Bumpy Ride on the Road to Transportation Equity
Lexer Quamie and Jeff Miller
As with many important issues in 2011, a deeply divided Congress struggled to reach agreement on a long-overdue reauthorization of the federal surface transportation law that has significant implications for the civil rights community.
The law, which establishes federal transportation policy and determines how billions of dollars are spent for roads, bridges, public transit, bicycle paths, and pedes-trian walkways, was last authorized in August 2005 as the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). Congress has passed eight temporary extensions of the law since it expired in September 2009, with the current extension extending through March 2012.
The reauthorization raises a number of important civil rights issues for advocates who believe Congress should use the legislation to correct past injustices and open new avenues of opportunities for communities traditionally excluded from the decision-making process and denied the benefits of safe, affordable, and well-designed transportation systems. Throughout the nation, millions of low-income and working-class people, people of color, seniors, and people with disabilities live in communities where quality transportation options are unaffordable, unreliable or nonexistent.
Transportation and Low-Income Populations
Traditionally, critical decisions about transportation
policies are made by those with resources and leverage to influence the
transportation debate. It’s not surprising, then, that transportation decisions
and spending do not benefit all populations equitably. As a result, the
negative effects of some transportation decisions—dissecting
neighborhoods of low-income families and people of color, physically isolating
them from needed services and businesses, and disrupting once-stable
communities, among other things—are broad and lasting.
Exacerbating the effects of these decisions are the economic downturn and slow recovery, which have wreaked havoc on many of the nation’s public transit systems. Since 2010, 79 percent of transit agencies have made or considered service cuts, fare increases, or both.
In Los Angeles County, for instance, massive cuts by the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) have had a profound effect on low-income residents who are dependent on the bus system. MTA’s bus ridership is 92 percent people of color with a median income of $12,000.
One L.A. bus line primarily used by immigrant domestic workers to travel from their low-income neighborhoods to work in upscale neighborhoods in Beverly Hills was targeted for elimination. Alternate routes would make an already long commute even longer. The Los Angeles-based Bus Riders Union complained that the agency treats the bus lines as a “separate and unequal system” and filed a complaint with the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Office of Civil Rights highlighting an alleged pattern of discrimination and harm against low-income people and people of color. In its Compliance Review of LA County MTA, published in December 2011, FTA found LA County’s MTA deficient in five of 12 civil rights categories. Among other things, FTA found that MTA had ignored evidence that its transit service cuts had a discriminatory impact on riders of color and had failed to analyze the cumulative effect of service changes. FTA required MTA to submit a corrective action plan describing how it will correct its civil rights deficiencies.
Transportation and Jobs
The transportation reauthorization
also has the potential to help jumpstart a moribund economic recovery by
creating good-paying jobs and making the movement of people and goods more
efficient. According to the Transportation Research Board, more than 14 million
jobs—about 11 percent of civilian jobs in the U.S.—are transportation
related. The American Public Transporta-tion Association estimates that 36,000
jobs are created or supported for every $1 billion invested in public
transportation and that every $1 invested in public transportation generates
almost $4 in economic benefits.
For this reason, while still awaiting long-term reauthorization of the transportation bill, civil rights advocates supported passage of S. 1769, The Rebuild American Jobs Act. The bill would provide $50 billion in much-needed transportation investments and establish a $10 billion national infrastructure bank to support qualified projects. Senate Republicans blocked the bill from moving forward to an up-or-down vote, however.
Transportation and Public Safety
Current transportation policy has
a major impact on health and safety. The advocacy group Transportation for
America reported in 2011 that nearly 70,000 U.S. highway bridges—about
12 percent of the total—are classified as “structurally deficient.” In 2007, an
eight-lane bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed during
rush hour, killing 13 people and injuring 145.
Many communities also suffer due to transportation planning that favors drivers over pedestrians. According to “Dangerous by Design”, a report by Transportation for America, nearly 70,000 pedestrians were killed between 2000 and 2009, and nearly 700,000 were injured. Children, older adults, low-income individuals, and racial and ethnic minorities suffer from disproportionately high pedestrian fatality rates.
The pedestrian safety issue gained national attention in 2011 after Georgia prosecutors brought charges against the mother of a four-year-old boy killed by a hit-and-run driver in April 2010. Raquel Nelson, her son, A.J. Newman, and his sister were all struck by a car as they were crossing a busy four-lane road that separated their bus stop from their home. Nelson’s neighbors had long complained about the lack of signals and a crosswalk at the bus stop. Nelson, charged with second-degree vehicular homicide and jaywalking, could face a longer sentence than the driver, who received a six-month sentence despite two previous hit-and-run convictions. Nelson’s attorney is seeking to have the charges dismissed.
Roadblocks to Reauthorization
The United States has a long and
growing list of transportation needs. Lawmakers, however, have been at
loggerheads over the cost and length of the transpor-tation reauthorization,
hurdles made more vexing due to lingering economic woes and strong political
pressure to reduce the federal deficit. An agreement to eliminate unpopular
congressional earmarks may have also been an impediment to compromise. In past
reauthorizations, lawmakers’ ability to use earmarks to give funding priority
to projects in their districts provided them with an added incentive to resolve
differences and pass the legislation in bipartisan fashion.
Much of the funding for federal transportation projects, including public transit, comes from the Highway Trust Fund, which collects taxes on motor fuels. In recent years, however, the trust fund has failed to keep up with the need, in part because vehicles have become more fuel efficient, forcing Congress to dip into general fund revenues to make up the difference. Even so, Congress has shown little interest in raising the 18.4 cents-per-gallon gas tax, which was last increased in 1993. In fact, it took a last-minute deal when Congress passed the most recent extension of the transportation law in September to keep the gas tax from being eliminated altogether.
The Obama administration’s budget for Fiscal Year 2012 included a proposal to spend about $556 billion over six years on transportation and infrastructure projects and outlined several policy reforms. The plan was intended to be a blueprint that Congress could use as a basis for its transportation reauthorization bill. While some Democrats working on the surface transportation re-authorization bill praised the president’s budget, the proposal didn’t receive serious consideration given its cost.
Rather, as 2011 drew to a close, House and Senate lawmakers were pursuing different visions of the transportation reauthorization.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee focused on a two-year reauthorization bill that would maintain current spending levels adjusted for inflation. The $109 billion bill, however, is about $12 billion more than the Highway Trust Fund is projected to take in, requiring Congress to make up the difference through other accounts.
In the House, Rep. John Mica, R. Fla., chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, initially proposed a six-year reauthorization that would spend about $230 billion. That, however, would represent about a 30 percent cut from $286.5 billion authorized in the last transportation bill. The Republican leadership has since outlined a transportation plan that is consistent with current investments. Democrats have balked at Mica’s intention to link revenue funding to domestic energy production through the sale of new oil and gas lease rights on federal lands, plus a possible new tax negotiated with the oil and gas industry for new leasing rights.
While Congress debated the reauthorization, the conservative drive in Congress to cut government spending in 2011 has already resulted in cuts to transportation funding. A budget deal struck in April between President Obama and congressional leaders to avoid a threatened government shutdown and fund the government through October 2011 resulted in more than $2 billion in cuts to transportation projects and programs.
And unless Congress acts in 2012, another deficit reduction deal struck in July 2011 will result in even more cuts to transportation funding that would take effect on January 1, 2013. While the amount of the cuts to transportation has yet to be worked out, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood believes they could be large and counterproductive. “We now face across-the-board cuts to programs that are critical to rebuilding our crumbling transportation infrastructure and putting Americans back to work,” LaHood said in November.
The most recent extension of the transportation bill gives Congress until the end of March 2012 to pass the reauthorization measure. Leaders in both parties say they are committed to meeting that deadline.
Transportation and Equity
As lawmakers consider a long-term
transportation reauthorization, they will continue to hear from a wide-ranging
coalition of community development, economic justice, faith-based, health,
housing, environmental justice, transportation, and civil rights organizations,
including The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. The Equity
Caucus at Transportation for America, launched in the fall of 2009, was
organized to advocate for transportation policies that advance economic and
social equity in America around several principles and priorities:
- Actively enforcing civil rights protections and reforming metropolitan planning organizations to improve decision making for all communities.
- Creating affordable transportation options for every person.
- Ensuring fair access to quality jobs, workforce development, and contracting opportunities in the transportation industry.
- Promoting healthy, safe and inclusive communities by evaluating health outcomes of transportation projects and ensuring that communities have roads and sidewalks that are safe for everyone.
Transportation policy has always played a central role in the struggle for civil and human rights. Access to affordable and reliable transportation widens opportunity and is essential to addressing poverty, unemployment, and other equal opportunity goals such as access to good schools and health care services. With federal funding battles likely to continue, however, it remains to be seen whether Congress can get out of neutral and move the nation’s transportation policies forward in 2012.
Lexer Quamie is counsel for The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund and specializes in criminal justice and workers’ rights issues. Jeff Miller is the vice president of communications for The Leadership Conference and The Education Fund.
