Apart from the efforts of President Johnson to rescue fixed route transportation from a complete collapse, there have been precious few notable achievements in this critical part of the American society. One such President unknown for this invaluable contribution to sanity and fiscal responsibility in this field was Gerald Ford, who occupied this position for less than three years, following the resignation of President Nixon.
The brilliance and fiscal clarity of President Ford’s contributions were not appreciated or respected by most members of the largely Democratic public transportation community. And, as noted, these contributions were known to few individuals outside of this industry. Instead, President Ford is often remembered by President Johnson privately telling reporters that President Ford was so dumb that he, “couldn’t fart and chew gum at the same time.” The White House press corp sanitized the quote and revised a portion of it so “walk and chew gum.”
I myself was fascinated by the birds-eye view of President Ford since, at the time, I lived in a house across the street from a couple whose husband was the chairman or president of Union Carbide, while his wife was a reporter for the Washington Post. President Ford frequently dined at this house – giving me that rare opportunity to tell my best jokes to the secret service guards seated in cars surrounding this house, in dark glasses well after dark, who were so disciplined that I never once got one to chuckle at my best jokes, but instead, made their best efforts to completely ignore me.
Stopping the Runaway Economy
Not much of a fan of either political party and never registered as a voter of one (although my memory could be wrong since I did not vote in a President election between 1980 and 2024 – the last one being a necessity. Most Americans had the most oversimplified opinion possible about both parties: The Democrats spend money irresponsibly (including giving too much money to those in need), while the Republicans only do things to enrich the Rich. So, while it would not likely be considered as such, President Ford’s contributions to our public transportation system – flagrantly circumvented as time went on – moved this part of our already Deep State to the brink of fiscal sanity, as well as decency for the distribution of wealth between urban and rural residents of the nation. And he accomplished this largely by passing three important programs, all of which I recall enjoying some bipartisan support.
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1976
This program served effectively as the Act that implemented the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973 signed into law by former President Nixon. This Act effectively opened up the Highway Trust Fund to grant local and city officials the flexibility to divert highway funds to “urban mass transit programs” (as transit programs were typically called during this period of our nation’s history).
The most interesting aspect of this legislation – signed and implemented by two successive Republican Presidents – was that it operated as a continuation of President Johnson’s Urban Mass Transportation Administration’s principal goal. However, as President Eisenhower’s 49,500-mile Defense Highway system passed through most cities (in its original concept, this highway system was designed only to run past the outskirts of these cities), President Nixon’s and President Ford’s program actually involved somewhat of a transfer of wealth from rural to urban areas. But not by much. Unfortunately, members of the Deep State in public transportation squandered and wasted the benefits of all three President’s contributions to public transit. And it took some cities and counties, such as Los Angeles County, only a few years to flagrantly circumvent them – although the party of the President in power at the time allowed this, seemingly more often when a Democratic president was in power – although many major city’s violations of President Ford’s requirement for alternatives analysis (see description below) were flagrant during the Reagan Administration.
Alternatives Analysis
After the spigot to providing Federal funds to support transit systems was first opened, by President Johnson, in 1964 (capital funds) and 1967 (operating funds), President Ford’s tentacles to the abuse of these funds, and the impotence of any intelligible design of these systems merely a decade after operating funds became available, were surprisingly sharp. Cities running near-empty buses well into the night were already applying for and receiving Federal funds for heavy rail systems. The alternatives analysis process now required every city to submit an analysis of various alternatives to heavy rail to UMTA (the FTA’s name at the time). While many or most of these analyses were patently dishonest, and the members of Deep State USDOT in Washington, and UMTA’s 10 Regional Offices, had no reasonable ability to refute any of these claims. Just the same, this legislation led to a profusion of far-less-costly light rail systems throughout the country. By 1980, there were six. By 1990, six more were created – including some that had been prohibited by transit agencies already running heavy rail systems (like the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit System) yet circumvented by shenanigans – like the Blue Line operating between Pasadena and Long Beach – through the creation of the Pasadena Blue Line Corporation. Traveling a lot domestically during these years, I distinctly recall how wasteful and unjustified many of these light rail systems were – including the San Diego Trolley (which was clearly not a “trolley system” in any way, shape or form), and the Buffalo Metro Rail system.
An important lesson to historians about public transportation in America is that, as hard as some Presidents (like Gerald Ford) tried, one could never tame the Deep State that public transportation in America undeniably is.
Metropolitan Planning Organizations
Before this program, Federal transportation funds flowed to major cities. The systems these cities designed were designed and intended to help the residents of these cities. Only by luck of their geographic position and the number of commuters who entered an urban area (mostly for work trips) did these systems help anyone but a city’s residents. (The term Tammany Hall – referencing a powerful Democratic political organization in New York City that lasted from the late 18th century until the mid-20th century — was often used [well past the existence of this relationship] to describe this dynamic. The “MPO regs,” as they were called, put a stop to this city-dominated dynamic. The regulations required the use or creation of a Metropolitan Planning Organization composed of representatives of both major cities and those from a number of suburbs.
The formation or selection of these MPOs was bumpy. In 1980, my first year in Los Angeles, working for LADOT, I was the City’s representative on the Paratransit Committee of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). At my level, I had nothing whatsoever to do with the control of funds, and which communities got how much. But in 1976, a year after this program was inaugurated, I had a much earlier and rude awakening to the push-back against this program in my first consulting job – helping the new Director of the Department of Planning and Programming in the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) figure out what his staff of 21 people actually did – a task that took my excellent if not brilliant boss and I a full year to figure out. But the year before, my firm was the dirty bag carrier for IDOT’s selection of its own agency in downtown Chicago as the MPO – the Chicago Area Transportation Study (CATS). When I or my boss entered a meeting at any agency in Chicago, many of the other occupants literally hissed at us. The downstate-upstate dynamics likely exist to some degree in every democracy. But they were particularly virulent in cities accustomed to powerful and dirty mayors – like the original Mayor Daley.
A more formidable circumvention of alternatives analysis occurred in the early 1980s, in Los Angeles County, to which I also had a birds-eye view. As a lowly “Associate Planner” for LADOT, the City’s Mayor at that time – Mayor Bradley – had his eyes on becoming the State of California’s next governor. But he realized the mayor of the State’s largest city that did not have a rail system of any kind would not likely considered. So, the City’s first transportation plan – which I was hired to write –was never written. And has not been written to this day. Instead, the Mayor and a select group of other members of the County created and constructed the first three lines of what became the L.A. Metro System – the construction of which put the City $7B in debt – not to mention the Federal funds squandered in this white elephant in a city that, as noted in other installments of this series, covered only nine percent of the costs of its bus fleet’s operating costs with passenger fares. While “factory shaded” passenger windows were introduced in the “New Look” transit buses manufactured by GMC in 1959, during most of my 17 years residing in Los Angeles, I remember distinctly seeing articulated buses with heavily shaded windows operating almost or virtually empty at night. If there is a city that did not warrant a heavy rail system, it is Los Angeles, which currently has two heavy rail lines and four light rail lines. We can thank President Ford for the four light rail lines, likely saving the County billions of dollars in construction costs, and billions more well into the future for operating costs.
While it completely eluded Elon Musk, or perhaps because he didn’t care and used his power as the unofficial director of DOGE merely to kill Africans, the Deep State that public transportation is and was began not very long after transit systems began obtaining Federal funds. Gerald Ford will not likely be remembered as someone who shoehorned fiscal sanity and responsibility into the process. But he unmistakably was. But that was a much different time. And a much different America.
Despite public transportation in the United States being horribly wasteful, and increasingly so, there have been bright spots periodically. Three bright spots were created by former President Gerald Ford.
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