given that the gap is $91m in 2009-2010 (including some of the stimulus), $7.1m towards operating savings is not going to save the day.”
$71m or $7.1m?
7.1 is 10% of 71.
Frankly, the occasional budget crisis is not necessarily a bad thing for government. It all depends on how our leaders respond. It is possible that this budget crisis could create the political cover necessary to cut back unproductive routes that really should not exist at all. Any route is hard to cut politically, but if the leaders can say “We had no choice, there was no money”, that argument can trump the objections. Then, when revenue returns, that revenue does not have to go back to those routes that were cut in the “crisis” (that should have been cut on principle anyway). The revenue can instead go to the most productive routes and we end up with a more efficient allocation of resources that would have been difficult to arrive at without the “crisis”. Of course, our leaders could respond like short-sighted cowards and cut routes “equally”, then when revenue returns, instead of restoring the money “equally”, they allocate it based on other agendas. Given the makeup of the King County Council, unfortunately, I suspect the latter is more likely.
Thus, if we had wise and courageous leaders, I would be opposed to Uncle Sam stepping in to “save the day” since it could give us the chance to do some necessary house cleaning. And frankly, even if we have weak leadership, I don’t want Obama to come save the day. Metro is running an unsustainable operation. It needs to change. I’m not even opposed to letting Metro crumble as an organization if necessary. The sooner Metro folds, the sooner we can consolidate it with a competently run organization like ST or the City of Seattle.