[Senate Hearing 117-857]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                        S. Hrg. 117-857


ADVANCING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION UNDER THE BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE LAW

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
                   BANKING,HOUSING,AND URBAN AFFAIRS
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                                   ON

 EXAMINING THE BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE LAW AND THE POTENTIAL FOR JOB 
                      CREATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH
                               __________

                             MARCH 15, 2022
                               __________

  Printed for the use of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban 
                                Affairs


                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
                  
                  
                  Available at: https://www.govinfo.gov/

                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
55-682 PDF                WASHINGTON : 2024   


            COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS

                     SHERROD BROWN, Ohio, Chairman

JACK REED, Rhode Island              PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey          RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
JON TESTER, Montana                  MIKE CRAPO, Idaho
MARK R. WARNER, Virginia             TIM SCOTT, South Carolina
ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts      MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland           THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada       JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
TINA SMITH, Minnesota                BILL HAGERTY, Tennessee
KYRSTEN SINEMA, Arizona              CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  JERRY MORAN, Kansas
RAPHAEL G. WARNOCK, Georgia          KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota
                                     STEVE DAINES, Montana

                     Laura Swanson, Staff Director

                 Brad Grantz, Republican Staff Director

                       Elisha Tuku, Chief Counsel

                 Dan Sullivan, Republican Chief Counsel

                      Cameron Ricker, Chief Clerk

                      Shelvin Simmons, IT Director

                        Pat Lally, Hearing Clerk

                                  (ii)


                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                        TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 2022

                                                                   Page
Opening statement of Chairman Brown..............................     1
        Prepared statement.......................................    31

Opening statements, comments, or prepared statements of:
    Senator Toomey...............................................     3
        Prepared statement.......................................    32

                               WITNESSES

Joanna M. Pinkerton, President and CEO, Central Ohio Transit 
  Authority......................................................     6
    Prepared statement...........................................    33
    Responses to written questions of:
        Senator Toomey...........................................    50
        Senator Sinema...........................................    50
Collie Greenwood, Interim General Manager and CEO, Metropolitan 
  Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority................................     8
    Prepared statement...........................................    35
    Responses to written questions of:
        Senator Toomey...........................................    51
        Senator Sinema...........................................    52
Greg Regan, President, Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO.    10
    Prepared statement...........................................    36
    Responses to written questions of:
        Senator Sinema...........................................    52
Dorothy Moses Schulz, Adjunct Fellow, The Manhattan Institute....    12
    Prepared statement...........................................    39
Randal O'Toole, Director, Thoreau Institute......................    13
    Prepared statement...........................................    46

                                 (iii)

 
ADVANCING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION UNDER THE BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE LAW

                              ----------                              


                        TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 2022

                                       U.S. Senate,
          Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met at 2:31 p.m., via Webex and in room 538, 
Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Sherrod Brown, Chairman of 
the Committee, presiding.

          OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN SHERROD BROWN

    Chairman Brown. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and 
Urban Affairs will come to order.
    Welcome. The hearing, as we generally are doing, is in 
hybrid format. Three witnesses are in person; two are virtual. 
Members have the option to appear either in person or 
virtually.
    Ohioans know how we let our infrastructure languish for far 
too long. President after President promised infrastructure 
investment, promised investment in public transit. President 
after President failed, and this Congress failed until 
President Biden and until we have a new Senate.
    Some of the most important work we have done this Congress 
in the Banking, Housing Committee is writing the most 
significant investment ever in public transit under the 
bipartisan infrastructure law. It is not just about the 
numbers; it is about what this investment will do, how this 
will matter in people's lives. It will mean transit agencies 
can run more buses and trains, more often, in more 
neighborhoods.
    Last year, Darryl Haley with Cincinnati Metro testified at 
our first hearing of the year on transit. This is our first one 
since the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed. He talked 
about one worker in a restaurant in suburban Cincinnati. She 
had to spend her entire day's paycheck on Uber to get to work 
because her regular bus did not run on Sundays and her employer 
said, you have to show up to work on Sunday. She could not miss 
her shift without risking that job. The bus did not come when 
she needed it. It prevented an entire day's hard work from 
paying off. It happens to her almost every single week. 
Multiply that times hundreds, times thousands, times tens of 
thousands of low-income workers.
    With the infrastructure bill, we have the potential to 
change the lives of workers like her. We can run buses on 
Sunday. We can run trains more often. We can add routes. We can 
add stops. It will make it faster and easier for people who 
already use public transit to get to work. People who work 
long, hard days on their feet too often have to take 45-minute, 
2 buses to get home and are dog tired when they are trying to 
care for their families.
    It is going to open up new job opportunities when people 
are not limited by where the bus or the train runs. It is going 
to make subways and buses and streetcars a viable option for 
the first time for millions of new riders. Right now, so many 
families feel the pain of high gas prices because of Russia's 
attack on Ukraine. They have no choice but to pay those high 
prices because they have to get to work, they have to get to 
school, they have to get to the grocery store. If there is a 
reliable bus or train, workers will not have to choose between 
paying for gas or making rent.
    It is going to make such a difference, especially in so 
many communities that have not had reliable transit. It is the 
Black and Brown communities who have been historically cutoff 
from job centers. It is rural workers, where walking is not an 
option. For our nation's seniors, a van or a bus from the local 
transit service is a lifeline to the doctor, for dialysis 
treatment, to the grocery store, to church.
    Because of the work we did on this Committee, not only are 
we going to run buses more often; they will be cleaner, they 
will be newer, they will be safer buses. One of our witnesses 
today showed me some of those buses in Columbus several months 
ago.
    More communities are going to be able to get new state-of-
the-art, zero-emission buses on the road. It is going to fight 
climate change. It is going to clean up the air in our 
communities. The Administration is already accepting 
applications for the zero-emission bus grants we passed.
    I have seen how Ohio agencies like Laketran and SARTA and 
COTA are leading the country in deploying these pollution-free 
buses. Over the coming year, we will see them in communities 
all over my State and Georgia and all over this country. We 
will make sure that these workers get the training they need to 
work on these new buses. On this Committee and under this 
President, workers will always, always have a seat at the 
table.
    I want to thank the members of our Committee for their work 
to get this done. Republican Ranking Member Toomey and I do not 
see eye to eye on many issues, as we know, but we were able to 
reach agreement to reauthorize Federal Transit Administration 
programs. We can both be proud that cities, the largest 
metropolitan areas in our States, cities like Cleveland and 
Philadelphia, can replace railcars that date back literally to 
the Carter administration.
    Our Housing and Transit Subcommittee Chair, Tina Smith, and 
the Subcommittee's Ranking Member, Senator Rounds from South 
Dakota, did great work to improve rural transit and tribal 
transit. Senator Menendez and Senator Reed continue to be 
leaders in fighting for a fair share of funds for transit, 
making sure that that historic 20 percent figure is met or 
exceeded, and we exceeded it. Senator Tester, Senator Warner, 
Senator Sinema played a key role in ensuring the Committee's 
transit title moved forward in the bipartisan negotiations, 
working with the Republican members of the bipartisan group. 
Senator Warner and Senator Van Hollen fought to reauthorize 
funds for America's subway, the
    Washington, DC, metro system, and Senator Van Hollen's 
legislation to improve safety plans gives workers a stronger 
voice in safety matters. Senators Warnock and Ossoff helped us 
fight for better bus rapid transit and better planning. And 
Senator Cortez Masto contributed provisions to link 
transportation planning with housing needs. I want to thank 
Senator Warren and other members of our caucus who have 
continued to advocate for zero-emission buses.
    After the difficult times of the pandemic, the future for 
public transit and for infrastructure is finally brighter. I 
will spend the coming months working with cities and townships 
and counties and villages in Ohio to make sure every community 
knows all the opportunities available to them to improve their 
transit systems.
    Today, after meeting with some national transit officials, 
I met the transit leader in Perry County, a rural county 
southeast of Columbus. They do not have a huge bus system, but 
they have essential transportation for people getting food, for 
people to get dialysis, for people that want to go to church, 
that need the kinds of things in their lives that only public 
transit can help them do. I know many of my colleagues will do 
the same around the State.
    I look forward to hearing from witnesses about the 
potential for job growth and economic job creation, economic 
growth, that these new provisions will unleash.
    Senator Toomey.

         OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PATRICK J. TOOMEY

    Senator Toomey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to our 
witnesses.
    Today's hearing is about the public transit component of 
the bipartisan infrastructure law. Mr. Chairman, thank you for 
pointing out the cooperative efforts that we engaged in. It 
appears to me the outcome worked out pretty well for you 
because there was a lot in the bill that I do not really agree 
with.
    As I have said repeatedly, we should not pay for an 
infrastructure package by borrowing billions and billions more 
dollars. Yet, that is precisely what happened with this law. It 
authorized so much new spending that $118 billion had to be 
transferred from the Treasury's general fund to the Highway 
Trust Fund, which is supposed to pay for mass transit and 
highway construction with gas tax revenue.
    Now some of my Democratic colleagues would make the Highway 
Trust Fund shortfall worse by suspending the Federal gas tax, 
reasoning that the solution to high gas prices is not more 
supply but rather more debt. I would suggest if we want to help 
commuters and families suffering from inflation we can start by 
reversing the Administration's actions which keep us from using 
much of our own fossil energy.
    But, back to infrastructure. Federal spending should be 
driven by a reasoned assessment of our nation's needs. However, 
the bipartisan infrastructure law seems to have been driven 
more by political imperatives. The bill funneled billions of 
dollars to projects that the private sector has been more than 
willing to fund, such as ferries and electric vehicle charging 
stations. Transit was given $108.1 billion over a 5-year 
period. To put that number into perspective, it is almost twice 
what transit got in the last surface transportation 
reauthorization.
    And this staggering sum will be on top of the nearly $85 
billion given to transit, the vast majority of it characterized 
as emergency spending, to offset COVID losses from March '20 to 
March '21, just 1 year. In fact, this nearly $85 billion in 
funding that the Federal Government gave to transit agencies 
exceeded both the annual operating and capital costs of all the 
transit agencies in the United States combined in 2019.
    And at the time, my Democratic colleagues tried to justify 
paying for more than 100 percent of transit agencies' budgets 
by saying that transit systems could collapse from declines in 
ridership and State and local tax revenue. But as we know, 
State and local tax collection set a new record in 2020. And 
despite an all-time record amount of revenue collected by State 
and local governments, Congress gave more than $850 billion to 
State and local governments.
    Worse, billions of dollars will go to transit agencies that 
were facing ridership challenges well before COVID. Since 
reaching a high of 10.7 billion trips in 2014, transit 
ridership has steadily fallen. It fell by almost 8 percent in 
2019, and the last 2 years saw even steeper declines. Ridership 
fell at some agencies by over 70 percent.
    Some estimates predict that ridership will never fully 
return to prepandemic levels. Agency leaders in New York,
    Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC, have all said many of the 
riders will not return. So why give away still more taxpayer 
money to agencies serving fewer riders? Well, a number of 
advocates suggest the solution to falling ridership is fare-
free transit. Advocates claim this will increase ridership and 
on time performance, achieve social equity, reduce operator 
assaults and fare evasion. I suppose one way to reduce fare 
evasion, which is really theft of services, is to never charge 
a price in the first place.
    But as Milton Friedman helped to publicize, there is no 
such thing as a free lunch. In my view, just as car owners pay 
a Federal gas tax to support highways, transit riders should 
have to pay something to contribute their fair share, too, as 
should local communities. Transit systems, after all, serve a 
city or a metropolitan area, not the entire country. That is 
why Congress has traditionally helped to pay for capital needs 
but not operating expenses. If New
    York or Washington, DC, cannot or will not pay for their 
transit systems, why should Federal taxpayers?
    Now there is one other issue we must discuss, and that is 
the rising rate of crime in mass transit systems. Despite 
having far fewer riders, New York, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia 
have all seen spikes in transit crime. There were 461 felony 
assaults in New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority 
last year. That is the highest number since 1997. MTA riders 
are confronting fearful conditions. We have seen the news 
stories--hammer attacks, stabbings, multiple people pushed onto 
subway tracks, including in front of oncoming trains, with one 
woman tragically killed. Even New York City's mayor, a former 
cop, says he does not feel safe on the subway.
    Today, we will hear from two witnesses on the ongoing 
systemic challenges facing transit agencies that were not 
addressed in the bipartisan infrastructure law. Dr. Dorothy 
Shulz, a retired transit police captain, will testify that 
transit systems must address security issues that are putting 
rider safety at risk. And Randal O'Toole of the Thoreau 
Institute will testify about the long-term decline in ridership 
that began well before COVID.
    We have seen time and again that throwing extraordinary 
sums of taxpayer monies without serious reforms encourages 
transit systems to maintain the status quo. I look forward to 
hearing from our witnesses and discussing the question: Does 
mass transit continue to make sense in every U.S. city at its 
current scale?
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Toomey.
    I will introduce today's witnesses. Ms. Joanna Pinkerton is 
President and CEO of the Central Ohio Transit Authority, 
serving the Columbus region. Ms. Pinkerton is a licensed 
professional engineer with a history of implementing solutions 
that capitalize on Ohio's rich legacy of transportation 
manufacturing and technical resources. Ms. Pinkerton joined 
COTA in April 2018.
    Welcome.
    Senator Ossoff will introduce Mr. Greenwood. And I believe 
that Senator Warnock will have some comments later. He had a 
scheduling conflict but will join us later.
    Senator Ossoff.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and it is a 
pleasure to welcome Mr. Collie Greenwood to the Senate and to 
the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.
    I want to take a moment, Mr. Chairman, and acknowledge the 
tragic passing of MARTA's CEO and General Manager, Jeffrey 
Parker, who passed away this January. Jeff championed MARTA. He 
championed accessible public transportation in the State of 
Georgia. He created an expansive vision for transit in metro 
Atlanta. He leaves a tremendous legacy that Collie now will 
continue. And though Jeff is no longer with us, his work and 
his vision are sustained and alive with us, and we will work 
together to realize as much of it as we can. And if I might, 
Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the Committee and the Senate, extend 
our condolences to the whole MARTA family during this difficult 
time.
    Following Mr. Parker's passing in January, Mr. Greenwood 
was selected as MARTA's Interim CEO and General Manager. He 
brings more than 30 years of experience in transit. He served 
as Chief Service Officer at North America's third largest 
transit system, the Toronto Transit Commission, overseeing bus, 
rail, accessible transit, station services, transit security 
and maintenance.
    And in this interim role, Mr. Greenwood will now carry the 
torch forward from Mr. Parker, to lead the largest and most 
ambitious expansion and modernization program since MARTA's 
founding over 40 years, an expansion and modernization that 
would not be possible without this Committee and your support, 
Mr. Chairman.
    So, Mr. Greenwood, welcome to the Senate.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Ossoff.
    Greg Regan is President of the Transportation Trades 
Department of the AFL-CIO. He is the elected President of the 
Transportations Trades Department, a labor organization 
consisting of 36 unions that represent workers in all areas of 
transportation. He collaborates with TDD's affiliated unions to 
fight for long-term investment in transportation. He works to 
ensure transportation jobs are safe and secure and to protect 
the rights working people have to a union voice.
    Dr. Dorothy Moses Schulz is joining us remotely. She is an 
adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute Policy and Public 
Safety Initiatives. She is a professor emerita at John Jay 
College of Criminal Justice. She was the first woman captain in 
the Metro North Commuter Railroad Police Department.
    Mr. Randal O'Toole, who is joining us remotely, is Director 
of the Thoreau Institute. He previously was a senior fellow at 
the Cato Institute, specializing in land use in transportation 
initiatives.
    Ms. Pinkerton, please begin. Thank you for joining us.

 STATEMENT OF JOANNA M. PINKERTON, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CENTRAL 
                     OHIO TRANSIT AUTHORITY

    Ms. Pinkerton. Thank you, Chair Brown and also Members of 
the Committee. Today, I appreciate the opportunity to testify 
here on the enormous opportunities that we see in central Ohio 
under this bipartisan infrastructure law.
    As previously mentioned, the legislation represents a long 
overdue commitment to repairing our transportation networks 
and, I believe, repurposing them for a future economy in ways 
that we may not even realize yet. It addresses many of the ill 
effects that we are seeing, everything from congestion to 
pollution, even intentionally dividing communities in our 
historical past. And our transportation networks have not kept 
pace with the rapidly evolving changes in how we live, how we 
work, how we do business, and they do not yet account for 
changes in lifestyle, including comments that have been made 
about declining ridership.
    I think there are existing advancements in new technology 
on the horizon which will have a direct impact and can move 
goods and people in a different way. With the new 
infrastructure funding, we can actually begin to shift our old 
ways of thinking to fix this.
    Ohio's two Senators played a central role in drafting this 
transformative legislation through listening at the local level 
and raising awareness of the investment needed to support our 
Nation's economy at this time. So I would like to share a few 
examples of how the Central Ohio Transit Authority can put 
these funds to use for the economy in central Ohio and the 
entire State.
    Central Ohio is a region of approximately 2.2 million 
people, with a unique situation where we are expected to grow 
to 3 million very soon. We know that, through smart growth and 
planning principles, transit can build communities which lead 
to a higher quality of life built around affordable housing, 
equitable access to amenities and employment and job 
opportunities.
    Our transformational LinkUS initiative is exactly that. 
Entities across our entire central Ohio region are 
collaborating on LinkUS to address our growth in a more 
sustainably through high capacity, high frequency transit 
corridors, which will support more dense, transit oriented 
development, and also connect to our rural communities through 
highway and surface transportation investments. Two of our 
planned corridors are already in the capital investment grant 
funding pipeline at the FTA. A third corridor will be submitted 
later this year and an expectation of two more to follow. We 
worked diligently to align these projects with the outcomes 
expected in the CIG program as written, and we expect that 
LinkUS will benefit greatly from the infrastructure bill's 
improvements, specifically to the Small Starts portion of that 
program, which addresses communities of our size.
    At COTA, we also understand and take seriously our role in 
protecting lives through improving air quality in our region. 
Our industry knows that to have a lasting impact, we must 
commit to converting transit vehicles to clean fuel. At COTA, 
we are already on track to be completely diesel-free by 2025. 
That is a commitment we have made in the past with our local 
capital programs.
    And we are preparing a path forward to net carbon-neutral. 
Last year, with the help of the Federal Low-No grant program, 
we proudly deployed our first electric transit vehicles, and we 
went a step further with our local energy providers to ensure 
that they are going to be powered by entirely renewable energy. 
The FTA just announced last week more than $1 billion in 
competitive funding to assist us and my colleagues with other 
ways to accelerate what we are already doing at the local level 
with our local funding.
    On a workforce front--I think this is important to mention 
our frontline operators in our fixed route, our paratransit, 
and our microtransit are essential to our mission. The transit 
industry is facing a workforce shortage like every other sector 
of the American economy. At COTA, we did not lay off a single 
transit operator during the pandemic. Yet, the current labor 
shortage has forced us to make service reductions. We are short 
almost 20 percent of the operators necessary to operate our 
fixed route service alone, putting a burden on our community 
and, as mentioned before, increasing the demands for frontline 
workers, who cover third shift, late shift, late night service, 
and weekend service. We are working on innovative recruiting 
and training programs, and we encourage any workforce 
retraining funds to be made available to transit agencies to 
make sure that we scale up, retool, and reimagine the workforce 
of the future.
    I would like to mention that this law will not only improve 
the condition of transit agencies; it will improve the 
condition of the roadways that we run on, and I believe it can 
transform how we use them. It has the potential to dramatically 
improve safety and increase capacity, using our existing system 
when it is repurposed by using more density, shared rides.
    In central Ohio, most of our road capacity can actually 
meet our future demand if we invest in emerging technology, 
connected vehicles. And I believe that the shared vehicle 
environment has the potential to make us both safer and more 
efficient. Our vehicle systems are increasingly generating more 
and more data, more than a terabyte a day, and this is a huge 
opportunity now that we can fund software and technology 
improvements through infrastructure. We are not just funding 
the concrete and the steel and the roads and the vehicles 
anymore. We are funding the systems that can connect them.
    We believe in central Ohio we bring a unique approach to 
serving our region. Our mission is to connect people to 
prosperity through innovation, dedication, and teamwork. We are 
one of the few transit agencies that has seen an increase in 
ridership year over year prior to the pandemic because we 
understand that transit has to meet the needs of the economy 
and the people it is serving in the ways that they are 
changing.
    We think this bill has made huge and generous strides, but 
it is up to us from a policy and administration and regulatory 
perspective to assess how we can reinvest and reimagine those 
systems through the policy applications. I believe the future 
work trends are here already and we have generations of workers 
who are ready to join the workforce in central Ohio through new 
systems invested in by this infrastructure bill.
    And we want to make sure that we have the American 
lifestyle and--quite frankly, this is not something that a 
transit CEO says very often--the pursuit of happiness of the 
American lifestyle. My community is going through a huge 
transformation at the moment, and we believe that this 
infrastructure bill can help support us to make sure we support 
the economy of the future.
    Thank you, Chair.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Ms. Pinkerton.
    Mr. Greenwood, welcome.

STATEMENT OF COLLIE GREENWOOD, INTERIM GENERAL MANAGER AND CEO, 
          METROPOLITAN ATLANTA RAPID TRANSIT AUTHORITY

    Mr. Greenwood. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Brown 
and Ranking Member Toomey and distinguished Members of the 
Committee. I am Collie Greenwood, Interim General Manager and 
CEO of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Agency in 
Atlanta, known as MARTA. I am honored to have the opportunity 
to appear alongside my transit agency colleagues and share our 
experience at MARTA and future expansion efforts made possible 
in part by the Congress's passage of the bipartisan 
infrastructure law.
    Serving MARTA in this role has been the culmination for me 
of 35 years of experience in the transit industry. I worked my 
way through college as a transit bus operator. At first, it was 
just a job that paid the bills, but at some point the mission 
of getting people where they needed to go became a part of me. 
I rose to Chief Service Officer at the Toronto Transit 
Commission, and I guided that agency through several 
transformational initiatives. In 2019, I was personally 
recruited by MARTA's former CEO, Jeff Parker, because of the 
alignment of our vision for public transit. Jeff spoke about it 
as lines and dots, the lines being the transit and the dots 
being the communities and places that we serve.
    MARTA is the largest public transit agency in the Southeast 
and one of the largest in the country, providing bus, heavy 
rail, paratransit, and streetcar services. And it has a robust 
transit-oriented development program that incorporates 
affordable housing and equitable access, driving economic 
growth and development around our rail stations.
    We have eagerly embarked on three expansion projects that I 
will briefly describe today as we hope that they will be direct 
beneficiaries of funding and policy changes made possible by 
the bipartisan infrastructure law. These expansion projects 
will benefit from a key change to the Small Starts program 
which, as you know, increases project eligibility from $300 
million to $400 million. And I would like to personally thank 
Senators Warnock and Ossoff for their leadership on securing 
that change that is already having an impact for MARTA.
    One of the first initiatives I worked on when I arrived at 
MARTA was a series of improvements to bus amenities and a focus 
on bus service enhancements and expansion. As a former bus 
operator, I understand the importance of reliable bus service 
and that while rail may get most of the attention it is the bus 
that is the backbone of public transit and bus service, 
particularly bus rapid transit, has the potential to be 
transformative for a community.
    With that in mind, I am pleased to share that the Clayton 
Southlake Bus Rapid Transit project has advanced to the project 
development phase of the Small Starts program. The estimated 
$338 million project will provide high-capacity transit service 
connecting College Park Rail Station in the southern part of 
metro Atlanta, that is close to the airport, to several key 
destinations in Clayton County, including major commercial 
corridors, the hospital, and the city of Riverdale Town Center. 
As the first BRT in Clayton County, the project will feature 13 
new branded stations with off-board fare collection, 10 branded 
electric vehicles and associated charging infrastructure, and 
the installation of transit signal priority equipment at key 
intersections.
    Another one of MARTA's highest ridership bus routes is 
along Campbellton Road in southwest Atlanta. In partnership 
with the city of Atlanta, we are investing in high-capacity 
transit to improve connectivity, accessibility, and mobility 
along this important corridor. The transit and transit-oriented 
development investments planned for this vibrant part of the 
city will support the overall economic and community 
development sought by the established neighborhoods along the 
route.
    One of the exciting parts of bus rapid transit is the 
planned use of electric buses to travel through dense urban 
corridors, leaving no emissions and no noise in their wake. 
MARTA's first six zero-emission buses will reduce our fleet 
emissions by approximately 935 short tons of greenhouse gases 
while also reducing harmful fine particle matter that is linked 
to a variety of health risks. The BIL's increase in funding for 
the new Low-No emission bus grant program will help MARTA 
accelerate the transition of our fleet to zero-emission buses.
    We are also working with the city of Atlanta on the 
transformation of our largest and busiest train station, Five 
Points, which sits at the heart of the city. MARTA will be 
seeking a RAISE grant and new discretionary grants to support 
the $150 million redevelopment of the station that is the 
intersection of 4 rail lines and a transfer hub for dozens of 
intercity bus routes that serve major Government and 
educational facilities, jobs centers, and Atlanta's vibrant 
arts and cultural scene.
    In closing, I want to thank you for the opportunity to 
present to the Committee today. I am very proud of the progress 
that we have made in the Atlanta region, including in very 
challenging circumstances while we continue to provide service 
during the ongoing pandemic.
    I am grateful for the leadership of the Georgia 
congressional delegation and their role in the passage of the 
bipartisan infrastructure law. Senators Ossoff and Warnock have 
provided steadfast support of MARTA and the communities that we 
serve. I am confident that the passage of this monumental law 
will contribute to our sustained growth as we expand in cost 
effective and practical ways, with great support from President 
Biden, USDOT Secretary Buttigieg, and Federal Transit 
Administrator Nuria Fernandez.
    Thank you very much, Chairman Brown and Ranking Member 
Toomey, for this historic legislation and all that it will do 
for the people and communities of the Atlanta Metro Region.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Mr. Greenwood.
    Mr. Regan, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Welcome.

   STATEMENT OF GREG REGAN, PRESIDENT, TRANSPORTATION TRADES 
                      DEPARTMENT, AFL-CIO

    Mr. Regan. Thank you, Chairman Brown and Ranking Member 
Toomey, for inviting me to testify today about the historic and 
long overdue investments in the bipartisan infrastructure law 
made in America's public transportation and, most importantly, 
in its frontline workforce. I am speaking today on behalf of 36 
unions who collectively represent the majority of those 
workers. They include bus and rail transit operators, station 
agents, car cleaners, mechanics, and other frontline 
professionals.
    Today, we may hear from some who argue that investments in 
public transit are a waste of taxpayer dollars. We may hear 
that public transit only serves New York City while 
disregarding the millions of Americans in rural, small, and 
medium-sized cities who have always counted on public transit 
and who continue to count on it today. We may hear that the 
pandemic has doomed public transit.
    I want to be clear on one fact. Those claims are wrong. 
They are short-sighted, and they ignore the critical role of 
transit for millions of working people who rely on these 
services for most of their transportation needs. That is truer 
today than any time in our modern history.
    The American middle class has been under attack for decades 
while the wealthy continue to get wealthier. Nearly two-thirds 
of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck, and the pandemic 
placed even greater strain on their household budgets, which 
were already stretched thin, to the point of cruelty in one of 
the richest nations on the planet. And now because of 
historically high gas prices, your constituents will have to 
look their families in the eye while they decide whether to put 
gas in their car, food on their tables, pay their utilities, 
hire childcare, all while dealing with all the other pressures 
that unchecked corporate greed and rampant inequality and the 
erosion of worker rights have placed on their lives.
    Some might incorrectly respond by saying that the cost of 
gas is President Biden's fault. To those listening to this 
hearing at home, please know that these are disingenuous claims 
that are only meant to prey on your fears so that wealthy 
corporations and their allies in Congress can profit 
economically and politically while the American people work 
harder yet get poorer.
    I say all this to make one point. It would be a grave 
mistake to undermine the workers in this industry, the 
essential service they provide to commuters in urban and rural 
communities alike, and the pocketbooks of every single American 
by turning our back on the benefits delivered by public 
transit.
    There is only one solution to drive the prepandemic growth 
we saw in this industry: more service, better service, and the 
kind of real long-term vision delivered by President Biden, the 
members of this Committee, and the bill. Not only did the bill 
make unprecedented investments in public transportation, it 
also included two of transportation labor's biggest priorities, 
to protect workers from assault and to create new good jobs and 
clean transit.
    Two years ago, TTD's past President, Larry Willis, 
testified before this Committee about the horrific safety 
conditions faced by transit workers on the job every single 
day, a problem that has only grown worse during the pandemic, 
as has previously been noted. Thanks to the hard work of this 
Committee, Senator Van Hollen, transportation labor, and the 
unwavering support of President Biden, we will finally be able 
to turn the tide and ensure safety for our workers. The bill 
included critical reforms that require for the first time that 
the Federal Transit Administration collect accurate data on 
transit workforce assaults, reform its public transportation 
agency safety plan process to include worker voices, and 
incorporate measures to reduce the risk of assault in every 
single transit system in this country, and update its national 
safety plan to address the risk of assault and other public 
health concerns.
    While we wait for these new safety requirements to be 
implemented, it is deeply painful to witness transit workers 
still facing the threat of assaults and other unsafe conditions 
that place them in harm's way at the workplace. Last week, I 
spoke with Administrator Fernandez and her team at the FTA and 
am confident they are working as quickly as possible to ensure 
that no transit worker will ever again wake up wondering if 
today is the day that they wind up in the hospital or worse 
because their employers did not protect them.
    Second, the bill clearly illustrates that innovative new 
technologies, and the creation and maintenance of good union 
jobs, go hand in hand when good policy ties it together. Chair 
Brown fought to ensure that massive new investments in the low 
or no emission vehicle program were tied to truly historic 
investments in the incumbent and future workforce.
    Specifically, the bill requires transit agencies to show 
the workforce impacts of the transition to zero-emission buses, 
and it also addresses one of the largest existing skills gaps 
in this industry by providing millions of dedicated funding for 
workforce training. Tying workforce training, including labor 
management training programs and apprenticeships, to the 
adoption of new technologies will ensure a high-road labor 
model that provides good union jobs and is consistent with the 
Department of Transportation's new innovative principles which 
make clear that workers will have a voice at the table in the 
adoption of new tech.
    Last week, the FTA issued its first funding opportunity for 
the revised Low-No program. Thanks to Senator Brown's clear 
vision for workers and FTA Administrator Fernandez's commitment 
to workforce training, the FTA will guarantee that the training 
needs of the transit maintenance workforce will keep pace with 
new technology. Their careers can grow along with the 
advancements in tech. We thank both of you for your important 
work on this truly historic issue and its huge improvement for 
transit workers.
    Again, thank you both for having me, and I look forward to 
answering any questions you may have.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Mr. Regan.
    Ms. Schulz is recognized from New York.

    STATEMENT OF DOROTHY MOSES SCHULZ, ADJUNCT FELLOW, THE 
                      MANHATTAN INSTITUTE

    Ms. Schulz. Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, and 
Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to 
testify. Can you hear me? I am showing as----
    Chairman Brown. We can hear you perfectly, Dr. Schulz. Go 
ahead.
    Ms. Schulz. OK. So I am going to skip over most of my 
resume. You heard it. And as you know, I was in policing, and I 
have worked as a consultant for a number of transit agencies as 
well as having done safety and security audits for the FTA.
    My testimony is on crime, decriminalization of fare 
evasion, and the effects of fare-free transit on public order. 
I am very glad to follow Mr. Regan because I, too, am concerned 
with worker security and I know that is an issue for all the 
transit worker unions.
    Transit systems in many cities--I can name them quickly. I 
am from New York; I talk fast. New York, Denver, Los Angeles, 
Minneapolis-St. Paul, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon, amongst 
those, defunded police, replacing them with homeless outreach 
and mental health workers and with Ambassadors who, rather than 
issue fare evasion summonses, explained to fare beaters how to 
pay their fare.
    A recent study of 115 agencies found that 90 percent 
reported complaints about homeless riders. Most believe this 
has a negative effect on ridership and that it has increased 
during COVID when some systems lost more than 70 percent of 
their commuters. Amid this disorder, many stations have become 
de facto homeless shelters and drug injectionsites. Systems are 
finding fentanyl smokers in restrooms and on buses and trains, 
raising security and health concerns for riders and especially 
for employees.
    Destination-less riders and thieves and grifters are not 
new to transit, but passively allowing them to remain is new. 
There must be greater steps to maintain public order in 
transit. This is reflected in the broken windows theory: 
curtailing little offenses before they become big offenses, 
whether on the street, in a mall, or in a transit facility.
    Broken windows policing has been incorrectly described as 
the opposite of community policing, one tough, the other soft. 
This is a false dichotomy. Assuring community viability is not 
tough or soft. It is maintaining order to keep people safe and 
secure, and without it, we are threatening patrons and 
employees.
    Systems have also lessened their focus on fare evaders. 
They are responding to studies--many of the same cities I 
previously mentioned, so I will not provide a list--that 
indicate that young minority males are disproportionately cited 
for nonpayment. None of the studies, though, speculate whether 
the different levels of citations indicate different levels of 
fare compliance.
    But to talk about fare enforcement may be obsolete. A case 
in Maryland and one currently on appeal in the State of 
Washington are challenging the whole concept of fare sweeps and 
whether demanding proof of payment is a search under the Fourth 
Amendment. If these cases--if the Washington case is decided 
the same as the Maryland case, systems are likely to further 
curtail enforcement, effectively making transit free even if 
fares are not officially eliminated.
    There are also advocates who would see nothing wrong with 
this. Fare-free transit used to be called free transit before 
people realized that someone, even if not the riders, would be 
paying for it. Advocates believe fare-free transit will 
increase equity and decrease pollution. They rarely, if ever, 
discuss security.
    On March 4th, using ARPA funds, Boston embarked on a fare-
free transit experiment on 3 bus lines. I hope they will 
include security in their surveys. We know bus riders are 
mostly lower-income women and that women increasingly work as 
bus operators. Their personal security must be paramount.
    In conclusion, transit systems have an obligation to 
provide a secure environment. The bipartisan infrastructure law 
does not do this in any way although it does finally, as Mr. 
Regan indicated, provide for tracking of assaults on employees. 
Infrastructure improvements are vital but so is assuring 
patrons and employees feel secure in the new or improved 
facilities. If transit boards continue to provide shelter to 
the unhoused or injectionsites for drug users, riders who can 
afford to will find other modes of travel and employees, as we 
heard, already in short supply, will find other places to work.
    I thank you for the opportunity to speak, and I look 
forward to answering any of your questions.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Dr. Schulz.
    Mr. O'Toole is recognized from Oregon.

    STATEMENT OF RANDAL O'TOOLE, DIRECTOR, THOREAU INSTITUTE

    Mr. O'Toole. Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, and 
Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to testify 
today. I am Randal O'Toole, and I am a policy analyst with 
nearly 50 years of experience studying transportation and land 
use issues.
    Today, you have asked how public transit can progress under 
the bipartisan infrastructure act. I am afraid I have bad news. 
It cannot, and it will not. Public transit has been declining 
for more than a century. For most of that time, Federal, State, 
and local governments have thrown increasing subsidies at 
transit aimed at reversing that decline. The results are a 
complete failure.
    Since Congress passed the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 
1964, taxpayers have spent well over $1.5 trillion subsidizing 
transit. Yet, the number of transit trips taken per urban 
resident has fallen 40 percent, from 61 in 1964 to just 37 in 
2019, the lowest in recorded history. In 2019, transit carried 
less than 1 percent of all U.S. passenger travel.
    Americans did not reject transit because of some automaker 
conspiracy or an irrational love affair with driving. They 
stopped riding transit because it is an inferior good. It is 
slower and more expensive than driving, and it does not go 
where most people want to go. In 2019, people can save money by 
driving instead of riding transit because average transit fares 
per passenger mile were 20 percent more than Americans spent 
per passenger mile driving their cars.
    On top of this, subsidies to transit were more than 100 
times as much per passenger mile as subsidies to highways. Even 
with those subsidies, University of Minnesota researchers 
estimate that in 2019 the average resident of one of the 
nation's 50 largest urban areas could reach almost twice as 
many jobs in a 20-minute auto drive as in a 60-minute transit 
trip.
    Transit is so inferior, researchers found, that bicycle 
riders can reach more jobs in 15 minutes or less than transit 
riders in trips of the same length. This makes transit third 
class transportation. The researchers found transit was 
inferior even in New York City, the city with the best transit 
in America.
    The pandemic accelerated all the transit--led Americans to 
turn away from transit, increased telecommuting, 
decentralization of downtown jobs, and movement of residences 
to the suburbs and exurbs. The Census Bureau's American 
Community Survey found that increased telecommuting led to the 
number of people driving alone, bicycling or walking to work in 
2020 to each decline by 16 percent, but the number commuting by 
transit fell by 41 percent, another sign of transit's 
inferiority.
    The transit industry claims that transit relieves 
congestion, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and helps low 
income people out of poverty and promotes economic development. 
I have discussed all of these in my written testimony, but for 
now I would just like to address the claim that transit 
promotes social justice by helping poor people and that free 
transit would be even more socially just. Even low income 
people know that transit is inferior. In 2019, only 5 percent 
of workers who earned less than $25,000 a year took transit to 
work compared with 7 percent of people who earned more than 
$75,000 a year.
    More than three-fourths of transit subsidies come from 
regressive taxes such as sales or property taxes. This means 
that 95 percent of low-income people who do not ride transit 
disproportionately pay taxes for transit systems that are 
disproportionately used by high-income people. That is the very 
definition of social injustice. I wonder if free transit 
advocates realize how racist they are when they argue that poor 
minorities should take third-class transportation while almost 
everyone else gets to take first-class transportation.
    American cities have a long history of throwing money at 
transit for no measurable benefits. The worst case is Los 
Angeles, which spent billions building rail transit and lost 
five bus riders for every rail rider it gained. Recently opened 
rail lines in Charlotte, Minneapolis, Portland, St. Louis, and 
other cities also produced no increase in riders. The only real 
beneficiaries of these projects are the engineering firms that 
designed them and the construction firms that built them.
    Transit agencies hope higher gas prices will encourage 
people to return to transit, but they will not. Between 1999 
and 2011, gas prices nearly tripled after adjusting for 
inflation; yet, ridership grew by only 12 percent. That will 
not be enough to offset the effects of increased telecommuting, 
decentralized of jobs and housing, and people's wariness of 
crimes and infectious diseases associated with crowding.
    Transit's problem is not a shortage of funds but too much 
money, which transit agencies spend at projects aimed at 
pleasing politicians, not improving transit ridership. The 
bipartisan infrastructure act only made this problem worse. If 
the Federal Government must subsidize transit, it should make 
subsidies proportional to the fare revenues collected by each 
transit agency. That will make transit agencies responsive to 
transit riders rather than to engineering and construction 
firms that have gotten fat spending Federal transit dollars.
    Thank you very much.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Mr. O'Toole.
    Ms. Pinkerton, start with you. You talked about the 
population that we think is likely, maybe certain, in the 
Columbus region. Part of that growth obviously will result from 
Intel's $20 billion semiconductor plant in New Albany, 5,000 
building trades workers over 10 years, ultimately creating 
10,000 new jobs. We are burying the term Rust Belt in Ohio. How 
will COTA and the investments in the infrastructure bill 
contribute to that by helping more workers connect to jobs 
created by Intel and all of the spinoffs from Intel?
    Ms. Pinkerton. Thank you, Chairman, for the question. Just 
last Friday, I was invited, with former elected Federal 
officials, to the Ohio Business Roundtable, who convened the 
officials to look at the entire system. So when you have such 
massive investment, when we are already seeing growth by 
hundreds of thousands in our community, you have to look at the 
entire system. It is a systems engineering problem.
    I am really thrilled that COTA is invited to be at the 
table, and the topics last Friday were interesting. They were 
not things that you would normally think of being the 
responsibility of a Federal highway agency or a DOT or a 
transit agency: it was about access, affordable housing, 
childcare, common themes like food access.
    We believe that mobility is the most important component of 
building out a new site such as the Intel site. And when I say 
mobility, I mean physical and I mean digital. People have to be 
able to move, and they have to be able to connect.
    We will be part of an overall system. We already know that 
you cannot expand the highways enough to relieve congestion and 
get all people to the site. We have already built 12 lanes out 
that direction, so we are looking at reusing the number of 
lanes with more dense development and also with transit being 
part of the formula.
    COTA intends to use our LinkUS initiative and make sure 
that we are looking at the new trends of people coming in and 
out of the city to the new site, and where they are coming from 
across rural parts of Ohio as well, so that we can digitally 
connect the rural transit systems to our high-capacity systems. 
It does not mean we have to buy new vehicles. It means we have 
to upgrade the software and the hardware systems to make sure 
that they can talk to one another.
    Chairman Brown. Thanks, Ms. Pinkerton.
    Mr. Greenwood, what does faster, better service mean to 
your riders?
    Mr. Greenwood. To the riders, it means the world. It 
actually unlocks potential, unlocks opportunities for people 
who normally might not take transit. Having a more robust 
transit system that is more reliable, getting people to where 
they want to go sooner actually allows them the dream of 
chasing the job that they want, living in the places that they 
want.
    And the aspect of reliability cannot be overlooked. It is 
one thing to have a scheduled service but quite another to be 
able to stick to it. When people give their word in their daily 
lives, it needs to mean something. If they are relying on 
public transit, then we need to make sure that our word means 
something, too. We only get that when we invest in transit, 
making sure that our infrastructure is such that that level of 
reliability is absolutely there.
    Chairman Brown. Thanks. I think especially of low-income 
workers who do not have, frankly, much of a voice in this 
Congress, who work all day on their feet all day, and then they 
have to take a bus ride home and change buses, and it takes an 
hour and 10 minutes to get home, and what better, more 
efficient service would mean to them. Thank you.
    Mr. Regan, the infrastructure law invests in both zero 
emission buses and the workers who operate and maintain those 
next generation buses. I have had conversations in Akron and 
Canton and Cleveland and Columbus and Cincinnati and probably 
seven or eight transit systems in Ohio about that transition. 
When companies and agencies adopt new technologies, workers 
often get left behind or denied the training that they need. 
Are the bipartisan infrastructure law's transit requirements a 
good model for including workers in technology transitions? 
Walk through how we avoid some of the problems we have seen in 
the past, especially when you think about diesel engines to 
all-electric buses.
    Mr. Regan. Thank you for the question. Yes, I think finally 
for the first time in our history we are actually taking the 
right approach to workforce training when it comes to transit. 
Historically, we have spent less than 1 percent of expenditures 
at transit agencies on frontline worker training. This will put 
5 percent of that into their overall investment in the people 
that are going to be operating these systems. And that is an 
important part. We are only going to meet the true promise of 
this moment, which is the real investment, if we are actually 
growing the workforce along with the expansion of our systems 
and improving service. The workforce has to be right along for 
the ride.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you.
    Senator Toomey.
    Senator Toomey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. O'Toole, in recent years, the Federal Government was 
providing roughly $13 billion per year to subsidize transit. In 
2020, they got their $13 billion. And then over the course of 
just that year they got another $70 billion, 7-0, on top of the 
13.
    With the bipartisan infrastructure law and recently passed 
omnibus, transit agencies will get another $20.5 billion. And 
then on top of that, they will get an additional $87 billion 
over the next 4 fiscal years. This, of course, does not include 
the hundreds and hundreds of billions that the Federal 
Government sent to State and local governments in a year when 
they were setting an all-time record for tax revenue 
collection.
    So my question for you: Are you aware of any kind of 
logical, methodical process for determining? Is it needs-based, 
or is there some other mechanism that you are aware of for 
determining these massive amounts of money?
    Mr. O'Toole. No, I do not know of any reason why transit 
should have gotten all of that money. Transit, before the 
pandemic, was carrying less than 1 percent of passenger travel 
and no freight. Transit, during the pandemic, has been carrying 
less than a half a percent of passenger travel and no freight.
    The main transportation problem that emerged from the 
pandemic was a freight problem, a supply chain problem, and 
yet, none of the COVID relief money went to aid that supply 
chain problem. So by my calculation, about more than 40 percent 
of the money went to transit--of the transportation dollars 
went to transit.
    Senator Toomey. So the U.S. Department of Transportation 
has found that there is a backlog of $105.1 billion in deferred 
maintenance and replacement needs for mass transit. This is 
generally known as the state of good repair needs. Seems to me 
that there are project sponsors across the U.S. that are 
looking to have the Federal Government now fund light rail, 
commuter rail, heavy rail projects amid depressed and uncertain 
ridership. Are these transit agencies all making sure that the 
money they are getting is first going to deal with the state of 
good repair, to bring up to date the deferred maintenance and 
the replacement needs that have been identified?
    Mr. O'Toole. You know, we have many examples of transit 
agencies that had serious deferred maintenance needs and chose 
to spend Federal dollars on building new transit instead. There 
is the Silver Line in Washington, DC; there is the Green Line 
in Boston, many other examples of transit agencies with transit 
systems that were breaking down deciding instead to spend money 
on new transit.
    I think what transit agencies have learned from the 
pandemic is that it does not matter if they actually carry any 
transit riders. They are still going to get lots of subsidies. 
And that is a lesson that is very bad. It tells people that the 
important thing is the jobs they create, the construction that 
is done. What is not important is whether anybody is actually 
carried by them, and so transit agencies have no incentive to 
be responsive to rider needs.
    Senator Toomey. Let me turn to Dr. Schulz. As I mentioned 
in my opening statement, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has 
publically admitted to not feeling safe using his own city's 
subway, the MTA. Earlier this year, New York District Attorney 
Alvin Bragg directed his staff to withhold prosecution of ``low 
level'' crimes like fare evasion. The previous DA, Cy Vance, 
announced ending criminal prosecution for fare evasion back in 
2017.
    So we have some years now of experience where, as a sort of 
de facto matter, there is kind of a no-fare ridership on the 
New York MTA. So at a minimum, it has actually been 
decriminalized as a practical matter. What has the experience 
been for the New York MTA? What lessons can be drawn from this 
history?
    Ms. Schulz. One of the lessons is--of course, this is also 
true in Brooklyn with DA Gonzalez, where it has been true for a 
long time. Manhattan always gets all the attention, but 
decriminalizing fare enforcement is nothing new in New York or 
anywhere.
    I believe the last thing I read, in New York, which has 
barriers, turnstiles, fare evasion is up to 40 percent. So you 
can only imagine what it is like in systems like Minnesota, 
Seattle, Portland, that basically are barrier-free and have a 
sign saying, you know, in effect, please remember to pay your 
fare.
    That is where the decriminalization of the fare enforcement 
really comes into play because particularly in these systems 
the fare enforcement was really the only sign of order or order 
maintenance that existed. And if you do away with fare 
enforcement, it is not just the income from your fares, which a 
lot of advocates say, well, it is only 10 percent of the fare 
box, or 20 percent, although in some cities it is as high as 40 
percent.
    But what it does is it takes away capable guardians. There 
is no reason for people who represent the system to be on the 
trains or on the platforms. Now systems are also going more and 
more to automated entry and ticket, which means that not only 
are there no police or security personnel there are very few 
station agents. And so people are really left to their own 
devices on the system, and it discourages orderly behavior. It 
is not only the $1.20 or the $2.75. It is if enough people see 
other people who are not paying they are going to feel why 
should they pay, why should anyone pay, and you lose control of 
the system.
    I think what New York learned is that--it is sort of a 
clich?--no good deed goes unpunished. During the pandemic, 
because so many homeless people really had nothing--nowhere to 
go and there were so few riders, it sort of looked the other 
way and let them be.
    Now I do not want to single out homeless people. Many of 
them are victims. In New York, two or three have been killed on 
the transit system. But, unfortunately, their presence 
discourages others and helps to create the sense that there is 
no order. And because for many of them their behavior cannot be 
predicted, it adds to the fear level.
    So all of these things together add to a downward spiral 
that is going to make people who do not have to depend on the 
system less likely to use it. And if people only have to go to 
work now one or 2 days a week instead of 5 days a week, I 
suspect that many of them will not get out of their pajamas, as 
the mayor asked them to, and they will find other ways to get 
to their workplaces on the days that they do have to put on 
clothing.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Toomey.
    Senator Tester from his office, from Montana.
    Senator Tester. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking 
Member, for having this hearing. I think it is very, very 
appropriate.
    I have got a number of questions. I am going to start with 
you, Ms. Pinkerton. You talked about electric buses on your 
route, I think. What percentage of vehicles are electric in 
your transit system?
    Ms. Pinkerton. Thank you for the question, Senator. We just 
launched our first two buses this year with another eight to 
come. And then we intend to have a capital program where, 
within 10 years, we would switch to primarily electric or with 
a mix with our compressed natural gas fleet. I previously 
mentioned our commitment to diesel-free by 2025. That will be 
achieved by entirely compressed natural gas and a mixture of EV 
coming into the fleet over the next 10 years.
    Senator Tester. So you have two electric buses. And by the 
way, congratulations on that. The two electric buses that you 
have, have been on routes how long?
    Ms. Pinkerton. They have been in service since last fall, 
sir.
    Senator Tester. Since last fall. So we know the advantage 
that I think has been pointed out already, no emissions and 
noise issues are minimized in a big, big way. Can you talk 
about any other advantages you might have other than the fact 
that you can potentially run these off renewable energy? Are 
there any disadvantages?
    Ms. Pinkerton. Thank you for the question. One impact I 
would not consider it a disadvantage. I think it is an 
opportunity: I mentioned the retraining and retooling of an 
American workforce. I have worked in the automotive industry, 
the DOT. And we all saw the Silver Tsunami coming, and we saw 
the younger generation coming up. I see an opportunity for 
workforce retraining.
    As a matter of fact, we bring 17-year-olds from high school 
into our facility, and we started doing this before electric 
vehicles came online, working on the floor for half the day in 
addition to taking their classes. They are paid a full wage 
while they are with us, and they are offered a job at the end 
of the 2 year training. But we are being incredibly aggressive 
with the opportunity not only to help the future workforce 
understand the electrification of transportation but the 
electrification and security issues we have with the national 
grid and our lack of a national energy policy.
    Also, coding technology, advanced technology systems. I 
mentioned a car and a bus generate a terabyte of data of day, 
so understanding how those systems work is vital.
    And one of the primary advantages we are going to see out 
of this is our massive state of good repair improvements. I am 
very fortunate. I do not have issues with state of good repair. 
We have significant local funding at the Central Ohio Transit 
Authority that ensures we are in a state of good repair at all 
times. But in order to do that, you have to have the data and 
the analytics to shift to a predictive maintenance model. We do 
not wait for something to break down. We predict when it is 
going to break down, and we fix it before it happens. And so 
that shift to data and analytics I think is a huge opportunity 
for us.
    Senator Tester. Thank you.
    Mr. Greenwood, this next question is for you because I have 
had a request to ask you a question, but this is my question, 
not the requestor's. For your work with MARTA, you are 
coordinating with the Federal Transit Administration, the State 
of Georgia, county governments, and of course, the city of 
Atlanta. That is a lot of layers for you to deal with and I am 
sure a lot of administrative headaches.
    While not on the same scale, I hear from Montanans about 
the amount of time that is required for reporting transit 
projects, even routine operation. So, Mr. Greenwood, could you 
speak a little bit about how your organization navigates these 
requirements, and do you see areas where it might make sense to 
take a different approach to some of the administrative 
requirements?
    Mr. Greenwood. Thank you for the question. We actually 
enjoy a good partnership with our State and city 
representatives. We are galvanized by the urgency of good, 
connective public transit. And while there may be issues 
administratively to be hammered out as a lot of the 
legislation, a lot of the grant opportunities are new, we meet 
quite regularly and have a deep internal commitment between the 
groups that we are going to sit at the table, strategize, and 
make sure that, you know, the winner in all of this is public 
transit and the communities and individuals that depend on it.
    Senator Tester. Thank you for that. I will just close with 
a comment. I live 12 miles west from a town with a population 
of 600. We do not have a lot of transit there.
    So when I came to Washington, DC, and I had the opportunity 
to ride the metro, I was pleasantly surprised. You pay to get 
on the metro, and I can tell you that it costs me more money to 
back my car out onto the street than it does to get a ride on 
the metro. So to say that driving a car is cheaper than driving 
transit or paying for transit, that is using some pretty funny 
math.
    With that, I yield, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Tester.
    Senator Smith from Minnesota is recognized from her office.
    Senator Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks. It is 
great to be with you.
    Let me just ask this. The bipartisan infrastructure bill 
has provisions that extend Build America/Buy America 
requirements for our infrastructure programs--to infrastructure 
programs that currently do not have them. And this means more 
jobs with more benefits for American workers in Minnesota, 
including in Minnesota's tech-med industry or for Minnesota's 
bus manufacturers.
    So, Mr. Regan, let me ask you about this. Can you speak to 
the importance of the Buy America provisions in the 
infrastructure bill, and what do you expect that effect to be 
for American manufacturing?
    Mr. Regan. Thank you, Senator. I think the Buy America 
provisions are vitally important to the long-term success of 
the investments we are making here. In particular, we have 
emerging, new rolling stock opportunities, a new technology 
that is going to be part of the system, including on EV side. 
That is an emerging marketplace. And there is an opportunity 
with the right policies to make sure that we can recapture some 
of that manufacturing capability that we have lost over the 
past and we have frankly given away.
    So Buy America, combined with other investments into the 
U.S. economy, will really go a long way to making sure that (a) 
we have a functioning system, we have the workforce that can 
provide it, and we have the supply chain here in the United 
States to supply our systems with all of the buses, rolling 
stock that they need.
    Senator Smith. Right. I totally agree with that. You know, 
Minnesota's Iron Range is a major supplier of American iron 
ore, which is why we care so much about Buy America standards 
that are focused on melted and poured in the United States. And 
I would, of course, representing the Iron Range, add mining to 
that. For the steel workers and others that are working on 
Minnesota's Iron Range, this is absolutely essential.
    So talk a little bit more about why these more detailed 
standards and also addressing sort of the many waivers that 
often had been granted in the past--why this is so important 
and how it addresses our competitiveness as a country as well 
as our ability to build out our manufacturing.
    Mr. Regan. Yeah. You know, the Buy America and the way it 
has been applied has always been slightly imperfect because you 
are doing it based on a percentage of the rail car. So if it is 
60 percent previously, go up to 75 percent. Everyone can assign 
their own value based on how much the chassis truly made up of 
this car or how much the aluminum shells were, things like 
that.
    So having more detail and more specificity with our Buy 
America policies is really important and also having just more 
data to understand where the gaps are within our own supply 
chain so that we can meet those needs so that manufacturers can 
find the opportunities to make something that can go into these 
rail cars. So you know, the people that you represent up in 
Minnesota can know where there is going to be an opportunity to 
try to build something for this country and with the money that 
we are investing into transportation.
    Senator Smith. Right. And exactly those businesses that are 
assessing where they want to put their investment dollars will 
have a better understanding of where they are going to be able 
to get a long-term return, and those workers are going to know 
better where they can expect to really build a career. And all 
of that, it seems to me, is contributing to our competitiveness 
as a country and also to the long-term resilience of our supply 
chains. And I think at the end of the day it also can 
contribute to the affordability of the products that Americans 
are buying. Would you agree?
    Mr. Regan. I would completely agree with that, and I think 
it would. The more we invest in manufacturing and actually 
having a domestic supply chain, the cheaper it is going to be, 
the more we can actually compete around the world, frankly.
    And you know, if the supply chain crisis that we lived 
through over the past year shows anything it is that in many 
areas we just simply are not prepared to deal with, and to 
provide, some of the goods that we need in this country. Rail 
chassis was a huge example of that. We just did not make here, 
and we did not have enough here. We might have the rail cars 
ready to move. We might have the trucks to transport it. We did 
not have the chassis. And that just shows that we are 
unprepared for a moment like that.
    Senator Smith. Right. Exactly.
    Mr. Greenwood, let me quickly turn to you. I just have a 
couple more seconds. People who rely on transit--and there are 
millions of Americans who use transit to get to work, to 
school, to get to the doctor's office, to get to childcare--
they understand kind of this truism that if you care about 
opportunity, if you care about equity, you care about buses. 
You cannot really have one without the other.
    And so I am interested in your perspective on this as you 
think about running an important organization like MARTA. What 
do you do--how do you think about this need to really make sure 
that that system is working, that it is well run, that it is on 
time, that it works for that people that rely on it to make 
their lives work?
    Mr. Greenwood. It is integral in our daily lives as MARTA 
employees. Unionized employees, frontline employees, management 
right through and through, we have this commitment that our job 
is to move people.
    And I would go one step further and say public transit is 
important even if you do not ride the bus and if you do not 
ride the train. This pandemic showed us that, you know, the 
employees that we call essential employees, they have been 
essential all along. We have just decided to start calling them 
that through the pandemic. But they went to work at the 
hospitals, at the medical centers, you know, at the facilities 
that created the PPE. And they continued working, and they got 
there by and large via transit. So the beneficiaries of public 
transit go beyond the people that actually step on the 
vehicles.
    Senator Smith. Well said. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Smith.
    Senator Ossoff from Georgia is recognized.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And in addition to you, Mr. Greenwood, I want to welcome 
the members of MARTA's board in attendance. And building on my 
colleague Senator Smith's praise of the workers who sustain 
these transit systems, I want to recognize Britt Dunhams's ATU 
Local 732 and thank all of the transit workers in Georgia for 
their efforts.
    Mr. Greenwood, I want to begin by discussing expansion of 
transit service to Clayton County. Clayton County joined MARTA 
in 2014. And as you know, I am continuing to urge the expansion 
of high-capacity service to Clayton County. Will the bipartisan 
infrastructure law that we passed in Congress help provide 
MARTA with the resources and the capacity to extend that 
service into Clayton County.
    Mr. Greenwood. It absolutely will. That is our commitment. 
The bipartisan infrastructure law will deliver resources 
necessary for high-capacity transit.
    We acknowledge, you know, an existing challenge in making 
sure that expanding rail anywhere in metro Atlanta is 
difficult. We do have to, you know, have a lot of collaboration 
with our partners and cooperation with the class 1 railroads, 
who--you know, they have different priorities, and they are 
perhaps less incentivized to move people as we are. However, we 
will continue those conversations and those discussions.
    And we are, you know, reassured by the fact that we can 
successfully do high-capacity transit with our BRT systems. We 
are pursuing that right now in Clayton County, and we are also 
investigating bus rapid transit in Campbellton on Campbellton 
Road in southwest Atlanta as well as Clifton Corridor in 
northwest Atlanta. Northeast Atlanta.
    Senator Ossoff. So, Mr. Greenwood, can you give an estimate 
for when Clayton County residents may be able to take advantage 
of that planned BRT system, which will be made possible in part 
thanks to the bipartisan infrastructure law?
    Mr. Greenwood. Well, the good news is based on the support 
of the BIL residents in Clayton County can start to expect 
results as early as 2026. So our Southlake BRT will come online 
in 2026. The operations and maintenance facility to support 
that will come online in 2026. And what that means is it really 
unlocks transit as a force multiplier. The sooner we get these 
projects out of the ground and in running, you know, in 
situational running, the sooner the beneficiaries can start to 
improve their lives and contribute to the economic development 
that we boast about.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Greenwood. And you mentioned 
in your opening remarks the Five Points Station.
    And MARTA is providing service across the metro Atlanta 
region, Mr. Chairman--Lovejoy, Riverdale, College Park, East 
Point, Decatur, all the way up to Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, and 
Alpharetta. Five Points Station is the hub.
    And I want to urge you, Mr. Greenwood, to submit that 
application for the resources to help upgrade that facility, 
particularly with a view toward increasing capacity and 
passenger safety. And I commit to you that I will do everything 
I can, working with Secretary Buttigieg, to see to it that we 
can upgrade the Five Points Station, the hub of MARTA's heavy 
rail system, and ensure that it is the safest and best hub 
possible for riders in metro Atlanta.
    Mr. Greenwood. Thank you, Senator Ossoff.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you. I look forward to working with 
you on that.
    Finally, Mr. Greenwood, I want to ask you about planning. 
And you know, the President signed my Local Transit Planning 
Support Act into law as part of the bipartisan infrastructure 
law, which expands support for transit planning in low-income 
communities and in low-density communities. Can you please 
comment on how the Local Transit Planning Support Act will 
improve transportation around metro Atlanta but also based upon 
your experience for coastal Georgia, for north Georgia, for 
middle Georgia, for south Georgia, where there is not as robust 
an existing infrastructure as there is around metro Atlanta?
    Mr. Greenwood. Yeah, thank you for the question. I can say 
that, you know, MARTA enjoys, you know, a one-cent sales tax 
through the communities that it serves in Fulton, including the 
city of Atlanta and the adjacent communities. Some of our 
communities outside of MARTA's footprint--you know, one of the 
common complaints that we hear is that transit is not expanding 
fast enough and it is not going to the places that are 
developing around the current MARTA footprint.
    And so that legislation will enable some of the--you know, 
some of the agencies that do not have as much funding, do not 
have the formula available to do that kind of investigation. It 
will allow them to catch up. It will allow them to do the work 
necessary to actually create linkages with MARTA and better 
serve the region through a considered and interconnected 
network.
    Senator Ossoff. And with the Chairman's indulgence, for 
parts of Georgia outside of your immediate jurisdiction, for 
folks along the coast, south Georgia, middle Georgia, north 
Georgia, the Local Transit Planning Support Act will help low 
density communities to plan their transportation systems. Based 
upon your broad experience, 35 years working in transportation, 
how can that law impact and improve transportation for 
communities across the State?
    Mr. Greenwood. I have always looked at transit as the 
common thread that weaves through the fabric of any nation that 
it serves. And there is no point in building strong transit in 
one area and leaving the rest, the neighboring agencies, 
desolate. So transit is--we call it the equalizer because it 
gets you from point A to point B and from point B to point A. 
So that is regardless of where you live. That currency, that 
equity is available for you. And so that is the magic of 
transit is that it is a common thread through all the 
communities that it serves, and we will be better able to link 
with the other providers of transit in that common goal.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Greenwood.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Ossoff.
    Senator Menendez from New Jersey is recognized.
    Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for 
holding this hearing. I know you have many topics before you, 
and I appreciate it.
    As my colleagues have heard me say many times over, we have 
a program in the Northeast Corridor called the Gateway Program 
to modernize our century-old infrastructure between New Jersey 
and New York that is utilized by both New Jersey transit, 
Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, some of the New York transit 
entities, and it is absolutely vital to the future of my State, 
the Northeast Corridor, and our national economy. And I say the 
national economy because that region generates 20 percent of 
GDP for the entire nation and this section is incredibly 
important.
    I am happy to report that we have made significant progress 
on Gateway over the last year or so. The Portal North Bridge 
project signed a full funding agreement with the Federal 
Transit Administration in January of last year. That has 
allowed over $800 million in Federal funding to begin to flow 
to the project. And the Hudson River tunnels that had been 
stalled for years under the previous administration are moving 
again.
    Last year, the Biden administration finalized the 
environmental review project, and within the last few weeks the 
project received an improved rating from FTA that will allow it 
to move forwards under the Capital Investment Grants or the CIG 
program. And that is why I raise this because I want to talk a 
little bit about CIG as part of our effort.
    But before that, I want to thank the Chairman and other 
colleagues on the Committee for their work to pass a strong 
transit title as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs 
Act that increased the authorization for the CIG program by 50 
percent. Last week, we passed a final fiscal year '22 spending 
bill that included an additional $400 million for CIG, and when 
combined with direct appropriations, it essentially amounts to 
a doubling of CIG from fiscal year '21 to '22.
    So I would like to ask Ms. Pinkerton and Mr. Greenwood, 
both of your transit systems have Small Starts projects in the 
CIG pipeline. Can you speak about the importance of the CIG 
program to your respective agencies and the communities that 
they serve?
    Ms. Pinkerton. Well, thank you, Senator, for the question. 
Our Small Starts Capital Investment Grant applications do fall 
under a regional growth initiative locally that we have really 
put a lot of thought into over the last 5 to 10 years, so we 
understand where the rapid growth is and will take place. The 
addition of a million more people to our region could cause 
housing to increase and become unaffordable. We are seeing that 
realized today.
    And we are also seeing that the amount of infrastructure 
needed to meet these needs could cost billions. But if we build 
in a smaller footprint, in a more transit-oriented manner, then 
we have the ability to actually reduce the tax burden on our 
local residents. That will require investment in transit in an 
order of magnitude we have not done before in the central Ohio 
region. So the CIG program is absolutely essential to us as we 
transform our community from a small city into a metropolitan 
area.
    And I need to mention that, in particular, the policy 
changes around the Small Starts portion has been vital for 
communities of ours who have gone from a mid-sized city to a 
large city status just in the last census.
    Senator Menendez. Mr. Greenwood, do you want to add 
anything to that?
    Mr. Greenwood. Similarly, I would say that the improvement 
through the CIG of really changing our ceiling from $300 
million to $400 million has really unlocked the ability for 
MARTA in particular to move a lot more projects through the 
pipeline. So we have gotten ourselves into a position where 
through a more agile administrative landscape, we were able to 
execute on multiple projects at the same time, bringing to the 
communities, you know, the sense of soon, certain, positive 
results as opposed to a landscape that normally causes people 
to hear about something and then wait and wait for results. 
They are able to get a timeline that is more in keeping with 
their expectations, and it allows us to more aggressively move 
through the process.
    Senator Menendez. And I assume you both believe that 
Congress should fully fund the Federal share of these eligible 
products; is that a fair statement?
    Mr. Greenwood. We do.
    Senator Menendez. One last question. I am a former mayor, 
and I have seen firsthand the transformative impact that access 
to well-planned transit can have on communities. I have long 
worked to provide additional resources to strengthen the 
linkage between affordable housing and access to transit. And I 
am pleased that some progress was made on that front in the 
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, providing greater focus 
on transportation planning activities, including what I call 
livable communities or the effort of transit villages and 
putting it all together in terms of infrastructure. I 
appreciate and have worked with this on the Chairman in the 
past.
    Can you speak to the ways in which your agencies have 
worked, or are working, to incorporate access to affordable 
housing when developing and evaluating the impacts of a 
potential project?
    Mr. Greenwood. If I may begin, you know, at MARTA that has 
been a staple of our development. We talk about lines and dots 
and making sure that not only do we build the community through 
effective corridor planning but making sure that the dots, the 
stations, the areas around those stations are well supported. 
We firmly believe that equitable transit-oriented development 
is essential to the development of a community. When we speak 
about economic development, the intention is for people that 
live in the community to be able to share and contribute to 
that economic development.
    We also know that, you know, in families where rental 
income or rental rates are difficult it is often the case that 
people are moving, changing locations in order to find housing 
that they can afford. And the domino effect of that, of course, 
is that the children that are established in school and trying 
to, you know, demonstrate their own academic prowess end up 
having to change schools and relocate themselves and start over 
again. So we are affecting more than just, you know, the 
immediate members of the family that we see getting on the 
trains. We are affecting the entire family.
    So equitable transit-oriented development forces 
communities that--not forces, but enables communities to work 
together to plan deliberately to protect the interests of 
everyone.
    Senator Menendez. Thank you for your insights.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Menendez.
    Senator Warnock from Georgia is recognized. I shared with 
Mr. Greenwood and his staff from MARTA prior to the hearing the 
good work you did in helping to build a strong transit title. 
So you are recognized. Thank you.
    Senator Warnock. Thank you so very much, Mr. Chairman, and 
it is wonderful to be a part of this hearing on public 
transportation and the bipartisan infrastructure bill. I often 
say that physical mobility and social mobility are inextricably 
connected. People need to be able to get where they are going 
to get where they are going. And so this is important work.
    And I am particularly proud that Mr. Collie Greenwood is 
here representing MARTA, which services the metro Atlanta area. 
Georgia has more than 15 urban transit systems and 80 rural 
systems serving nearly 80 percent of our 159 counties from 
Augusta to Valdosta.
    Georgia transit and MARTA's expansion plan has been top of 
mind for me since my first day here in the Senate, especially 
as we negotiated the bipartisan infrastructure package. I agree 
with my colleagues who have talked about the importance of CIG, 
and I was proud to introduce the Capital Investment Grant 
Improvement Act and fought to ensure that its provisions were 
included in the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
    I want to talk specifically about MARTA's work in Clayton 
County. Georgia creates jobs, provides commuters with more 
affordable mobility options--again, mobility leads to social 
mobility--bolstering the local economy. And that is why I was 
thrilled to deliver a one-two punch of funding last week for 
MARTA's new multipurpose operations and maintenance facility in 
Clayton County. I fought all year to include funding for 
critical Georgia projects in our annual funding package, and 
last week we passed it into law, good news, including $5 
million I secured for MARTA's new facility.
    I also learned last week that MARTA will receive $15 
million for that same facility through the Federal Buses and 
Bus Facilities Competitive Grant program. And I was proud to 
write in support of MARTA's application and glad that we were 
able to deliver on both fronts.
    Mr. Greenwood, could you tell me a little about the 
importance of this facility to MARTA and to Clayton County?
    Mr. Greenwood. Thank you, Senator Warnock. And we 
collectively at MARTA have been celebrating the good news and 
singing your praises and Senator Ossoff's praises just very 
recently about all the work that you have done to support us in 
this regard.
    The Clayton operations and maintenance facility 
specifically is very important to the neighborhood as well as 
it is to our system. It is a bricks-and-mortar representation 
to the people in the community that MARTA is not just passing 
through. We are actually -we are living here.
    And it is a representation to the people in the community 
that, yes, there are going to be 733 permanent jobs, direct and 
indirect, as a result of this facility being in the 
neighborhood, and they are jobs in operations, administration, 
technology, leadership and management.
    It is an inspiration to the community. We will have a local 
MPD, MARTA Police Department, precinct right there in the 
neighborhood. It provides all at once economic development, 
addresses climate change because of its green leanings, safety 
and security in the neighborhood, equity, pride, and 
inspiration in a neighborhood, and a clear example of capital 
investment leading to operational efficiencies in that we 
minimize nonproductive, what I call deadhead miles and 
minutes--that is time that the vehicle is not revenue service--
because the home is now inside of the community.
    So for all those reasons, the Clayton O&M facility is 
firing on all cylinders.
    Senator Warnock. And all of those are wonderful 
developments and benefits to this work.
    You touched on its impact on the issue of the climate and 
sustainability. Can you say a little bit more about how this 
facility impacts your effort to transition more of your bus 
fleet to electric?
    Mr. Greenwood. Sure. Thank you. I will say this. It is a 
purpose-built facility, and that means that we are-- yes, we 
are solving today's needs in terms of how many buses will we 
move in there and how will they be distributed throughout the 
system, but we are keenly aware of the fact that we will--it is 
incumbent on us to support today's propulsion needs and 
tomorrow's propulsion discoveries.
    We are aware of it at this--you know, it is 2022, and the 
technology in bearing zero emission propulsion systems is 
changing rapidly. And so we are making sure that this facility 
allows us to remain nimble, allows us to accommodate what we 
know about electric buses today and accommodate tomorrow the 
emerging developments in the future propulsion technologies.
    So we will have space. We will have ports. We will have 
roof-mount access for the batteries. We will have hoists and 
smart hoists and charging. We will have safety and minimal 
reversal moves built into the design of the system, of the 
facility. So it is what we need today, but it is absolutely 
forward-facing in a green landscape.
    Senator Warnock. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Greenwood. 
Focused on green opportunities in this work. Glad that I was 
able to secure $20 million for this facility. Hopefully, we can 
secure future investments, and I look forward to seeing this 
project once it is completed.
    Mr. Greenwood. Thank you, Senator Warnock.
    Senator Warnock. Thank you.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Warnock.
    Senator Van Hollen from Maryland is recognized.
    Senator Van Hollen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank all of 
you for your testimony and your work.
    You know, the passage of the infrastructure modernization 
bill is going to be a huge boost to transit in my State of 
Maryland. It is going to allow us to modernize our existing 
transit systems, build new light rail systems. It will extend 
the Federal participation in our nation's metro system here, 
the WMATA system in Washington, the Washington region. And it 
will revive a chance for Baltimore to build a full metro 
system, which is called the Red Line, where the Federal 
delegation secured about a billion dollars in Federal support 
but the State, a number of years ago, decided not to put the 
matching fund in, the Governor at that time. So we think we 
will get that back on the list of things to do.
    I would like to focus briefly on an overlooked area of 
transit but one where we made substantial progress as part of 
the infrastructure modernization bill, and that is transit 
worker safety and workforce development and training. And, Mr. 
Regan, thank you and your team at the Transportation Trades 
Department for your input on the bill, especially those 
provisions.
    I want to start with the safety issue because I introduced 
a bill to support greater worker safety in response to all of 
the assaults that we have witnessed on our transit workers, 
which predated the pandemic but really came to a peak during 
the pandemic. And there was no sort of definition for what 
constituted one of these attacks. There was no recordkeeping. 
And there was no system in place for preventing these avoidable 
attacks.
    I am pleased that we were able to include provisions from 
that bill in the final product. Thank you for your support. Can 
you just talk about the implementation of those safety 
provisions and why they are important and how we can make quick 
progress?
    Mr. Regan. Of course. And first of all, thank you for your 
leadership on this issue. It was vital to getting us across the 
finish line. This has been shockingly hard to get accomplished 
over the years. So for us to have this finally in law is a 
really major win for working people.
    To your point, under the current definition of assault, 
somebody could have their nose broken while they are driving a 
bus and that not count as a Federal assault. So we need to make 
sure that the rules and reporting requirements are definitely 
upgraded and accurately reflect the scale of the problem as we 
see it.
    The other thing that I think is one of the most important 
aspects of what this bills does is it brings the workers into 
the safety planning process, which is--it seems so obvious. 
These are people who are seeing this, seeing what it is like on 
the ground. They are the ones who are dealing with the 
assaults, are the ones who know where the vulnerabilities are, 
and they should be at the table when they are talking to their 
agencies about planning for how to make a safer environment for 
both passengers and for the employees. So that is going to be a 
really big step for us toward hopefully solving this awful 
problem.
    Senator Van Hollen. Well, I look forward to working with 
you on the implementation phase. As you know, passing a law is 
one thing; implementing it is another. So we want to make sure 
that those changes take place as rapidly as possible for the 
safety of the workers.
    Another often overlooked area has been workforce training 
for transit operators and workers. I had also introduced 
legislation on that. I was pleased that the FTA also moved 
forward about the same time with a national transit workforce 
center and that that received additional funds as part of the 
infrastructure bill. Can you talk about implementation of that 
provision of the legislation?
    Mr. Regan. Yeah. Well, first of all, this is the first time 
we are actually putting Federal funding into frontline transit 
workforce training, which is a huge improvement, something that 
is frankly long overdue. And the funds in the infrastructure 
act will actually help us jumpstart that in a much more 
important way and not at a better--not at a moment too soon 
because if we do see--if my friends over here are going to be 
expanding service and seeing new opportunities to grow transit 
systems, we need to have the workers there that are ready to 
operate all of this.
    So we are looking forward to working together with agencies 
and with our partners in the industry, that when we are going 
in there to apply for funds, when people are saying, hey, FTA, 
this is our--this is what we plan to do with this money. Here 
is where we want to use X billions of dollars. Well, let us 
partner with that to make sure that the workforce development--
and these are the jobs we are going to create. These are how we 
are going to train people up. These are the new skills we are 
going to develop for our employees. That is going to be a 
really important part of making this a success across the 
country.
    Senator Van Hollen. No, I appreciate that because we often 
focus on the hardware of our transit systems, right-- buses, 
metro cars, rails, trains--which we have to do. But of course, 
they require a trained workforce, and we want to make sure that 
workforce is safe as they go about their jobs.
    So thank you for your work on this. It did take longer than 
it should have, but I am glad we were able to include those 
provisions in the final bill. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Brown. Thank you, Senator Van Hollen.
    Thank you to the five witnesses for joining us today, the 
two from New York and Oregon and the three of you that are 
here.
    This hearing showed the great benefits to the public that 
come from the infrastructure law's investment in public 
transit. We will see great benefits in other infrastructure 
sectors.
    Thanks to the witnesses for your testimony.
    For Senators who wish to submit questions for the hearing 
record, these questions are due 1 week from today, on Tuesday, 
March 22nd.
    To the five witnesses, please submit responses to questions 
for the record within 45 days from the day you receive them. 
Thank you all for joining us.
    The hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 4:06 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
    [Prepared statements and responses to written questions 
supplied for the record follow:]
              PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN SHERROD BROWN
    Ohioans know how we let our infrastructure languish for far too 
long. They talked to Congress for years, trying to get Washington to 
listen.
    Presidents of both parties promised infrastructure investment. It 
took this president and this Congress to deliver.
    Some of the most important work we've done this Congress in the 
Banking and Housing Committee is writing the most significant 
investment ever in public transit under the Bipartisan Infrastructure 
Law.
    But it's not just about the numbers--it's about what that 
investment will do, and how this will matter in people's lives.
    It's going to mean transit agencies can run more buses and trains, 
more often, in more neighborhoods.
    Last year, Darryl Haley with Cincinnati Metro testified at our 
first hearing of the year on transit. He talked about one worker he 
knows at a restaurant in suburban Cincinnati--she had to spend her 
entire day's paycheck on an Uber to get to work, because her regular 
bus didn't run on Sundays.
    But she could not miss her shift without risking her job. The bus 
didn't come when she needed it, and that prevented an entire day's hard 
work from paying off. And it happens to her almost every single week.
    With the infrastructure bill, we have the potential to change the 
lives of workers like her. We can run buses on Sundays. We can run 
trains more often. We can add routes. We can add stops.
    That's going to make it faster and easier for people who already 
use public transit to get to work. It's going to open up new job 
opportunities, when people aren't limited by where the bus or the train 
runs.
    And it's going to going to make subways and buses and streetcars a 
viable option for the first time for new riders.
    Right now, so many families are feeling the pain of high gas prices 
because of Russia's attack on Ukraine.
    They have no choice but to pay those high prices, because they have 
to get to work, they have to get to school, they have to get to the 
grocery store.
    But if there's a reliable bus or train, workers won't have to 
choose between paying for gas or making rent.
    This is going to make such a difference--especially in so many 
communities that haven't had reliable transit. It's the Black and brown 
communities who have been historically cut off from job centers. It's 
rural areas where walking isn't an option.
    For our nation's seniors, a van or bus from the local transit 
service is a lifeline to the doctor or the grocery store or church.
    And because of the work we did on this committee, not only are we 
going to run buses more often, they're going to be cleaner, newer, and 
safer buses.
    More communities are going to be able to get new, state-of-the-art 
zero-emission buses on the roads. That's going to fight climate change 
and it's going to clean up the air in our communities.
    The Administration is already accepting applications for the zero 
emission bus grants we passed.
    I've seen how Ohio agencies like LakeTran, SARTA and COTA are 
leading the country in deploying these pollution-free buses. Over the 
coming year, we're going to see them in communities all over the State 
and the country.
    And we made sure that workers will get the training they need to 
work on these new buses.
    On this committee and under this president, workers will always--
always--have a seat at the table.
    I want to quickly thank the members of our Committee for their work 
to get this done.
    Republican Ranking Member Toomey and I don't see eye-to-eye on many 
issues, but we were able to reach agreement to reauthorize Federal 
Transit Administration programs.
    We can both be proud that cities like Cleveland and Philadelphia 
can replace rail cars that date back to the Carter Administration.
    Our Housing and Transit Subcommittee Chair Tina Smith and the 
Subcommittee's Ranking Member, Senator Rounds, did great work to 
improve rural transit and tribal transit.
    Senator Menendez and Senator Reed continue to be leaders in 
fighting for a fair share of funds for transit.
    Senator Tester, Senator Warner, and Senator Sinema played a key 
role in ensuring the Committee's transit title moved forward in the 
bipartisan negotiations, working with the Republican members of the 
bipartisan group.
    Senator Warner and Senator Van Hollen fought to reauthorize funds 
for ``America's Subway,'' the Washington, DC, Metro system, and Senator 
Van Hollen's legislation to improve agency safety plans gives workers a 
stronger voice in safety matters.
    Senators Warnock and Ossoff helped us fight for better bus rapid 
transit and better planning, and Senator Cortez Masto contributed 
provisions to link transportation planning with housing needs.
    I also want to thank Senator Warren and other members of our caucus 
who have kept advocating for zero-emission buses.
    After the difficult times of the pandemic, the future for public 
transit and for our infrastructure is finally brighter.
    I will spend the coming months working with Ohio cities and 
townships and counties and villages to make sure that every community 
knows all the opportunities available to them to improve their transit 
systems.
    I know many of my colleagues will be doing the same. I look forward 
to hearing from our witnesses today about all the potential for job 
creation and economic growth we can unleash.
                                 ______
                                 
            PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR PATRICK J. TOOMEY
    Today's hearing is about the public transit component of the 
bipartisan infrastructure law. As I've previously said, we should not 
pay for an infrastructure package by borrowing billions more dollars. 
Yet, that is precisely what happened with this law. It authorized so 
much new spending that $118 billion had to be transferred from the 
Treasury's General Fund to the Highway Trust Fund, which is supposed to 
pay for mass transit and highway construction with gas tax revenue.
    Some of my Democrat colleagues would make this shortfall worse by 
suspending the Federal gas tax, reasoning that the solution to high gas 
prices isn't more supply, but rather more debt. I'd suggest if we want 
to help commuters and families suffering from inflation, we can start 
by reversing the administration's actions that keep us from using our 
own fossil energy. But back to infrastructure.
    Federal spending should be driven by a reasoned assessment of our 
Nation's needs. However, the bipartisan infrastructure law seems to 
have been driven more by Democratic political imperatives.
    The bill funneled billions to projects that the private sector has 
been more than willing to fund, such as ferries and EV charging 
stations. Transit was given $108.1 billion over a 5-year period. To put 
that number into perspective, it's almost twice what transit got in the 
last surface transportation reauthorization.
    And this staggering sum will be on top of the nearly $85 billion 
given to transit, the vast majority of it categorized as ``emergency'' 
spending to offset COVID losses, from March 2020 to March 2021. In 
fact, this nearly $85 billion in funding exceeded the combined annual 
operating and capital costs of all transit agencies in the U.S.
    At the time, Democrats tried to justify paying for more than 100% 
of transit agency budgets by saying that transit systems would collapse 
from declines in ridership and State and local tax revenues. Yet, State 
and local tax collections set a new record in 2020. And Congress gave 
more than $850 billion to States and local governments for COVID 
relief.
    Worse, billions of dollars will go to transit agencies that were 
facing ridership challenges well before COVID. Since reaching a high of 
10.7 billion trips in 2014, transit ridership has steadily fallen. It 
fell by almost 8% in 2019.
    And the last 2 years saw even steeper declines. Ridership fell at 
some agencies by over 70 percent. Some estimates predict ridership will 
never fully return to prepandemic levels.
    Agency leaders in New York, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC, have 
all said their riders won't return. So why give away more taxpayer 
money to agencies serving far fewer riders?
    A number of advocates suggest the ``solution'' to falling ridership 
is fare-free transit. Advocates claim this will increase ridership and 
on-time performance of transit; achieve ``social equity''; and reduce 
operator assaults and ``fare evasion.'' I suppose one way to reduce 
fare evasion-which is really theft of services-is to never charge a 
price in the first place.
    But as Milton Friedman helped publicize: there's no such thing as a 
free lunch. In my view, just as car owners pay a Federal gas tax to 
support highways, transit riders should have to pay their fair share, 
too. As should local communities.
    Transit systems serve a city or metropolitan area, not the entire 
country. That's why Congress has traditionally helped to pay for 
capital needs, but not operating expenses. If New York or Washington, 
DC, cannot--or will not--pay for their transit systems, why should 
Federal taxpayers?
    There's one other issue we must discuss. And that's the rising 
rates of crime in mass transit systems. Despite having far fewer 
riders, New York, LA, Chicago, and Philly are all seeing spikes in 
transit crime. There were 461 felony assaults on New York's 
Metropolitan Transportation Authority last year. That's the highest 
number since 1997.
    MTA riders are confronting fearful conditions. We've seen the news 
stories: hammer attacks, stabbings, and multiple people pushed onto 
subway tracks, including in front of oncoming trains, with one woman 
tragically killed. Even New York City's mayor-a former cop-says he 
doesn't feel safe on the subway.
    Today, we will hear from two witnesses on the ongoing, systemic 
challenges facing transit agencies that were ignored by the bipartisan 
infrastructure law. Dr. Dorothy Schulz, a retired transit police 
captain, will testify that transit systems must address security issues 
that are putting rider safety at risk. And Randal O'Toole of the 
Thoreau Institute will testify about the long-term decline in ridership 
that began before COVID.
    We've seen time and again that throwing extraordinary sums of 
taxpayer dollars without serious reforms encourages transit systems to 
maintain the status quo. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses 
and discussing the question: does mass transit continue to make sense 
in every U.S. city at its current scale?
                                 ______
                                 
               PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOANNA M. PINKERTON
           President and CEO, Central Ohio Transit Authority
                             March 15, 2022
    Thank you, Chairman Brown, for the opportunity to testify this 
afternoon on the enormous opportunities I see for central Ohio under 
the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
    This legislation represents a long-overdue commitment to repairing 
our transportation networks and repurposing them for a future economy, 
and in ways some may not realize. It addresses many of the ill effects 
of decisions of years past--congestion, pollution, and intentionally 
divided communities. Our transportation networks have not kept pace 
with rapidly-evolving changes in how we live, work and do business; 
and, they certainly do not account for the rapid and exciting 
advancements in technology which directly impacts the movement of goods 
and people. With this new infrastructure funding, we can begin to shift 
our old ways of thinking to fix that.
    Ohio's two Senators played a central role in drafting this 
transformative legislation through listening and raising their 
awareness of the necessary investment needed to support our nation's 
economy. I would like to share some examples of how the Central Ohio 
Transit Authority can put these funds to work for central Ohio.
CIG Funding for LinkUS
    Central Ohio is a region of 2.2 million people, with an expectation 
to grow to 3 million in the next two decades. We know that through 
smart growth and planning principles, transit can build communities 
which lead to a higher quality of life built around affordable housing 
and equitable access to amenities and employment opportunities. Our 
transformational LinkUS initiative is exactly that. Entities across our 
region are collaborating to address our growth more sustainably--
through high-capacity, high frequency transit corridors that will 
support more dense transit-oriented development.
    Two of our planned corridors are already in the Capital Investment 
Grant (CIG) funding pipeline at the Federal Transit Administration, and 
a third corridor will be submitted later this year. We worked 
diligently to align these projects with the outcomes expected in the 
CIG program and expect LinkUs will benefit greatly from the 
infrastructure bill's improvements to the Small Starts portion of that 
program.
Sustainability
    At COTA, we understand and take seriously our role in protecting 
lives through improving air quality in our region. Public 
transportation is the original ``green'' transport industry, making 
more efficient use of infrastructure through shared resources, shared 
trips, less emissions, and a smaller carbon footprint than what is 
required to subsidize single occupant trips. Our industry knows, that 
to have a lasting impact, we must commit to converting transit vehicles 
to clean fuel vehicles. At COTA, we are on track to meet our commitment 
to be diesel-free by 2025. And, we are preparing our path forward to a 
net carbon neutral future. Last year, with the help of a Federal low/no 
grant, we proudly deployed our first electric transit vehicles, and we 
went a step forward with our local energy providers to ensure they are 
powered by entirely renewable energy. The FTA just announced more than 
$1B in funding to assist us and others in our fleet transition, and we 
will work diligently to secure Federal dollars to accelerate our move 
to a clean-fueled fleet.
Workforce
    Our front line operators--in our fixed route service, our on-demand 
microtransit COTA//Plus service, and Paratransit service--are essential 
to our mission. And the transit industry is facing workforce challenges 
like many sectors of the American economy. At COTA, we did not lay off 
a single transit operator during the pandemic, yet the current labor 
shortage has forced us to make service reductions. We are short almost 
20 percent of the operators necessary to operate our fixed route 
service--putting a burden on our community and customers who experience 
service delays, and stretching our heroic frontline staff thin through 
overtime and aggressive work schedules. Through innovative recruiting 
and training, we are starting to see progress in skilling up a new 
generation and workforce retraining funds will be key to this momentum.
Technology and Innovation
    This law will not only improve the condition of our roadways, it 
can transform how we use them. It has the potential to dramatically 
improve safety and increase capacity through efficiencies that do not 
require expansions.
    In central Ohio, our current highway capacity can meet even future 
demand--IF we invest in emerging technology and repurpose our existing 
assets. Connected and shared vehicles hold the potential to make moving 
both safer and more efficient. This will help bring us closer to the 
goal we all share: an end to crash-related injuries and fatalities.
    Our vehicle systems are connected and they each generate more than 
a terabyte of data each day. This creates a huge opportunity to 
leverage that data to solve many of the issues our inefficient 
transportation systems cannot handle at the moment. The new Federal 
investment takes bold steps to support transit agencies and other local 
officials in upgrading transportation technology systems.
    Thanks in part to an Innovative Mobility Integration (IMI) grant 
from the Federal Transit Administration, COTA has partnered with new 
artificial intelligence start-up companies to use traditional traffic 
management data built on old ways of operating, and coupling it with 
predictive analytics to increase safety and reduce travel times across 
our region.
    COTA brings a unique approach to serving our region. Our mission is 
to connect people to prosperity through innovation, dedication and 
teamwork--and, the more innovative, the better. The transportation 
systems built by previous generations made huge strides to bring us 
where we are, but it is time to re-invest and re-imagine how those 
systems can be utilized for future generations more equitably. The once 
``future'' trends are already here--generations of workers and those 
soon to join the workforce want quality of life and outcomes from their 
services. They believe mobility should be ubiquitous and accessible in 
the palm of their hand--part of an American lifestyle which includes 
the pursuit of happiness through enriching and meaningful actions.
    Understanding this, we have developed partnerships with The Ohio 
State University Center for Automotive Research (OSU CAR), the 
Transportation Research Center (TRC), US 33 Smart Mobility Corridor, 
emerging and preemergent tech companies to see how we can better move 
ALL lives forward by trying new things. The newly added flexibility in 
this law allows--for the first time--for agencies on the cutting edge 
to implement recent research and successful demonstration of technology 
into standard every day practice. This is one of the most vital parts 
of the bill--just as we fund asphalt, concrete, steel, and plastic--we 
have to fund the digital to connect them all.
    When the public, private and academic sectors work together, we can 
create seamless networks to make the movement of people and goods 
easier and more cost-effective. This is exactly the type of environment 
needed to attract global businesses and investments.
Conclusion
    The bipartisan infrastructure bill is exactly the type of Federal 
support needed for agencies pushing the envelope like ours. I 
appreciate the opportunity to share with you how we see this historic 
legislation impacting our growing region.
    Thank you.
                                 ______
                                 
                 PREPARED STATEMENT OF COLLIE GREENWOOD
  Interim General Manager and CEO, Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit 
                               Authority
                             March 15, 2022
    Good morning, Chairman Brown and Ranking Member Toomey, and 
distinguished Members of the Committee. I am Collie Greenwood, Interim 
General Manager and CEO of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit 
Authority in Atlanta, Georgia, known as MARTA. I am honored to have the 
opportunity to appear alongside my transit agency colleagues to share 
our experience at MARTA, and future expansion efforts made possible in 
part by the Congress's passage of the Bi-partisan Infrastructure Law.
    Serving MARTA in this role has been the culmination of 35 years of 
experience in the transit industry. I worked my way through college as 
a transit bus operator. At first, it was just a job that paid the 
bills, but at some point, the mission of getting people where they 
needed to go became a part of me. I rose to Chief Service Offer at 
Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), and I guided that agency though 
several transformational initiatives. In 2019, I was personally 
recruited by MARTA's former CEO Jeff Parker because of the alignment of 
our vision for public transportation. Jeff spoke about it as ``lines 
and dots''--the lines being the transit and the dots as the communities 
and places we serve.
    MARTA is the largest public transit agency in the southeast and one 
of the largest in the country, providing bus, rail, paratransit, and 
streetcar services, and has a robust transit-oriented development 
program that incorporates affordable housing and equitable access, 
driving economic growth and development around our rail stations. We 
have eagerly embarked on three expansion projects that I'll briefly 
describe today, as we hope they will be direct beneficiaries of funding 
and policy changes made possible by the Bi-Partisan Infrastructure Law. 
These expansion projects will benefit from a key change to the Small 
Starts Program--which as you know increases project eligibility from 
$300 million to $400 million. I'd like to personally thank Senators 
Warnock and Ossoff for their leadership on securing that change that is 
already having an impact for MARTA.
    One of the first initiatives I worked on when I arrived at MARTA 
was a series of improvements to bus amenities and a focus on bus 
service enhancement and expansion. As a former bus operator, I 
understand the importance of reliable bus service and that while rail 
may get most of the attention--it is the bus that is the backbone of 
public transit and bus service, particularly bus rapid transit, has the 
potential to be transformative for a community.
    With that in mind, MARTA is pleased to share that the Clayton 
Southlake Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project has advanced to the project 
development phase of the Small Starts Program. The estimated $338-
million-project will provide high-capacity transit service connecting 
College Park rail station in the southern part of metro Atlanta that is 
close to the airport--to several key destinations in Clayton County, 
including major commercial corridors, the hospital and the City of 
Riverdale Town Center. As the first BRT in Clayton County, the project 
will feature 13 new BRT-branded stations with offboard fare collection, 
ten BRT-branded electric buses and associated electric vehicle charging 
infrastructure, and the installation of transit signal priority 
equipment at key intersections. Additionally, the FTA recently awarded 
MARTA a $1 million Transit-Oriented Development Corridor Planning Grant 
to analyze and develop a potential project list of community 
developments at and around those proposed BRT stations in order to 
amplify the positive benefits of transit investments in the area.
    Another one of MARTA's highest ridership bus routes is along 
Campbellton Road in Southwest Atlanta. MARTA, in partnership with the 
City of Atlanta, is investing in high-capacity transit to improve 
connectivity, accessibility, and mobility along this important 
corridor. The transit and transit-oriented development investments 
planned for this vibrant part of the city will support the overall 
economic and community development sought by the established 
neighborhoods along the route. MARTA is hopeful these investments will 
spur the redevelopment of Greenbriar Mall and former U.S. Army 
facility, Fort McPherson, which in years past were significant economic 
drivers for this community.
    One of the exciting parts of bus rapid transit is the planned use 
of electric buses to travel through dense urban corridors--leaving no 
emissions or noise in their wake. In 2019, MARTA was awarded a $2.6 
million FTA Low/No Emission Bus Grant to support the purchase of our 
first six electric buses and charging infrastructure. These buses 
replace six 2005 diesel buses and will be put into service on routes 
serving Atlanta and DeKalb County on May first.
    For comparison--the six diesel buses combined operate for almost 
333,000 miles and consume 94,900 gallons of diesel fuel each year. 
These new zero-emission buses will reduce MARTA's fleet emissions by 
approximately 935 short tons of greenhouse gases, while also reducing 
harmful fine particle matter that is linked to a variety of health 
issues. The increase in funding for the Low/No Emission Bus Grant 
program will help MARTA accelerate the transition of our fleet.
    We are also working with the City of Atlanta on the transformation 
of our largest and busiest train station--Five Points--which sits in 
the heart of the city. MARTA will be seeking a RAISE grant and new 
discretionary grants to support the $150 million redevelopment of the 
station that is the intersection of MARTA's four rail lines and 
transfer hub for dozens of inter-city bus routes that serve major 
Government and educational facilities, job centers, and Atlanta's 
vibrant arts and cultural scene.
    MARTA is investing in the bus facilities at Five Points station to 
improve the customer experience by minimizing transfer time, covering 
waiting areas, providing better seating, signage and arrival and 
departure information screens. MARTA and the City of Atlanta will 
remove the canopy above the station to allow for the development of two 
mixed income affordable housing towers. There is a high demand for 
affordable housing units in Atlanta and particularly at those locations 
connected to transit, providing an ideal opportunity for MARTA and the 
City.
    Federal investment in this vital hub of the MARTA transit system 
has wide-reaching economic development benefits including the 
Summerhill BRT project for which MARTA received a U.S. Department of 
Transportation TIGER Grant in 2018. This BRT connects the Atlanta 
BeltLine, Peoplestown, Summerhill, Capitol Gateway and South Downtown 
and is nearing design completion with buses on the street in 2025. The 
Five Points transformation will enhance the area adjacent to the State 
of Georgia's Two Peachtree Building and Georgia State University's 
downtown campus while also helping to boost the convention and 
hospitality industries, left reeling from the pandemic. While the goal 
is to have the project complete in time for Atlanta to host the World 
Cup in 2026, the effects of the transformation will stretch well beyond 
that, accelerating billions in private development planned in South 
Downtown Atlanta. Five Points station is a landmark for Atlantans and 
its opening over 40 years ago placed Atlanta in the company of other 
world-class cities with vital transit systems. This redesign seeks to 
recapture that glory and reimagine the ways in which a transit hub can 
enhance a city center.
    In closing, I want to thank you for the opportunity to present to 
the Committee today. I'm very proud of the progress that we've made in 
the Atlanta region, including in very challenging circumstances while 
we continued to provide service during the ongoing pandemic. I'm 
grateful for the leadership of the Georgia congressional delegation and 
their role in the passage of the Bi-Partisan Infrastructure Law. 
Senators Ossoff and Warnock have provided steadfast support of MARTA 
and the communities we serve. Our leadership team here at MARTA is 
confident that the passage of this law will contribute to sustained 
growth of MARTA, as we expand in cost-effective and practicable ways 
with the support of the Federal Transit Administration. Thank you for 
your attention.
                                 ______
                                 
                    PREPARED STATEMENT OF GREG REGAN
          President, Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO
                             March 15, 2022
    On behalf of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), 
and our 36 affiliated unions, I want to first thank Chairman Brown and 
Ranking Member Toomey for inviting me to testify before the Senate 
Banking Committee this morning about advancing public transportation 
under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
    TTD and our 36 affiliated unions have long called for the historic 
investments that were finally delivered in the Bipartisan 
Infrastructure Law (BIL). We especially want to applaud the leadership 
of President Biden and the members of the Senate who put partisanship 
aside and showed Americans that we can still work together.
    These investments can rebuild America's shrinking middle class with 
good-paying union jobs in public transportation, construction, rail, 
aviation, maritime, manufacturing, and beyond. These investments are a 
promise not just to the workers we represent but also to the American 
people that they can feel proud of our national infrastructure--the 
transit systems that provide accessible and reliable service, the 
highways that are free from potholes, the bridges that are no longer 
corroding before their very eyes. These investments will also bring 
relief to the pocketbooks of the American people as our overstressed, 
inefficient transportation supply chain finally meets the growing 
demand of consumers.
    In addition to these direct and long-overdue investments in 
America's infrastructure, the BIL also included key transportation 
labor policies that have been long sought by TTD and our affiliated 
unions. Thanks to members of this committee, we were able to ensure 
that major new investments in zero emission transit were paired with 
workforce training policies to ensure both the incumbent and future 
workforce have the necessary skills to maintain complex electrical 
equipment. The BIL also took concrete steps to stem the scourge of 
unacceptable violence faced by transit workers every single day in this 
country by ensuring workers have a real voice in their own workplace 
safety.
    On behalf of all transportation workers in this country, I thank 
you for advancing investments and policies that will make a real, 
tangible, and immediate difference in their lives.
COVID-19's Impact on Public Transportation Ridership
    We understand that there is still real uncertainty about the future 
of public transportation ridership in this country. Flexible telework 
policies remain in place for many businesses, and many have vowed to 
make flexible or full-time work from home policies permanent. Only time 
will fully reveal the long-term impact of this for commuters, 
commercial real estate, and housing.
    But one thing hasn't changed: the people who most depend upon 
public transportation. For them, it remains a critical lifeline to 
jobs, healthcare, groceries, and many other day-to-day needs just as 
much as it did before the pandemic came to America's shores.
    Throughout the pandemic, bus and rail transit operators, station 
agents, car cleaners, mechanics, and other frontline workers have 
bravely put their own health and safety on the line to ensure this 
critical lifeline still serves the public.
    Beyond direct investments in good jobs and affordable 
transportation options for millions of Americans--a benefit that will 
only become more important in the weeks ahead as record gas prices, 
generated to drive record profits for the oil companies gouging 
Americans at the pump, place financial strain on already struggling 
families--we should not overlook two other important benefits of public 
transportation.
    First, as the pandemic has laid bare, our supply chain is easily 
disrupted by even small inefficiencies across our ports, roads, air, 
and rail networks. A choke point anywhere along that system means goods 
don't get delivered to your constituents on time, driving up prices and 
creating avoidable uncertainty for American consumers. It would be a 
serious mistake to take millions of Americans out of mass 
transportation and put them into single occupancy vehicles on our 
already overstressed roads and highways. Commuters and freight carriers 
already spend hundreds of hours each year stuck in traffic, and the 
last thing either needs is more out of pocket costs at the pump or the 
market because we took a short-sighted view on supporting investments 
in mass transportation.
    Second, like all investments in our transportation infrastructure 
and services, we know that Federal investments have a direct multiplier 
impact on the economy. Beyond the direct labor income created within 
the industry, the Federal, State, and local investments in mass transit 
ensure that businesses have access to labor and ensure that customers 
come through their doors. In other words, this is not a public expense. 
It is a true, demonstrable public investment.
    I say all of this to make one point. While we still can't fully 
know the near- or long-term impacts of the pandemic on ridership and 
service, it would be a grave mistake to undermine the workers in this 
industry, the essential service they provide to commuters in urban and 
rural communities alike, and the pocketbooks of every single American 
by turning our back on the benefits delivered by public transit. 
There's only solution to drive the prepandemic growth we saw in this 
industry: more service, better service, and the kind of real long-term 
vision delivered by President Biden, members of this committee, and the 
BIL.
Transit Worker Safety
    Two years ago, TTD's past president, Larry Willis, testified about 
the horrific safety conditions faced by frontline public transit 
employees on the job every single day--a problem that was only 
exacerbated by COVID-19. Thanks to the hard work of this ommittee, TTD 
and our affiliates, and the unwavering support of President Biden, we 
will finally turn the tide and ensure safety for our workers.
    By way of background, in 2015, transportation labor unions 
successfully fought for the inclusion of assault prevention language in 
the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. This language 
required the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to publish a Notice 
of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that established safety standards, 
practices, or protocols for protecting transit operators from the risk 
of assault. Under President Donald Trump's leadership in 2019, more 
than four years after the passage of the law, the FTA issued a 
toothless suggestion that transit agencies merely examine the problem 
if they felt so inclined. Specifically, the notice required local 
transit agencies to study the problem but stopped short of requiring 
any meaningful action. Our unions condemned this failure of leadership 
at the time and Congress joined us in calling out the FTA for ignoring 
its obligations to the transit workforce.
    In the absence of clear Federal leadership under the watch of 
President Trump, transportation labor once again fought for a 
legislative remedy that would put a stop to worker assaults and secured 
specific worker safety requirements in the recently-passed BIL. The 
safety requirements passed in that law were based on the Transit Worker 
and Pedestrian Protection Act, which was led by Senator Chris Van 
Hollen, endorsed by President-elect Biden, and enjoyed strong, 
bipartisan support in Congress.
    Thanks to the actions taken by this committee, the FTA is now 
statutorily required to collect accurate data on transit workforce 
assaults, to reform its Public Transportation Agency Safety Plan 
(PTASP) process to include worker voices and incorporate measures to 
reduce the risk of assault in every transit system, and to update its 
national safety plan to address the risk of assault and public health 
concerns.
    But that does not mean we are in the clear. It has now been almost 
4 months since the passage of the BIL and transit workers--who, like 
any of us, simply want to go to work each day and not worry about 
whether they may be attacked or killed on the job--have continued to 
face the threat of violence in the workplace. Consider some of the 
following examples:

    On December 4, a CTA bus driver was inspecting his bus 
        after hearing a loud noise when he was pushed and repeatedly 
        punched by an unknown male and female. The operator was 
        hospitalized. Three days earlier, a CTA train operator was 
        hospitalized after two teenagers beat him and then ran away. 
        [Chicago Tribune, 12/12/21]

    On December 8, a Detroit Department of Transportation 
        driver was stabbed by a passenger who was told to get off the 
        bus. [The Detroit News, 12/13/21]

    On January 3, a Muni bus driver in San Francisco was 
        dragged out of the bus by a passenger and was left bleeding 
        from his nose and mouth from the assault. [Mission Local, 01/
        28/22]

    On February 7, a TriMet bus driver in Portland was maced by 
        a passenger while driving the bus. This was the third time he's 
        been attacked on the job. [KOIN Channel 6, 02/07/22]

    On February 10, an MTA bus driver was attacked when an 
        assailant quickly exited the bus, picked up a tree branch from 
        the ground, and beat her with it before fleeing the scene. [NY 
        Post, 02/10/22]

    It is deeply painful to watch transit workers continue to face the 
threat of assaults and other unsafe conditions that place them in 
harm's way in their workplace while we wait for these new safety 
requirements to be implemented. However, I have been briefed by 
Administrator Fernandez and her team at the FTA, and am confident that 
they are working as quickly as possible to ensure no transit worker has 
to ever again wake up wondering if today is the day they may wind up in 
the hospital because their employers didn't protect them.
New Technologies and Meeting the Needs of the Workforce
    Transportation labor has long held that new technologies and good 
jobs are not mutually exclusive. We were excited to see this is a value 
also held by Secretary Buttigieg, as demonstrated by the publication of 
the U.S. Department of Transportation's (DOT) Innovation Principles. 
Specifically, the DOT makes clear that, ``The Department will empower 
workers and expand access to skills, training, and the choice of a 
union. They will have a seat at the table in shaping innovation.''
    The BIL clearly illustrates--through the Low or No Emission Vehicle 
Program--that innovative new technologies and the creation and 
maintenance of good union jobs can go hand in hand when good policy 
ties them together. As detailed in our policy statement on the topic, 
the adoption of zero emission buses posed a serious threat to good 
union jobs in this sector. In part, this is due to years of 
underinvestment in workforce training. Combined with unfocused and 
sometimes non-existent policies on workforce support and training, this 
transition places tremendous strain on the incumbent workforce who may 
soon be asked to maintain complex electric infrastructure and vehicles.
    Moreover, electric engines require fewer mechanics to maintain than 
their diesel and natural gas counterparts, which currently make up more 
than 99 percent of the domestic U.S. bus fleet. Policies that encourage 
or require a rapid transition to an all-electric fleet without an 
accompanying increase in transit service paired with strong labor 
protections would risk putting tens of thousands of workers on the 
unemployment rolls.
    Rather than sideline these concerns, Senator Sherrod Brown fought 
to ensure that massive new investments in the Low or No Emission 
Vehicle program were tied to truly historic investments in the 
incumbent and future workforce. Specifically, the BIL requires transit 
agencies to examine the impact of the transition to zero-emission 
vehicles as a part of their fleet transition plan and requires 5 
percent of grants for zero-emission vehicles to address the impact of 
the transition to zero-emission vehicles on the applicant's current 
workforce unless the applicant can certify that a smaller percentage is 
needed to carry out their plan. Critically, transit agencies are 
encouraged to train the next generation of workers through 
apprenticeship and other labor-management training programs. These 
training models have a proven record of positive outcomes for worker 
training and retention, and their further adoption in this industry is 
a welcome step forward from transportation labor.
    The first Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the revised Low 
or No Emission Vehicle Program was issued last week, on March 8, 2022. 
Thanks to Senator Brown's clear vision for workers and FTA 
Administrator Fernandez' commitment to workforce training, the NOFO 
included strong pro-worker language as a condition of receiving grants 
to ensure that the training needs of the public transit maintenance 
workforce will keep pace with these new technologies. We again thank 
both of them on this important step forward for workers.
    TTD has already held conversations with our partners at the 
American Public Transportation Association (APTA) and the International 
Transportation Learning Center (ITLC) to ensure that labor and 
management are working closely on the development of training 
materials, best practices, and other tools to help drive the adoption 
of zero emission buses forward in a way that efficiently embraces 
technology and ensures good union jobs.
    We encourage lawmakers to view the revised Low or No Emission 
Vehicle Program as a path forward for other technologies. Whether it's 
electric vehicles or automation, our workers are ready and willing to 
adapt, gain new skills, and integrate these technologies into their 
workplaces when they are given the tools they need and the protections 
they deserve to take on that work.
    On behalf of transportation workers across the country, I again 
want to thank the members of this committee for their commitment to the 
shared goals of public transportation, President Biden and Secretary 
Buttigieg for their clearly detailed vision for working people, and 
Chairman Brown and Ranking Member Toomey for inviting me to speak 
before you today.
                                 ______
                                 
               PREPARED STATEMENT OF DOROTHY MOSES SCHULZ
                Adjunct Fellow, The Manhattan Institute
                             March 15, 2022
    Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, and Members of the Committee 
on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, thank you for the opportunity 
to testify. My testimony will focus on transit crime, the 
decriminalization of fare evasion, broken windows theory, and the 
public safety effects of fare-free transit.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Although I have list-I and a number of other affiliations, the 
views expressed are my own and do not represent of the organizations I 
have named. The Manhattan Institute does not take institutional 
positions on legislation, rules, or regulations.
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    My name is Dorothy Moses Schulz. I am a retired Metro-North 
Railroad police captain; one of my assignments was commanding officer 
at New York City's landmark Grand Central Terminal. I am also a 
professor emerita of law and police science at John Jay College of 
Criminal Justice (CUNY). I have been a security consultant for U.S. 
transit agencies and have conducted safety and security audits on 
behalf of the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). I am currently an 
adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
    Transit security is complicated. While transit agencies receive 
Federal dollars, their budgets and priorities are set by the cities, 
counties, or regional boards, or a combination of these, that direct 
their activities.
    Because of these bi- or trifurcated arrangements, policies on 
security depend on direction from the boards, which are generally 
comprised of political and civic leaders, rather than transit or law 
enforcement professionals. That includes decisions about replacing 
transit police with social service workers, how or whether to eject 
unhoused individuals and drug users and sellers from their facilities, 
and how or even whether to enforce against fare evasion.
    Just as there is no one way to fund transit, there is no one way to 
police it. Most large systems, including New York's commuter rail 
lines, New Jersey Transit (NJT), Boston's MBTA, Philadelphia's SEPTA, 
San Francisco's BART, Washington, DC's, WMATA, Dallas's DART, Houston's 
METRO, and Atlanta's MARTA, have their own police forces.
    But others, including York City's subway lines, San Francisco MUNI, 
and Los Angeles Metro, rely for security on a combination of in-house 
officers, private security, and local police or sheriffs' departments. 
This is especially true for the light rail systems that have been 
developed in the last few decades.
    Transit policing has been affected by ``defund the police'' 
demands. Nearly 1,000 NYPD officers assigned to help remove homeless 
riders were taken from transit and the NYPD's 85-member homeless-
outreach unit was disbanded.\1\ Luckily, New York City's new Mayor Eric 
Adams, a retired police captain whose career began in the NYPD's 
transit bureau, has announced a Subway Safety Plan\2\ that reverses 
many of these changes.
    Other cities, including Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Seattle, 
and Portland, Ore.,\3\ also cut back on policing transit, often in 
favor of homeless outreach and mental health workers, and by civilian 
ambassadors who, rather than issue fare evasion summons, explain to 
fare-beaters how to pay their fares.
    Many politicians cheered the changes. In New York and elsewhere, 
progressive prosecutors have declined to prosecute trespassers, fare 
evaders, and those arrested or issued summonses for public order 
offenses, including drinking, urinating, or injecting drugs in public 
space. Recently transit systems have reported riders smoking fentanyl 
in restrooms and on buses and trains, raising security and health 
concerns for other riders and particularly for employees.\4\
    It is not coincidental that these cities face surging numbers of 
homeless individuals and drug users and sellers who congregate in 
stations and on trains and buses. Problems have been exacerbated by 
COVID-19-related shutdowns, as some systems report ridership losses of 
70 percent or more and a sluggish return of commuters. Among them were 
New York's bus, subway and commuter rail lines; Boston's MBTA; 
Chicago's CTA and Metra commuter line; Washington, DC, WMATA; and in 
California, the San Diego Trolley, Los Angeles Metro, and San Francisco 
Muni.\5\
    As a result, stations have become de facto homeless shelters and 
drug injection sites.
    A study of homelessness in transit agencies found that almost 90 
percent of the 115 of the primarily U.S., but also Canadian, agencies 
responding reported complaints about homeless riders from other riders, 
especially concerning hygiene and aggressive behavior. The majority 
believe these riders have a negative effect on ridership, that has 
increased during the pandemic.\6\ It is unclear, though, whether there 
is an actual increase in homeless riders or whether their presence has 
become more noticeable in the absence of other riders.
    Neither destinationless riders nor people using transit facilities 
for nontravel purposes are new, but passively allowing them to remain 
is. Throughout their history, railroads hired officers to prevent 
harassment of and thefts from patrons, to deter human traffickers 
hunting for vulnerable strangers, and to protect employees and company 
property.\7\
    These capable guardians today are part of the theory of ``broken 
windows,''\8\ which stresses the importance of curtailing little 
offenses before they become big offenses, whether on the street, in a 
mall, an ATM vestibule, or a transit facility. Broken windows policing 
has been incorrectly described as the opposite of community policing; 
one as tough, the other as soft. This is a false dichotomy. Assuring a 
community' viability isn't tough or soft; it is maintaining order to 
keep people safe and secure. Today, the decline in order maintenance 
threatens patrons and employees.\9\
    Yet a recent Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) report on 
analysis, causes, and responses to ridership declines that includes the 
chapter ``Possible Causes of Ridership Decline Identified in the 
Literature'' contains the word ``security'' only in a chart. Nowhere 
are crime, fear, homelessness, or drug use/sales mentioned as affecting 
patrons' willingness to return to transit.\10\
    Another TCRP study on fare enforcement provides a different 
picture.\11\ It documents agencies' use of criminal, civil, or 
administrative penalties to address nonpayment while complying with the 
concerns of the many departments in a transit agency that have a say in 
fare policies. I served on the topic panel, and I recommend it to you 
to learn what agencies in your State are doing.
    Rather than duplicate the report, I have chosen to highlight two 
cities as representative of many transit systems. If you talk to 
agencies in your States, you are likely to hear variations of these 
examples.
Denver
    Prior to COVID-19, Denver's Regional Transportation District (RTD) 
had successfully transformed Union Station from a deserted landmark 
into a hub of tourist and commuter activity. But beginning in 2020, the 
RTD diverted funds from security to hire mental health workers, and due 
to COVID-restrictions, tourists and commuters disappeared. Today the 
station is reeling from what Denver's Mayor Michael Hancock 
euphemistically called ``unwelcome activities.'' Denver police have 
made many more arrests than in past years, including more than 500 in 
less than three months this year, including almost 50 in a single 
day.\12\
    Denver's police chief described the arrestees as homeless, addicted 
to substances, and facing mental health challenges. A change in 
penalties for drug possession, he said, contributed to 
``defelonization, decriminalization [that] makes it very difficult to 
hold people accountable.''
    RTD, which has received about $300 million in American Rescue Plan 
Act (ARPA) funds, decided even before the arrest blitz to close station 
restrooms and is now consider requiring tickets for access to the 
station to minimize illegal activity.\13\
    But it is facing push-back. The director of the Harm Reduction 
Action Center criticized the police and the RTD, although conceding 
that Union Station had become a popular injection site primarily after 
the library, previously the largest injection site, locked its 
bathrooms to curtail drug activity.\14\ The Center, according to its 
website, promotes public health by ensuring those who inject drugs are 
educated and equipped with tools to reduce the spread of communicable 
disease and to eliminate the proliferation of fatal overdoses. It 
provides its program participants access to syringe between 9 a.m. and 
noon.\15\
    While there is increasing advocacy around the country for safe 
injection sites, I believe that most people would agree this is not an 
appropriate role for either a library or a public transit facility.
Seattle
    Sound Transit, which operates in Seattle and Tacoma, is, like 
Denver and many light rail systems, barrier free. This means there are 
no turnstiles limiting entry or exiting. Patrons may be asked while on 
board to show tickets or farecards indicating they have paid for their 
ride.
    Sound Transit in Seattle suffers from the city's crime wave and 
from budget cuts to the Police Department that have resulted in about 
300 vacancies in the 1,000-member department. Transit bus and rail 
riders have asked for additional police since at least 2019. Recently 
there have been persistent complaints of drug use on buses and trains, 
including assaults on drivers by passengers high on drugs.\16\
    Seattle police this month arrested a suspect for pushing a 62-year-
old woman down a flight of stairs at the Chinatown-International 
District station. The alleged offender is also suspected of stabbing 
another person at a downtown bus stop.\17\
    Sound Transit is facing insolvency despite receiving about $166 
million in ARPA funds. Yet its CEO Peter Rogoff, who was FTA 
administrator, Undersecretary of Transportation under President Obama, 
and before that, Senate Appropriations Committee staff, including 
Democratic Staff Director of the Transportation Subcommittee, when it 
was led by Sens. Murray and Lautenberg, reported in January, just 
before retiring, that Sound Transit's losses have created a 
``financially unsustainable'' trajectory, based in part on COVID-19 
rider losses but also on an increase in non-paying passengers. ``When 
you've got a situation with a 98 percent chance of being out on the 
system and not being contacted by anybody . . . , that just lends 
itself to further noncompliance. We need to get back to a place where 
our passengers are honoring the honor system that we're using,'' he 
said, estimating that as many as 40 to 70 percent of riders were 
``nonfare'' passengers.\18\ Only once (in 2017) has Sound Transit met 
its goal of farebox receipts covering 40 percent of costs.
    Yet Sound Transit replaced fare enforcement officers with 
ambassadors who provide educational materials to fare evaders rather 
than issue citations. This occurred following a study that found black 
riders received a higher percentage of citations than their percentage 
of riders despite what appeared to be a neutral system of having all 
passengers tap farecards into a reader to indicate payment.\19\
Legal Challenges to Fare Enforcement
    Many systems have cut back on fare enforcement based on similar 
equity studies, which claim that young, minority males are 
disproportionately cited for nonpayment. Studies in Brooklyn, NY; 
Minneapolis/St. Paul, Los Angeles, and Cleveland, showed similar 
disparities.\20\ In 2018, the Washington Lawyer's Committee for Civil 
Rights and Urban Affairs found that 91 percent of all citations or 
summonses for fare evasion issued by WMATA's Transit Police were to 
black riders, and that almost half the summons were to black young 
adults under the age of 25.\21\ None of the studies speculate whether 
the different levels of citations indicate different levels of fare 
compliance.
    But questions about fare enforcement may become moot. The 
Washington State Supreme Court is expected to decide by the end of the 
year whether fare enforcement by police officers constitutes a search 
under the Fourth Amendment. The issue in State v. Meredith,\22\ is 
whether by boarding a bus and accepting transportation, the rider 
consented to a warrantless search following a fare enforcement's 
officer's request for proof of payment. The rider provided a false 
name, but based on an onsite fingerprint check, the officer determined 
the rider's real name and placed him under arrest based on two existing 
warrants. The case turns on whether the officer's request for proof of 
payment qualifies as a warrantless seizure.
    A similar case, State of Maryland v. Kennard Carter, decided on 
Jan. 29, 2021, successfully challenged fare enforcement in the 
Baltimore's barrier-free light-rail system.\23\ Deciding against the 
Maryland Transit Administration (MTA), whose police officers 
participated in routine sweeps to check for tickets, the court found 
that sweeps were a warrantless seizure that passengers were unable to 
reject, making any further actions by the police unlawful.
    If the Washington case is decided in the plaintiffs' favor, 
together with the Maryland case, transit systems are likely to further 
curtail fare enforcement, effectively making transit free even if fares 
are not officially eliminated.
Fare-Free Transit
    Just as some may cheer a lessening of fare enforcement, there are 
also many advocates for fare-free transit.
    The most vocal, and thus far the most successful in a large city, 
has been new Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who on March 1 made three local 
bus lines free. The two-year pilot program is funded by $8 million of 
the $558 million ARPA funds that Boston received. The funding is in 
addition to the $500,000 in Covid-relief funds that underwrote fare-
free transit on one Boston line from August 2021 until the end of the 
year. Smaller Massachusetts systems have also used ARPA funds to 
eliminate bus fares.\24\
    Wu hasn't indicated a source of funding if the pilot project goes 
beyond two years but has implied that pandemic funding could continue 
to be available to fund free transit.\25\ A big part of her mayoral 
campaign was urging the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority 
(MBTA-or the T) to ``make the T free.'' Because the MBTA is a regional 
authority; no one mayor can make such a decision, but Wu is supported 
in her larger effort regionwide by Sen. Edward Markey (D), Rep. Ayanna 
Pressley (D) and by the Boston Globe.
    Pressley's Freedom to Move Act offers $5 billion in grants to 
entice transit systems to go fare-free. To qualify, transit agencies 
would have to improve safety and quality, particularly in low-income 
and historically underserved communities. Those backing Pressley's bill 
(and Markey's companion bill) view fare-free transit as part of a 
larger social-justice agenda, believing that minority males are 
targeted for enforcement disproportionately and that transit, like 
schools and libraries, should be free.
    Many climate advocates also believe it help to reduce pollution 
through reduced traffic congestion. Ridership on buses also tends 
toward women and minorities. For now, the focus is on buses, because 
they are likely to be controlled by a single city rather than by a 
regional board.
    While a few cities eliminated fares during the COVID crisis and a 
few are offering free or reduced fares as experiments or to lure back 
riders, free transit has existed primarily in resort or university 
towns, where riders were mostly tourists or students.\26\
    Despite transit systems facing problems of crime and disorder, 
discussions on eliminating fares have not considered whether fare 
enforcement serves a positive function of providing capable guardians 
who in addition to checking for fares, also serve as representatives of 
the transit system. The existing studies on fare enforcement ignore 
that fare enforcement provides an opportunity to provide patrons with a 
visible security presence and a sense that someone is in charge of the 
system. While this security presence may be threatening to some, it is 
likely to reassure other patrons and enhance their expectations of a 
safe and secure ride.
    Surveys of riders almost universally indicate that their highest 
priorities are safety, travel time, and service frequency and 
reliability. Responses favor additional security, particularly among 
women riders, who, based on income and employment opportunities are 
often late-night and weekend riders.
    Women's sense of vulnerability is not misplaced. Anyone following 
the news in any city can see that women have more often been victims of 
crimes in transit systems than male patrons. A recent study in Los 
Angeles, a system whose former CEO called free transit a ``moral 
obligation,''\27\ confirmed studies that women are more likely than men 
to be concerned about safety on public transit.\28\ The report, 
``Changing Lanes'', noted that Latina, Black, or Asian women were more 
likely than White women to feel unsafe. It also reinforced earlier 
findings that income plays a large role in transit dependency, 
specifically that higher-income women can leverage travel resources. 
They are less dependent on public transit than lower-income women.
    While minority groups and riders of limited financial means might 
see short-term benefits from reduced fare enforcement or from fare free 
travel, they will be sacrificing protection from the criminals, drug 
users, and mentally ill persons who are increasingly frequenting 
transit locations.
Conclusion
    I have said little so far about the Infrastructure Investment and 
Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, 
because it addresses neither transit security nor crime on transit 
property or equipment.
    A review of the FTA's IIJA posting\29\ makes this clear. The words 
``security'' or ``crime'' do not appear in any of the 21 factsheets 
explaining the law. Only assaults on transit workers are mentioned, 
explaining that these must now be reported to the National Transit 
Database (NTD), to which agencies have been required since 1974 to 
report safety-related incidents.
    But safety and security, although often used interchangeably, are 
differentiated in most industries, including public transportation.
    Safety--refers to harm from unintentional acts; not fastening bolts 
properly, or incorrectly installing electrical circuits. Because these 
acts occur without malice, we call them accidents.
    Security--refers to harm from intentional acts, throwing someone 
down a flight of stairs or taking their property, we call these crimes.
    In 2005, the FTA, through a Memo of Understanding (the Annex), 
transferred its Federal security efforts to the Department of Homeland 
Security (DHS), assigned primarily to its Transportation Security 
Administration (TSA). While TSA provides some oversight; State safety 
oversight agency (SSOA) managers and transit agency police/security 
personnel at FTA meetings I attended voiced their concerns that TSA's 
focus on infrastructure hardening to prevent terrorist activities does 
not address the daily crimes and disruptions to public order discussed 
here.
    FTA grantees, under 49 U.S. Code 5307 (urbanized area formula 
grants), with some exceptions, must spend 1 percent of their funds on 
security annually, which many include lighting, surveillance cameras, 
or emergency phone lines.\30\
    But the FTA never directly oversaw transit agencies' security 
operations. FTA reviewed these indirectly through its three-year audits 
of SSOAs, primarily assuring that the States were reviewing agencies' 
security policies and documentation during the States' reviews of 
agencies within the States. The FTA's Office of Safety and Oversight no 
longer includes security in either its 3-year safety or its expenditure 
reviews. Some SSOAs continue to include security in their State reviews 
of agencies under their jurisdiction.
    As to fare-free transit . . . . It is unclear whether the 
Infrastructure Law could provide funds for fare-free transit. A Jan. 7, 
2022, FTA webinar31 outlines not only safety, but also equity 
priorities. These include expanding access and opportunity to 
underserved, overburdened, and disadvantaged communities; incorporating 
equity into planning and funding decisions; increasing social and 
economic opportunity by investing in equitable transit projects, and, 
lastly, assuring that no less than 40 percent of the benefits of FTA 
investments reach underserved, overburdened, and disadvantaged 
communities.
    Although I am a transit security professional and not a transit 
planner, while the equity strategies do not mention fare-free travel, I 
suspect that a planner could easily make fare-free pilot programs fit 
these priorities.
Recommendations
    I would like to leave you with the thought that despite the vast 
investment of Federal dollars, transit in the United States is provided 
locally or regionally and responds to demands at the local level.
    Transit systems have an obligation to their riders--and to their 
employees--to provide a safe and secure environment.
    But if managers believe that those covering their non-federally 
funded costs are more concerned with providing shelter to the unhoused, 
injection sites for drug users, and fare-free transit than they are in 
fixing the broken windows, patrons who can afford to will find other 
ways to travel and existing staffing vacancies won't get filled.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify on transit policing and 
transit security. I am happy to answer any questions.
Notes
1. Dorothy Moses Schulz, ``Going Off the Rails'', City Journal, Jan. 
    15, 2021. https://www.city-journal.org/crime-plagued-public-
    transit-hurts-city-economies
2. Subway Safety Plan. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/home/downloads/pdf/
    press-releases/2022/the-subway-safety-plan.pdf
3. Dorothy Moses Schulz, ``Will Defunding Police Hamper Post-COVID 
    Recovery of Transit Systems?'' The Crime Report, Aug. 7, 2020. 
    https://thecrimereport.org/2020/08/07/will-defunding-police-hamper-
    post-covid-recovery-of-transit-systems/
4. See for instance (for Denver): Janet Oravetz and Jennifer Meckles, 
    ``41 Arrests Made at Union Station as Part of Enforcement 
    Operation'', 9News, Feb. 24, 2022. https://www.9news.com/article/
    news/crime/denver-union-station-arrests/73-401142b4-0abf-4daf-8543-
    0e9c6a6725da#:text=DENVER--Denver Poli.at; (for Seattle): Mike 
    Lindblom, ``Drugs on Buses Have Become an Everyday Hazard, Seattle-
    Area Transit Workers Say'', The Seattle Times, Feb. 14, 2022. 
    https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/drugs-on-
    buses-have-become-an-everyday-hazard-seattle-area-transit-workers-
    say/; Eric Lendrum, ``Authorities Say Seattle's Public Transit 
    Unusable Due to Drugs and Crime'', American Greatness, Feb. 15, 
    2022. https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/15/authorities-say-seattles-
    public-transit-is-unusable-due-to-drugs-and-crime/; Gary Horcher, 
    ``Public Transit, The New Drug Den: What's Being Done to Keep You 
    Safe?'' KIRO7 News, Feb. 22, 2022. https://www.kiro7.com/news/
    local/public-transit-new-drug-den-whats-being-done-keep-you-safe/
    X6GLQLCLXZGOXOH655KPJ23RJM/; (for Minneapolis): Eric Rasmussen, 
    ``Reports of Drug Use, Intoxication and Overdoses Real Depth of 
    Public Health Crisis on Light Rail'', ABC5 KSTP.com. June 8, 2021, 
    updated Jan. 10, 2022. https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/reports-
    of-drug-use-intoxication-and-overdoses-reveal-depth-of-public-
    health-crisis-on-light-rail/. A recent post on a transit police 
    blog from a manager who asked not to be identified asked what 
    systems were doing about employee absenteeism based on second-hand 
    smoke from fentanyl and what steps systems were taking to air out 
    smoke-filled train cars. One of the responses came from a firm 
    selling solutions for smoke and vapor complaints and for handling 
    discarded hypodermic needles on seats and floors.
5. Dorothy Moses Schulz, ``Will COVID-19 Derail Public Transit?'' 
    National Review, May 29, 2020. https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/
    05/coronavirus-mass-transit-long-term-effect-business-model-
    unclear/#slide-1
6. Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, ``Homelessness in Transit Environments 
    Volume I: Findings From a Survey of Public Transit Operators''. Los 
    Angeles: UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, December 2020. 
    https://escholarship.org/uc/item/55d481p8
7. Dorothy Moses Schulz, ``Holdups, Hobos, and the Homeless: A Brief 
    History of Railroad Police in North America'', Police Studies 10, 
    (Summer) 1987, pp. 90-95. Reprinted, British Transport Police 
    Journal, Summer 1988.
8. George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson, ``Broken Windows: The Police 
    and Neighborhood Safety'', The Atlantic, March 1982, https://
    www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/
    . For a transit-specific crime prevention strategies other than 
    broken windows, see Dorothy Moses Schulz, ``Strategies for 
    Combining Community Crime Prevention With Crime Prevention Through 
    Environmental Design: The Transit Experience'', Security Journal 7, 
    (1996), 253-257.
9. Dorothy Moses Schulz and Gareth Bryon, ``Is It Time To Bring Back 
    `Broken Windows' Policing?'' The Crime Report, July 21, 2021. 
    https://thecrimereport.org/2021/07/21/is-it-time-to-bring-back-
    broken-windows-policing/
10. ``Recent Decline in Public Transportation Ridership: Analysis, 
    Causes, and Responses''. TCRP Research Report 231. Washington, DC: 
    The National Academies Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.17226/2632
11. ``Measuring and Managing Fare Evasion''. Pre-publication draft of 
    TCRP Research Report 234. Washington, DC: The National Academies 
    Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.17226/26514
12. Kyle Harris, ``Police Have Arrested More Than 500 People at Union 
    Station So Far This Year'', Denverite, Feb. 24, 2022. https://
    denverite.com/2022/02/24/police-have-arrested-more-than-500-people-
    at-union-station-so-far-this-year/
13. Darius Johnson, ``Increasing Crime at Union Station Calls for New 
    Courses of Action'', 9News, Dec. 7, 2021. https://www.9news.com/
    article/news/local/increasing-crime-at-union-station/73-8a2dfda3-
    dc5f-4d69-b99a-e1d36b3dee37
14. Michael Roberts, ``Union Station Police Raids Are a Doomed Return 
    to a Faded Policy'', Crime Says, Westwood, March 3, 3022. https://
    www.westword.com/news/denver-union-station-police-sweeps-ripped-by-
    critic-13565941
15. Harm Reduction Action Center, https://
    www.harmreductionactioncenter.org. Accessed March 7, 2022.
16. Mike Lindblom, ``Drugs on Buses Have Become an Everyday Hazard, 
    Seattle-Area Transit Workers Say'', The Seattle Times, Feb. 14, 
    2022. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/
    drugs-on-buses-have-become-an-everyday-hazard-seattle-area-transit-
    workers-say/
17. Sara Jean Green, ``Seattle Police Flood Downtown After 2nd Homicide 
    in 4 Days'', The Seattle Times, March 3, 2022. https://
    www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/seattle-police-flood-
    downtown-following-2nd-homicide-in-4-days/
18. David Kroman, ``With Fares Depressed, Sound Transit Grapples With 
    `Financially Unsustainable' Trajectory'', The Seattle Times, Jan. 
    28, 2022. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/
    with-fares-depressed-sound-transit-grapples-with-financially-
    unsustainable-trajectory/
19. Heidi Groover, ``Black Passengers Cited, Punished 
    Disproportionately by Sound Transit Fare Enforcement'', The Seattle 
    Times, Oct. 4, 2019. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/
    transportation/faced-with-racial-disparities-sound-transit-debates-
    changes-to-fare-enforcement/
20. For a detailed discussion of the Brooklyn, NY, study and references 
    to the other, see Harold Stolper and Jeff Jones, ``The Crime of 
    Being Short $2.75''. New York: The Community Service Society, 
    October. 2017. https://www.cssny.org/publications/entry/the-crime-
    of-being-short-2.75
21. Washington Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, 
    ``UNFAIR: Disparities in Fare Enforcement by Metro Police'', 
    September 2018. https://www.washlaw.org/unfair-disparities-in-fare-
    evasion-enforcement-by-metro-police/
22. State of Washington v. Zachery Kyle Meredith, No. 81203-3-1, 492 P. 
    3d 198, State v. Meredith, No. 81203-3-I--Washington--Case Law--
    VLEX 886949386
23. State of Maryland v. Kennard Carter, Maryland Court of Appeals, 
    filed Jan. 29, 2021. State v. Carter, 012921 MDCA, 74-2019--
    Maryland--Case Law--VLEX 856468856
24. Taylor Dolven, ``Boston City Council Approves $8 Million To Make 3 
    MBTA Bus Lines Fare-Free Starting Next Year'', The Boston Globe, 
    Dec. 1, 2021. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/12/01/metro/boston-
    city-council-approves-8-million-make-three-mbta-bus-lines-fare-
    free-starting-next-year/?p1=Art
25. Emma Platoff, ``Federal COVID Funds Offer Boston Mayor Michelle Wu 
    A Big Boost With Her Big Plans'', The Boston Globe, March 9. 2022. 
    https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/03/09/metro/federal-covid-funds-
    offer-michelle-wu-big-boost-with-her-big-plans/?et-
    rid=1011729407&s-campaig.
26. ``Implementation and Outcomes of Fare-Free Transit Systems''. 
    Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2012. https://
    doi.org/10.17226/22753
27. ``L.A. Metro To Study and Consider Eliminating Bus and Rail Fare'', 
    Mass Transit, https://www.masstransitmag.com/management/press-
    release/21152206/los-angeles-county-metropolitan-transportation-
    authority-metro-la-metro-to-study-and-consider-eliminating-bus-and-
    rail-fares
28. ``Changing Lanes: A Gender Equity Transportation Study'', Final 
    Report. Los Angeles: LA Department of Transportation, 2021. https:/
    /ladot.lacity.org/changinglanes
29. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. https://
    www.transit.dot.gov/BIL
30. 49. U.S. Code 5307, Urbanized area formula grants, available at 
    https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/5307.
31. Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Implementation Webinar Presentation, 
    Jan. 7, 2022. https://www.transit.dot.gov/funding/grants/
    bipartisan-infrastructure-law-implementation-webinar-presentation
                                 ______
                                 
                  PREPARED STATEMENT OF RANDAL O'TOOLE
                      Director, Thoreau Institute
                             March 15, 2022
    Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, and Members of the 
Committee; thank you for inviting me to testify. My name is Randal 
O'Toole, and I am a policy analyst with nearly 50 years of experience 
studying transportation and land-use issues. Today I'll discuss recent 
transit trends, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the 
role of urban transit in a postpandemic world.
    Pandemics do not change things so much as they accelerate trends 
that were already taking place.\1\ One such trend is the decline of the 
importance of public transit in the day-to-day lives of most Americans, 
which has been going on for more than a century. The acceleration of 
this trend raises the question of why we continue to subsidize 
something that is irrelevant to the vast majority of Americans outside 
of New York City.
    In 1920, the average urban American rode transit nearly 300 times a 
year. In 1964, when Congress passed the Urban Mass Transportation Act, 
it had fallen to 62 trips per year.\2\ Over the next 55 years, Federal, 
State, and local governments tried to boost transit ridership with well 
over $1.5 trillion (after adjusting for inflation) in subsidies. This 
effort failed: by 2019 ridership was down to just 37 trips per urban 
resident.\3\ Less than 5 percent of working Americans rode transit to 
work, down from more than 12 percent in 1960.\4\ In recent years, 
transit declined not just in trips per urban resident but in total 
trips: between 2014 and 2019, transit systems in Miami, Cleveland, St. 
Louis, and several other urban areas lost 25 percent or more of their 
riders while transit ridership nationwide declined by 7 percent.\5\
    The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act added another $39 
billion to this record of subsidies, plus the better part of $1 billion 
for buying electric buses. But this is no more likely to reverse 
transit's fortunes than the previous $1.5 trillion did.
    Transit's long-term decline is due to increasing auto ownership, 
decentralization of jobs away from downtowns, and decentralization of 
residences into low-density suburbs and exurbs. More recently, the 
growth of telecommuting further reduced transit, as the number of 
people working at home exceeded the number taking transit to work for 
the first time in 2017.\6\
    Commuters and other urban travelers have good reasons not to use 
transit, as it is inferior to its competitors in almost every way: it 
is slow, it doesn't go where most people need to go, and it is 
expensive. The American Public Transportation Association admits that 
transit vehicles average just 15 miles per hour, and that doesn't count 
the time required to get to a transit stop, wait for a vehicle to 
arrive, and then get from the transit stop to a destination.\7\ By 
comparison, automobiles, which can go door-to-door in most cases, 
average 30 to 40 miles per hour in most urban areas.
    Transit's slow speeds are compounded by the fact that it doesn't go 
where most people want to go. Most transit agencies run hub-and-spoke 
systems centered around downtowns. That made sense a hundred years ago 
when most urban jobs were in downtowns, but today only about 8 percent 
of urban jobs are in central city downtown areas.\8\ For many people, 
getting to a job or another destination by transit can be a 2-hour or 
more ordeal.
    The University of Minnesota Accessibility Observatory calculates 
that, in 2019, the average resident of one of the nation's 50 largest 
urban areas could reach nearly twice as many jobs in a 20-minute auto 
drive as a 60-minute transit trip. Transit is so slow that a reasonably 
fit bicycle rider could reach more jobs in trips of 50 minutes or less 
than transit riders taking the same amount of time.\9\ This makes 
transit third-class transportation.
    Finally, transit is extraordinarily expensive. In 2019, transit 
fares averaged 30 cents a passenger-mile.\10\ By comparison, Americans 
spent just 25 cents a passenger-mile driving their cars and light 
trucks.\11\ On top of this, subsidies to transit were more than 100 
times greater, per passenger-mile, than subsidies to highways: while 
highway subsidies averaged about a penny per passenger-mile, transit 
subsidies averaged $1.08.\12\ Altogether, transit agencies spend more 
than five times as much money moving passenger miles as the cost of the 
average automobile.
    Despite these disadvantages, the transit industry has been very 
clever in coming up with reasons why taxpayers should continue to 
subsidize it. They claim that increasing subsidies to transit will 
relieve traffic congestion, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promote 
economic development, and help low-income people out of poverty. None 
of these claims are true.
    Spending more money on transit can't relieve congestion if the 
spending doesn't result in more transit riders. In recent years, 
numerous urban areas including Charlotte, Minneapolis-St. Paul, 
Portland, St. Louis and others have spent heavily on new transit 
projects only to see overall transit ridership decline. Los Angeles is 
the worst-case example: for every new rider transit has gained from 
building new light-rail lines, the region has lost five bus riders, 
mainly because the high cost of rail transit has forced LA Metro to 
reduce bus service and increase fares.\13\
    Even if spending money on transit increased ridership, it wouldn't 
necessarily reduce congestion if the transit systems end up blocking 
traffic. The environmental impact statement for Maryland's Purple Line, 
which is now under construction, calculated that the line would add 
millions of hours of delay to the region's commuters per year because 
the light-rail vehicles would occupy lanes once open to 
automobiles.\14\
    Nor is transit environmentally friendly. Outside of New York City, 
San Francisco, and one or two other urban areas, transit uses far more 
energy and emits more greenhouse gases per passenger-mile than the 
average car. Diesel buses are particularly dirty, producing more 
greenhouse gases per passenger-mile than the average SUV.\15\ Transit 
agencies hope to fix this with battery-powered buses, but most 
electricity in this country comes from burning fossil fuels. The 
electricity powering the Washington Metrorail system, for example, 
generated 286 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger-mile in 2019, 
compared with 200 grams for the average car and 244 grams for the 
average light truck.
    Whenever I hear of a transit project that supposedly stimulated 
economic development, a little investigation reveals that this 
development received millions of dollars in other subsidies, usually 
through a mechanism called tax-increment financing (TIF). For example, 
a 2009 New York Times article claimed that ``new rail transit lines 
stimulate urban revival.''\16\ But all of the developments cited in the 
article actually received TIF subsidies.\17\
    The city of Portland discovered in the 1990s found that TIF without 
transit would stimulate economic development but new transit projects 
without TIF failed to stimulate new development. So whenever it built a 
transit project, it accompanied it with TIF and then credited the new 
development to the transit project, never mentioning the millions or 
hundreds of millions of other subsidies it gave to that 
development.\18\
    Far from helping low-income people, transit does low-income 
families more harm than good. In 2019, only 5 percent of people earning 
less than $25,000 a year took transit to work, compared with 7 percent 
of people earning more than $75,000 a year.\19\ At least 75 percent of 
taxes used to support transit are regressive.\20\ That means that the 
95 percent of low-income people who don't ride transit were 
disproportionately paying to subsidize transit rides that were 
disproportionately taken by high-income workers. That makes transit one 
of the most socially unjust institutions we have.
    The pandemic has accelerated all these trends. The biggest 
acceleration is in the number of people working at home, as the 
pandemic taught both employers and employees that workers can be 
productive without coming into expensive downtown offices 5 days a 
week. Many employers are now planning for hybrid work schedules where 
people work at home at least 2 or 3 days a week.
    The best estimates are that, after the pandemic ends, about four 
times as many people will be working at home on any given day as before 
the pandemic.\21\ This will take an especially large telecommuting 
reduced the number of people driving alone to work by 16 percent, but 
it reduced the number commuting by transit by 41 percent.\22\
    Transit will be especially hurt because many downtown offices will 
have people come in to work only a few days a week. People have a 
travel budget measured in time as well as dollars and on average seem 
to be willing to spend about five or six hours a week commuting. If 
they have to commute only twice a week, they will be willing to live 
much further from their workplace, which means transit won't work for 
them as well as it previously did.
    Due to all these factors--remote work, loss of downtown jobs, and 
decentralization of residences--transit will never come close to 
carrying as many riders as it did in 2019. Of all modes of travel, 
transit has been slowest to recover from the pandemic. Driving 
recovered to more than 100 percent of prepandemic levels as long ago as 
June 2021.\23\ In December 2021, domestic air travel was more than 87 
percent and Amtrak more than 80 percent of prepandemic levels.\24\ 
Transit, however, was only 56 percent, and in January 2022 it dipped to 
47 percent.\25\ I estimate that, in the long run, it will never recover 
more than about 75 percent of prepandemic ridership, or about 25 trips 
per urban resident, and even that may be optimistic.
    During the pandemic, transit agencies argued that they were 
carrying ``essential workers'' to work. If so, they weren't carrying 
very many of them and it would have been far less expensive to find 
other transportation for those people than to keep subsidizing transit. 
Census Bureau data indicate that only 3 percent American workers took 
transit to work on any given workday in 2020.\26\ Meanwhile, transit 
subsidies rose from $58 billion to $64 billion and will be even greater 
in 2021. With fewer riders, costs per passenger-mile rose to well above 
$2, eight times the cost of driving.\27\
    The latest argument in favor of increasing transit subsidies is 
that it would somehow be socially just to eliminate transit fares. But 
it's no more socially just to increase subsidies with regressive taxes 
than it is to expect low-income people to live with third-class 
transportation while almost everyone else enjoys first-class transport. 
Currently, the main obstacle to auto ownership for many is the fact 
that banks charge up to 25 percent interest for used-car loans to 
people with poor or no credit ratings. If we are truly concerned about 
the plight of low-income people, giving them low-interest loans to buy 
a good used car will do more to help them out of poverty than free 
transit.\28\
    Before the pandemic, New York City was the only American city where 
transit played a meaningful role in transportation. Even in cities such 
as Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, transit was only 
really important for downtown workers. Elsewhere, transit's only 
relevance to the vast majority of Americans is as a tax burden.
    The real problem with transit is not a shortage of funds but that 
transit agencies have too much money and they spend that money on 
things that do little to help transportation uses, such as building 
multibillion-dollar light-rail lines and taking lanes away from 
automobiles on congested roads. More than a half century of growing 
transit subsidies should have taught us that people are not going to 
give up the convenience and economy of private automobiles to ride 
slow, inefficient mass transit where they are likely to become victims 
of crime and infectious diseases. At the same time, reducing subsidies 
would make transit agencies more dependent on fares and therefore more 
responsive to the needs of people who continue to ride transit.
    It is time to stop throwing money at an obsolete form of 
transportation. Ending subsidies to transit will still allow some 
transit to exist, but it will be more efficient, serve mainly those 
people who truly need it, and rely mainly on buses that share lanes 
with other vehicles.
    If transit must be subsidized, make the subsidies proportional to 
the fares collected by each transit agency. That will give the transit 
agencies powerful incentives to cater to fare-paying customers. 
However, if we are seriously interested in reducing greenhouse gas 
emissions, helping low-income people out of poverty, and solving other 
social problems, there are better ways of doing so than by continuing 
subsidies to a third-class form of transportation.
Notes
1. Davies, Stephen, ``Going Viral: The History and Economics of 
    Pandemics'' (London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 2020), p. 22, 
    iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Going-Viral.pdf.
2. Public Transit Fact Book 2021 (Washington: American Public 
    Transportation Association, 2021), appendix A.
3. National Transit Database 2019 (Washington: Federal Transit 
    Administration, 2020), Service spreadsheet.
4. American Community Survey 2019 (Washington: Census Bureau, 2020), 
    table B08301.
5. National Transit Database Historical Time Series (Washington: 
    Federal Transit Administration, 2020), table TS2.1.
6. American Community Survey 2017 (Washington: Census Bureau, 2018), 
    table B08301.
7. Public Transit Fact Book 2020 (Washington: American Public 
    Transportation Association, 2021), p. 5.
8. Wendell Cox, ``United States Central Business Districts'' 
    (Downtowns), 4th Edition (Belleville, IL: Demographia, 2020), table 
    1.
9. Andrew Owen and Brendan Murphy, ``Access Across America: Auto 2019'' 
    (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2021), p. 6; Andrew Owen and 
    Brendan Murphy, ``Access Across America: Transit 2019'' 
    (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2020), p. 4; Andrew Owen and 
    Brendan Murphy, ``Access Across America: Biking 2019'' 
    (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2020), p. 5.
10. Calculated from National Transit Database 2019, Service, Fares, 
    Operating Expense, and Capital Expense spreadsheets.
11. Calculated by dividing expenditures on auto ownership in National 
    Income and Product Accounts (Washington: Bureau of Economic 
    Analysis, 2021), table 2.5.5 by automobile passenger miles in 
    Highway Statistics 2019, table VM-1, and by average auto 
    occupancies of 1.67 from 2017 National Household Travel Survey 
    (Washington: Federal Highway Administration, 2018), table 16.
12. Calculated by subtracting diversions of highway user fees to 
    transit and other non-highway uses from general funds spent on 
    highways in Highway Statistics 2019, table HF-10 and dividing by 
    passenger miles.
13. Thomas A. Rubin and James E. Moore, II, ``Metro's 28 by 28 Plan: A 
    Critical Review'' (Los Angeles: Reason Foundation, 2019), chapter 
    3, pp. 3-4.
14. Purple Line Traffic Analysis Technical Report (Annapolis: Maryland 
    Department of Transportation, 2008), pp. 41-42.
15. Calculated from National Transit Database 2019, Energy and Service 
    spreadsheets. For details on methodology, see Randal O'Toole, 
    ``Urban Transit: Browner Than Ever'' (Camp Sherman, Oregon: Thoreau 
    Institute, 2021).
16. Amy Cortese, ``New Rail Lines Spur Urban Revival'', New York Times, 
    June 13, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/realestate/
    14sqft.html?--r=1&scp=1&sq=urban%20revival&st=cse.
17. Randal O'Toole, ``Suckered Again'', The Antiplanner, June 15, 2009, 
    http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=1471.
18. Randal O'Toole, ``Debunking Portland: The City That Doesn't Work'' 
    (Washington: Cato Institute, 2007), pp. 8-9.
19. American Community Survey 2019, table B08119.
20. National Transit Database 2019, Revenue Sources spreadsheet.
21. Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis, ``Why 
    Working at Home Will Stick'' (Cambridge: National Bureau of 
    Economic Research, 2021), p. 30.
22. American Community Survey 2020, table XK200801; American Community 
    Survey 2019, table B08301.
23. Traffic Volume Trends (Washington: Federal Highway Administration, 
    June 2019 and June 2021).
24. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, ``Revenue Passenger-Miles, All 
    Carriers--All Airports'', 2022, https://www.transtats.bts.gov/
    Data--Elements.aspx?Data=3; Monthly Performance Report December 
    2021 (Washington: Amtrak, 2022), p. 5.
25. National Transit Database Monthly Module Adjusted Data Release 
    (Washington: Federal Transit Administration, 2022), https://
    www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/2022-03/
    January%202022%20Ajusted%20Database.xlsx.
26. American Community Survey 2020, table XK200801.
27. National Transit Database 2019 and 2020, Fare, Operating Expense, 
    and Capital Expense spreadsheets.
28. See Randal O'Toole, ``Reducing Poverty by Increasing Auto 
    Ownership'', (Camp Sherman, OR: Thoreau Institute, 2020), for a 
    review of case studies showing that auto ownership helps people out 
    of poverty better than free transit.
        RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR TOOMEY
                    FROM JOANNA M. PINKERTON

Q.1. During your testimony, you described how the Central Ohio 
Transit Authority (COTA) uses coding technology and advanced 
technology systems to assist with predictive maintenance for 
the agency's state of good repair improvements.
    When did COTA begin to utilize advanced technology systems 
for predictive maintenance?

A.1. COTA began a pilot of our Vehicle Intelligence Program in 
Spring 2021.

Q.2. How has advanced technology systems helped the lifecycle 
of COTA's transportation assets and infrastructure?

A.2. The current pilot runs the system on 10 vehicles and has 
prevented a minimum of 20 road calls so far. COTA has recently 
approved a contract to implement the Vehicle Intelligence 
Program to the rest of the fleet by end of the summer. We will 
have a dedicated team member who will consistently engage with 
the software. This team member will establish the parameters 
and monitor the alarms that help our vehicle maintenance team 
with true predictive maintenance.
    The goal of this system is to improve the reliability of 
the transit vehicles so that the full life cycle can be 
utilized and to reduce the number of road calls which can 
potentially disrupt service.

Q.3. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (49 U.S.C. 
5312(b)(4)) includes a new program-the Accelerated 
Implementation and Deployment of Advanced Digital Construction 
Management Systems-that directs the Secretary of Transportation 
to promote and document the application of advanced digital 
construction management systems, practices, performance, and 
benefits.
    Do you believe agencies like MARTA COTA may benefit from 
this program? If so, please explain why.

A.3. I understand that the use of advanced digital construction 
management systems has been underway for highway construction 
projects for some time, supported in part by the Federal 
Highway Administration's focus on digital construction under 
Every Day Counts 6. This provision at Section 5312 is new for 
the Federal transit program, so I would expect to see FTA 
implementation guidance soon.
    At COTA, we are innovators, always interested in new ways 
to advance projects more effectively. Digital modeling can 
optimize maintenance and asset management--which is a priority 
for all transit agencies.
                                ------                                


        RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR SINEMA
                    FROM JOANNA M. PINKERTON

Q.1. One way to grow an economy is to make the people that 
power it more productive. Could you share a bit from your 
perspective about the productivity gains for families, workers, 
and businesses that fast, safe, and effective transit 
authorized under our Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act 
will provide? Please utilize specific examples where 
appropriate and valuable.

A.1. First of all, I would like to thank you for your strong 
leadership--and bipartisan work with Senator Portman--in 
developing the IIJA legislation. The value of the 
infrastructure investment under the IIJA to Central Ohio cannot 
be overstated.
    COTA's LinkUS initiative exemplifies our belief in the 
power of high-frequency transit routes as a catalyst for smart 
development. In turn, the value of developing housing, 
businesses and other amenities along high-frequency transit 
routes comes from the improved accessibility it provides 
residents, customers at businesses along the route, and 
employees throughout the region who will benefit from safe and 
reliable commutes.
    Intel's plans for an initial investment of more than $20 
billion to construct two new chip factories in Licking County, 
Ohio, will transform this mostly rural county, requiring 
considerable investment in the surrounding infrastructure to 
realize the full promise of this project. For projects of this 
magnitude, Federal support in the form of IIJA funding is 
essential. Transit will likely play an important role in the 
commutes of many of the 3,000 Intel employees that will work in 
the first two factories.
                                ------                                


        RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR TOOMEY
                     FROM COLLIE GREENWOOD

Q.1. Has the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority 
(MARTA) utilized any advanced technology systems to address 
construction, maintenance, or operations of its system? If so, 
please describe the tangible benefits that resulted from 
utilizing these systems.

A.1. MARTA has two new advanced technology systems to help 
streamline the construction, maintenance and operations of the 
transit system. First, MARTA is deploying Unifier as the 
project lifecycle management solution from Oracle Primavera for 
capital planning, project delivery, cost control, and 
facilities and real estate management. Primavera Unifier 
provides governance across all project phases, from planning 
and building to operations and maintenance. Unifier includes 
unlimited storage of portfolio, program and project documents.
    MARTA has an ambitious capital expansion program, and 
Unifier tracks a project from planning through operations and 
management. This reduces friction between project teams as they 
evolve and allows us to work seamlessly with external project 
team members. Currently, Unifier interfaces with our Oracle 
Financial System which enables us to quickly and efficiently 
develop a More MARTA monthly report for our funding 
jurisdictions.
    MARTA has also recently deployed Bluebeam to review plans 
and help manage our as-built construction documents. Bluebeam 
is a technical tool that streamlines the ability to mark-up PDF 
documents both technically and administratively. Bluebeam 
reduces the process of Project ``redlines'' on hard copies by 
over 50%, saving on average three days per submittal throughout 
the life of a project. Our Station Rehabilitation Program has 
been able to document QA/QC procedures more efficiently with 
multiple stakeholders, consultants and contractors which 
reduces time spent and more importantly, risk.

Q.2. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (49 U.S.C. 
5312(b)(4)) includes a new program-the Accelerated 
Implementation and Deployment of Advanced Digital Construction 
Management Systems-that directs the Secretary of Transportation 
to promote and document the application of advanced digital 
construction management systems, practices, performance, and 
benefits.
    Do you believe agencies like MARTA may benefit from this 
program? If so, please explain why.
A.2. Even if MARTA never applies for a grant under this new 
program, the market penetration of these new products across 
the industry will benefit MARTA as staff and consultants gain 
command over of these tools to benefit transit construction 
management systems across the U.S.
                                ------                                


        RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR SINEMA
                     FROM COLLIE GREENWOOD

Q.1. One way to grow an economy is to make the people that 
power it more productive. Could you share a bit from your 
perspective about the productivity gains for families, workers, 
and businesses that fast, safe, and effective transit 
authorized under our Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act 
will provide? Please utilize specific examples where 
appropriate and valuable.
A.1. I began my career in transit as a bus operator, so I've 
seen personally how customers are impacted by the level of 
transit service. One of the first initiatives I worked on when 
I arrived at MARTA was a series of improvements to bus 
amenities and a focus on bus service enhancement and expansion. 
Bus is the backbone of public transit and bus service, 
particularly bus rapid transit, has the potential to be 
transformative for a community. MARTA's first project to enter 
the Capital Investment Grant Program in two decades, the 
Clayton Southlake Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project, is an 
upgrade of one of MARTA's busiest bus routes, serving the 
southern portion of our service area. It is projected that the 
project will save a transit rider 19 minutes on the length of 
the trip, from College Park Station to Southlake Mall. 
Additionally, the FTA recently awarded MARTA a $1 million 
Transit-Oriented Development Corridor Planning Grant to analyze 
and develop a potential project list of community developments 
at and around those proposed BRT stations in order to amplify 
the positive benefits of transit investments in the area. The 
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will amplify existing 
programs and create new ones that will improve efficiency and 
productivity, and help more destinations be in reach for metro 
Atlanta transit riders.
                                ------                                


        RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR SINEMA
                        FROM GREG REGAN

Q.1. One way to grow an economy is to make the people that 
power it more productive. Could you share a bit from your 
perspective about the productivity gains for families, workers, 
and businesses that fast, safe, and effective transit 
authorized under our Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act 
will provide? Please utilize specific examples where 
appropriate and valuable.
A.1. Response not received in time for publication.