The consensus in the transit community appears to be that the stimulus bill didn't include operating funds for mass transit not because Congress forgot, or lacked the money, but because they feared the agencies would grow addicted to the money and settle into a life of comfortable bureaucratic inefficiency and federally-financed waste. The concern, apparently, was that a one-time infusion of stimulus money would lead to a permanent dependence on federal funding. That doesn't make a lot of sense in context -- the federal government seems basically content with the idea that large banks now have an implicit federal guarantee that taxpayers will cover their riskier bets -- but there it is. At a time when we desperately need to stimulate the economy and desperately need to transform our transportation sector to avert catastrophic climate change, the Senate is still arguing over whether the DC subway system will give its conductors overly lavish pension plans.
