Labor and climate groups support Transit Equity Day
2018Bill Onasch 2018-01Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 4 →
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On Feb. 5, civil rights, trade-union, student, church and environmental activists across North America will come together in a variety of events to call atten tion to a looming crisis in public transit.
The diversity of these groups indicates that they rec ognize not only the urgent need to save what we have but also the potential crucial role transit expansion can play in providing affordable transportation that is accessible to all, that can reduce traffic fatalities and congestion—and that can curtail greenhouse gas emis sions driving climate change.
But today, New York City’s subways moving a record 5 million passengers a day are on the verge of col lapse, a major line is being shut down for renovation lasting for more than a year—and their buses aren’t doing much better. Washington, D.C., has neglected even routine maintenance, leading to accidents and delays on the Metro.
Transit-union contract negotiations remain highly contentious in Washington and Chicago. Some public agencies continue to contract work out to non-union penny-pinching private outfits who can do it cheaper only by providing inferior service and paying substan dard wages. Washington, D.C., is moving to privatize the Red Line subway. More of the same—and even worse—are in store.
This is not the first crisis for transit. After setting record ridership numbers during World War II, when there was full employment, no new cars were being built, and tires and gasoline were rationed, the ruling class took America into a very different postwar de velopment scheme. From the end of World War II on, highly subsidized urban sprawl promoted a massive exodus of residents and jobs to new suburban areas. The streetcar and bus lines in the urban cores did not follow them.
In many cases, such as in Los Angeles and Kansas City, consortiums of auto, oil, and tire companies became silent owners of transit properties. They dismantled their impressive electrified streetcar and trolley bus networks—which would require many billions to rep licate today—replacing them with diesel buses pro duced by General Motors, as they steadily slashed ser vice. One result in Los Angeles was the introduction of a new word to our vocabulary—smog. Out of sprawl an important new division in the working class soon emerged—either car dependent or transit dependent.
Because a high percentage of the transit-dependent tems were built in the Bay Area, Washington, D.C., At lanta, and Los Angeles. Less densely populated areas such as Seattle, St Louis, and the Twin Cities launched highly successful “light rail” systems linking urban ar eas to airports and suburbs.
But money from Washington for operational expens es dried up long ago, and matching funds for capital improvements are to be almost completely eliminated under Trump’s budget “blueprint” as “offsets” to pay for the mammoth tax cuts for corporations and the rich.
Transit Equity Day was called by the Labor Network for Sustainability, Amalgamated Transit Union, Insti tute for Policy Studies, Jobs with Justice, Partnership for Working Families, and the Labor Community Strat egy Center. Their website is: labor4sustainability.org/ transitequityday.
TED will not be marked by mass demonstrations like those organized around women’s and climate issues soon after Trump’s election. The initiators are set ting more modest goals such as getting resolutions passed by organizations, submitting opinion pieces to local newspapers, organizing community meetings to discuss local transit issues—and, where weather per mits, outdoor rallies in public places.
The choice of the date was a worthy effort to identify with the historic link between civil rights and public transit. But it would have been better to have issued the call much earlier. Some areas were getting started with initial planning with only a month to go. The re sponse on Feb. 5 will give a better picture of the cur rent potential for building the effective transit advo cacy movement that is so sorely needed today. n