ALL OVER the United States, communities have recognized that new highways are often not the best answer to traffic congestion and have turned to public transit projects. Commuting by transit limits sprawl, air pollution, and fuel consumption. Despite mass transit's obvious advantages, the Bush administration wants to make it a less affordable option for states by requiring that for New Starts projects they match federal aid on a dollar-for-dollar basis instead of the current $1 for $4 of US assistance. New highways would still be subsidized at a 1-to-4 ratio. This change, which the administration justifies as a way to aid more projects and better leverage US funds, would jeopardize transit projects from Boston to Houston. Both the House and Senate versions of the new transportation bill include the 1-to-4 match, but supporters of public transit fear that the administration's proposed match could be inserted to bring down the cost of the package. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill if its cost substantially exceeds his proposal.
Boston area projects that would be affected include Phase 3 of the Silver Line (a tunnel between New England Medical Center and South Station), the Urban Ring, and the extension of the Blue Line to Lynn.
In New Hampshire, a project to restore service on a 12-mile stretch of rail between Nashua and Lowell could be jeopardized. Once completed, it would take pressure off heavily congested Route 3. A New Hampshire court has ruled that the state cannot use its own gas-tax revenues to help fund a multi-modal transportation center that would include a new Nashua train station, but project proponents still hope to get service restored.
Some of the projects endangered by the administration's new matching proposal simply connect downtowns, but others are a response to new growth patterns, linking city centers to university campuses, medical centers, and airports.
According to the administration, there is a national backlog of more than 120 public transportation projects looking for federal support. More would be funded promptly if Congress, in its 1998 transportation bill, had not stipulated that 80 percent of gas-tax transportation money must go to highways and just 20 percent to public transit. While that 1-to-4 ratio was an improvement over the 1-to-5 ratio established in the 1991 transportation bill, it is not keeping pace with the need.
Since 1998, the Sierra Club says, transit ridership has increased 21 percent. This public demand reflects the results of a 2003 study by the Texas Transportation Institute, which found that peak-period commuting congestion in the United States doubled in the past 20 years. The extra pollution and wasted time and fuel will only increase if Washington does not change its transportation priorities to be fair to public transit.