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public transportation will only end up costing average Americans more in higher rail and bus fares, local tax hikes, and wasted hours in traffic jams spent sucking up car exhaust.
Independent experts like Elmer Johnson, former executive vice-president of General Motors, say that our nation is losing at least $100 billion a year from traffic congestion. “The one policy we haven’t tried to reduce that,” Mr. Johnson notes, “is less auto use.” To do that, we need alternatives like buses and commuter rail; that is the only way to make our highways function more efficiently, and to cut economic waste and air pollution.
• The House leadership’s plan would reduce the federal share of capital assistance for public transportation projects from 80 percent to 50 percent requiring state and local governments to pick up the rest. Highway projects, however, would still receive the full 80 percent of their funding from federal sources. Federal matching funds to Washington METRO, for example, could fall by 46 percent in one year, reducing service reliability and quality.
• The House leadership’s plan
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