Tell the Senate: Fund Public Transit!

The Senate is moving quickly on an $80 billion jobs bill...but the draft they're considering has not a single dollar for critical transit operating assistance grants - which in many places is the only thing keeping cash-strapped transit agencies from cancelling bus routes and laying off thousands of employees.

We already know that investments in public transportation produce twice the jobs that highway projects do. So if we are serious about creating and saving jobs, our senators need to insist on investing more in public transportation.

If the Senate wastes this opportunity, millions of people will be stranded at the station. And in difficult times like these, the economy suffers even more.

Don't let your senators squander this opportunity to make it right - send them a letter and demand that they fund transit operating assistance and other key transportation proposals!

May 22, 2013

Subject:

Dear Senator,

I am writing you with an urgent request to include strong support for public transportation options in our community, and similar communities across the country, in the forthcoming jobs bill. I was concerned to learn than the Senate jobs bill includes no such funding right now.

As you know, this horrible recession has taken a brutal toll on funding for essential services of all kinds, and people like me, who rely on public transportation, have been hit especially hard. We need more service - not less - to get to jobs in an affordable, dependable way. Yet transit agencies are being forced to cut service, eliminate jobs and put people like at risk of losing jobs we may no longer be able to get to.

You can help by insisting that the jobs bill include, first, emergency support for public transportation options. Congress helped a little in the last stimulus by allowing transit agencies to use a small share of their federal capital funds for operating expenses, but today they need access to all the resources they can get. This will save jobs - transit workers’ and those of people like me - and help keep this lifeblood of local economies healthy.

But we also need to expand rail and bus service. Any jobs measure that funds infrastructure should be strongly focused on this goal. Recent studies of the previous stimulus have shown that transit projects created more jobs, faster than other infrastructure investments. A projection by the Economic Policy Institute showed that an investment of $35 billion in expanding transit and repairing roads, bridges and rail could create nearly a half million jobs in a hurry.

Please share this evidence and the voices of people in our communities with your Senate colleagues, and support public transportation with emergency assistance to keep our lifelines to work operating, and with investments to build the service we so desperately need.

Sincerely,

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