Transportation Policies Leave Blacks on the Side of the Road

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia's funding formula steers cash to rural highways at the expense of grid-locked Atlanta motorists. From July 1999 to September 2003, Georgia spent $620 on transportation costs per resident in the 13-county Atlanta region, compared with $ 1,000 per resident in the rest of the state. During the late 1990s, only about 17 percent of the gasoline tax revenues were returned to the Atlanta metropolitan counties - a region that generates 40 percent of the state's collection.

This problem is not unique to metro Atlanta. The Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based environmental organization that researches threats to health and the environment, found that commuters in 176 metropolitan areas paid $20 billion more in federal gasoline tax than they received back in federal Highway Trust Fund money for both transit and highways from 1998 to 2003. Taxpayers in 54 metropolitan areas lost an estimated $100 million dollars during the six-year period. The top gasoline tax losers were Los Angeles, Dallas-Form Worth, Phoenix, Atlanta, Detroit and New Orleans.

On One Accord

Clearly, transportation continues to be a civil rights issue. Nationwide African Americans and other people of color have demanded an end to transportation policies that aid and abet the flight of people, jobs and investments to suburbs. In 1995, the Labor/Community Strategy Center, Bus Riders Union, Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund charged the Los Angeles MTA with violating Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The groups found that MTA operated separate and unequal bus and rail systems. MTA, they discovered, spent 70 percent of its budget on rail systems for majority White communities, while reducing the fleet of buses that catered to the mostly minority populations.

Though the coalition won a historic out-of-court settlement against the MTA in 1996, it has been an uphill battle to get the the MTA to live up to the 10-year federal consent decree. The Bus Riders Union had to go to court as recently as January 2004 to get the MTA to abide by the decree.

On the national front, Congress passed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 to improve public transportation necessary for "improved air quality, energy conservation, international competitiveness, and mobility for elderly persons, persons with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged persons in urban and rural areas of the country." From 1998 through 2003, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) spending amounted to $217 billion, making it the largest public works bill enacted in the nation's history at the time. The legislation also helped create jobs. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, every $1 billion invested in public transportation infrastructure supports approximately 47,500 jobs.

TEA-21 expired in September 2003. Congress has since passed six temporary extensions. The latest extension carries spending through the end of May 2005, with the Federal Highway Administration getting $24.5 billion and public transportation $5.2 billion.