TRANSIT FUNDING RULES:

TRANSIT FUNDING RULES: Brad Plumer has an enlightening addition to my recent argument on this website for a shift in federal transit funding from highways to mass transit. He writes,

Under federal rules, transit projects have to undergo far more scrutiny. Before Congress hands out money for transit, they demand a cost-benefit analysis of the system, an analysis of its effects on land use, an environmental analysis, and often a comparison among various alternatives. Now, that all sounds perfectly reasonable, except that highway projects don't have to undergo most of these procedures�except for a looser environmental analysis. Federal oversight is rather minimal.... Not surprisingly, many of those communities find it far easier to build new highways than to set up, say, a light-rail system, no matter how popular the latter may be.

He goes on to mention Milwaukee as an example of a city that has buckled to all the perverse incentives and built more highways instead of mass transit. This just goes to prove that the righwing myth about suburban sprawl (its what Americans want, the free market at work etc.) is totally unfounded. Rather, these rules Brad cites, and correctly argues need changing, demonstrate what James McElfish of the Environmental Law Institute recently told me in an interview, "sprawl represents the interaction of the marketplace with a lot of rules that encourage market failure." Progressives should lobby the new Congress to re-write a lot of these rules governing transit funding, as well as demanding more funding for mass transit.

--Ben Adler