National coalition of public transit agencies rally for significant and immediate federal relief
A virtual rally was hosted by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) along with the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA), Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD), Indianapolis Public Transportation Corporation (IndyGo), Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA), San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Utah Transit Authority (UTA), Miami-Dade County Department of Transportation and Public Works and Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) to call on Congress to urgently deliver significant and immediate federal aid to public transportation systems nationwide as Congress debates the next coronavirus relief package.
Transit agencies across the country are facing an unprecedented financial catastrophe caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In New York, the MTA is facing the prospect of cutting subway and bus service by 40 percent and Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad Service by 50 percent, reducing the workforce by up to 9,400 jobs and scaling back what had been the agency’s most ambitious program in history for infrastructural renewal and upgrade.
Transit agencies across the country detailed the devastating impact of continued inaction from Washington and pushed for an immediate infusion of federal aid to stave off additional deep cuts.
A partial transcript of the rally is available below:
Patrick J. Foye, Chairman and CEO, New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA): Here in New York without federal aid, we may be forced to make cuts of up to 40 percent on subways and buses and up to 50 percent on the commuter railroads -- not to mention the layoff of up to 9,500 of our heroic colleagues -- fare and toll hikes beyond what has been scheduled in our financial plan and gutting our historic $51.5 billion capital plan. These drastic actions will kill our national economic recovery as local transit systems are the heartbeat of local economies. I'll note that since 2011, the MTA itself has created up to 100,000 out-of-state jobs in nearly all 50 states from Georgia to Nebraska to California. In the same timeframe, our agency has generated nearly $50 billion in infrastructure investment nationwide.
This is not a red or blue issue. It's a jobs issue. Mass transit systems across the country carried the United States throughout the pandemic and we will carry it out of this crisis. The immediate need is this -- in order to ensure the health care workers, grocery workers, first responders and other essential personnel can continue to get to work and beat this pandemic, we need substantial federal funding now. If relief doesn't come soon, these deep cuts at the MTA and other agencies will take effect and they will fall disproportionately on the backs of working people, low-income customers, people of color and low-income communities. While there is no certainty of passage, we're encouraged by the negotiations. The bipartisan bill before Congress is a good start, but even were a lame duck session relief bill to pass, the MTA and the other agencies on this Zoom today, as well as agencies across the country, will continue to have substantial funding needs, including a total of $12 billion in aggregate to ensure the MTA’s survival, and at least $32 billion for transit nationwide.
Alex Wiggins, CEO, New Orleans RTA: Here in New Orleans, it is no different. The impact has been devastating, both from a revenue perspective and a ridership perspective, but most importantly from the human perspective. All of us across the country are trying to operate and maintain safe transit systems in this COVID environment, which brings on a host of costs in order to reassure the riding public that it's safe to ride transit. On the personal level, our employees are impacted and we may need to make significant investments in PPE to keep transit moving. In New Orleans, it's absolutely essential that we continue to operate into 2021. The first round of CARES Act funding really did make a critical difference in underwriting our operational costs, so it could keep the community connected, we could maintain employment, and of course maintain mobility across the region.
The pandemic has had a devastating impact on our revenue in particular and we're looking at essentially more than 60 percent reduction in revenue. And we all know that transit is essential to making sure we connect folks to work, to schools, to medical facilities. Here in New Orleans, our transit system transports medical students to medical school and patients to hospitals, and we cannot afford to not operate into 2021. We definitely need additional funding to be able to avoid service cuts, and most importantly, avoid having to lay staff off. Transit is absolutely essential and this really becomes an issue of equity.
Debra A. Johnson, CEO and general manager, Denver RTD: The Regional Transportation District here in Denver is facing a new financial reality. The safety of our employees and our customers remains our number one priority. As you just heard, this means sustaining our supply of Personal Protective Equipment and cleaning products to ensure that we are providing an environment to safely transport essential workers to help this economy moving and especially to protect our own essential workers, our valued frontline employees. Our new normal has taken a toll on our employees, our operations and our finances.
The majority of funding comes from sales tax and fare revenues, both of which have taken a huge hit during the pandemic. Now, I'd be remiss not to acknowledge and thank our federal partners in reference the CARES Act funding, who has helped us offset some of our financial impacts. But even with the benefit of these COVID dollars, RTD still faces a looming deficit of $140 million in 2021. Additional federal assistance is needed to maintain service delivery for our customers and the economic health of our region. Here at the RTD we have taken several steps over the past months to address our financial reality. We have reduced our expenses, implemented a hiring freeze, deferred or eliminated capital projects and implemented furloughs for salaried employees. And starting in January, salaried employees who make more than $60,000 a year will take an additional pay cut. We've also had to make the agonizing decision to reduce our workforce by 350 employees. We have to right size our staff to align with the much reduced ridership and reduced level of service we provide in the foreseeable future. We're currently carrying about 40 percent of pre-pandemic ridership, operating 60 percent of pre-pandemic service levels, while maintaining 100 percent of pre-pandemic staffing levels. The agency is unable to sustain the staffing costs associated with previous service levels, hence the reduction in workforce that will be effectuated in January.
Inez P. Evans, president and CEO, IndyGo: IndyGo and the city of Indianapolis is facing an unprecedented time during this pandemic. We faced unprecedented expenditures, that have coupled with decreased revenue, that are having a significant impact on IndyGo’s ability to advance the projects that we promised our riders. We have had to delay, a major re-formation of our transit system that would have made a frequent grid network, originally planned for last year. We had already completed the first of three major bus rapid transit lines, the Red Line, which is the largest bus rapid transit, electric bus system in the country. We have two more legs to go, the Purple and the Blue Line.
The federal government is our partner. We are faced with having to make significant decisions about whether or not to move forward with those tremendous investments to our community. The Purple Line alone is a $162-million project, with a $77.5-million investment from the federal government. The Blue Line is over $200 million project, with a $92 million commitment from the federal government -- but without our share we cannot move forward.
Without the additional funds, just to maintain our regular services, IndyGo would face a potential cut of its operational services by 30 percent. That is 30 percent of a community of nine million riders, a third of our service would be gone.
Stephen Bitto, director of Marketing and Communications, GCRTA: Throughout the pandemic, RTA has not been forced to lay off or furlough any of our staff. Service, although marginally reduced, is being maintained at a level that ensures greater Cleveland’s essential workers have viable public transportation. In our community, this is critical as nearly half a billion dollars in annual earnings brought home by those that are dependent on RTA to get to work. But the challenges remain. Due to the state of Ohio’s stay-at-home order, all ridership dropped by nearly 70 percent. The current spike in COVID-19 infections continues to hold down ridership, annual fare revenues projected to be down approximately $19 million.
Our regional economy continues to be battered by the pandemic. Local unemployment is approximately 11.5 percent, lagging significantly behind both national and state levels. The corresponding drop in disposable income is negatively impacting local sales tax receipts, accounting for over 80 percent of our annual operating budget. We currently have a backlog of unfunded infrastructure projects totaling $500 million. Our entire heavy and light rail fleets have far exceeded their useful lives, while nearly a third of our bus fleet is in a similar situation.
Annually, RTA delivers an economic impact to greater Cleveland of $322 million dollars. Transit has had a positive impact on property values by a tune of $2.2 billion and transit, again, has enhanced employment by three percent while driving poverty down by 13 percent. A diminished or weakened transit system would have a devastating effect on our communities.
Robert M. Powers, general manager, BART: Here at BART, we are facing some significant deficits of over $210 million over this next fiscal year and the year after that. Initially we did a hiring freeze and we took our positions, restricted those and also limited overtime. So we have taken our course of financial responsibility very seriously in this course of pandemic. We have reduced the hiring and we have maximized our returns on the workforce that we have going. BART has worked with our labor unions on extending our labor contacts. Our latest initiative is offering voluntary retirement incentives to over 40 percent of the workforce. Perhaps most importantly are these new labor contracts that we just established with our three largest labor unions to bolster our financial stability and predictability. We used our CARES Act funding to save our operating budget and to keep the trains running, and we can't thank Congress enough for the money. BART is now facing a $200 million budget deficit in this current fiscal year and next.
Service level planning for next year is well underway. At BART, we are proud to continue to offer service seven days a week, although our trains are less frequent than before the pandemic, and although we have been forced to close the system earlier at night. We cannot continue at this current pace without help.
Carolyn Gonot, executive director, UTA: We took steps early in the pandemic to make sure that everything was moving, that we were able to provide safe transport for our passengers and keep our workforce safe. We implemented cleaning and disinfecting methods, we changed the materials in our operating systems and we continue to provide a schedule to keep our workforce and our employees safe. Our biggest asset is our workforce and we need to keep them working for us and working for the public. We are currently heavily funded through fares and federal funding, as well as the sales tax. Our ridership is down about 60 percent. We are now up to 90 percent of our service, seeing the need for essential workers to get to their jobs. We have actually seen increases in some of our service needs, particularly in corridors that are serving a lower income community and those essential workers that need to get to their jobs, whether it be to the hospitals, to the restaurant jobs, or to their support services that they need to handle on shifts that aren't just necessarily 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
As we go through our budget processes, we see the pandemic's continued effect, both short term and long term on our transit industry. This needed influx of funding for the public transit industry will continue to go a long way in being able to support us, particularly in this near term so that we're able to be viable and focus on those needs of those who need to travel. We've done many surveys throughout the public and have seen the need for this. We have done four riders surveys and surveys throughout the public on ridership during this pandemic and we have seen that the most important aspects is to have service still be maintained and being able to have that late night service, those changes that were made to the schedule they’d like to see come back, those absolutely critical to them.
In our agency, we're continuing to try to manage that through our budget processes, but we do know we will have some service cuts that will remain at least in the near term, and we'd like to bring those back as the economy revives, and people come back to work to their jobs and also serve those students in the universities that come up and down the Wasatch Front.
Alice N. Bravo, director, Miami-Dade County Department of Transportation and Public Works: Initially our ridership dropped substantially, but as some businesses were allowed to reopen, we saw that ridership demand come back. Our top priority has been safety, that of our patrons, of our employees. We've gone to great lengths to enforce social distancing, to provide PPE for employees, to provide innovative ways to disinfect all of our vehicles, our stations, our facilities. We’re using actually ultraviolet technology to clean the air inside of our vehicles. None of that would be possible without the CARES Act funding and a continuation of it into the future.
We're enforcing social distancing, so that's required us to shift our assets in terms of bus routes. So there are areas where we've had to reduce service, we're working with the community to find other means to do that. We've had to innovate, develop a special program for our overnight routes so that we can continue that service. So we thank Congress for the support and greatly urge the need for continued support, so that we can lessen the impact of this horrible crisis on our community.
Leslie S. Richards, general manager, SEPTA: Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, SEPTA and transit agencies across the country have worked to meet the needs of our regions and provide service for those who need it the most. The CARES Act has been a lifeline for SEPTA, and I want to again thank our congressional delegation for their efforts to pass this vital assistance. However, additional assistance is needed to ensure that critical transit services will be able to support the nation in recovery. COVID-19 and prolonged emergency restrictions have exacted a heavy financial toll on SEPTA. The authority is currently losing $1 million in fare revenue every single day. Despite cost saving measures, SEPTA currently estimates the CARES Act funds will only support SEPTA operations through the end of next year. And based on current ridership forecasts, SEPTA anticipates an additional operating budget shortfall of at least $622 million dollars through the end of fiscal year 2023.
To extend CARES Act funding as long as possible, SEPTA now plans for service reductions and layoffs during the current fiscal year and beyond. These measures would threaten our near and long term ability to operate effective transit services, and have devastating consequences for our customers and the region's economy. Our region's health care providers, businesses and schools are planning for the future. If SEPTA is unable to meet the transportation needs of the region it will short circuit the desperately needed economic recovery, just as it is taking off. As the nation prepares to emerge from the depths of the coronavirus pandemic, the availability and viability of transit service will determine how quickly, fully and equitably our regions will recover.
