Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Boston, San Francisco, Washington DC and Philadelphia transit agencies carry most transit riders in the country — more than three billion every year. This is one of the best ways we build our wealth, reduce our transportation costs, reduce our reliance on foreign oil and reduce our climate-changing pollutants.
And these transit networks need $50 billion to get to a state of good repair.
What does this mean? It means that federal taxpayers ought to come up with $50 billion over the next four or five years in a stimulus program for transit to get tens of thousands of people to work improving transit.
And it also means that there ought to be a coalition of agencies, advocates and riders from those seven cities to push for an investment in our economic future.
President Barack Obama’s New Foundation to deliver economic prosperity (fueled not by asset bubbles but by solid, sustainable infrastructure investments) will rely on modern transit. We need to help make the public case for a $50 billion invest in these seven agencies — in addition to all of the other investments in transit that generate positive economic returns — for a more prosperous, sustainable economy that taxpayers will enjoy.
Look for news articles over the next few days on this topic, and more importantly, look to see who will show public leadership to build the case for a $50 billion investment into the nation’s most important transit networks.
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