Transit Funding

It isn't only Democrats blasting the House Republican transportation bill, which would eliminate dedicated federal transit funding, cost the MTA up to $1 billion a year and slash bicycle and pedestrian funding. In the transit-dependent New York region, some Republicans are balking at the ferociously anti-urban legislation. But many of their colleagues remain studiously silent.

Four New York City members of Congress joined the chairman of the MTA today to bluntly denounce the House GOP's anti-transit transportation bill.

The House Ways and Means committee has just passed a bill that would kick transit out of the Highway Trust Fund, casting aside a 30-year history of providing a dedicated funding source for federal transit programs. Transit instead would be funded by a transfer from the general fund, which would have to be offset by cuts elsewhere to avoid raising the deficit. As US PIRG's Dan Smith said yesterday, this is like saying that transit funding will come from the Tooth Fairy.

In a move that should dispel any remaining thoughts that the House transportation bill [PDF] will ever be signed into law, the Ways and Means Committee announced today that they will try to forbid gas tax revenue from funding transit.

The MTA needs new revenues, announced chairman Joe Lhota during a broad-ranging panel discussion at Fordham University this morning. "There's going to be the need for broad-based tax revenue somewhere within the system over the next couple of years," Lhota said, noting that he's generally the kind of conservative person loath to call for tax increases.

Governor Andrew Cuomo's 2012 budget, released this afternoon, offers what now passes for good news for transit: maintenance of the status quo.

New York's infrastructure is dangerously underfunded and threatening to cripple the region's economy, warned former lieutenant governor and MTA chairman Richard Ravitch in a speech on Thursday.

Between continued raids on dedicated transit funds, a cut to the MTA payroll tax, and the state's decision to pay for the last three years of the MTA capital plan with debt, 2011 wasn't a good year for the MTA's finances. The New York League of Conservation Voters is hoping that 2012 turns out to be kinder to transit riders.

In October, Reps. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) and Steve LaTourette (R-OH) introduced a bill to allow transit agencies to use federal money to hire bus drivers and pay other operating expenses.