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Congress Is Toying With the Future of Mass Transit

On Friday the House Ways and Means Committee passed a vote that would fundamentally reverse 30 years of federal public transit funding, and not in a good way. The vote approved a plan to eliminate the transit account of the Highway Trust Fund. The trust fund pays for road construction largely with money collected through the federal gas tax. Since the early 1980s, some of that tax has gone toward the payment of mass transit projects — the transit account presently receives 2.86 cents of the 18.4-cent federal gas tax — but the new plan would keep all that money invested in roads.