Transit paradox: More riders, less money for repairs

For America's mass transit systems, it may well be 1945 all over again. Despite stumbling in the recession, ridership continues an upward trend, but so does the bill for bringing everything up to snuff - $77 billion, according to the Federal Transit Administration. And no one knows where this money will come from.

A new FTA study of all U.S. transit systems reveals that it would cost $77 billion to clear the backlog of deferred maintenance on the nation's transit infrastructure and $14.4 billion a year just to keep the backlog from growing.

The study expands on a 2009 study of the nation's seven largest rail transit operators, a group that accounts for the overwhelming bulk of the infrastructure costs. That study found that it would cost $50 billion to bring those systems' facilities back to a state of good repair and $5.9 billion a year to keep the backlog from growing.

The nation's mass transit agencies spent between $12 and $13 billion in 2008 on maintenance and repairs, about $1.5 billion short of the amount needed to run in place on the maintenance and repair backlog.

This problem has been growing for several years, but has been thrown into relief by the weather-related problems many Northeast rail systems have experienced this summer. The extreme summer heat has led to slowdowns and breakdowns that have left passengers stuck, sweltering and frustrated. Two incidents, one in Maryland and the other in New Jersey, where trains broke down and left passengers stranded for hours in cars without air conditioning, made headlines across the country.

The problems highlighted by the heat wave, however, are ongoing and often reflect delays in replacing or repairing vital equipment. In Philadelphia, at least two 47-year-old commuter rail coaches have caught fire within the last six months, fortunately without serious injury to passengers or crew; new railcars that were originally scheduled to replace these in 2007 are only now undergoing testing prior to entering revenue service later this year. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority just placed an order for 20 diesel locomotives to replace equipment that was to have been retired in 2005. The rapid transit systems serving Washington and the San Francisco Bay Area, both opened in the 1970s, are now reaching the point where major overhauls costing billions of dollars are needed, and neither region has figured out where the money will come from. In Washington, the deterioration of the subway system has become a hot topic of discussion in the wake of several derailments and a fatal accident since the start of this year.

Tony Dorsey, a spokesman for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, told The New York Times that because costs to repair and replace infrastructure continue to rise while mass transit revenues are either flat or falling, “we’ve got the perfect storm out there that is causing people in the transportation industry to feel very concerned.”

While the Federal stimulus bill has provided some money for transit infrastructure repairs, the biggest Federal rail transport initiative has funneled $8 billion into projects that may or may not result in faster intercity passenger trains at some unspecified point in the future. Critics have been vocal in pointing out this misplaced emphasis on new projects while existing assets continue to deteriorate.

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