In the developed world, we think of public transportation as buses, trains, subway and light rail. Essentially, anything where costs and conveyance are shared. While sharing rides with fellow commuters may roll over the occasional rough patch, it’s nothing when compared with sharing the tab for safe, reliable and efficient transit service for the masses. As we approach the 2010 election, transportation and especially how transportation is funded, has taken center stage.

Several key projects are at the center of the political storm, including a $42.6 billion high speed rail plan in California, high speed rail in the Midwest, and the ARC tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan. Whether plans should move forward, and how they will be financed, has become political sport. But why? How did America’s public transportation system find itself in the crosshairs this election season?

Propped up by state, local and federal subsidies, America’s 6.9 million daily transit riders receive $2,300 in federal subsidies alone. During a 50-week working calendar, with 250 scheduled work days, the feds kick in more than $9.20 per day to get people to and from work. The cost of each segment is nearly $5 in taxpayer money, if banking holidays are subtracted from the total number of possible work days.

What municipalities, state and regional governments pile on to keep transit systems operating further adds to the total. Given how few people ride transit relative to the number of automobiles drivers–nearly 155 million–it becomes a little more difficult to say that a $104 for a monthly New York City Metrocard is really that steep. And yet the arguments continue over how much is too much to, and who is paying for transportation in taxes, versus who benefits.

Public Transit funding on the chopping block

In theory, a whopping 84 percent of Americans would spend more money to shore up transportation systems in need of repair, according to a White House study. At the same time, people are quick to chose infrastructure as an area where money can be trimmed in times of fiscal uncertainty writes Eric Jaffe, citing a study done by the Transportation Research Board.

Voters in five states: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois and New York were surveyed by The Pew Center on the States in cooperation with the Public Policy Institute of California. Across the board, voters were not willing to fight to protect money for public transportation compared to K-12 education and money for health care.

With the exception of Arizona, survey respondents represent voters from the nation’s richest pools of electoral votes. All states except Arizona are also likely to see development of major rail projects–the ARC in New York, and high speed rail in the others. In presidential contests, New York, California and Illinois deliver for Democratic candidates, almost without fail. But Obama’s infrastructure and transportation agenda must play beyond his core constituency, otherwise it will hang like a lead weight around members of the Democratic party as they head down the stretch in tightly contested midterm elections.

However, misinformation about transportation spending has run amok. In the hopes of ginning up fear, politicians are exploiting this basic lack of knowledge. “Roughly 20 percent of respondents in Arizona, New York, and Illinois thought transportation made up the state’s biggest expense; in fact it made up 7 percent, 6 percent, and 8 percent of each state’s budget, respectively.” Jaffe said,

The reality of infrastructure spending versus the perception could not be more stark.

Public Transportation leads to Gentrification

In an unexpected plot twist, it appears that the when benefits accrue due to transportation investment, they can hurt and not help the poor, the people most commonly associated with transit ridership.

The results of a new study from the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University show that certain public transportation investments lead to gentrification and the displacement of poor and low-income area residents by more affluent commuters.

While “core riders” remain predominantly the urban poor, most often low-income blacks and hispanics, increased transit investment draws more cosmopolitan, affluent and educated home buyers who can afford to ditch their cars and commute to work by train or bus. It also decreases transit ridership in the long term.

Via Smart Planet

For 64 percent of the neighborhoods around the new rail stations in the study (that’s 27 of 42 total), population grew more quickly than the rest of the metro area.
55 percent of those neighborhoods showed a “dramatic” increase in housing production.
62 percent of those neighborhoods showed a faster increase in owner-occupied units than the rest of the metro area.
50 percent of those neighborhoods showed an increase in the proportion of non-Hispanic white households relative to the rest of the metro area. (The other half showed no change or a decrease.)
62 percent of those neighborhoods showed an increase in median household income; 60 percent showed a boost in the proportion of households with incomes of more than $100,000.
Perhaps most tellingly, 74 percent of the neighborhoods showed rents that increased faster than the rest of the metro area. A full 88 percent had a relative boost in median housing values, too.

Transit funding also lead to decreased ridership and increased car buying

In 40 percent of the new transit neighborhoods, public transit use declined relative to the rest of the metro area.
In 71 percent of the neighborhoods, ownership of a vehicle increased; in 57 percent, ownership of two or more cars increased.

Therefore, the relationship between transit and growth is much less clearly understood than it would seem. What should be intuitive is anything but.

A Conservative’s view of Public Transportation

Funding for public transportation is often seen as a cut and dry battle between liberals and conservatives. Democrats want increased spending for transportation, while Republicans think it is fiscally irresponsible to pay for someone else’s commute, right? Wrong.

In an interview with Grist, William Grist, who recently published his book ‘Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation said,

The fundamental reason conservatives should support public transportation is because traditionally we’ve been strong on national security. The country’s single greatest national security vulnerability is our dependence on imported oil. For at least half of the American population, that dependence is complete; that is to say only half of the population has any public transit available at all. The first conservative virtue, as Russell Kirk argued, is prudence. It strikes us as wildly imprudent to make our mobility hostage to events in unstable parts of the world.

Energy security is one way to sell the transportation issue to conservatives, but Lind also points out that affluent transportation riders by from choice much prefer rail over the bus. Street car, commuter rail, heavy rail or light rail all fall into this category, said Lind. “Even if you’re driving a Mercedes, it’s no fun sitting there stuck in traffic,” Lind said.

And that’s where we find ourselves, politically locked in a intractable mess over transit. At the highest levels, the all-important Surface Transportation Reauthorization bill is clawing its way towards passage in Washington. In state after state, competing factions are scrapping over the future of major transportation initiatives. Will they see completion or, be sent to the mass transit graveyard? The answer hangs in balance.

For good or for ill, the logjam may be broken in just over a week when voters head to the polls. In Wisconsin, gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker has promised to kill the high speed rail train that would connect Chicago with Madison if elected. Former eBay CEO, Meg Whitman, has made her opposition to high speed rail an issue in her bid for the top seat in California.

The fact that funding or starving transportation systems is one of the most heavily contested electoral issues indicates we’re at a rather remarkable moment in American history. The fights may be bringing out some of the worst aspects of the political process, but its a fight that urban planners and transportation advocates have been dreaming about for years. While we may not win every battle, the fact that we are passionately debating transportation again means that the issue is unlikely to go away any time soon. In the long run, this can only be a good thing.