Congress is in the process of writing America’s next big transportation bill — and more than 100 organizations are demanding it deliver for transit.
by Kea Wilson
A Senate committee has a rare opportunity to radically reshape public transportation in America – and advocates across the country are demanding that they seize it before it’s too late.
More than 100 organizations co-signed a joint letter urging Sens. Tim Scott (R–S.C.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) to make sure the next major federal transportation bill delivers for the public transit sector, which has been systemically underfunded and faced steep structural barriers to expanding service for decades.
The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which Scott and Warren lead, is responsible for writing the transit segment of the bill that will replace the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act when it expires in September 2026. That writing process — and the months of heated political jockeying that it will inevitably involve — is already well underway, and advocates say it’s critical to put the pressure on now to make sure that Washington won’t repeat the mistakes of the past.
“Now is the time that our legislators need to hear from us about our priorities as folks who do this work and live in these communities,” said Stevie Pasamonte, senior organizer for the National Campaign for Transit Justice. “And we also need them as folks who need more options to get around without fear of traffic violence, and to get around affordably at a time when a lot of working folks, families, and people with disabilities can’t [do that],”
And organizations focused on shared modes aren’t the only ones that are speaking out. The signatories include a diverse coalition of labor organizations, advocates for social equity, public health nonprofits, interfaith groups, and even whole cities, in addition to a who’s-who of champions for transportation reform and sustainability.
Whatever their individual reasons for rallying behind the cause, the authors collectively stressed that the committee needs to sweat a few key details when it writes the next mass transit title — or else lawmakers will miss a generational opportunity to rebuild U.S. transportation from the ground up.
First and foremost, the signatories argue that the federal government badly needs to provide money for transit operations, rather than capital projects alone. Some rural communities can currently access some federal dollars to pay drivers, staff, and other critical costs to keep their networks running, but such expeditures are capped at around 50 percent; cities, meanwhile, can generally use federal money to do things like build a new light rail line or buy a new bus, but not to pay someone to actually keep those buses and trains running, rendering them useless when fare revenue dips because of, for instance, a global pandemic.
[Read the rest on Streetsblog USA]