A rough ride for transit? Soaring government deficits threaten to shrink service and delay some capital programs, though probably not for long - 2003 Passenger Rail Outlook

Railway Age, Jan, 2003 by Luther S. Miller

Tumbling tax revenues at every level of government have created a fiscal crisis that leaves no public service untouched, including transit. The new year will see a tightening squeeze on operations. Capital spending on heavy, light, and commuter rail will remain at an annual rate of more than $6 billion, but some new projects will be getting a second look. The funding crisis will ease as the economy shifts into a full recovery mode, which many economists believe will happen at about mid-year. But some lasting harm could be done as pressures mount for such lower-cost alternatives as bus rapid transit and monorail. On the other hand, high-cost alternatives like maglev could lose face, and funding. There was talk last month that public support was swiftly eroding for a scheme to link Baltimore and Washington, D.C., with maglev trains at a cost of nearly $5 billion--the much-ballyhooed beginning of a national network of super-speed, gliding-on-air trains. This grandiose plan, which has had the lukewarm support of the Federal Railroad Administration, would drain critical dollars from conventional rail transit.

The biggest challenge for transit this year will be renewal of long-term federal funding through TEA-21 reauthorization.

A little over a decade ago, a significant milepost in dedicated funding came into view with passage of ISTEA, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. It guaranteed specified and dependable levels of funding for six years. ISTEA was so successful that it was followed by another six-year authorization at slightly higher levels, TEA-21, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century. TEA-21 reauthorization comes up this year. Not all of the omens are promising.

The new speaker of the House, Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, is known mainly in the transit world as the lawmaker who tried to kill off light rail in his home town, Houston. (He was rebuffed.) But transit has staunch bipartisan support among key members of House committees. As Nelson Rockefeller once observed, good transit is good politics, and legislators tend to respond to the wishes of voters back home. That's what makes the American Public Transportation Association's aggressive letters-to-lawmakers campaign particularly important this year.

Still, the national government faces a $200 billion deficit this year, after years of surpluses. It also must absorb the costs of a national defense buildup and probable war in the Middle East. This means that government programs up for reauthorization in 2003 could be victims of bad timing. Realistically, if the choice is between trains and tanks, the trains may have to wait. Meanwhile, others are climbing Capitol Hill with their begging bowls. Highway builders are seeking an increase from $35 billion a year to $60 billion by 2007. State transportation departments have put their needs at a more modest $41 billion a year.

Where public transit advocates are beginning to break ranks is over the question of how federal or other funding aid should be spent. There's rising pressure, stoked by pro-highway forces, for communities looking for decongestants to opt for cheap over-the-counter remedies like "bus rapid transit" (BRT) (an "odious oxymoron," in the jaundiced view of one rail advocate). BRT is now being seriously pushed and gaining some ground as an alternative to a long-planned rail line in the Dulles Airport corridor outside Washington. The Federal Transit Administration has described BRT as bus service with rail service quality, and it has a record of success as an added amenity in rail-served cities or as a substitute for rail in smaller communities.

But is low-cost always cost-effective? That question is currently being examined by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in a $300,000 study to determine whether commuter rail, light rail, or BRT should be installed along what's left of the 5.5-mile North Shore Railroad on Staten Island.

There are other challenges to conventional rail. In Seattle two months ago, voters approved construction of a 14-mile, $1.7 billion monorail by a margin of 877 votes out of 189,000 cast. It took two days to count and recount the vote. Local funding would come from a 1.4% motor vehicle excise tax. Seattle's existing one-mile monorail, built for the city's international expo in 1962, is primarily used by tourists traveling between the Space Needle and downtown. Will a longer monorail be up to the larger transportation task that has up to now been contemplated for light rail? Many think not, and contend that the "monorail mob" that got out the vote in November was little more than a pro-highway lobby.

Straitened circumstances appear to have had one pleasing effect for planners of conventional rail. A large state deficit, plus the loss of its Olympics bid, has considerably diminished Maryland's enthusiasm for a planned $4.4 billion maglev line connecting Baltimore and Washington and providing the first link in a dreamed-of national maglev system. As Maryland Senate President Thomas Miller put it: "Maglev right now--with the bumps it's encountered, including the loss of the Olympics and the economy and the continued citizen opposition--just doesn't have legs."