Bus and subway riders to pay more
Oil prices have inspired a national increase in bus and subway commuters, and with that comes a rise in fares in several cities. Ashley Milne-Tyte reports that's putting a squeeze on transit systems' budgets.
A rider waits to board a subway train in Los Angeles. (David McNew/Getty Images)
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TEXT OF STORY
Bob Moon: New York City's transit agency, the MTA, holds a meeting today, to reveal their preliminary budget for 2009. And it includes some unwelcome news for commuters. Bus, rail and subway fares are set to go up for the second time in two years. And New York's not the only city facing these kinds of funding challenges. In New York, Ashley Milne-Tyte reports.
Ashley Milne-Tyte: New Yorkers have been commuting by subway for decades. But in other parts of the U.S., public transport is suddenly gaining new riders keen to save money on gas.
Bill Millar of the American Public Transportation Association says that's great:
Bill Millar: But on the other hand, public transit systems are great users of energy, particularly diesel and gasoline."
So he says cities from Cleveland to San Diego are hiking fares. But that won't automatically plug budget deficits. Millar says transit systems rely on several sources of funding.
Millar: Certainly I've been talking lately with communities that rely a lot on sales tax. And as the economy has grown worse, people are buying less and they're seeing sales taxes go down.
He says to shore up their budgets, many transit systems are putting off improvements, and some are cutting back on service.
In New York, I'm Ashley Milne-Tyte for Marketplace.
Comments
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From Cincinnati, OH, 07/23/2008
I arrived in Cincinnati nearly 20 years ago from NJ and was shocked by the lack of public transportation to which I had become accustomed while growing up in the east. I later learned, as I studied the history of the region, of the remarkable public transportation the formerly did exist throughout Mid-west cities that was largely dismanteled in the postwar years of interstates and cult of the car. Affordable inter-urban lines, streetcars, bus lines etc.all with little or no government subsidy and profitable! Some now, like St. Louis, have been prescient and established light rail again but others, like Cincinnati, yak for a decade but accomplish nothing, while expecting "the government" to come, deus ex machina, to susidize everything. Have we no more transportation entrepenuers in the good ol'USA who want to be like the railroad magnates of old?
From Atlanta, GA, 07/23/2008
I think the government should sponsor the public transit systems a whole lot more to encourage further development in the US public transit systems and people utilizing them.
Reality check people, gas price will continue to grow as the world demands it more. We need a better public transit system, and even going beyond... Create a public transit system between neighboring cities. Just imaging that... Travelling to Jacksonville from Atlanta means I don't need to drive nor fly, but ride the fast bullet train... Or even between washington DC to Atlanta... We are long overdue on a city to city fast bullet train like in Japan, China, and Europe.
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