Transit Agencies Plan Higher Fares or Less Service, Study Finds
Transit Agencies in U.S. Plan Higher Fares
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Traffic drives over the George Washington Bridge on August 16, 2011 in New York City.
Traffic drives over the George Washington Bridge on August 16, 2011 in New York City. Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
More than half of U.S. public transit agencies may increase fares or trim service this year amid budget shortfalls and a threatened loss of federal funding, according to a study.
Officials at 56 percent of 117 agencies surveyed in March said they were considering cost savings, according to the report released today by the American Public Transportation Association, a Washington-based trade group for transit providers. One in four agencies contemplated a combination of both measures, the study found.
“The overarching trend points toward a public that wants more public transportation,” Art Guzzetti, the group’s vice president of policy, said in a telephone interview. “What’s on hold is public investment.”
Transit agencies have already reduced staff and benefits as they reeled from post-recession revenue declines. Fifty-one percent of agencies said they’d already increased fares or reduced service this year, according to the study by the group, which has 1,500 members serving more than 90 percent of riders in the U.S. and Canada.
Since 2008, the Orange County Transportation Authority in Orange, California, has reduced service 20 percent while raising fares by the same amount, said Joel Zlotnik, a spokesman. The operator of buses and a commuter-rail system lost $40 million in state funding during the time, he said.
This month, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey proposed toll increases for bridges and tunnels that would boost the cost to enter Manhattan to as much as $17. Rides on its PATH trains under the Hudson River would increase $1 to $2.75. Board members will vote on the plan this week.
Soaking the Straphanger
“It’s not fair to ask people already hit hard to pay more,” said Michele Markowitz, a 21-year-old college student who lives in Manhattan and rides the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s subway every day.
“We’re told to ‘go green’ and take mass transit, but it’s becoming too expensive to do so,” said Markowitz, who was having a beer at the Subway Inn on 60th Street with her boyfriend.
Thirty-five percent of the agencies projected budget gaps in the coming fiscal year totaling more than $600 million, the study said. Officials cited a dearth of local and state funding and rising fuel costs as the biggest stresses to operating budgets even as ridership is projected to grow.
Public transit riders took more than 34 million weekday trips in 2010 on average, according to the APTA. That may reach 40 million by 2015, said Guzzetti, who wrote the report.
Less for Infrastructure
A proposal from U.S. Representative John Mica, a Florida Republican and chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, would cut federal funding for roads, bridges, tunnels and mass-transit systems by an annual average of 22 percent over six years. The five biggest recipient states would together receive an average of at least $2 billion less per year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Government.
“State and local governments will not be able to make up for this lack of funding,” Guzzetti said in the report. “Now is not the time to reduce critical federal funding that is needed to preserve service and address capital needs.”
Justin Harclerode, a spokesman for the committee, said the legislation ensures funding levels are sustainable and won’t bankrupt the fund.
Mica’s proposal “will better leverage our resources and reduce federal red tape and bureaucracy to increase the effectiveness of infrastructure investments,” he said in an e- mail.
To contact the reporter on this story: Esmé E. Deprez in New York at edeprez@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net.
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