[Nfbmo] St. Louis Transportation

James Moynihan jamesmoynihan at kc.rr.com
Wed Mar 11 05:00:32 UTC 2009



Dear Friends,

FYI....I don't know if any of you heard this on the PBS News Hour with Jim Layer this evening, but, when I heard St. Louis mentioned among the list of affected cities, I pricked up my ears.  

The News Hour had a segment on tonight dealing with the serious problems many local transportation systems are having and the reasons behind it.  It appears that about 30 cities nation wide, including Washington d.C., New York city, and, St. Louis, were encouraged by the U.S. Dpt. of Transportation to find innovative ways to solve the problem of depreciating equipment and rolling stock during the 1990's.  Because these transportation systems are governmental entities, they cannot get money for depreciation of equipment through taxes like regular private businesses can since they don't pay taxes.  What they have done is to sell their equipment to banks which can charge depreciation of the equipment off on their taxes.  The banks then lease the equipment back to the transit systems for regular payments from that transit system.  On the surface, this looked like a "win, win" situation for everyone.  However, in the present economy, banks are desperate for money and have found ways to find the transit systems leasing equipment from them in technical default although these transit systems may have made all their payments regularly and properly.  This allows the banks to demand that the transit system pay up a large amount of money at one time.  The transit systems can't afford to meet the bank's demands without drastically cutting services, personnel, and maintenance.  Although the News Hour says the Department of Transportation is now discouraging such practices, this doesn't help those systems already involved.  I guess this would mean St. Louis.  You might contact your National Senators and Represenatives to see if they can propose any legislation to assist with this problem.  I am also wondering if the Federation as a national body could propose legislation which would help those disabled and blind persons who have lost their bus routes and commuter routes because the cut backs in service have eliminated or drastically cut back routes they need for getting to work, doctors, grocery stores, et. cet because of this situation.

Cordially,

Jana Moynihan




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