SHOULD   TAXPAYERS   SUBSIDIZE   MASS   TRANSIT?

YES!   IT'S  GOOD  FOR  THE   ENTIRE   STATE



When Governor Rowland's budget was proposed in February, it contained a 
proposed $16.6 million cut in transportation funding to be achieved by 
eliminating commuter rail service on three branch lines:  Shore Line East, running 
from New Haven to New London; the Waterbury branch, running from that city to 
Bridgeport; and the Danbury branch which runs to Norwalk and beyond to NYC.

The idea of cutting that rail service and replacing it with buses was so absurd 
that few riders took it seriously.  The scheme, which runs counter to the kind of 
progressive public policy practiced in every other state in the union, was dead on 
arrival in the Legislature.  A month to the day after its suggestion, the Governor 
relented and acknowledged that constituent pressure had persuaded 
representatives on both sides to keep the trains.

Sadly,  these budget proposals come with one ulterior motive:  promised 
election-year tax cuts, especially in the state's gasoline taxes.  Those gas taxes 
are highly unpopular,  mostly because Hartford has never explained to drivers 
why they are collected and how they are spent.

If drivers knew that those gas taxes helped subsidize mass transit, pay for the 
operations of the DMV and the State Police, they would perhaps seem less 
onerous.  In fact, if the gas tax was cut by four cents a gallon, not the five cents 
proposed by the Governor, none of these cuts in commuter rail service would be 
needed.  A penny a gallon.  That's all we're talking about to pay for the trains that 
carry a half-million riders a year.


The Governor argues that the per-trip subsidies of riders on Shore Line East, for 
example, are high enough to buy each passenger a car.  But the question is, 
where will they drive?  Has Rowland tried commuting on I-95 across the Q bridge 
lately?  Conditions on that highway rival the LA freeways.  Adding more cars and 
congestion (not to mention pollution) is hardly the answer.


Its interesting that the Governor doesn't suggest that drivers pay for the costs 
they place on the state.  Who's paying for the rebuilding of the state's highways 
and bridges as well as their maintenance, plowing and policing?  The people that 
drive on them?  Hardly.  Taxpayers foot those bills whether or not they are 
drivers.   If we follow the Governor's logic that users alone should pay for the 
services they enjoy, would he have us restore toll booths to the state's major 
roads, further slowing traffic?

We all are asked to pay for public services important to our state, even if we 
ourselves don't patronize them.  Downstate travelers rarely if ever use Bradley 
Airport, but they don't spite the tax investment in its operations because they 
understand the economic vitality it brings to the Capitol region.

As in the real estate business, there are three things that make Connecticut an 
attractive location for companies and taxpayers:  location, location and location. 
Affluent wage earners who work at jobs in NYC chose to live in Fairfield county 
not only for the quality of life, but because of the frequency and quality of 
dependable rail service.  If those trains are removed, those commuters will move, 
taking with them their income tax dollars, property taxes and economic input to 
their communities.

All of us in Connecticut must look beyond our own backyards when asking how 
our tax dollars benefit the state.   We're all in this together and need to take a less 
parochial, short-term view of our future.  What may be politically expedient today 
in short term savings will come to haunt us in decades to come.  Public transit 
makes good sense.  It deserves taxpayer support.

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JIM CAMERON  is Vice Chairman of the MetroNorth / Shore Line East Rail 
Commuter Council and lives in Darien.