Rumbling Toward Ruin

America's mass transit is a shambles, and no help is in sight

Nearly 30 million people ride subways, buses, trolleys or commuter trains every weekday in the U.S. Yet everywhere mass transit is either stalling or rumbling inexorably toward ruin. Items:

> In Philadelphia last week, a bumper-to-bumper procession of cars, sometimes ten miles long, inched into the city while subways, buses and trolleys stood idle, sidelined by a strike of 5,000 transit workers, the fourth such in six years. Thousands of commuters from the city's outskirts tried to get downtown via Conrail, but that overtaxed railroad line had to leave hundreds stranded on platforms. Some of the 400,000 Philadelphians who rely on public transit took to bicycles to get to work. The strike, sparked by union protests over the hiring of part-time help and a decision to require maintenance workers to pass proficiency tests, is costing the city $3 million a day in business and keeping 15% of schoolchildren at home.

> In Birmingham, the bus system has been shut down for more than three weeks because of insufficient funding. Some 30,000 riders have been affected, and the school system has signed a contract with the Yellow Cab Co. to provide transportation until the end of the school year. The only proposed solution to the shutdown: nearly halving the 43 routes to 22 and operating only from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., weekdays, a 65% cutback in daily service.

> In Chicago, the nation's second largest transit system (1 million subway, el and bus passengers a day) is going flat broke while the state legislature bickers over funding. Businesses and commuters are already reserving hotel rooms, forming car pools and making other contingency plans for a shutdown that could come as early as this week.

> Boston, which closed down its entire transit system for 26 hours last December, has just enough money to operate its subways and buses (300,000 riders) through the fall. City officials have already been forced to lay off 100 of its 6,700 transit workers, and only narrowly averted a walkout last week by postponing the layoffs of an additional 220 employees.

> In New York, whose transit system is the nation's largest (5 million daily users) and may also be its worst, already beleaguered straphangers were horrified to read headlines predicting a $1.55 fare by the summer of 1983 (vs. 600 today and 300 in 1970) in return for steadily deteriorating service in graffiti-sprayed cars.

How did the U.S. transport itself into this mess? Three groups contributed mightily: pusillanimous politicians who refused to risk their constituents' wrath by asking for fare increases when they were unquestionably essential; inept managers who, despite in many cases handsome salaries and generous expense accounts, proved incapable of managing; and inflexible unions that pushed labor costs sky-high (they account for 77% of Chicago's operating expenses).

Aggravating the situation were a number of long-term trends. In the 1950s, transit ridership declined precipitously (see chart). Americans fell in love with the automobile, honeymooned on new highways and married into the suburbs. Subways and buses were not part of the post-World War II American dream. When the energy crisis hit in 1973, the country found that its railroad beds had deteriorated and its subways were falling apart. The Federal Government called for more efficient public transit and urged private companies to design a better bus (see box). Mass transit was going to be the methadone that would help America withdraw from its addiction to foreign oil. It would unclog crowded highways and improve the quality of air. Besides, it was an economic necessity: people needed a reliable means of getting to work without being exhausted in the process; businesses needed a way to get customers downtown.

Public transportation is in hot demand again, but today no one wants to pick up the tab. A decade ago, to lure people back to mass transit, city and state officials made the mistake of holding fares to unrealistically low levels. From 1970 to 1975, while inflation was rising nearly 40%, fares were not increased at all in many cities; in some, they actually decreased. Mass transit was the closest thing to a free ride.

As labor and energy costs continued to shoot up, fares generally were paying only about half the operating costs. Increased ridership actually exacerbated the problem: rush-hour crowds require heavier overhead, but do not generate enough revenue to cover all off-hour operations. A pattern emerged in which budget deficits were picked up by the Federal Government or, more often, the states. The politics of mass transit sharpened old rivalries: downstate vs. upstate, rural vs. urban.

Like many U.S. voters, Ronald Reagan does not see urban mass transit as a high national priority. Says the President: "There is no reason for someone in Sioux Falls to pay federal taxes so that someone in Los Angeles can get to work on time by public transportation." Federal grants for major construction projects in 1981 will total $3.3 billion; operating subsidies, $1 billion. The Reagan Administration would like to limit, if not eliminate, this aid. High on the Reagan hit list is funding for any new mass transit projects (usually 80% federal, 20% state), throwing a wrench into planning in Los Angeles and Houston. Construction will proceed on projects already under way--subways in Atlanta and Baltimore, an elevated line in Miami. But some planned extensions are in jeopardy, and transit officials fear that many existing systems will be in trouble without federal help.

Such fears could prove self-fulfilling. Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis has indicated that he also favors slowly eliminating operating subsidies in order to force systems to become cost-effective. Says he: "We do not plan simply to walk away from the transit systems, because we realize that to do so would be to shut down most of them."

Although the average city gets only 13% of its operating budget from Washington, cutbacks are bound to mean rising transit fares, reduced services and greater demand for local and state subsidies. Such cutbacks will hurt small cities more than large ones. New York derives less than 10% of its operating expenses from federal subsidies, but Corpus Christi gets 69%, Grand Rapids 44% and Peoria 35%. Lewis contends that rehabilitating existing systems will be a top priority. Says he: "We're trying to emphasize large cities, older cities over new systems."

Nowhere does a system need rehabilitation more than New York City. Its subways are a filthy, Dantesque netherworld, plagued not merely by delays (one train in every ten is late) but by violent crime (18 murders, 12,000 muggings, robberies and other felonies in the past year). The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) carries one of every six people using public transit in the entire nation. The city cannot function without it. During a ten-day strike last spring, New York firms lost about $100 million in sales each workday.

After the 1980 strike, the MTA, already running $400 million in the red, raised the fare from 50-c- to 60-c-. Even without a cutback in federal funding, the price of a token could rise to $ 1 by summer. One survey shows that 50% of New York's riders would willingly pay the dollar if it would mean safer, more efficient service. But the higher fare is unlikely to bring any such improvements. Although the massive system would cost $55 billion to replace, only $300 million a year is being spent on rehabilitation and improvement, $700 million short of what experts say is needed. The Reagan focus on capital improvements may come just in time. Although the accepted life span of a subway car is 35 years, 567 of the MTA'S 8,500 cars are more than 30 years old. About a quarter of them are out of service at any given time for maintenance. Soon after shiny new cars were introduced, they had to be withdrawn when they developed cracks in their undercarriages. Admits MTA Member Steven Berger: "The only way at this point to fix things is to shut down the system for a week and call in a faith healer."

To make matters still worse, New York has been facing a congressional mandate to equip subway stations and buses for the handicapped. The MTA estimates that this would cost $1.4 billion over the next 30 years, plus $100 million a year in operating funds. The Reagan Administration may relent and allow New York to provide special but separate facilities for the handicapped.

President Reagan, however, has reaffirmed support for Manhattan's Westway, a six-lane superhighway slated to run for 4.6 miles along the Hudson River. The highway, with an estimated price tag of $1.7 billion, would receive 90% of its funding from the Federal Government. New York City Mayor Edward Koch has blocked the project in an effort to get parallel funds from Albany for mass transit improvements or to get Governor Hugh Carey to ask Washington to trade in highway funds for transit money.

In Boston, the finance fight is becoming another Battle of Bunker Hill. Until citizens passed the tax-cutting Proposition 2 1/2 in November, the state legislature regularly bailed out the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (META), which serves 79 communities. The 1981 MBTA budget was set at $6 million below the 1980 budget of $340 million, and already the system has exceeded its monthly allocations by nearly $2.4 million. At this rate, the MBTA will be broke by the fall.

Last week MBTA Director Barry Locke laid off 45 executives and 100 employees (not including 200 "door guards," who pull down as much as $33,000 a year for making sure that automatically operated doors open and close). Another 250 MBTA personnel are slated to be laid off April 3. Fares were doubled from a ridiculously low 25-c- to 50-c- last June. Locke had planned to eliminate Sunday service and school bus transportation but limited the cuts in the face of protests. Two subway stations have been shut for a saving of $294,000, and more stations are expected to be closed on weekends. But even those cuts will not be enough to keep the system solvent.

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) also has severe money problems. Chicago's bus drivers and motormen are the highest paid in the nation: $24,689 after 42 months. The CTA raised fares from 60-c- to 80-c- this January and promptly lost 6% of its riders. During the past two years the Federal Government has sent $143 million to help underwrite expenses, but such grants are bound to be cut. The projected deficit for 1981: $150 million.

Not all the crises involve antiquated subway systems. The prototype of modern transit, the San Francisco region's $1.7 billion, 71-mile Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has had problems as complex as its technology. Says American Public Transit Association Spokesman Al Engelken: "We were going to the moon in the '60s, and we figured we could just slap space-age technology into the subways. But what works on the moon doesn't always work in an urban environment." Indeed, BART's fully automated "train control system" was too finely tuned to withstand daily transit pressures and constantly broke down.

From the day it opened in 1972, BART never attracted enough passengers to pay its way. After a fire broke out in its high-technology San Francisco-Oakland tube beneath the bay in 1979, killing one and hospitalizing 40, ridership plummeted from 150,000 a day to 110,000. By 1979 losses were more than $6 million a year. A 1980 fare increase (from 30-c- to 50-c-) sent another 8% of the riders scurrying elsewhere for transportation. By extending its hours from 8 p.m. to midnight, improving maintenance and getting trains to run pretty much on time, however, BART has now brought ridership up to 165,000 people.

New systems have benefited from BART'S mistakes. The year-old San Fran cisco subway, which runs about 30 miles and cost only $333 million, shares tunnels with BART and daily transports 100,000 people without hitches. In Washington, D.C., the Metro has been a mass transit showcase. Stations with vaulted ceilings resemble underground cathedrals. Says Engelken: "It's accident-free, clean, safe and on time." But the system cost $71.3 million a mile (vs. BART's $22.5 million), and all of it was built at federal expense.

So far, 37 of Metro's planned 101 miles are finished, with work progressing rapidly on lines Unking affluent Maryland and Virginia suburbs to downtown. Nearly 300,000 people ride it every day. But the graduated fare, ranging from 50-c- to $2.05, would have to be more than doubled to make the system pay for itself. Losses for 1981 are estimated to be $131.5 million. While the Reagan Administration has promised at least another 40 miles of Metro, the routes that would run through Washington's poorer black neighborhoods remain a low priority.

The Metro may turn out to be the Rolls-Royce of American mass transit. Because of its high cost, transit planners question whether many cities have a dense enough population to deserve "heavy rail" or underground transit. The Department of Transportation rejected Houston's request for a $1 billion heavy rail line last year. Detroit too is in limbo over a proposed 15-mile light railway system Unking the city with its northern suburbs. Miami still gets funding for its $867 million, 21-mile elevated rail line, but its downtown "people mover" may fall victim to federal budget cuts.

The country's newest subway system, Atlanta's MARTA, opened its first twelve-mile segment in 1979 and is scheduled to operate a second segment from downtown to the new airport in 1985. The availabilty of federal funding will determine how much more of the $3 billon rapid-rail system gets built. In Baltimore, construction is half completed on an eight-mile rail line from downtown to the northwest suburbs, but the second leg, in an area where a 15-mile auto commute can take an hour, is in jeopardy. The projected cost of the undertaking: $958 million.

Even Los Angeles, land of the ubiquitous auto, has made what is proving to be an ill-timed move toward mass transit. With buses now moving 1.25 million riders a day, voters approved a .5% increase in the 6% sales tax last November to finance a metro rail system. One arm would have linked downtown Los Angeles' Union Station with North Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley, an 18-mile project costing $2 billion. Other plans called for a 2.9-mile downtown monorail "people mover" and two elevated systems along the Santa Ana Freeway corridor (17 miles) and the Harbor Freeway corridor (20 miles). With federal money drying up and Proposition 13 in effect, there is now little hope that such projects will be built.

One city in California is making do without federal funds by looking to the past. San Diego will resurrect its reliable old fixed-rail trolley system this summer. Using an existing railroad right-of-way, the city has upgraded the roadbed and laid new rails for a 16-mile run between downtown San Diego and the Mexican border. The cost: $5 million a mile, 7% of what the Washington Metro cost and 1.3% of what New York's Westway would cost. Featuring a $1 fare, the bright red "Tijuana Trolley" is expected to carry about 300,000 passengers a day. The funding comes from state gas taxes and the cars come from Germany.

Of course, trolley lines--even good ones--are hardly the answer to the nation's transit woes. And it is beyond dispute that, despite America's romance with the automobile, major U.S. cities --like major cities anywhere in the industrialized world--must have effective mass transit systems if they are to survive. The economics of OPEC and the hazards of air pollution leave no other choice. The question is not whether something should be done to make such systems work. The question is what should be done, and how urgently. --ByEllie McGrath. Reported by Robert Celine/New York andDavid S. Jackson/Chicago, with other U.S. bureaus

With reporting by Robert Celine/New York andDavid S. Jackson/Chicago, with other U.S. Bureaus

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