Shifting Federal Transportation Dollars to Create More Jobs

Shifting federal transportation dollars to transit projects could help create up to 180,000 jobs and not raise the federal deficit, according to a new report.

1 minute read

September 7, 2010, 12:00 PM PDT

By Nate Berg


The report was produced by the Transportation Equity Network, and it argues that transit has a higher jobs-creation power than roads and other car-focused transportation projects.

"According to the report, written by University of Missouri-St. Louis researchers Todd Swanstrom, Will Winter, and Laura Wiedlocher, every dollar spent on funding transit creates more jobs than spending on roads. Specifically, each billion dollars spent on transit creates 36,108 jobs while the same figure can only buy 30,319 road jobs. That means that by reassigning some federal spending from roads to transit, Congress could boost employment without adding a cent to the deficit."

Friday, September 3, 2010 in Streetsblog

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