$2 Trillion and No One Aboard

by Randal O’ Toole

Since 1965, Congress has been subsidizing transit and taxpayers have spent well over $2 trillion dollars on transit. That’s in the same territory as the U.S. deficit.

In these 60 years, transit operating costs have increased 500 percent while fare revenues have ticked up a modest 10 percent. Total ridership–in actual numbers–has decreased by 10 percent, and riders per capita for urban residents has fallen by more than 50 percent.

Instead of improving efficient transportation, transit agencies have bloated their bureaucracies and nearly tripled their workers. Today, they spend 55 percent more on “general administration.”

Most transit makes congestion worse, not better. Aside from New York, transit uses more energy and emits more greenhouse gases per passenger mile than cars and light trucks. Worse yet, transit spending siphons billions from improving roads for 100 percent of Americans.

It’s time to stop this trillion-dollar boondoggle. Next year, congress will consider new legislation in the Surface Transportation Reauthorization bill. Congress should end transit subsidies or tie them to fare revenues, so that transit must boost ridership—not spending—to increase funds.

Read the full commentary at CascadePolicy.org

Randal O’Toole is an Adjunct Scholar at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization. He is a transportation and land-use policy analyst and the author of several books, including American Nightmare: How Government Undermines the Dream of Homeownership and Romance of the Rails: Why the Passenger Trains We Love Are Not the Transportation We Need. He writes from Central Oregon.