[Nfbf-l] Fw: New York Times Article Shows Need for Operating Fundsin Stimulus

Thu Feb 5 03:55:55 UTC 2009

Hi Kirk,

This is a most scary and beyond disturbing article and it is the reality we
are all likely to face with regard to transportation or the lack there of.
You are correct; we have to get busy and bring this information to our law
makers and help them to realize that huge chunks in the funding and services
of public transit is just going to heighten the percentage of unemployed
Americans. It is a sad state of affairs without question!

Thank you for sharing this article which is down right frightening.

Kathy

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbf-l-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbf-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Kirk Harmon
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2009 8:50 PM
To: NFB of Florida Listserv
Subject: [Nfbf-l] Fw: New York Times Article Shows Need for Operating
Fundsin Stimulus

Hello all! This is a must read for all of us! When do we decide to take a
stand? Is it not  time for all of us that rely on Public Transportation to
start to discuss joining hands for a united effort to protest these
outrageous fare increases and cancellations of services? I hope before those
that are employed don't start losing their abilities to get  to work and
earn a living or for our elderly to get  to the Grocery stores to feed
themselves?not to mention our Blind students getting to their classes so
they can better their futures! I am a member of the Community Transportation
association of America so when I received this from Joann Hutchinson that
most of you know that are  involved in Transportation know, I found it
crucial to forward! Your Friend in the cause, Kirk Harmon

Kirk Harmon
1031 Lenmore Ct.
Orlando,FL.32812
Bva/FRG
District Director
E.central,FL.
Mayor's Veteran's advisory Counsil
NFBNewsline National Representative for Veteran's 

    ----- Original Message ----- 
        From: Joann Hutchinson
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2009 5:26 PM
Subject: New York Times Article Shows Need for Operating Funds in Stimulus

The Community Transportation Association of America has sent this article
that is a sampling of how transit services are in need of operating funds.
They have ask me to send this to those who are concerned for elderly, low
income and disabled persons who depend on these services for health care,
employment and other activities of daily living.  The February 3, Tuesday,
NY Times article below discusses the St Louis, Missouri issues and how the
effect of transit service cutbacks will result on Assisted Living
facilities, senior services and others.  What is happening in St Louis will
happen in cities across the country.

As your Ambassador, I've been hearing about the problems that you and others
in the region are facing every day under the current economy. I'm doing my
part to help you work together and coordinate more efficiently, but there
are limits to what I can do. As you know, the US Congress is debating an
economic recovery bill that may increase transit capital investments, expand
Medicaid, and possibly bring billions of dollars in increased infrastructure
investments to states, cities and towns everywhere. As it stands right now,
these funds, especially the transportation funds, would be available only
for capital projects, and not for wages, fuel or other operating costs. The
House has already passed its version of the "stimulus" legislation, but the
Senate is still debating it. 

If you or your partners in aging services, disabilities, workforce
development and other networks have opinions or ideas about the need for
operating funds for transit, it's not too late to call your US Senators'
offices and share your views.  The power of our American democracy is the
freedom of citizens to air their concerns to their elected leaders, and this
may be one of those times where Senators need to hear from you about the
needs in your state or community. If you have questions about the details of
this stimulus legislation, don't ask me - I'm not your legislative expert.
You can contact Scott Bogren of the Community Transportation Association
(bogren at ctaa.org; 202.247.1921) or the staff of any other professional
association of which you're a member.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rider Paradox: Surge in Mass, Drop in Transit  - New York Times - Published:
February 3, 2009 

ST. LOUIS - Buses will no longer stop at some 2,300 stops in and around this
city at the end of next month because, despite rising ridership, the
struggling transit system plans to balance its books with layoffs and
drastic service cuts. 
Val Butler worries about her commute to the Garden View Care Center in
Chesterfield, Mo. 
One stop scheduled to be cut is in the western suburb of Chesterfield, Mo.,
just up the road from a bright, cheerful nursing home called the Garden View
Care Center. Without those buses, roughly half of the center's kitchen staff
and half of its housekeeping staff - people like Laura Buxton, a cook known
for her fried chicken who comes in from Illinois, and Danette Nacoste, who
commutes two hours each way from her home in South St. Louis to her job in
the laundry - will not have any other way to get to work. 
"They're going to be stranding a whole lot of people," said Val Butler, a
nurses' assistant at Garden View, who said that she feared looking for work
elsewhere in a tightening economy. "A lot of people are going to lose their
jobs. A lot of people."
St. Louis may be girding itself for some of the most extreme transit cuts in
the nation, but it is hardly alone. Transit systems across the country are
raising fares and cutting service even when demand is up with record numbers
of riders last year, many of whom fled $4-a-gallon gas prices and
stop-and-go traffic for seats on buses and trains. 
Their problem is that fare-box revenue accounts for only a fifth to a half
of the operating revenue of most transit systems - and the sputtering
economy has eroded the state and local tax collections that the systems
depend on to keep running. "We've termed it the 'transit paradox,' " said
Clarence W. Marsella, general manager of Denver's system, which is raising
fares and cutting service to make up for the steep drop in local sales tax.
The billions of dollars that Congress plans to spend on mass transit as part
of the stimulus bill will also do little to help these systems with their
current problems. That is because the new federal money - $12 billion was
included in the version passed last week by the House, while the Senate
originally proposed less - is devoted to big capital projects, like buying
train cars and buses and building or repairing tracks and stations. Money
that some lawmakers had proposed to help transit systems pay operating
costs, and avoid layoffs and service cuts, was not included in the latest
version.
The Washington Metro set a record on Inauguration Day last month when people
made 1.5 million trips on it to see the swearing-in of President Obama, but
its $176 million budget gap means that it is planning to cut service and
eliminate 900 jobs. Chicago had its biggest gain in riders in three decades
last year, but was forced to raise fares. Charlotte, N.C., whose new
light-rail system is the envy of transit planners around the country, and
which is enjoying its biggest ridership levels since "the days of
streetcars," according to Keith Parker, the transit system's chief
executive, will be running its new trains less frequently, raising fares and
cutting back on bus service.
In New York City, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is considering
steep fare increases and its deepest service cuts in years to help close a
$1.2 billion deficit. In addition to considering a 23 percent increase in
fares and tolls, the authority is weighing plans to eliminate more than two
dozen city bus routes and two subway lines, reduce off-peak service and even
close some subway stations at night. 
The nation's transit woes threaten to deal another blow to the weak economy,
keeping some workers from jobs they commute to and forcing some systems to
lay off administrators, bus drivers, train operators and mechanics. And
while the economic stimulus package being considered on Capitol Hill
includes tax cuts intended to put more spending money in people's pockets,
fare increases promise to take a big bite for many commuters.
Big systems in Boston, Atlanta and San Francisco, and smaller ones across
the nation, find themselves weighing cuts or fare increases that they fear
could erode the gains they have made in attracting new riders. Beverly A.
Scott, general manger of Marta, the Atlanta system, said as the sales tax
revenue continued to drop, she was weighing everything from fare increases
to service cuts to even selling the naming rights to stations - but she
still hopes for more state support. 
William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation
Association, an industry group, wrote to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi,
last month urging her to include money for operating costs in the stimulus
bill. Public transportation ridership is surging across the country," he
wrote, "increasing 6.5 percent in the third quarter of 2008 - the largest
quarterly increase in the past 25 years, but transit systems are cutting
service, increasing fares and laying off employees as a result of increased
transit fuel costs in the past year and declining state and local revenue
sources that support transit."
Commuting Woes 
So even as the federal government plans to buy new train cars and buses for
some transit systems, places like St. Louis find themselves without enough
money to pay the bus drivers and light-rail train operators that they have
now. 
"I have 165 buses that I'm going to have to put in mothballs," said Ray
Friem, the chief operating officer at Metro, the St. Louis system. "There's
a ton of federal money tied up in those assets."
Money is so tight that the agency is not planning to rip out the bus stop
signs that dot the roads, though they will soon be misleading. Instead, at
the transit system's headquarters upriver from the Gateway Arch, officials
last week put the final touches on a model of a vinyl hood they plan to
drape over each sign. "We regret due to a lack of funding, service to this
stop is suspended," the prototype said. 
St. Louis is in some respects unique. It was in the minority of transit
systems that lost a ballot measure in November seeking more money; voters
rejected a proposal to raise the local sales tax to help pay for more public
transportation. Transit officials said they believed their efforts had been
hurt by lingering public resentment over a light-rail expansion project that
was delayed and went over budget, devolving into messy litigation with
contractors that ended up costing the transit system even more.
Faced with a yawning shortfall, despite an 8 percent increase in ridership
last year, the system reluctantly decided to cut nearly half of its bus
service; lay off nearly 600 of its workers, or a quarter of its work force,
and reduce service on its red, white and blue MetroLink light-rail cars -
the modern successors of the clanging trolleys that Judy Garland sang about
in "Meet Me in St. Louis." Absent a windfall, the cuts are scheduled to take
effect at the end of March.
Some people who worked on the failed campaign to raise the sales tax said
their efforts were complicated because most local voters do not regularly
take public transportation. But in the leafy suburbs west of Interstate 270,
which are scheduled to lose almost all of their bus service, many people
will soon discover that even if they do not take buses themselves, they rely
on them to bring workers to their shopping malls, office parks, hospitals
and nursing homes.
The Garden View Care Center, in Chesterfield, is part of a cluster of a
dozen facilities sometimes called nursing home row. Rhonda Uhlenbrock, the
center's administrator, has been working with agencies that set up car pools
and trying to coordinate with other businesses that will be affected to see
if she can find other ways for her employees, many of whom do not have cars,
to get to work.
"This place could survive without me," Ms. Uhlenbrock said in her office
recently, where she was assembling a collage to honor employees who have
been at the center more than 10 years. "But not without them. They are the
people who do the work."
Ms. Nacoste, who rises at 3:45 a.m. for her two-hour commute to work in the
housekeeping and laundry department, said employers closer to home either
paid less or were not hiring. She shook her head at the thought that the
weak economy was leading to cuts in bus service. 
"They're going to make the economy worse if they cut the bus," Ms. Nacoste
said. "There's going to be unemployment, people running out of money. What
are we going to do?" 

-- 
Jo Ann Hutchinson

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