Trenton: New Stimulus Data: Funding Public Transit Creates More Jobs Than Funding Highway Projects
Trenton,
Dec. 17 – Stimulus money spent on public transportation projects
created almost double the number of “job-months” as money spent on
highway infrastructure projects.
In a new analysis of ten months’ worth of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) data released last week by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee,
three public interest and “smart growth” groups found that for every
billion dollars spent on public transportation projects, 16,419
job-months were created. A billion dollars spent on highway
infrastructure projects created only 8,781 job-months.
(Because
transportation projects are of different durations, a “job-month” is a
more accurate way of comparing quantities of employment.)
“This
data proves without a doubt that not every transportation dollar is
equal. If the goal is creating the most jobs, then we should invest in
buses, trains and rail cars, which create almost twice as many jobs as
road-building,” noted Phineas Baxandall, a senior analyst with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, one of the three organizations who crunched the data, along with Smart Growth America and Center for Neighborhood Technology.
For more details, background information and to read the policy implications, click here to download the PDF fact sheet the three groups prepared.
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NJPIRG is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy organization.
