By Ron Thaniel
April 5, 2010

With the recession continuing to take a toll on public transit, and with agencies being forced to raise fares, cut service, and borrow to address capital and operating needs, mayors continue to urge that federal support for transit operations be restored to stabilize public transportation services and that the nations governors use the flexibilities that current law provides to allocate available federal transportation resources to public transit. The following is an official blog by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood on this subject.

Fast Lane – The Official Blog of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation: Economy roughs-up transit; thousands of jobs in the balance – March 26

Times are tough right now. The folks in the transit world know this as well as anyone.

I have spoken personally to mayors and other local officials around the country about the challenges they’re dealing with on their transit systems, and it’s not pretty.

Although public transit provided over 10.2 billion rides in 2009, the recession has dented ridership revenues. What’s worse for the transit climate is that the states – strapped for cash – are pulling back funds from local transit agencies. Without the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, with its support for state governments and its transit grants, furloughs and reductions would certainly be worse. But this situation calls for further action.

Recently, I spoke to the members of the American Public Transportation Association, and – over and over again – I heard about the unpleasant choices they’re facing, particularly in meeting operating costs. The folks I talked with at the Amalgamated Transit Union are equally concerned.

Read the news and you’ll see: from Sacramento to New York City, and from Chicago to Atlanta, transit agencies across the country are being forced to cut services or increase fares – sometimes both.

But transit services are essential for getting people who can’t afford a car to the jobs they count on. And the most vulnerable of these workers often rely on the very same routes being slashed.

Hospital employees on the early shift can’t afford the news that their 4:30 a.m. bus is no longer running. Hotel workers trying to get home from the late shift need a subway line that’s still running to their neighborhood. Cleaning crews, emerging from deserted downtown office buildings in the middle-of-the-night, don’t feel safe waiting – often alone – at unsheltered bus stops for long stretches of time.

And that’s not even to mention the thousands of transit employees nationwide who find themselves out of work entirely. In Atlanta alone, up to 1,500 transit workers are facing the possibility of layoff as that city considers eliminating 50 percent of its bus routes and reducing its rail service by 20 percent.

America’s transit agencies are hurting. That’s the simple fact. Significant service cuts and thousands of layoffs have been proposed.

And, although addressing these issues will always be a primarily local and state responsibility, the federal government should try to help.

Accordingly, I will work with members of the House and Senate this year to see if we can allow transit agencies more flexibility to use a portion of their federal funds to cover operating costs during these tough economic times.

Now, this cannot be a blank check. There must be limits.

And clearly, we’re talking about temporary assistance, not the normal course of business.

But for right now, we should do what we can to keep our trains and buses operating, to keep people working, and to keep people getting to the jobs they need so badly.

We need to support this industry so it can help families meet their daily needs all across the country.