ABSTRACT
To contend with chronic financial distress, the preponderance of policy analyses have focused on transportation system efficiency goals, but they have neglected transit’s public policy functions. As real social processes in which tax revenues are exchanged for transit benefits to taxpayers, hundreds of local governmental budgets have shaped United States transit services since the 1970s. Transit budgets are not unusual. Organized vested interests such as construction companies, equipment manufacturers, land speculators, labor unions, and transit managers figure in any local transit policy process. But, if transit budgets are consistently sustained through voter behavior, it is the Cost-Benefit Analysis that must be faulty, not the budget decisions themselves. The distinction between disjointed incrementalism and the ideal of synoptic modeling is very important for understanding the benefits that transit budgets create. A sea change is underway in which transportation economists and planners are studying the costs and benefits more closely, particularly the value of time.
