The Evolution of Federal Transit Policy

Abstract

The first major piece of national transit legislation was enacted in 1964. By 1969 the Urban Mass Transportation Administration was the subject of a highly critical analysis by staff investigators for a Congressional Appropriations Committee, and in the early 1970s industry analysts sharply critiqued the rationality of urban transit policy in general. In 1981 the Comptroller General of the U.S. reported to Congress that the demand for transit subsidies was approaching crisis proportions. The U.S. government has come to play a greater role in the transit industry than do most European counterparts, provides more passenger subsidy per ride than any other country, and, though transit is everywhere subsidized, the U.S. federal government subsidizes a greater share of industry costs than most other national governments. This article examines the circumstances under which this particular industry-government relationship developed. As part of this industrial policy discussion, the article also looks at the culture of discourse that was present during the early intervention period and that has been characteristic of the transit policy community since that time.