Concern and annoyance over urban transportation are scarcely new. Julius Caesar banned daytime wagon movements from the streets of Rome because of traffic congestion—and generated a good deal of nighttime traffic noise. The intensity of frustration and alarm over the modern aspects of the problem has in recent years brought increasing support for far reaching changes. Several innovations were initiated or seriously considered during the year.
Most of the current problems of urban transportation are tied to the automobile. The bill of particulars of the indictment runs something like this. The auto is a major source of congestion, air pollution, and noise. Urban highways are very expensive, disruptive of neighborhoods, and often destructive of parks and of aesthetic and historic features of the city. The physically handicapped, the old, and the young, who cannot drive, and those too poor to own cars become steadily more disadvantaged by the declines in transit service that have accompanied the switch to private cars from busses, streetcars, and commuter trains. The yearly total of mass transit riders now is only a quarter of the 1946 level.
A major response has been to subsidize mass transit from general funds. A recent development, however, has been to subsidize it from highway-user funds. California has increased the price of gasoline by making it subject to tax at the sales tax rate, the proceeds being used in populous counties for transit subsidy. This has been of help to the San Francisco BART system, which began operations, after long delay, during 1972. In December Michigan increased its gasoline tax from 7 to 9 cents a gallon. A quarter of the income generated by the 2-cent rise will go for mass transit.
A much more significant case of this kind of transfer almost happened during the year. An attempt to tap the Highway Trust Fund on behalf of mass transit failed in Congress last fall. But the unexpectedly strong support for the proposal suggests that the next Congress may take this route.
There has been some federal financing of urban mass transit since the Urban Mass Transit Act of 1970, which authorized $3.1 billion in federal funds for the improvement over a five-year period of bus, rapid transit, and commuter rail systems. For the 1973 fiscal year, federal funding under this act is $400 million.
The much larger Highway Trust Fund has been dedicated to highways only since its establishment in 1956. The fund is drawn from the 4 cents per gallon tax on gasoline, plus taxes on tires and truck tonnage. Collections are now running at more than $5 billion a year. In 1970 small sums from the Trust Fund were allocated for bus lanes and fringe parking areas; these applications, though non-traditional, nevertheless involved highway use.
Last March the Administration recommended the use of a portion of the Highway Trust Fund for an expanded program of mass transit construction. The proposed level of financing for mass transit started from about 20 percent of the fund at the beginning and increased to about 40 percent in the last years of the decade. By that time, annual Trust Fund levels were projected at approximately $7 billion. The money would have been available on a matching grant basis, with $3 of local expenditures required for each $7 of federal grants. Urban areas could have used the money for either highways or transit, but it was expected that the latter use would receive the bulk of the funds. The Administration's plan was hailed by transit advocates as a major breakthrough.
In August, the Senate Public Works Committee followed the Administration lead and voted to open the Trust Fund to purchase buses and build more bus lanes. In September, the full Senate went further and passed an amended bill which funded fixed rail projects as well.
In October, the House of Representatives rejected the innovation in transit financing. An amendment to the Highway Act permitting such financing was ruled out of order on the ground that such basic changes had to come in tax legislation, rather than in a general authorization bill. The Senate then passed a compromise highway bill, which increased transit funding, but from general funds only. The bill died in the House. Appropriation of funds for the traditional highway program died with it.
As a consequence, there will be pressure for a new bill by April, when advance highway fund allocations have to be made. It seems likely that the new bill will include increased funding for transit, with a good chance that much of the money will come from the Highway Trust Fund.
One of the problems with subsidy to mass transit is that of deciding just how much the subsidy ought to be. The Administration has taken the position that only capital costs should be covered, though the bill passed by the Senate provided for operating cost subsidy as well.
An extreme example of subsidy occurred in Rome, Italy, which offered free buses at peak commuting hours for two months during the summer of 1972. Ridership increased, but there appeared to be little decline in traffic. Many pedestrians became bus riders, some auto drivers drove downtown and performed errands by bus while there, and others took the bus and turned the car over to their wives.
An alternative to transit subsidy is employment of pricing devices tied to auto use. One form of this is to attract more riders by rationing parking space for private automobiles through higher rates or surcharges at lots in downtown areas. There has been a good deal of interest in this idea (and some vociferous opposition). Both reactions greeted such a proposal for the Washington metropolitan area, put forward late in the year.
Another way of reducing the number of cars on the road is to use tolls, in reverse, as an incentive. Recently, an economist suggested somewhat facetiously that a toll might vary inversely with the number of passengers in the car. The San Francisco Bay Bridge Authority did this in all seriousness by adjusting tolls to encourage carpooling. Starting 1 June, an express lane was set aside during peak commuting hours for the use of cars with three or more riders. As an added lure, a greatly reduced toll rate—$1 a month per car instead of 500 a day—was offered for automobiles that regularly carry at least three people, thus affording opportunity to save money as well as time. By the end of the year, 2,000 cars a day on the average were taking the express lane and more than two-thirds of them were using the dollar-a-month cards.
A version of this article appeared in print in the January 1973 issue of Resources magazine.
