GOP vs. urban transit

Crain's Chicago Business reports:

Did you realize that, when you took Metra, Pace or the Chicago Transit Authority to work or school today, you were engaged in "social engineering?"

Well, you were, according to a section of the 2016 Republican Platform that was adopted this week and on which Donald Trump and Mike Pence will now run. And it's time for such "government transit" to get its hands off of the U.S. Highway Trust Fund, the GOP says.

Under current law, proceeds from the federal 18.4 cents a gallon tax on gasoline are split between roads and transit, with the latter usually getting about a fifth of the total. The fund has come perilously close to running short in recent years, in part because people are driving less but the per-gallon tax has remained frozen for many years.

Faced with that, GOP House lawmakers a few years ago moved to switch the entire amount to roads, something that would have forced transit to battle it out for every other demand for federal general funds. That got squelched when a handful of GOP congressmen from urban areas, including Chicago, revolted.

But the idea has never quite died among GOP conservatives, mostly from rural and suburban districts. the 2012 party platform called for an end to the diversion, but left it at that.

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