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Exclusive: California Transit Association tackles transit challenges
Metro Magazine
Taking place from Oct. 27 to 29 in Pasadena, Calif., The California Transit Association’s 44th Annual Fall Conference and Expo, “Transit Revival, Transit Survival” brought transit professionals from all over the state together to discuss budget and marketing issues, new technology and the latest legislative developments. Bill Bogaard, mayor of hosting city Pasadena, said that the conference underscored why the topic of transit is more important now than ever, and recalled that when the L.A. Metro Gold Line was completed in 2002, the city pooled its resources, and came together around that event. He added that it has been a major factor in successful development in the city. “More than three-fourths of development takes place in that corridor,” Bogaard noted. Sessions to help conference-goers learn how to enhance their marketing efforts with little to no funds, navigate the process necessary to offer riders online trip planning through Google Transit, and identify new sources of ad revenue were well-attended.
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OCTA to reduce bus service hours
The Daily Titan
The Orange County Transportation Authority held a public hearing Monday Nov. 9 at their headquarters in Orange regarding proposed countywide bus service cuts that will go into effect in March 2010. Although OCTA initially expected to cut 300,000 hours, after the meeting adjourned, the OCTA board voted on a plan to reduce 150,000 annual revenue vehicle hours, also known as the hours a bus is in service on the street. Attributed to a loss of state funding and plummeting sales tax revenues, the proposed service cuts will be significant countywide. The Transit Advocates of Orange County estimated bus service will be cut by 36 percent over the next year.
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VTA faces $98 million deficit far worse than projected
San Jose Mercury News
Because of an unprecedented drop in sales tax revenue, the Valley Transportation Authority faces an operating deficit of $98 million over the next two years — and will consider cutting service, laying off workers, slashing employee benefits and diverting money from new projects to stay afloat. The soaring deficit, disclosed in a report released Friday, is four times as great as predicted just four months ago. It amounts to about 15 percent of the agency's operating budget. "We are looking at a crisis," VTA General Manager Michael Burns said. "Significant decisions will have to be made to maintain a relevant transit system. The situation is not good and is not getting better."
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Bay Area transit consolidation back on table
San Francisco Chronicle
...the cost of operating transit in the region has soared 219 percent in the past 11 years, with the amount of service rising 118 percent and the number of riders increasing 98 percent. Bay Area transit agencies face an $8.5 billion deficit in operating costs over the next 25 years, and a $17.2 billion shortfall in equipment purchases and construction. Steve Heminger, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area's transportation planning and financing agency, said the region needs to look at how to streamline not just the administration and oversight of transit agencies but also the services they offer and the fares they charge...What the commission needs to do, he said, is to look at it as building a new system, not just tinkering with what exists. The approach would be similar to recent efforts undertaken by San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority to restructure their systems.
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Metrolink officials consider rate hike to counter revenue shortfall
Los Angeles Times
The five-county rail agency's board is scheduled to decide this week whether to increase fares by as much as 6%. Some worry that the move would exacerbate a drop in ridership. Faced with falling ridership, deepening budget woes and increased expenses for safety reforms, officials at Southern California's commuter rail service are considering raising fares for the second time in less than six months.
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Public Transit Return on Investment: Both Immediate and Long-Lasting
Passenger Transport
Increased investment in public transportation provides jobs, wages, and business income in industries that have been particularly hard hit by the economic downturn, according to a report released Oct. 22 by APTA. The report, Economic Impact of Public Transportation Investment, finds that every $1 of investment in public transportation returns many times its investment. The average return is almost four times the investment in economic returns. In some areas of the nation this figure could be as high as $9.
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Transit Creates As Many Jobs As Roads — But it Could Do Even Better
Streetsblog San Francisco
Today's report, released by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) offers a definitive completion of the Washington idiom that estimates how many jobs would be created by $1 billion of federal spending. Lawmakers in both parties have used several different versions of that idiom for highway spending – "$1 billion for roads would create ____ jobs" – but the Federal Highway Administration's official number was 30,000 in 2007 dollars. The current mixture of federal aid to transit also generates 30,000 jobs per $1 billion spent, according to APTA's report, produced by Cambridge Systematics and the Economic Development Research Group. But that total results from the 69-31 federal split between transit capital expenses (i.e. new equipment and tracks) and transit operating expenses (i.e. hiring folks to run the networks) ... the more federal aid freed up for transit operating costs, the stronger the job-creation potential. And that's just one of the economic upsides magnified by a greater emphasis on operating aid; APTA's report found that $1 billion for transit operating generates $1.8 billion in take-home employee income, which in turn produces more tax revenue for the government.
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