If Transit Investment Produces Jobs, Why Isn’t There More of It?

[marmar]

from the Next American City blog:




In a nation that is struggling to counter a frustratingly high unemployment rate, any intervention that would increase job numbers at no cost to the American taxpayer would be quickly welcomed by policymakers, right?

Perhaps not. A new study by Todd Swanstrom, Will Winter, and Laura Wiedlocher of the University of Missouri-St. Louis suggests that the U.S. government could produce 180,000 extra jobs in several metropolitan areas by simply shifting spending away from highways and towards transit.

The report, “More Transit = More Jobs: The impact of increasing funding for public transit,” was sponsored by the Transportation Equity Network (TEN), a national group working to improve the mobility of some of the nation’s least well-off households.

Taking advantage of data that demonstrate that transit produces roughly 20% more jobs per dollar invested, the researchers show how the decisions made by just twenty metropolitan areas could affect the nation’s job prospects.

If the regions “Shifted 50 percent of their highway funds to transit, they would generate 1,123,674 new transit jobs over a five-year period.” the study reports. That’s “A net gain of 180,150 jobs over five years—without a single dollar of new spending.” In other words, if the federal government wants to find ways to increase employment, transit is a better place to look than roads.

While some regions, like those including and surrounding New York City, Honolulu, and Portland, spend a majority of their overall transportation funds on public transportation, others spend very little. The St. Louis metropolitan area, for instance, devotes just 15% of its overall transportation dollars to transit. According to TEN, that may reduce the ability of that city to generate jobs. One obvious answer would be spending less on roads and correspondingly more on transit. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://americancity.org/columns/entry/2582/

[Chan790]

1. Because mass transit is the enemy of big business.

Ford, GM, Exxon, Shell see no money for them in mass transit so they spend many times the amount being proposed by NAC and TEN be moved into mass transit on making sure mass transit remains dead.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

2. Because Transit System are operated by governments

And governments are evil. At least according the Republican who continually vote against transit systems.

[xchrom]

3. it's common sense in a time of economic hardship. nt

[HereSince1628]

4. Auto, oil, tire industries and of course the auto insurance industry

Don't you know that sensible social programs ALWAYS unfairly compete with private industry?

:sarcasm:

[Warren Stupidity]

5. That would take bold leadership. nt.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

6. Transit might bring "them" out to the suburbs where "we" ran away from them

Longtime powerful New York State public works executive Robert Moses engineered highways and railroads on Long Island from the 1920s to the 1970s. His biographer, Robert Caro, reported that Moses engineered transportation projects to exclude many minorities and poor people from jobs and recreation on Long Island, in many ways. Two of them were:

(1) ensuring that parkway overpasses had maximum clearance of nine feet, when buses needed twelve feet; and

(2) vetoing extension of the Ling Island Railroad to the very popular Jones Beach.

Deliberate policies of urban neglect have far outlived Moses and traveled far from New York, ensuring that highway projects for cars eat the vast majority of transportation funding.