Obama’s plan to de-fund public transit through “safety” oversight

The Obama Administration released its proposed plan for Federal take-over of transit safety. As predicted, the bill would create vast new Federal bureaucracies, with broad power to implement safety regulation on local transit operators.

While the administration is vague on how to pay for their “solution-in-search-of-a-problem” program, the inescapble conclusion is that funding would come out of existing FTA programs. Money that might have been spent on expanded transit service will instead pay for fairly useless “safety” programs and other gimmicks.

Even if one accepts the premise that US public transit operation is “unsafe”, consider the following: the alternative to public transit is the automobile. The automobile is at least two orders magnitude more dangerous than the bus or train. The inevitable result of this “safety” program will be less transit service, and more travelers having no choice but to revert to automobile use. Thus, even if the safety program (on paper) reduces transit fatalities, the transportation system as a whole will be considerably less safe.