Shifting Gears in Urban Transportation

...So far eight cities have expressed an interest if the Federal government will cover the cost...

...During the Ford Administration, for instance, Detroit was promised $600 million for what was called "fixed rail" transit?presumably, a subway...

...At the moment, municipalities can use proposed Interstate Highway money for transit projects—but Washington will finance 90 per cent of the highway and only 80 per cent of the transit spending...

...One area where this may be accomplished is in transferring funds from highway allocations...

...Brock Adams presumably will keep the public informed of what transpires...

...He cited the skyrocketing capital and operating costs and the growing public skepticism about heavy-rail transit...

...in a word, oil...

...The fare in peak hours will be 30 cents...

...The seriousness with which the issue is being taken on Capital Hill is demonstrated by the fact that Representative James Howard (D.-N.J...

...Adams would like to experiment with free transit during rush hours as well...

...His department's Urban Mass Transportation Administration (umta) is already funding subway construction in the District of Columbia, Atlanta and Baltimore...

...Before the postwar push, most American cities boasted rail or trolley systems...

...Page continued, "There is a limited amount of money available in Washington, Lansing and Detroit for public transit, especially rail rapid transit...

...Adams is further requesting greater leeway within existing transit categories to make money flow more easily for specific tasks, like replacing and maintaining subway cars, buses or other vehicles...

...At the beginning of his Washington speech, he said, "In the next decade, my department alone will spend $150 billion or so of the taxpayers' money...

...They have a right to know what our priorities are...

...Because the high and steadily increasing cost of underground mass transit faces stiff resistance in Congress, however, it has come to be looked upon as the option of last resort...

...Significantly, when Page later met with state and local representatives, it was agreed that of five transit plans to be submitted, only one would be for a subway—of the others, two will involve rail, the third all buses, and the fourth will focus essentially on rehabilitation...

...When the line folded in 1959, they had to resort to a highway drive of an hour...

...The effect of transit fare practices on the use of public transportation is a subject that also interests Adams...

...In a major policy address before Washington's National Press Club in early February, Transportation Secretary Brock Adams pointed out that half our petroleum is imported (contributing heavily to last year's $26.8 billion U.S...

...Adams wants the figure for both to be 90 per cent, to prevent the basing of local decisions simply on the availability of the most Federal dollars...

...metropolis, at one time had 1,000 miles of interurban rail lines...

...and after 6 p.m...

...And an informed public could help swing the pendulum away from the automobile toward mass transit...

...States of the Union...

...At present, umta is pushing less expensive light rail or streetcar systems (many transportation planners prefer the jazzier term "people movers...

...Adams and the new umta head, Richard Page, have reaffirmed their intent to deliver that amount—and more, if the city can justify a larger sum...

...We all know the automobile is choking our cities," he said in his Washington speech...

...chairman of Public Works' surface transportation subcommittee, is planning to meet with Adams in the Secretary's office every morning for the next six weeks...

...on weekdays and Saturdays, and all day Sunday...

...Among experts trying to cope with the issue in the capital and elsewhere, the automobile is falling out of favor, and there is a renewed emphasis on systems that served us well decades ago...

...Congressional hearings held in 1973 explored the role General Motors had played in the purchase of many trolley and rail lines that were subsequently converted to bus lines...

...Los Angeles, today's freeway Helen Leavttt, a past contributor, is a Washington-based freelance writer...

...That is the way Congress has traditionally wanted it...

...until the late '40s, Dallas-Fort Worth had a 254-mile interurban system that reached speeds of up to 90 miles per hour...

...Adams is seeking to persuade the House and Senate Public Works Committees—the bodies likely to have the greatest impact on the final shape of the Highway Act—to change the way they look at transportation spending...

...In addition, Adams and his colleagues have been promoting the idea of public transit as the cornerstone of new downtown development, planned in concert with office buildings and shopping malls...

...But when Page addressed the motor capital's regional transit planning organization last October, he quoted a Detroit Free Press editorial stating that the agency should decide "not what it thinks the Federal government will pay for right now, but what it thinks the area will need...

...Expanding an approach that is working successfully in some places, umta this month is launching a one-year, limited free-fare program in Trenton, New Jersey, designed to attract off-peak hour auto drivers...

...most planners fear the demand for such service would overwhelm their limited capital equipment...

...And he is urging a separate schedule of funding for major capital investments, such as subway systems...

...Boston and San Francisco, in fact, have begun receiving initial deliveries on a joint order of 275 streetcars...

...The main reason for the switch is...

...Adams is determined to provide more Americans with an alternative to their cars...

...No one is suggesting a return to the horse-drawn carriage, but everybody seems to be talking about trolleys, commuter railroads, subways, and improved bus service...

...He will have to penetrate the special interests that have created this lopsided situation in the first place, and will find this hardest to do in the House, where members have always been more supportive of the highway cause...

...But Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Chicago never did scuttle their streetcar lines entirely and are extending them today...

...In fiscal 1979 highway construction and maintenance will be supported by $8.3 billion from the Highway Trust Fund (p\us more than $750 million in Federal revenue sharing money), compared to urban transit's $2.8 billion and Am-trak's $660 million...

...Bus riders will be gratis from 10 a.m.-2 p.m...

...Yet despite the new approaches to transit and its funding—and despite the energy crisis—the annual Federal budget for ground transportation still favors highways by 3:1...

...The people have the right to know what motivates us when we spend that kind of money...

...The other half of our oil supply goes, in approximately equal proportion, to home and commercial heating, industry, and petroleum byproducts...

...Conrail's purchase and reorganization of the entire 30,000-mile Northeast Rail System, by contrast, cost $2 billion...

...The Secretary is therefore trying to persuade Congress to take a more flexible stand on public transportation funding...

...trade deficit), and precisely this amount is burned up in the form of gasoline by autos (70 per cent), jets (18 per cent) and trucks (12 per cent...

...The current thinking in the Department of Transportation—as embodied in the 1978 Highway Act, due to come before Congress in the next few months—represents an abrupt change from the philosophy of the previous secretary, William T. Coleman Jr., who said, "the automobile is and will continue to be the most universally accepted form of transportation in America...

...Adams insists: "We are not dominated by existing corporations that want to maintain the status quo...

...In his speech to the Press Club, Adams noted that Boston's trolleys efficiently carried riders downtown when the recent snowstorms prompted Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis to ban all auto traffic into the city...

...State and local governments, meanwhile, according to Federal Highway Commission estimates, will pour $33.5 billion of their own into non-Interstate roads in 1978...

...Washington, D.C., tore up its 38-mile trolley network in 1962...

...Commuters could once take a Chicago, Aurora & Elgin train in suburban Glen Ellyn and reach downtown Chicago in 20 minutes...

...When New York City sends up a cloud of exhaust fumes, people cough in Connecticut...

...it is now constructing a 64-mile subway at a cost of $5 billion...

...Coleman's position echoed the highway-auto-truck interests that shifted into high gear after World War II, when car manufacturers returned to domestic production and began stressing the need for highway construction...

...The change, officials say, would shift $3.2 billion to public transportation by 1979...