Sunday, April 29, 2012

The Federal Government and Infrastructure Financing


One thing that was clear after the 2010 congressional elections, and which has become clearer with the budget fights, is that guaranteed sources of federal funding for mass transit projects are not sacrosanct. The recent transportation bill proposed by the house eliminated dedicated funding for bicycle paths and pedestrian improvements and put dedicated funding for rail transit at risk, instead lumping it with highway funding and forcing states to divide it between large numbers of projects.

In 1964, Congress passed the Urban Mass Transportation Act, which established the Federal Transportation Administration as a component of the US Department of Transportation. When the act was passed, it was understood that in order for the economy of the United States to function as efficiently as possible the economies of its cities also needed to function as efficiently as possible. In order to do this, it was deemed necessary to provide alternatives to automobile transportation, and thus repair and upgrade existing mass transit systems across the country and provide for the construction of new ones. Atlanta's MARTA and the San Francisco Bay Area's BART were some of the direct results of this program, as were the expansion of the Chicago L, rehabilitation of the New York City Subway, and expansion of the T in Boston.





Additional federal legislation was passed creating the National Capital Transportation Agency which oversaw the creation of WMATA and the construction of the Washington DC Metrorail system. This was extended to a 106 mile system serving the District of Columbia and its suburbs.



More recently, programs such as SAFETEA-LU and small starts have provided funding to upstart streetcar systems and pedestrian improvements, allowing the creation of a unified streetscape that supports transportation alternatives and is friendly to mixed use development and density.

Even during the presidency of Ronald Regan, mass transit funding was seen as relatively sacrosanct among those in congress, and set amounts of funding were awarded to both highway and transit without much complaint.
Now, however, many Republicans in Congress want to eliminate many of these programs, instead handing states blocks of money that they must divide up between many projects in many localities, rather than allowing cities themselves to apply for funding for specific projects. This is due to the fact that many Republicans see transit investment as a waste of money that should be going towards highway spending. This is in fact the opposite case, as highways are much less cost effective than rail transit.

The political environment caused by this has caused many cities to be forced to fend for themselves in terms of mass transit funding, as evidenced by Rahm Emannuel's planfor Chicago. This inevitably raises the question of “where will this money come from?”. While cities such as New York and Chicago may be able to support these investments due to their extremely large populations, smaller cities which may be equally in need of transportation funding cannot. State governments are another option, but they may not warm to the idea of giving large portions of their money to a relatively small geographic area, as evidenced by the Cincinnati streetcar project and the future of high speed rail in Ohio.
Private investment is one other option, and one which is becoming more attractive for smaller projects such as streetcar systems, which developers are happy to help fund as they know they will recoup this money in the form of increased property values and land desirability.


Nevertheless, the importance of the Federal Government in infrastructure funding is one that cannot be ignored, simply because on the lowest level it represents the recognition of a problem, and one that not all cities can solve on their own means. Ideological battles over public transportation for the purposes of scoring political points are not sustainable, nor are they good practice. Cities are the economic engines of nations, and thus should be given proper resources.

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