Need for transit funding remains
Shortly after helping lead an effort to kill highway tolls in Connecticut, a group of legislators gathered this week to ask for additional funding for what they said was a critical transit need in their districts.
In this case, they were rallying support to spend money on Metro-North’s Waterbury Line, which goes through the Naugatuck Valley in some of the most economically depressed communities in southwestern Connecticut. Investment in these towns, with acres of vacant land just waiting to be developed, in the form of increased train service and better, more reliable infrastructure is as close to a no-brainer as it gets.
But it wouldn’t come cheap. Trains cost money, and the state’s Special Transportation Fund is in need of an infusion.
The easy criticism here is to accuse them of hypocrisy. Transit improvements require funding, and tolls, whatever controversy they entailed, represent a viable means of raising necessary funds to pay for the better transit we all agree that we need. So how could these legislators cut off a means of raising funds and then go ahead and demand those funds anyway?
However satisfying that might seem, it doesn’t solve anything. Tolls failed for a lot of reasons, and Republican opposition was only a small part of it. Had Democrats been united there would have been no way to stop any form of highway tolls, either the winnowed-down trucks-only version or the expansive, 50-plus-gantries version floated last year by the Lamont administration.
With tolls dead, the need for transportation spending goes on.
According to one lawmaker, the state should pursue lowcost financing from the federal Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program, which has high upfront costs that can dissuade policymakers from considering it as an option. Still, choices today are fewer than they were a month ago, and nothing should be taken off the table.
When it comes to mass transit, the virtues of development in the neighborhood of train stops are well-documented. It’s a strategy that can help get people out of their cars, shorten commutes and grow local economies. Communities should pursue housing development around train stops, including affordable housing, and the governor has floated the idea of tying transit dollars to the construction of such homes, though he hasn’t followed through on the idea.
In the meantime, the need for spending on highways and bridges is just as severe. The state has a responsibility to keep its infrastructure in a state of good repair, which is necessary before improvements can be contemplated, but even that much remains out of our grasp. The money isn’t there.
During the course of the toll debate, Republicans floated a funding proposal that would require taking money from the state’ rainy-day fund and, though a complicated series of transactions involving pension funds, using the money to secure funding for transportation. It didn’t make much sense, but it did implicitly grant the idea that major spending on transportation is necessary for the state’s economic future. On that much, all sides agree.
What hasn’t changed is the disagreement on how to raise those funds. Even with tolls dead, they continue to dominate the goings-on at the state Legislature.