By Michael Hill
Correspondent
Ridgewood Mayor Paul Aronsohn says the nation’s funding of mass transit is like patching potholes after a rough winter instead of committing to repaving the whole road.
“This is something that sometimes takes years. You need to step back and be willing to make the investments. Too often, I think, elected officials look to the next election cycle and we have to look beyond that. We have to step back and really take a big view of sort of the future and it takes a commitment,” Aronsohn said.
Mayor Aronsohn supports Sen. Bob Menendez’s approach to not just spending on transportation but investing in it with a bill to dedicate $115 billion over six years.
“Also, creating a six-year timeline will provide transit agencies with the certainty they need to build big projects. There’s no way — no way — that we’re going to build new Hudson River tunnels or to replace the Portal Bridge while facing the threat of transit programs lapsing or the highway trust fund becoming insolvent every few months,” Menendez said.
Leaders of several transit unions surrounded the senator, calling for an end to poor funding of public transportation.
“Across this country, transit ridership is higher than it’s been in decades yet transit systems are still cutting service and raising fares as we regretfully saw happen this past Wednesday at NJ Transit. It’s because they don’t have enough money to run their service but it’s also because we have a lot of elected officials that don’t care about mass transit,” said Amalgamated Transit Union New Jersey Chairman Ray Greaves.
While Congress sees the need to better fund transit systems, it doesn’t agree on how to reach that destination. House Republicans don’t like the idea of taxing the $2 trillion in profits American companies keep overseas.
“A lot of people say a lot of things about ‘I am not going to do X, Y or Z’ and unless you test the proposition you’ll never know,” Menendez said.
One of the options on the table is raising the gasoline tax. The senator talked about it, but does he support it?
“There is a fixation about the gas tax when there are a series of other revenue sources, non gas tax, that can be considered as well,” Menendez said.
The senator says Congress and the White House can’t cut enough from the federal budget to fund the nation’s transit system needs, needs that border on embarrassment.
Menendez recalled subcommittee testimony of the Port Authority looking for a PATH train part after Sandy and having to get it from the Chicago transit system because the part is no longer made. It was called the Craigslist approach.
“While Craigslist may be a nice way to sell your old furniture, I think we can do far better for America’s infrastructure in this 21st century,” Menendez said.
The nation’s highway trust fund runs empty in two weeks.