In 1986, then Senator William Proxmire (Dem-Wisconsin) presented the "Golden Fleece" award for wasteful government spending to the Urban Mass Transit Administration (UMTA) for "playing Santa Claus to the nation's cities" (Moore, 1986, p. 1). Proxmire was referring to the federal government's 10-year, $40 billion investment in urban transit, which he called a "spectacular flop" (Moore, 1986, p. 1). Federal funding continues to serve as the backbone for highway and mass transit projects in states and cities across the nation. However, more than a decade after Senator Proxmire criticized this system of funding as wasteful, not much appears to have changed.
The federal government subsidizes both highway and mass transit development in the U.S. The Highway Trust Fund (HTF) was created in 1956 as part of the Highway Revenue Act (Highway, 2008). The HTF collects tax revenues from excise taxes on highway motor fuel and truck-related taxes on tires, sales of trucks, and heavy vehicle use (Highway, 2008). These taxes are marked for expenditure for highway and mass transit development. In 1983, the Mass Transit Account (MTA) was created as part of the HTF to oversee mass transit expenditures and development projects.
Many lawmakers and citizens continue to criticize the HTF and MTA because of the inefficiency, inadequacy, and lack of popularity of mass transit alternatives to vehicles in cities across the nation. Despite the federal government allocating $20 billion annually in subsidies to publicly owned transit systems, Cox (2001) argues that "Transit ridership has hovered in a narrow range for 40 years, a period during which the American population has grown by about 100 million, and its share of the urban travel market has fallen from 7.1 percent in 1960 to 1.8 percent today" (p. 1). In effect, despite the billions of dollars earmarked annually for mass transit projects in the U.S., less than 2% of all...