We don’t think much about public transportation in rural areas — out in the country, owning a car is pretty much a given. But those who can’t afford one can’t go anywhere — not even to the doctor’s office or the grocery store — without some form of public transit. Of the billions of highway and transit dollars in federal stimulus money, a small amount is going to help those with no access to transportation other than their own two feet.

The mostly-rural state of Mississippi has been awarded nearly $2.5 billion in overall recovery dollars from Washington, more than $17 million of which is going to build up rural public transit. Natchez, a small Mississippi River town in Adams County, has a plan in place which uses $4 million in stimulus to change rural transportation not just for the state but for all of small town America.

More than 10 percent of the county’s 30,000 residents don’t have access to a car — a number consistent across rural America. Some in Natchez call investment in bus service yet another example of stimulus waste — considering that 90 percent of people do own cars. But others see Natchez’s new public bus service as an example for the rest of the country.

In a report from Blueprint America on PBS NewsHour, special correspondent Miles O’Brien reports from Natchez:

In Adams County, hard times have more or less been constant since the 1980s when the local oil boom went to oil bust throughout the county. In the time since, other industries like lumber have seen a decline, too. The recession has only made things worse. Today, over a third of the population lives in poverty.

Started as a bus service for seniors in the 1980s, Natchez Transit has expanded to help long-struggling residents get to school, work, the store and medical care. We sat down with some of these transit-dependent riders and their bus driver to learn what transportation access means out in the country:

The problems and needs of people in poor, rural America are not new. Still, the recession and the resulting stimulus have given new attention to these areas of the country. Charles Carr, Transit Director for the Mississippi Department of Transportation, believes the time is now to readdress how transportation policy is implemented in rural Mississippi and the rest of the country:

Producers Cameron Hickey and Tom McNamara, editor David Kreger and special correspondent Miles O’Brien for Blueprint America

PROFILES FROM THE RECESSION, a collection of BLUEPRINT AMERICA video and transcribed reports from the field, looks at recovery from this Recession with stories on transportation and the country’s infrastructure (its planning, design, and livability).

On Dec. 1, 2008, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced that the U.S. economy had entered a recession a year earlier on Dec. 1, 2007. And on Sept. 20, 2010, it announced that the recession had ended in June 2009. Still, since 2007, fifty-five percent of Americans in the workforce have lost their jobs, suffered a pay cut or seen their hours reduced — and despite an official end to the Recession, unemployment and underemployment remain high.

A $787 billion economic stimulus plan from Washington was passed to stabilize the country in 2009, with some $150 billion going to infrastructure (including $27 billion for highways, $8.4 billion for mass transit, and $8 billion for high-speed rail). Still, of the billions of dollars that states have been awarded, only half has been received and put to use.

BLUEPRINT AMERICA profiles some of those projects, with a focus on the money’s impact in rural America. And the coverage doesn’t stop at how stimulus can change a small town, but goes further looking at what it means to live out in the country today. Other profiles include how the economic times of not just the Recession but really the past two decades have redefined what it means to live in suburbia, and how its landscape is almost unlivable as a result. And, as more and more Americans leave the suburbs for the city, profiles of urban life from park building to new neighborhood designs. Plus, interviews with policy makers and news makers on transportation and a community’s livability.

1940s WPA poster, showing various infrastructure projects that could benefit a community at the time || Unknown, WPA

Tom McNamara, Blueprint America

The Dallas Cowboys left town for a new stadium before the start of last year’s season. And the Dallas suburb of Irving, where the NFL team played from 1971 to 2008, is planning for life after football with a new transit-oriented development. At the same time, a new stadium just down the road has no transit access at all — except for a one-day, temporary rail line to be built for Super Bowl Sunday next year.

TRANSIT: ‘THE TALL T’ IN TEXAS

With a population around 200,000, Irving is a part of the North Texas Metroplex (nearly 7 million live there) — sprawl-land, U.S.A., to an outsider, but a part of the country that also has been building one of the most extensive mass-transit systems outside of the Northeast Corridor. That said, Texas was seen as the big loser when federal (stimulus) high-speed rail dollars were awarded earlier this year. It only received a $4 million grant for planning a project in the Dallas-Fort Worth area (with Irving in-between) as opposed to the hundreds of millions to even billions other states won.

When Texas Stadium is razed April 11, plans are already in place to redevelop the 80-acre site (with an additional 320-acres surrounding) located at the busy intersection of Texas highways 183 and 114, which about 150,000 cars pass through daily.

With new construction a least two years out, a city-contracted developer is looking for tenants in the meantime. And with the site’s proximity to the Dallas Area Rapid Transit light rail line to be installed next year, the area is primed for high density development — with plans for housing and condominium towers, a corporate or medical campus and an entertainment venue already in the works.

TEXAS TEA IS OIL, TOO

Older professional sports stadiums typically were built around highways and parking. Old Texas Stadium is a perfect example. But as the years went on, local mass-transit connected fans not wanting to pay big bucks for parking (or wanting to knock back a few drinks) to their teams. It happened in Irving and it happened in most sports-towns across the country. At the same time, almost all newly built stadiums now incorporate mass-transit, biking and walking (Target Field, the new Minnesota Twins stadium in Minneapolis, for example).

Don’t even ask how much the pizza costs || Arlington, Texas

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, however, built a $1.2 billion, 80,000-seat stadium 15 miles outside of Irving in the Dallas suburb of Arlington — the largest city in the country (population nearly 400,000) without a public transit system. The city recently tried a commuter bus system, but it met with little success. Arlington has even voted against tax increases several times in the last two decades that would have financed some form of public transit. Still, the city did increase the local sales-tax by a half cent in 2005 to pay for the new football stadium. On game day, as a result, area fans can spend hours in traffic and pay upwards of $60 for parking. And that’s just to get to the game — tickets to watch the game are even more expensive.

The lack of transit in the city can be seen in other ways, too. Rail connects Dallas to the east and Fort Worth to the west, but goes out of its way to avoid stopping in Arlington. And when the city hosts the Super Bowl next February, it will divert freight rail lines to set up a one-day rail stop — at a cost of $250,000 for a temporary public transit line, moving a projected 10,000 fans to the big game. The following day: Arlington will again be the largest city in the country without a public transit system.

President Obama, with Vice-President Biden, signing the stimulus bill into law last February in Denver. || Photo: The New York Times

When the stimulus bill was passed last February, it sent billions of dollars to the nation’s mass-transit agencies. Still, the money was purposed for only new equipment and construction — nothing to operate the systems, even as many are cutting service, laying off workers or raising fares.

An agency may get a new bus or build a new bus shelter using stimulus dollars, but, potentially, they would not have the operating funds to employ a new driver to run the new bus to the new stop.

For several months following the release of stimulus funds to transit agencies, the Obama Administration seemed opposed to repurposing any of the federal money to keep transit operating budgets solvent. Instead, only the benefits of new building — such as job creation — was championed.

Last Friday, however, President Obama signed legislation into law enabling transit agencies to use up to 10 percent of their stimulus dollars to cover operating costs for equipment and facilities. The provision, oddly, was tucked inside the latest war spending bill.

[This is an excerpt from the text of the bill]
H.R. 2346: Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2009

Sec. 1202. A recipient and subrecipient of funds appropriated in Public Law 111-5 and apportioned pursuant to section 5311 and section 5336 (other than subsection (i)(1) and (j)) of title 49, United States Code, may use up to 10 percent of the amount apportioned for the operating costs of equipment and facilities for use in public transportation or for eligible activities under section 5311(f): Provided, That a grant obligating such funds on or after February 17, 2009, may be amended to allow a recipient and subrecipient to use the funds made available for operating assistance: Provided further, That applicable chapter 53 requirements apply, except for the Federal share which shall be, at the option of the recipient, up to 100 percent.

D.C. Metro crash || Photo: Reuters

Though the funds were made available following the Metro subway crash last week in Washington, D.C. — the potential cause of which has been associated with the operating budget problems of the city’s mass-transit system — the legislation has no direct connection with the accident.

[UPDATE]

On the evening of June 22 in Washington, D.C., as area commuters headed home from work, a Metro train car rear-ended another car — resulting in the deaths of nine, and injuring dozens more.

D.C. Metro crash || Photo: Reuters

In the time since the accident, it has been made known that federal safety officials had previously warned that the type of train cars involved could be unsafe in crashes, and called for them to be replaced or, at least, strengthened.

Still, the Washington transit agency did nothing after the federal warning. Not because they did not also see the same problem, but because the agency could not afford to replace the cars, which make up more than a quarter of those used in the system.

Metro — like most mass transit agencies throughout the country — is on the verge of operating in deficit, as a shortfall of $154 million is projected for fiscal year 2010.

At the same time, a tax shelter, as Blueprint America previously reported in March, according to the terms of a lease-back agreement — in which Metro raised extra funds by selling its trains to private companies that would, in return, lease them back — meant the leased cars, like the ones involved in the accident, have to remain in service until a specified date or the agency could face financial penalties.

A breakdown of provisions and funding requirements for mass transit in The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
[Transit Capital Assistance] [Fixed Guideway (Rail) Infrastructure Investment] [Capital Investment Grants] [Federal Transit Administration Formulas]

Sources: Congressional Budget Office, Department of Transportation – Federal Transit Administration, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House Committee on Rules, Joint Committee on Taxation

As President Barack Obama signed the stimulus bill in Denver on Tuesday, it released the biggest influx of federal dollars since the Great Society program of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Unlike LBJ, President Obama – working with less of a Democratic majority – ultimately had to make significant concessions to Congressional moderates and Republicans to pass the bill. In the end, 246 House Democrats, 57 Senate Democrats and three Senate Republicans voted to pass this compromise version of the economic stimulus package.

In order to gain those three Senate Republican votes, reductions in spending were made in favor of tax cuts, including breaks to car and home buyers.

The initial House version was far more liberal in spending provisions compared to what the Senate later agreed upon.

Spending on mass transit went from $12 billion in the House to $8.4 billion in the Senate, and the President approved the latter. Total highway funding went from $30 billion in the House to $27 billion in the Senate, and, similarly, the President approved the latter.

One of the most significant reductions was a cut of $25 billion from a state fiscal stabilization fund. The House had proposed $79 billion; the Senate reduced it to $39 billion. The final agreement fell in between.

As a result, no matter how much is federally spent to improve infrastructure in the future, the impact will be little felt as most states across the country are experiencing substantial budget shortfalls.

Certainly, projects that are shovel ready – projects that have gone through the approval process and have already received state funding – only need the infusion of federal dollars to get going. However, necessary infrastructure projects down the road will have a difficult time getting off the ground as state dollars are first needed – and these deficits are long term problems. Moreover, some states are even facing drastic enough budget problems to discontinue infrastructure projects already underway.

In California, abandoned construction sites marked by piles of dirt line some highways as projects to decongest the state’s stressed transportation system have been suspended until a $41 billion state budget deficit is closed. In terms of mass transit, the state continues to reduce funding as a way to fill a few funding holes.

As the economic stimulus bill was signed, the President said he would not pretend “that today marks the end of our economic problems.” Another economic stimulus could be coming in the near-future as states will undoubtedly need more assistance – including funding for infrastructure – in order to foster the kind of job growth needed to effectively combat this recession.

Sources: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal

A look at America’s top mass transit systems – from budget deficits to finding new revenue sources to how agencies will manage both. Also, find out how each agency plans to use federal funds from the economic stimulus.

One alarming example: Mass transit. Cities and states, strapped for money, are cutting back on mass transit even as it becomes more popular with Americans. At the same time, President Obama is calling for increased mass transit as a necessary step toward energy independence.

Blueprint America — with NOW on PBS — reports from North Carolina to see what the future holds for the country’s mass transit systems in these financial times.

[Transcript]

BRANCACCIO: More people around America are using mass transit than ever before—and that’s good, says President Obama, because it points us toward energy independence. But there’s a problem—cities and states, strapped for money are cutting back on mass transit. The elephant in the room is the president’s big stimulus package. But are states ready to take the money and ring in a golden era of mass transit? Senior Correspondent Maria Hinojosa and Producer Dan Logan have our report from North Carolina, part of a PBS-wide series on the country’s infrastructure that we call “Blueprint America.”

HINOJOSA: Pat McCrory is the seven-term mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. He’s a Republican… one of the most prominent conservative politicians in a very conservative state. He’s pro-life and a proud fiscal hawk. But two years ago, he put his entire political career on the line to build this light rail line in Charlotte. It was the one of the most expensive public works projects in North Carolina’s history, costing almost a half-a-billion dollars. And it almost cost McCrory his job.

You’re a Republican. You’re a conservative Republican. Most people don’t think of conservative Republicans as being big supporters of mass transit.

MCCRORY: I caught a lotta heat from my political right when I became a very strong advocate for mass transit in Charlotte. It was though I had lost the label of you’re no longer a conservative if you support mass transit.

HINOJOSA: The mayor was vilified by fellow conservatives over the light rail, who called him a tax-and-spend liberal. The project became known as the “McCrory Line” and that wasn’t a compliment.

MCCRORY: My opponents said McCrory’s lost his mind. And this is going to be a boondoggle and no one is going to ride it. I was scared to death.

HINOJOSA: Opponents tried to pull the plug on the project by repealing the sales tax that was paying for the line. The referendum on the tax repeal—and the mayor’s own re-election bid—came just three weeks before the line was supposed to open.

MCCRORY: I was afraid I was gonna have to leave town for fear that, you know, five people would arrive and three of them would be homeless and the other two would be criminals.

HINOJOSA: But much to everyone’s surprise, voters backed the transit tax overwhelmingly, the mayor was re-elected and the light rail, now a year old, has turned out to be hugely popular. Thousands more people are riding the line every week than were expected, and big cities like Orlando are sending delegations to see what all the fuss is about. In the heart of the south, where people love their cars, McCrory’s light rail line is winning hearts and minds.

FEMALE RIDER: This is the best thing that’s happened to us.

HINOJOSA: Why?

FEMALE RIDER: Why? Because, I don’t have to worry about the traffic. One night I sat for three hours on 77 to get home. I don’t now.

HINOJOSA: Mayor McCrory would like nothing better than to expand mass transit in Charlotte. In fact, he says he has a $300 million plan to build a new commuter rail that he says is “shovel-ready”. He’s hoping that means he’ll get a share of the $789 billion stimulus package that President Obama was pushing this week.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: There’s a lot of work that needs to be done on our nation’s congested roads and highways, crumbling bridges and levees, and crowded trains and transit systems.

HINOJOSA: But when it comes to stimulus projects, McCrory is not very optimistic about how the dollars will get spent.

What are you worried about here in North Carolina?

MCCRORY: My fear is money being spent based upon politics and not common sense, and power and not sustainability.

HINOJOSA: And what does that look like?

MCCRORY: It looks like—checks bein’ written with no qualitative sustainable analysis being complete before the check is spent.

HINOJOSA: Are you saying that you’re concerned that there might be a road to nowhere, a bridge to nowhere in North Carolina?

MCCRORY: In every city and county and state in the United States.

HINOJOSA: There’s a catch with the stimulus package. While President Obama urged Congress to keep the bill free of pet projects, most of the $50 billion for transportation will go directly to the state governments to fund whatever shovel-ready projects they want. When it comes to pet projects, state politicians can be just as irresponsible as their colleagues in Congress. Here in North Carolina, many believe that stimulus spending will have little to do with common sense… and a lot more to do with politics.

MCCRORY: First of all, there’s big money in transportation. I mean, there’s a huge infrastructure investment. And there’s a lotta political involvement of big money in transportation.

HINOJOSA: When you think about transportation in North Carolina, is it always intimately tied into extraordinary politics?

MCCRORY: North Carolina—transportation and politics have been intermingled for decades. North Carolina’s Department of Transportation oversees the state’s roads, bridges, and railways. It’s been criticized over the years for being nothing more than a bankroll for projects favored by its board members. The 19 member board that has approved funding for projects has been mostly made up of politicians and political fundraisers not transportation experts.

HARTGEN: The state does not use objective criteria in evaluating projects. We don’t compare projects head to head. Even within district, but let alone between districts.

HINOJOSA: Professor David Hartgen studies transportation at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He says that each board member represents a different part of the state… so traditionally, to get projects funded in their own region, they agree to vote “yes” for each others’ projects.

HARTGEN: As far as I know, the transportation board has never had a no vote on any single project in the last 15 years.

HINOJOSA: That shotgun approach to funding projects is a problem that seems to extend far beyond North Carolina. Phineas Baxandall and his colleagues at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group have been pouring over the states’ wish lists for the stimulus money and he says that in many states, there are projects seem almost arbitrary.

BAXANDALL: What we know from looking at these wish lists is—that the states sometimes have abysmal, terrible plans on these wish lists.

HINOJOSA: Take a look at Missouri, for example. In the initial list that the state department of transportation drew up for the stimulus, there were no projects listed for the entire city of St. Louis.

BAXANDALL: St. Louis was missing in the Missouri wish list. And that’s kind of amazing to talk about transportation without St. Louis and Missouri.

HINOJOSA: And in North Carolina, the state Department of Transportation’s own employees are on the record saying that historically, funding decisions have been influenced by petty politics. In a recent report commissioned by the state, one employee said, “What we work on depends on who’s screaming the loudest.” Another asked, “…why are we doing random political projects?”

It wasn’t always this way with transportation policy… our country used to have a clear, national vision for how we spent money. In the 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System, which connected the entire country and boosted the economy for decades. But now that America’s cities have been connected, there’s no national vision that addresses our current needs.

BAXANDALL: If we’re being serious about transportation now, we’d be focusing on, you know, what are our needs. We need to be reducing our consumption of oil. We need to be reducing our congestion. We need to be reducing the amount of global warming poll—pollution that we create. These are the kind of, you know, screaming national priorities that we should be focused on.

HINOJOSA: President Obama talked about creating a national infrastructure bank that would boost funding for smart projects…but that’s still on the drawing board. Mayor McCrory would like to push the President think bigger.

MCCRORY: I would recommend that the president develop a plan, a vision of how our infrastructure will look for the next 50 to 100 years in the United States. Whatever we spend the money should be part of our 25 to 50 year plan. That you’ll know the impact not just next year, but you’ll know the real impact 50 years from now. And the people 50 years from now would go, “You know what, they were pretty smart to build this thing.”

HINOJOSA: And the smart vision for an infrastructure of tomorrow, McCrory argues, starts with mass transportation. Transit advocates say that we need to take a moment to consider our future population growth. In the next forty years, America will add over a hundred million people our roads simply won’t be able to handle all of those cars. They say mass transit allows us to shape that growth. Instead of continuing to sprawl out beyond our cities, Americans would have the option to live in a walk-able urban environment. Charlotte will add the equivalent population of the city of Pittsburgh in the next twenty years so they’re trying to get ahead of the curve. So far, the results are promising.

MCCRORY: Downtown Charlotte was basically an 8:00 to 5:00 office park. People came in at 8:00, went inside, got in their cars and went out into the suburbs.

HINOJOSA: And now?

MCCRORY: And now, it’s an area of incredible—vitality, entertainment, and work environment.

HINOJOSA: The light rail makes it easier to get around Charlotte without a car… rolling right by the basketball arena… the football stadium… and the children’s museum.
The mayor is especially excited about a new building near the line.

MCCRORY: This is the NASCAR hall-of-fame.

HINOJOSA: In case you forgot, we are in NASCAR country.

MCCRORY: You gotta understand NASCAR around here. It’s serious stuff.

HINOJOSA: But the most interesting area that’s developing around the light rail is a ten-minute ride from the center of town. The South End is at the heart of Charlotte’s hopes for urban renewal around transit… after a history of blight and decay.

So when people in Charlotte used to talk about the south end like, you know, 10-20 years ago—

MCCRORY: The term south end didn’t even exist.

HINOJOSA: It was a neighborhood you didn’t go to.

MCCRORY: This was a neighborhood with no name.

HINOJOSA: In the early 1900s, the area was home to Charlotte’s industrial mills. But in the years that followed, businesses abandoned the area and it became one of the worst neighborhoods in Charlotte. Now, there are restaurants… apartment buildings… and new construction everywhere. The city has worked hand-in-hand with the real estate developers to build up the area.
It hasn’t always been easy.

FINCH: I think one of my—greatest memories is trying to sell transit and talking to a bunch of real estate brokers who use their car all the time, and, you know, run around and say, “Eh, that’s not gonna work. I need my car.”

HINOJOSA: Tracy Finch works for Harris Development Group, a real estate firm wooing suburbanites to live near the light rail. It’s taken some time and effort…but people are coming around.

FINCH: When people ride it and they’re amazed at, you know, the diversity—people are riding it. How clean it is, how easy it is. They start to become believers really quick. I read in the paper all the time somebody saying, you know, “I can read the paper on the way in.” That has value to people.

HINOJOSA: The economic downturn has had an impact on the South End real estate market. But unlike other areas of the country, construction here still continues.
A firm from Texas is building the area’s first multi-storied luxury apartment building. They think they’re going to make a lot of money.

FINCH: They wanted to put the—11 stories, 310 units on there, and some of the highest rents that we’ve seen in Charlotte. Because they think that the district with the line in it, and the proximity to uptown, everything that’s going on here, it was—it was the place to be.

HINOJOSA: And there are many other developments in the works.

MCCRORY: Mass transit’s not just about transportation, it’s also about economic development, creating jobs and making money. And that’s why a conservative like me supports it.

HINOJOSA: But the light rail is not only lifting up high-end real estate developers. It’s also revitalizing low-income neighborhoods.

PARKER: We’ve had relatively struggling communities be transformed by it.

HINOJOSA: Keith Parker is the head of the Charlotte Area Transit System, or, “CATS”, which runs the light rail. He points to the Wilmore neighborhood in the south end…one of the most distressed areas of the city, with high crime and not much in the way of desirable real estate as late as 2006. Now, in 2009…

PARKER: Property values went from about $92,000 to $195,000 in this economy. And just overall, you’ve seen a neighborhood absolutely transformed. And this—these are not millionaires, and so on. These are blue collar, working class people.

HINOJOSA: But transit alone doesn’t transform neighborhoods. The key is the way you connect those neighborhoods to the train stations with well-planned sidewalks that create a walk-able community.

MCCRORY: That’s part of the total package of land use design. It’s not just the rail or the train it’s what you do off the rail and train so the customer gets the fulfillment of, I can walk to a place to get a sandwich, I can walk to go shopping, I can walk to go live. Many cities you get off and the ’70s and ’80s development there’s no sidewalk so their not going to ride the train.

HINOJOSA: When it is successful, transit can even foster social change. You’ll see a diverse mix riding the rails… and many credit the popularity of the light rail with connecting the inner city and the suburbs like never before. Ultimately, the mass transit experiment in Charlotte is about redefining a city… while retaining its original character.

There are some people that are gonna say, Mr. Mayor, you want to turn Charlotte into New York City, with all this mass transit? We don’t want that.

MCCRORY: No, I’ll tell ya, what we want in Charlotte is we want big city opportunity, but we want to keep a small town environment and quality of life. So we’re still seeking the best of both worlds.

HINOJOSA: But with the economy in freefall, Charlotte’s successful urban experiment is facing serious challenges. Remember, its revenue comes from the sales tax… so with consumer spending at a standstill, Charlotte transit will have a quarter of a billion dollars less to work with than they had expected over the next ten years. Next month, they’ll be cutting back on service… and Charlotte is not alone. Over sixty communities nationwide are reducing seeing fare hikes and less service, even as more Americans are riding transit than in the last fifty years.

PARKER: What we’re struggling with is an economy that’s really screaming for us to have low-cost transportation. While—revenues are in a place where we can’t give them all the things that we would like to.

HINOJOSA: And despite its huge price tag, there are no guarantees that the stimulus dollars will solve Charlotte’s problems. For one thing, the money can’t be used to cover operating costs. So the fare hikes, layoffs and service cuts will continue. But more importantly, these new stimulus dollars won’t change the old-school way of delivering transportation money to the states. That’s not the wholesale change transit advocates had hoped for.

BAXANDALL: Epical change is epical for a reason. It doesn’t—it doesn’t happen easily. All the stars have to be aligned and—and the stimulus here, there may be half-aligned.

HINOJOSA: Why? Because, says Baxandall, the federal rules work like this: the more roads a state builds and the more gas people guzzle, the more federal money a state receives.

BAXANDALL: What that means, in effect, is that if you are a state that is trying to do the right thing in terms of reducing our dependence on oil, you’re gonna be getting less money. So we have the incentives which are punishing people for doing the right thing. And that’s exactly the opposite of what we should be doing.

HINOJOSA: And there are lots of other obstacles to funding mass transit projects, says Baxandall. They have to pass more rigorous environmental reviews than roads and are forced to compete against projects from other states—not the case for road money.

BAXANDALL: If you’re a governor, if you’re, you know, a mayor, you wanna have certainty about—I’ve invested these resources, I’ve invested this time, I’ve invested maybe my political career on something and if you can’t have that certainty, that is—I mean that is just a huge disincentive.

HINOJOSA: And transit planners say there’s another roadblock to mass transportation projects… this one stemming from the policies of the Bush administration.

KING: I do not believe the Bush administration believed in the growth-shaping characteristics of transit, so they were not looking forward, they were looking back.

HINOJOSA: David King heads regional transit service in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina… known as the research triangle. He says that policies under Bush’s U.S. Department of transportation discouraging transit have made less “shovel-ready” projects available for the stimulus.
King has personal experience dealing with the administration. Four years ago, he tried to bring light rail to the triangle to anticipate the population boom expected in the region over the next twenty years. But his proposal was rejected by Bush’s Department of Transportation… because, they were told, not enough people lived there.

KING: They were looking at, “You don’t have the density today,” when in fact what you’re trying to do is shape the growth so that the—the density and the development opportunity comes to the transit.

HINOJOSA: Now, with shovel-ready projects in demand for the stimulus, transit advocates are upset because they say the federal pipeline for projects has dried up over the last eight years.

KING: The conflict is between ready to go projects and the need to spend money quickly. And there’re not many because we’ve had eight years of those projects being systematically discouraged.

HINOJOSA: Are you frustrated with that? Are you just saying, “Gosh, if only the past eight years we had known what to prepare for, that we would have a different administration with a different perspective on mass transit”…

KING: Oh, surely. Surely it’s frustrating.

HINOJOSA: King has also been frustrated with how little North Carolina spends on mass transit… last year, only 3% of its transportation budget.
But times might be changing at the department.

CONTI: Transportation in North Carolina has been very road-focused, highway-focused. We need to continue to maintain that system and expand it, where appropriate. But we also need to look at these other modes in a much more serious way.

HINOJOSA: Gene Conti is North Carolina’s new Secretary of Transportation. He was hired by Governor Bev Perdue, who narrowly defeated Pat McCrory last fall. With the department getting so much bad press, she made transportation reform one of her big campaign issues.

You want your governor to be reelected in four years, so how do you measure the politics then of a huge stimulus package?

CONTI: This may sound naïve, I don’t think it is. But good policies are good politics. So, we’re concerned about good policies.

HINOJOSA: On the governor’s first day in office, she issued an executive order taking power away from the Board of Transportation to de-politicize the funding process. Much of that authority now resides with Conti, who has thirty years experience as a transportation administrator.

Transportation has been controversial in the state of North Carolina. Are you convinced that the governor’s reforms—will actually make a difference this time?

CONTI: I absolutely believe they will make a difference. But we’re gonna have to prove that to people. I think there’s a lot of justified skepticism and a lot of concern among the public. So, we’re gonna have to do our jobs well and we’re gonna have to do them openly and transparently so people understand what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and they can judge the results.

HINOJOSA: Is your understanding that the transportation board, with the governor’s reforms will now be more fact-based, what they decide to support?

CONTI: I think they will be. It won’t be people getting in a dark room somewhere and making decisions at the last minute.

HINOJOSA: But Mayor McCrory will believe it when he sees it.

MCCRORY: I hope. I hope he’s right. But, based upon past history—politicians will get involved.

HINOJOSA: With his transit budget in shambles and the city clamoring for more service, the mayor is still waiting to hear from the Department of Transportation about getting money for a new commuter rail in Charlotte.

The time has come, says McCrory, for our country to make smarter choices about transportation… or else, he says, our economy will be choked with congestion in the future.

MCCRORY: You can wait until the pain arrives and implement change then. It will be an easy sell, but mostly likely you’ve waited too long and it’ll be too expensive. Or you can anticipate the pain and change now. And most likely, the change will work and it’ll be less expensive. But it’s gonna be one hell of a sale.

BRANCACCIO: After this story you may want to consult a crystal ball about the state of public transit where you live. Well, we’ve got one- use an interactive map to see if fare hikes and service reductions are being planned in your state. It’s all on our website.

And that’s it for NOW. From New York, I’m David Brancaccio. We’ll see you next week.