It's Coming!

The headline in Friday’s Boston Globe would not have been out of place in the Post or Daily News: MBTA plans for drastic cuts in bus, rail service. Hmmm. And it gets even more familiar once you start reading the front-page article.

The MBTA would halt all evening and weekend commuter rail service, eliminate six Green Line stops, discontinue lightly used bus routes, and lay off 805 employees if the agency does not get legislative help with its $160 million deficit, according to a state document.

The agency has delayed making the contingency plan public as it awaits action from the Legislature on a potential gas tax increase designed to rescue the state’s transportation system. The increase could prevent or minimize service cuts and fare increases.

Wait. Is Massachusetts now governed from Albany? No. In fact Boston and Gotham aren’t alone. As Eliot Brown points out over at Politicker, Chicago went through all this almost two years ago (when times — and tax receipts — were good) and managed to avert their doomsday plan well past what everyone thought was the “last minute.”

The problem is that transit funding in the US is wildly inadequate and often poorly set up. Look at the systems with the most problems of late: New York, Boston, and Chicago. These three systems alone account for roughly two out of every five mass transit trips taken in the entire United States. And riders already pay far more of the cost of operating those systems than newer systems like Miami, Houston, and L.A. They are, in effect, penalized for being successful.

The Federal government stopped supporting mass transit operating budgets in the early 80s, instead focusing on capital funding to build or rebuild systems. The result has been a long, slow descent into increasing fares and local bonding initiatives funded with incremental tax increases. That impact of that long-ago policy shift is finally catching up with America.

Almost every transit system is facing operating deficits and service cuts and fare hikes are being contemplated across the country. It’s easy to blame Albany for inaction (and it’s certainly true that the Senate in particular seems desperately in need of adult supervision) but the bigger picture is two-fold and damning: The Feds forced transit funding down to the local level while freely doling out cash to highways in all 50 states. And in New York the decisions of Governor George Pataki, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have compounded a bad situation.

The three of them over the last 15 years forced the MTA to borrow money repeatedly for projects — there was NO pay as you go in the Empire State — and now the mortgage payments are eating away at the operating budget. All those new cars on Metro North and the LIRR, all those subway station improvements, all those new subway cars — that was all done on borrowed money and the bill is coming due more each year. That’s why the MTA is in such a hole despite riders paying the highest share of operating expenses of any transit system in America.

At the same time multiple studies have shown cars and highways getting massive hidden subsidies that wildly distort the way Americans get around. Hong Kong’s transit system actually makes a profit. How? Everybody uses it because gas prices are very high making transit a cost-effective and attractive option. Hong Kong’s transit doesn’t need a subsidy because the government doesn’t tilt the playing field toward auto use with hidden pro-car subsidies.

Our leaders in Washington and Albany (and Boston and Springfield) have repeatedly failed transit users as if money spent on transit is somehow less worthy than money spent on highways. America loves it’s cars but isn’t it time to at least stop subsidizing them?