Happy Earth Day

It's true every day of the year, but especially on Earth Day ... if you want to help reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, one of the best things you can do is get out of your car and onto public transportation. This is one of the main reasons why I take the commuter rail.

In 2008, Americans took 10.7 billion trips on public transportation, the highest level of ridership in over 50 years, according to the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). This represents a 4.0 percent increase over the number of trips taken in 2007 on public transportation, while at the same time, vehicle miles traveled on our nation’s roads declined by 3.6 percent in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

“Even as gas prices fell for the second half of the year and hundreds of thousands of people lost jobs, more and more people chose to ride public transportation throughout the country,” said APTA president William W. Millar. “Given our current economic condition, people are looking for ways to save money and taking public transportation offers a substantial savings of more than $8,000 a year. That’s quite a savings.”

It is cheaper to ride the rails and when the commutes are on time, it's quite the relaxing ride. The Worcester/Framingham commutes (generally the p508 or p512 in the morning and either the p527 or p 529) have been pretty consistent as of late. Today's commute on the p508 was ahead of schedule, we arrived at South Station at 8:21 AM.

In other news, the MBTA plans to cut expenses by laying off non-union workers and transit police and freezing wages. The moves will save $4.5 million to $6 million per year, but will probably not be enough to prevent the agency's budget deficit for the coming year from going even higher than the previous projection of $160 million, MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas said.

It's a start, but the T needs to do more.

Federal Highway Fund

Train Rider was off today.

It is nice to have a holiday, but short weeks tend to be brutally long for me. They go by in a flash, but I seem to have so much work to do - five days moved into four. I love that the days go by fast, but wow!!

The New York Times reported today that the Federal High Fund is about to run out of money. This could cause road and bridge construction projects around the country to be halted. More of the same. No money causes alarms at the state level.

Progressive Railroading reported that the MBTA was not alone in the increase in the number of monthly passengers. The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority carried more than 14 million passengers on its rail, bus and paratransit services, while the Chicago Transit Authority saw a 9.5% year-over-year gain in August 2008.

Sierra Club Calls for Rhode Island Transportation Overhaul

Today's Providence Business News published an interesting article about the Sierra Club of Rhode Island calling for the state of Rhode Island to increase their investment in public transportation.

“Rhode Island must aggressively commit to long-term transit investment, starting now,” said the report prepared by the Sierra Club’s Rhode Island Chapter. “Not only in maintenance and enhancement of the current system, but also towards expansion – including into other modes, such as light commuter rail, bus rapid transit (buses operated like in-city rail, with limited fixed stops along dedicated lanes) and auxiliary services such as subsidized commuter vanpools.”

The article noted that over the last five years public transit ridership in Rhode Island has increased at a rate of about 10% per year. I know, first hand, that a number of my coworkers at one of my former employers gradually moved from driving to work to taking RIPTA. This was due to the first wave of gas increases in 2004. Commuting by bus saved them money on gas and parking. Parking in downtown Providence, surprisingly, costs a small fortune (compared to other similar mid-sized cities).

Similar to other states, expanding and improving RIPTA has been stalled due to funding issues. RIPTA receives 7.25 cents for every gallon of gasoline sold at retail in RI.

“When the cost of gas goes up, RIPTA does not get any more money as a result of the increase in price,” the report said. “In fact, rising gas costs typically reduce gas sales. So when people drive less, RIPTA loses the extra money needed to pick up the slack – while at the same time paying more itself for fuel.”

Instead, the report suggested, the gasoline tax should be indexed to inflation or the price of fuel and tolls should be added to state highways, with a portion of the revenue diverted to RIPTA. It also listed other possible sources of funding, including employer taxes; parking excises; parking taxes; sales taxes; motor vehicle fees; real-estate transaction and subdivision taxes; and private sponsorship.

RIPTA’s capital funding should also be ramped up, using tax-increment financing (TIF), developer support and federal dollars, the report suggested.

Rhode Island's population growth has really spread out over the past 10 to 15 years. If you are ever in South County take note of the carpool lots scattered off of the state highways. This is a good thing, as RI's traffic congestion has increased.