Introduction: The Need and Demand for Quality Public Transit
Public transit ridership has increased 21% since 1997, the state of public transit systems across the United States is in overwhelming disarray. A growing number of riders depend on public transit, but they are often left with limited access to nearby, expansive transit options riddled with frequent delays, service interruptions, and unfit station stop conditions. According to The Federal Transit Administration’s Status of the Nation’s Highways, Bridges and Transit: Condition and Performance Report (24rd edition)(2021), 43.2% of Guideway Elements (tracks, tunnels, and bus guideways); 23.8% of Systems (train control, electrification, communications, and revenue collection); 14.7% of Maintenance Facilities (bus and rail maintenance buildings and equipment/storage yards); 19.7% of Vehicles (large buses, heavy/light rail, commuter rail cars); and 53.7% of Stations (rail and bus stations, platforms, walkways, shelters) are below the “State of Good Repair” (SGR). The percentages of these Asset Categories determined to be in “poor condition” are substantial as well—6.4% of Guideway Elements, 21.4% of Systems, 36.4% of Maintenance Facilities, 18.5% of Vehicles, and 5.3% of Stations. As the 6,800 transit systems across states continue to struggle to procure adequate funding to modernize, expand, and rehabilitate their transit systems, the Department of Transportation estimates that the current $105.1 billion backlog of repairs is estimated to marginally decrease by 3.7%, to 102.2 billion by 2036 if current spending on transit asset preservation and expansion ($11.6 billion and $7.2 billion, respectively) is maintained.
The impact of this backlog is costly. 45% of Americans have no access to public transit; 41.7% of U.S. households possess one vehicle or less, and the average U.S. household spent $10,000, or 17% of total household expenditures on transportation in 2014. As a result, carless, low-income individuals cannot reliably depend upon the nation’s transit systems to access higher education, work, or critical social services such as healthcare, legal assistance, and quality food markets. Black and brown citizens shoulder this cost disproportionately as 24% of public transit riders are African American—making them the second-largest group of riders despite making up 12% of the U.S. population—and 10% of African Americans rely on public transportation to commute to their jobs.
“White Flight,” Redlining, & Highway Creation Projects Historical Impact on Today’s Transit Systems
“White Flight” describes the period following World War II (1940-70s) where whites’, unwilling to reside beside black and brown citizens, fled cities and other metropolitan areas in order to maintain segregated communities. As whites fled to suburban areas, policies such as the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and other highway-creation projects became the legislative focus of President Eisenhower and Congress, in order to provide these newly white-inhabited suburbs with access to cities. Creating these highways often involved bulldozing black neighborhoods, further intensifying segregation between white and black communities. According to The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Travel Patterns of People of Color, it wasn’t just whites that fled metropolitan areas; employment opportunities left with them, thus resulting in black and brown communities struggling to find high-skilled, well-paying work nearby. As a result of being “geographically mismatched,” unable to purchase homes in affluent, job-rich suburbs due to racially discriminatory policies in the housing market such as redlining, and owning personal vehicles at significantly lower rates than whites, black Americans and other minorities were and continue to be forced to procure the lower-skilled jobs in closer proximity to them. In this way, white-focused urban renewal projects and housing policies, as well as the push toward car-based travel, have stunted economic mobility for people of color.
Current Effect on Black Communities, Non-Racial Minorities, Environment, & National Economy
The ramifications of such policy decisions have a disproportionate effect on black Americans. On average, 14% of black households’ pretax income is consumed by transportation costs, and low-income black households spend 30% of their pretax income on transportation costs. The lack of efficient, expansive, and inexpensive transit options poses a barrier to such groups who struggle to travel to access opportunities and services. Black households rely on public transit the most among all races and ethnicities, as 20% of black households do not have access to an automobile and 14% fewer jobs were located near black residents in major metropolitan areas between 2000 and 2012. The burdens of transportation costs have driven people of all races and incomes to evade transit fares—an act criminalized in many states that could land evaders in jail. In line with other policing trends, black and brown riders are disproportionately fined, arrested, and even brutalized by transit police.
Racial minorities aren’t the only ones to suffer from the nation’s poor-quality transit systems; rural communities, the environment, and the nation’s economy, also take a hit. According to data in the Transit Cooperative Research Program’s (TCRP) “Report 266: An Update on Public Transportation’s Impacts on Greenhouse Gas Emissions”, public transportation saves the United States 6 billion gallons of gasoline annually. In addition, communities that invest in public transit reduce the nation’s carbon emissions by 63 million metric tons annually. APTA’s “Economic Impact of Public Transportation Investment: 2020 Update reports that public transportation is an $80 billion industry that employs more than 448,000 people. Every $1 invested in public transportation generates $5 in economic returns, and home values also increase near public transportation.
The Freedom to Move Act, Other Policy Recommendations, & the Debate Surrounding Transit Funding and Expansion Methods
While there is a consensus amongst voters of all partisan backgrounds that public transit should be prioritized, legislators are divided on the extent to which funding should be allocated to revamp and expand America’s transit systems, and how this funding should be procured. In a 2020 national Survey collected by Data for Progress, 66% of voters believe their own communities would benefit from expanding public transit while 77% of voters believe the US overall would benefit from expanding public transit. Democratic legislators, whose party platform traditionally emphasizes political values such as racial equity, environmental justice, and maintaining necessary social services, largely support expanding the federal budget allocated to the Department of Transportation (DOT) and Federal Transit Administration (FTA). Republican legislators tend to view public transportation spending as less of a political priority because the majority of their constituents rely on highways and car-based travel.
Introduced by Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) in the House and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) in the Senate, the Freedom to Move Act aims to award up to $5 billion in five-year grants to states and localities that implement an environmentally conscious, expansive, fare-free transit system. By incentivizing participants through grants, the act aims to provide both racial and environmental justice to underserved communities through alleviating the financial burden of fares; eliminating disproportionate and excessive punishment for fare evasion; expanding access to safe, accessible, frequent, and reliable transit; and reducing traffic congestion and pollution. While many laud the Act for tying infrastructural improvements to racial and environmental justice, some critics oppose it because they feel eliminating fares would not only increase the current spending backlog, but make transit unsafe by attracting trouble-causing youth, drunks, addicts, and homeless riders. Supporters of the act argue that since fare revenue currently only accounts for 30% of transit systems’ funding, state budgets, with increased aid, can manage without collecting revenue.
Although split on the Freedom to Move Act, legislators across both sides of the aisle support the recently expired Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, and the newly enacted Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The FAST Act authorized $305 billion in federal grants over fiscal years 2016 through 2020 to the DOT to dramatically revamp highways, motor vehicle/freight safety, and public transportation. Its public transit provisions increased annual funding for FTA’s State of Good Repair program for rail from $2.1 billion to $2.5 billion and increased funding for the FTA’s Bus and Bus Facilities program by 89% over the life of the bill. Because of these significant increases in funding, many Democrats and Republicans advocate for the bill to be extended for a second time.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law authorizes up to $108 billion for public transportation over fiscal years 2022 through 2026, the largest federal investment in public transportation in the nation’s history. The measure has four priorities: safety, modernization, climate consciousness, and equity. Many critique these bipartisan measures because of their failure to specifically address the burden of transportation costs. Additionally, some are concerned with the federal government and other public investment sources’ historic inability to consistently meet the funding needs for state transit systems, and advocate for public-private partnerships, or P3’s. P3’s are contracts between a public or governmental agency and a private entity that facilitates greater participation by the private entity in the delivery and operation of an infrastructure project, facility, or service. While supporters of P3’s find that collaboration with the private sector can promote a more free market and in turn cultivate innovation in infrastructure, some doubt the level of oversight governmental agencies will exert throughout project development and implementation. Such critics argue that while these partnerships can expedite transit development and rehabilitation, profit-driven private companies may lead projects away from centering transit development and expansion around racial, economic, and environmental justice.
