CALPIRG Statement before the LA MTA Regarding Proposal to Increase Public Transit Fares

CALPIRG Statement before the LA MTA Regarding Proposal to Increase Public Transit Fares
May 24, 2007

Los Angeles is at a crossroads with our transportation system. Already Los Angeles is the number one most congested region in the nation, and more and more people are moving to Los Angeles County each and every year. Our region will add six million people by 2030. To make matters worse, the distance that we drive in our cars each year is growing much faster than our population.  

Angeleno drivers spend an additional 93 hours a year behind the wheel stuck in traffic. 88 percent of travel in Los Angeles during peak hours is in traffic. Not surprisingly 78 percent of Los Angeles County residents surveyed in a 2005 PPIC poll listed traffic congestion as a major problem – higher than affordable housing, air quality, quality of education, and lack of job opportunities. Building roads and highways alone will not solve our traffic congestion woes and will only worsen our unhealthy air pollution and global warming pollution.

Clearly, we need to invest, and invest heavily, in more public transit. We need the transit services to allow people who do not have access to cars to go to school, work for a living, and shop for their needs. We also need to develop public transit that attracts drivers to get out of their cars and ride public transit – to reduce our dangerous dependence on oil, ease consumers’ vulnerability to gasoline price spikes, decrease unhealthy air and global warming pollution, and give more people a way out of traffic congestion.
 
Therefore, we urge this Board to get out of this trap of thinking “How much can we recover from fares?” A fare increase would hurt the very ridership increases that should be this Board’s number one priority. Similarly, cuts to train or bus service are also not the solution. Inconvenient public transit also equals fewer riders.

Instead, your number one priority should be, “What can we do to generate the most riders on our public transit system?”

We couldn’t agree with this Board more that we need stable funding sources for public transit. We disagree that asking riders to pay more or suffer service cuts, are the only solutions to the operating deficit. We urge this Board to think BIG when it comes to investing in our public transit system, and we have three general recommendations.

1.    Use your political clout to increase public transit funding in the state budget, which is being determined right now. One of CALPIRG’s top priorities this spring has been to stop the diversion of more than $1.3 billion in public transit funds from the state budget. Although I am a proud Los Angeles native, I am based in Northern California so that I can lobby our state Legislature, and will continue to work with your staff to fight back against any cuts. We want to publicly thank Assembly member Mike Feuer for putting forth a visionary transportation budget proposal yesterday that would increase reliable, stable funding for public transit for years to come, and we urge this Board to support him on that proposal, despite concerns from road and highway interests.  

2.    Likewise, let’s make sure more federal transportation dollars go to public transit in California. Between 1945 and 1980, U.S. government spent 75 percent of transport money on highways, and only 1 percent of money on public buses, trolleys, and subways. While that ratio has improved slightly in more recent years, we still are not spending enough federal dollars on public transit.

3.    Finally, reject the idea that the only solutions to an operating deficit are to make riders pay more or suffer from less service. There are so many local revenue tools to consider – local sales taxes, gas taxes, vehicle and parking fees, development fees to promote smart growth, and the list goes on. A thriving public transit ridership benefits everyone, whether or not you use the system, and so our tax system should encourage more transit riders, rather than encouraging more driving.