Smart Growth Resource Library

Jumpstarting the Transit Space Race

ReConnecting America's report Jumpstarting the Transit Space Race: How the New Administration Could Make America Energy-Independent, Create Jobs and Keep the Economy Strong tackles the expansive issue of inadequate transportation facilities in many of the U.S. urban and suburban areas and how a comprehensive program to enhance alternate transportation options could have a positive ripple effect throughout the economy.

From the Report: The demand for transit in the U.S. has never been greater, with ridership at its highest levels in 50 years and almost 400 new rail, streetcar and bus rapid transit projects proposed in large and small regions from Massachusetts to Hawaii. Americans took 10.1 billion trips on transit in 2007, saving 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline -- the equivalent of a supertanker leaving the Middle East every 11 days.(1) This spike of interest in transit offers huge opportunity for the U.S. to reduce our dependence on foreign oil as well as household transportation expenditures -- which would increase both national and economic security.

There is so much interest in transit that 78 regions in 37 states have proposed 400 projects worth $248 billion. At the current rate of federal investment, building these projects would take 77 years.

The relatively low level of transit investment in this country stands in sharp contrast to expenditures on transit in countries such as India, England, China and Canada. And it has caused local governments to turn to local voters for support by putting sales tax and other funding measures on the ballot in order to find a way to build new transit lines and systems. Both Denver and Houston, for example, recently won support from voters to build entire transit systems, and there are more than a dozen measures on the November 2008 ballot across the country. Voters approved 70 percent of tranportation-funding ballot measures between 2000 and 2005, indicating huge public support for transit construction.

9 pages (2.6mb); available online as a PDF document at the resource link below.

Resource: http://ctod.org/newstarts/NEWSTARTS.pdf

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