Below is an early analysis from Metro’s government affairs staff of the debt-ceiling compromise before Congress. Not surprisingly, it includes cuts in federal transportation spending:
The House and Senate are set to vote today on legislation that reduces our national deficit, raises the debt ceiling and avoids a technical default by the U.S. Treasury Department. The plan agreed upon last night by the House and Senate leaders and the White House has two parts or phases – with the initial impact being a nearly $1 trillion reduction in the national deficit and an increase of $900 billion in the debt ceiling. The second part of the bill would empower a joint congressional committee with the task of securing an additional $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction and raising the debt ceiling by a similar amount. Should the joint congressional committee fail to achieve significant debt reductions, the bill being considered today includes trigger mechanisms that would force across the board spending cuts.
As drafted, the legislation being considered by Congress today would impact federal transportation funding by placing statutory caps on discretionary spending. For example, federal transportation programs for Fiscal Year 2012 and 2013 would be funded at Fiscal Year 2011 levels. This is significant because the Fiscal Year 2011 funding levels were approximately 3.8 percent less than the previous year [Fiscal Year 2010]. Following Fiscal Year 2012, transportation spending and other non-discretionary federal programs would rise by about 2 percent per year from Fiscal Years 2014 to 2021. Please find attached a copy of the Budget Control Act that will be considered by the House and Senate later today. We will continue to carefully analyze the short and long-term implications of this legislation on our agency’s Board-approved legislative program.
It’s worth noting that many members of Congress — as well as President Obama — have in recent months also raised alarms about the nations deteriorating infrastructure.
There is also this angle, as pointed out by the New York Times: the initial strategy to help the nation’s economy by boosting government spending — i.e. the federal stimulus bill, bailouts of various firms — has turned into a strategy of big cuts to government spending.
@Redebbm Well you do have opinions stated but they aren’t facts, the only fact you stated was Measure R being approved by voters but everything else you stated are your “opinions”.
The only reason why that Measure R tax was approved is because many people felt for it and thought things were gonna improve but they didn’t. No, I didn’t support the Measure R tax. Measure R tax didn’t improve anything, wait til the City of L.A and Metro go bankrupted one day due to mis-management and then you will wake up to see the taxes were spent on wrong places.
BTW Just because you like taxes since it’s like supporting communism/liberalism so much in city of L.A, doesn’t mean people will agree with you either.
I mean your entitled to your opinions.
I mean Metro always begs for money a lot, they need to reduce their spending themselves and cut the waste.
I do think that Metro should remove the Transit TV monitors from the buses since it discourages some riders from taking Metro and find a new source of revenue.
Besides, privatization makes sense and is good for economy rather you agree or disagree.
Just remember, this is a capitalist country NOT socialist. So privatization is legal. As for contracted services, they owned by Metro, there not private, so there no point in the excuse for this.
The contracted routes should be privatized IMO so Metro can stop wasting money on contracted services to save money.
Actually, Metro ain’t that great itself, they are so poorly manged and aren’t good. I still support dismantling Metro and having the Metro routes being taken over by Private companies. The Metro Rail operations could be taken over by LADOT.
I don’t care if people disagree or not, I’m not changing my opinions anytime soon.
So stop thinking Metro or any Transit Authority is all that great because they are lots of mis-management and this is for a fact.
The government itself failed big time, and the government agencies like Metro or any Transit Authority are no better then a private company, they are just bad as it is. It shows that Socialism doesn’t really work.
Either way most people in America will anyways continue to use cars and no one can force them onto mass transit.
Actually they are a certain Transit Agency in other cities/states that are gonna privatize their bus service due to inefficient performance such as Long Island Bus (Nassau County NY), Hampton Roads Transit’s routes in Suffolk, Virgina and Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Austin County, texas).
I will support privatization Metro bus routes and dismantling Metro if this ever happens one day. This is my opinion and it’s not changing anytime soon.
“Either way most people in America will anyways continue to use cars and no one can force them onto mass transit.” And how do you think that was made possible?… America spends/spent most of its transportation money on auto infrastructure so yes, logically, more people will use cars because that’s what is much more available… duh!!! But if we had the same investment in mass transit that we had in roads, we would almost certainly see the percent of transit users go up proportionately, there is a reason that cities with a high amount of mass transit infrastructure virtually always have much higher transit use. I’m not against privatization as a principle overall, but I am against having that be expected for mass transit but not for highways and roads. That’s an unequal standard for transit funding. Unfortunately the reality is that the Federal government effectively took mass transit out of the private sector when they built the interstate highway system because it set a precedent for what mode of transportation Americans would use without regard to what the free market would actually provide which would have most likely been in the form of more dedicated mass transit, like it was before the 1950s. Private companies built the LA interurbans, the NY subways and the Chicago ELs, but that was all before the interstate highway construction which artificially induced demand for auto travel and now can’t be effectively competed with from the private sector in terms of transportation mode because no private company has the investment will nor the money to build a mass transit system that will lure Americans off the government highways. Not to mention the risk of litigation and NIMBY issues when it comes to acquiring existing ROWs or building new ones, its basically become impossible for the private sector to realistically invest in and build mass transit amidst a sea of government funded roads and highways. Unfortunately, If we depend only on the private sector now, nothing will get built, and Americans will always be stuck with that single mode of transportation and the traffic and capacity problems that come with it.