Get on the bus

With a Vice President known as Amtrak Joe and a President who says he believes that the nation’s urban policy needs to shift its focus from crime and poverty to metropolitan development, a new day for urban development focused on public transit may be dawning in the United States. Election Day 2008 gave transit advocates on the West Coast even more solid reasons to believe their time is finally here.

In Washington, voters in three counties approved a measure to increase the sales tax rate and spend $17.9 billion to expand a new light rail system. On the same day, voters in California authorized the construction of a high-speed rail system between San Diego, Sacramento and San Francisco. According to reports, the $33 billion backbone link will deliver passengers to San Francisco from Los Angeles in less than three hours for half the price of a plane ticket. A few days later in Oregon, Gov. Ted Kulongowski asked state legislators to invest $1 billion every two years into the state’s transportation system.

Transit, as they say, is hot on the West Coast and the payoff from it looks good for private enterprise.

Gasoline and diesel prices may have fallen from the highs they reached during Summer 2008, but the reason for the decline is decreased demand due to an economic crisis, which has pinched pocketbooks across a country experiencing unemployment at a rate higher than it’s seen in decades. And the federal government predicts that gas prices will be back up above $3.50 per gallon in 2009 as the economy recovers and demand for oil increases.

But doom and gloom in the economic news isn’t the only reason interest in public transit is expected to continue to grow in the United States. Simply put, Americans think life is better when they have the option not to drive. Eighty percent of the nation sees quality of life benefits from increased investment in public transportation and 76 percent support public funding for the expansion and improvement of public transit, according to a study released by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).

In 2007, Americans took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation, representing a 50-year high and a 2.1 percent increase over the previous year, according to APTA. With ridership nearing or meeting capacity in almost every city, governments are starting to invest more—and in many cases, long overdue—money in local and regional transit systems as part of anti-sprawl strategies. The California legislature in 2008 passed the nation’s first anti-sprawl law. SB 375 will send parts of the state’s $5 billion transportation budget to regions that reduce carbon emissions by reducing the need for residents to drive.