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 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 ridership dips because of, for instance, a global pandemic.
That's particularly troubling in small cities under 200,000 people, which rely more heavily on federal dollars to keep their networks running smoothly while they grow the ridership they need to support a robust transit system.
Theoretically, urban areas of all sizes can flex funding from capital to operations needs — but in practice, transit agencies are so poorly funded that doing so is basically robbing Peter to pay Paul. Even large metros like Philadelphia are forced to make hard choices when operations funding dips, cannibalizing cash to replace rapidly aging infrastructure so today's riders have a bus driver to get them to work.
Skimp on capital costs too much, though, and that bus might soon not be drivable by anyone – which is why it's also critical to increase capital funding, too, especially a demand for mass modes continues to surge. The American Public Transportation Association estimates that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act underestimated the demand for capital dollars by at least $36 billion — which represents a lost opportunity to expand networks and shift people out of cars.
"You have buses and other facilities that are in disrepair; they're breaking down, and they can't fix those facilities if they're flexing money to be able to pay their staff and run at a frequency that's useful for folks to get around," added Pasamonte. "What happens is, you have this really long backlog of repairs that agencies are already having trouble addressing ... because we have consistently and chronically underfunded these systems, and they've had to make difficult choices."
Those choices can be even more difficult in non-urban areas, where residents without cars —and there are a lot of them — are more likely to be isolated from jobs and basic needs. That's why the letter authors argued that rural transit needs particular support, like allowing agencies to fund 80 percent of their service on federal money alone, requiring states to provide multi-year funding estimates to rural transit agencies so they can plan for the long term, and new grant programs and partnership aimed at the smallest networks around
The letter also argues that cities need more money for safe roads leading up to stations and stops, and all the routes in between. That could look like "dedicate[d] funding for transit-supportive infrastructure such as sidewalks, bus shelters, ADA access, traffic signal priority, queue jumps, and bus lanes," incentives for "mixed-use, mixed-income private development near transit stations and hubs," or just "increase[d] flexibility in roadway design standards to support safe travel for transit riders," from the moment they leave their front door to the moment they arrive at their destination.
Again, those needs are particularly acute in smaller cities and rural areas, where the road to the closest stop can often be a long and daunting one.
"We've all seen people walking on the side of a highway or biking on an eight-lane road with no sidewalk because there's no other option ... when people think about cyclists, they think that's going to be some Lycra-wearing person. when the reality is, it's someone taking transit who is going to work, people win motorized wheelchairs using the bike lane because the sidewalk is in disrepair or inaccessible," Pasamonte adds. "They wouldn't do that if they didn't need to get where they're going. If we're going to provide transit service – which we should — we need to make it safe for people to actually access that service."
Pasamonte also argues that the senators the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs committee need to think beyond their particular committee, and work with their colleagues on Environment and Public Works to prioritize road maintenance over road expansion. Because while that might not seem like an issue that's under their direct purview, America's highway addiction has profound impacts on transit agencies, which suffer service delays when roads are in poor condition, and inevitably becomes the target for future cuts when highway agencies can no longer put off repairs and come looking to legislators for cash.
"There are a lot of reasons to prioritize maintenance over expansion," Pasamonte added. "It's just smart cost calculation; that's part of why we put this to the banking committee. " We have all experienced roads that have potholes, bridges that need to be rebuilt, highways that are difficult to travel along by car or by bus. We know that's the case across the country, and we also know we're seeing highway expansions left and right — knowing that state DOTs don't have a plan to address that maintenance backlog."
As the reauthorization drags on, Pasamonte hopes that the Senate will listen to the diverse coalition of organization that's fighting for the structural building blocks of that will deliver a great transit future for America — and the countless constituents who support them.
"Look at the types of organizations that are signed on; it's not just transit and environmental orgs," they add. "It's labor, it's housing, it's cities. This is not a niche issue. If you care about having a robust and reliable transit network and having safe streets, the best thing you can do is contact your elected officials and let them know his is something that you care about — because if we don't reach out, it's not going to be on their radar."
