Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I am Hank Dittmar and I am Executive Director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project,-a national coalition of over two hundred groups who believe that transportation policy and investment should serve people and communities, not just vehicles. Our members include national and local environmental and preservation groups, organizations representing both business and labor, consumer groups and professional associations concerned with transportation and the built environment.
I am here today to discuss the pending reauthorization of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, which expires on September 30, 1997. This 1991 law represented a big step forward for transportation policy in this country, embracing both highways and transit as it defined a program that would enable us to meet the nation's mobility needs while improving community vitality and protecting the environment. This Committee is responsible for the public transit provisions of the ISTEA law, and shares jurisdiction with respect to the important planning and decision making parts of the law with the Environment and Public Works Committee. In my testimony today, I will focus on the positive contribution ISTEA has made to improving the relationship between transportation, communities and the environment.
Public transportation plays a critical role in improving environmental quality and energy security in this country and it could do much more. Public transit investment is a key strategy for areas seeking to bring their air quality into compliance with national air quality standards. Nationally, the Federal Transit Administration estimates that transit use prevents the emission by automobiles of 126 million pounds of hydrocarbons and 156 million pounds of nitrogen oxides. Improvements to transit systems are key parts of State Implementation Plans developed by regions all over the country in response to the Clean Air Act, which seeks to address the serious health impacts of dirty air. According to researchers at Harvard's School of Public Health, air pollution may contribute to more than 60,000 deaths annually. Transportation is strongly implicated in the rising rates of asthma and respiratory disease in metropolitan areas. Public transportation helps with air pollution because it diverts trips from single occupant vehicles to shared use modes.
Transit also contributes to improving energy security by conserving petroleum. Transportation accounts for two-thirds of oil consumption in the United States, and our nation's oil consumption is growing. Transportation energy use actually increased by 45 percent between 1970 and 1994, and oil imports are an increasing share of our energy picture. In fact, oil imports accounted for 60 percent of our trade deficit in 1990. According to the Federal Transit Administration, transit use saves 1.5 billion gallons of fuel each year. The recent "Dollars and Sense" report on the impacts of public transit estimates the energy security and conservation benefits of this savings at $1.2 billion annually.
ISTEA has had a very positive impact on environment and energy conservation, as its increased investment in public transit and emphasis on a balanced transportation system has begun to reverse a decline in public transit brought on by federal disinvestment in the Eighties. Overall federal transportation spending has always favored highways over transit, but ISTEA closed the gap somewhat -- from 8 to I to 5 to 1. Where transit investments have been made transit use is increasing -- up 52 percent in ten years in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina and 105 percent in ten years in Fort Myers, Florida, for example. ISTEA's provisions to allow states and localities to shift highway dollars to mass transit have also helped. Since ISTEA has passed over $3 billion has been "flexed" from highways to transit. The vast majority of this money has come from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program, which funds localities struggling to meet air quality standards. These funds have been used to help build new transit systems, initiate new service and to purchase clean fueled transit vehicles. With air quality standards due to be toughened, Congress should increase this program to around $2 billion annually - from the highway account of the Highway Trust Fund.
The Federal Transit Administration identifies three functions of public transportation: low cost mobility, congestion relief, and community economic development. With respect to the mobility function, public transit plays an important role in ensuring access to opportunity and services for those who lack any alternative. This function clearly derives its national purpose from the general welfare clause of the Constitution, and assumes particular importance as we deal with ensuring accessibility through the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as we deal with the consequences of an aging population and as we struggle to move Americans from welfare to work. These problems demand sharply increased transit investment overall, as the cost implications of ADA compliance alone are quite significant.
The implementation of welfare reform has also shown that transit investment needs to be increased overall. Studies show that 40 percent of workers with incomes less than $ 1 0,000 don't commute by car and that 20 percent of workers with incomes between $25,000 and $35,000 don't commute by auto. The situation is even more extreme with respect to welfare recipients -- only 6 percent of welfare recipients have autos available to them, according to the Department of Transportation. The problem of job access is compounded by the sprawling nature of our metropolitan areas. By and large, people without jobs tend to be concentrated in center cities, some inner suburbs and in pockets of rural poverty, while job growth has been in newer suburban areas. This spatial mismatch problem makes it difficult for people coming off welfare to get to new jobs, as transit systems have been historically oriented in the opposite direction.
For this reason, and because welfare reform can only work if access problems are dealt with, we believe ISTEA reauthorization should include a new Job Access program. The Administration has proposed a $ 1 00 million job access program, which is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the Administration's NEXTEA bill funds this program from existing transit resources. What is needed is new money, both from the transit and highway accounts, with two purposes: to bring people to jobs and to bring jobs to people. The first program should be oriented toward serving what's called the reverse commute, and should be intended to promote coordination of transit resources with social service transportation through a high matching ratio. The program could fund bus, van pool and user side subsidy programs intended to provided transportation access and user training for people seeking suburban work opportunities.
The second "Jobs to People" program should provide funding to encourage transit oriented development at transit nodes -- rail stations, bus transfer centers and other intermodal facilities. Such programs would seek to concentrate job development in areas well served by transit and close to areas where job seekers dwell. The program could fund planning activities and provide low interest loans for development, paying the transportation parts of redevelopment programs. This program should also have a high matching requirement, to encourage other government, philanthropic or private investment into these areas. These two programs should be funded with new resources at $250 million initially, growing to $400 million over the term of the legislation.
The second function of transit cited by the Federal Transit Administration is that transit investment helps auto users by relieving congestion on the highway network. Economic studies have shown that in corridors where transit provides for travel time reductions, travel speeds actually increase on highway corridors. Congestion has been estimated by the Texas Transportation Institute to cost $51 billion annually. These costs would rise by $19.2 billion annuallywithout public transit. To put that cost in regional terms, the "Dollars and Sense" study estimates that thel oss of the region's transit system would generate additional auto traffic equivalent to a 29 lane Capitol Beltway. Not only should public transit investment be sustained and expanded, but Congress should increase spending on programs which enable transit to compete in terms of travel times with the automobile, as these investments provide the added benefit of reducing travel times for drivers too. Expanded funding for rail and busway systems and for technologies such as transit preferential traffic signals would provide these benefits.
A third important function of public transit is that transit investment helps to revitalize existing communities by promoting community economic development. ISTEA has had a major impact in this area, by promoting a view of transportation that embraces economic vitality and community quality of life as central goals for transportation investment. By serving as a node for all kinds of investment, transit can attract economic development. Robert Cevero, a professor with the University of California, has found that land values increase with proximity to a rail station while they decrease with nearness to a highway. Rail investment has strengthened center cities in the San Francisco Bay Area, the National Capitol region and the Portland area. The Washington Metro system has attracted development to close in suburban stations like Bethesda, Ballston and Pentagon City as well. Metrorail in Northern Virginia was estimated by the firm of KPMG Peat Marwick to have attracted 9 1,000 additional jobs, $2. 1 billion in tax revenues, and 26 million square feet of commercial development.
Regions all over the country are planning new rail system to attract this kind of economic benefit. Over 25 cities are in serious planning for a new fixed guideway system. New rail lines have opened recently in St. Louis, Dallas, and Denver and ridership is exceeding projections in each city. Rail transit promotes improved quality of life and more livable communities as well, by encouraging mixed use development in walking distance of stations and by supporting residential development near rail. These benefits have been supported by the FIA's highly successful Livable Communities Program. Insufficient federal funds are available to accommodate the increased demand for new systems around the country. New Starts funding should be increased, but not at the expense of other important programs to fund renovation of older systems, bus purchase or rural transit.
As I noted earlier, this Committee also has joint responsibility for the integrated planning and decision-making structure established in ISTEA..ISTEA invigorated metropolitan transportation planning by calling for fiscally constrained budgeting, improved public involvement procedures and an expanded role for local government and transit officials. ISTEA also for the first time required consideration of both transit and highway alternatives to solving a transportation problem. This resulted in guidance calling for Major Investment Studies, a notable improvement in planning practice. The metropolitan planning and public involvement provisions and funding for planning in ISTEA should be continued and improved. ISTEA's planning factors should be simplified and focused on performance measurement and the Major Investment Study requirement should be codified and integrated with the environmental process.
ISTEA also revitalized transit research and technology development, partly through the creation of a Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP). TCRP should be reauthorized; it has already proven its worth. In addition, ISTEA should call for an increased emphasis on transit in the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) program, which-to date has been disproportionately focused on technologies which promote the single occupant vehicle. More emphasis needs to be given to technologies which help transit, including paratransit scheduling and dispatching, transit preferential signals, rural transit, and traveler information system oriented to transit service.
Congress should reauthorize ISTEA's transit programs in a timely fashion. Funding levels should be increased and the existing program structure retained. ISTEA's efforts to establish a level playing field between highways and transit should be continued, with equivalent matching ratios, comprehensive planning provisions and with a change to allow capital maintenance to be eligible for transit as it is for highways. Funding for ADA compliance should be provided and new funds should be dedicated to a two part Job Access program. Continuation of a strong national transit program is good for the environment, good for the economy and good for rural and metropolitan communities.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I would be pleased to answer
any questions that you might have at this time.
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