Philadelphia, PA—For 15 years the Pennsylvania General
Assembly couldn’t pass a transportation bill to fund improvements and upgrades
to the state’s highway and mass transit networks. But last month, Republican
Governor Tom Corbett signed a $2.3 billion transportation bill and said barely
a spot in the state would not a see an improvement because of the legislation.
According to the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce
and the Philadelphia Building Trades, a broad coalition of business and labor
groups working together for three years helped finally persuade the General
Assembly to pass the new transportation bill.
Liz Ferry, Vice President for Communications with the
chamber of commerce, said the chamber worked tirelessly with members of the
Keystone Transportation Funding Coalition, made up of members of the
construction industry, public transit agencies and labor organizations, to
ensure the bill passed.
“We worked very hard for this funding measure, the first one
in 15 years, because we view it as terribly important to economic growth in the
Commonwealth,” said Ferry.
Funding for the new bill will come from an increase in the
gas tax (about 28 cents a gallon based on 2013 prices) and increased vehicle
registration, driver’s license and moving violation fees phased in over five
years. The bulk of the money—$1.65 billion— will go towards highway and bridge
repairs, while $475 million will go to the state’s two main mass transit
systems—the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) serving
the Philadelphia area and the Allegheny Port Authority serving the Pittsburgh
area.
Andrew Busch, a spokesman for SEPTA, said the transit agency
views the new funding mechanism as transformational.
“The new funding will allow us to make critical investments
to keep the core of our system running and replace aging infrastructure such as
100-year old railroad bridges and power substations that date back to the
1930s,” said Busch.
SEPTA’s ridership, like many other mass transit systems in
major urban areas around the country, is growing; the agency now carries about
1 million riders per weekday. To keep the rail system running safely and
efficiently, SEPTA has pursued federal grants, such as Transportation
Investment Generating Economic Recovery grants on an annual basis.
But the new funding mechanism provides SEPTA with a multi-year
funding stream for the next five years, which Busch says makes the agency
optimistic about formulating a new five-year capital plan that will allow the
agency to modernize passenger stations, replace aging equipment and immediately
start work on old infrastructure.
The new transportation bill is good news for Philadelphia
commuters because if the funding didn’t come through, SEPTA had plans on
significantly scaling back service. Busch noted that the agency had prepared a
doomsday budget and a service realignment plan in September that would have
eliminated 9 out of 13 regional rail lines, truncated service on two others and
forced the agency to retire its trolley cars and replace them with buses.
“We had to be realistic about the future. That would have
been the unfortunate reality, but luckily it didn’t come to pass,” Busch said.
Pat Gillespie, business manager for the Philadelphia
Building and Construction Trades Council, said the $2.3 billion transportation
bill would bring much needed work to his members fixing the state’s
structurally deficient roads and bridges and repairing and upgrading mass
transit systems.
Even with a formidable coalition of business groups, labor
organizations and mass transit advocates working together to persuade the
state’s General Assembly to pass the first transportation bill in 15 years,
concessions were still necessary.
According to Gillespie, the building trades in Philadelphia
and the laborers union in Pittsburgh agreed to an increase in prevailing wage requirements
on transportation projects from $25,000 to $100,000.
“For us that was a pretty draconian thing to do, but we
figured better to do that and live and fight another day than no transportation
bill at all,” said Gillespie.
He noted that some building trades’ locals throughout the
state were unhappy with the decision, but that the Philadelphia building trades
and the Pittsburgh-area laborers agreed to the concessions because another year
without transportation funding in a still fragile economic recovery was
unacceptable.
“The art of negotiations is that each side gives a little
for the greater good. No one likes to focus on that, but we now have a
significant budget that’ll be able to improve our mass transit systems and
improve the conditions of Pennsylvania’s bridges and highways,” Gillespie said.
Source: Labor
Press
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