Outside the Capital Area Transportation Authority, or CATA, Transportation Center Monday morning, as cars and buses passed by, a group of Lansing community members stood by the side of the road.
Among them was CATA Executive Director Sandy Draggoo, who paused now and then to watch buses pull in and out of the station.
Draggoo opened her mouth to apologize for the noise, then thought otherwise.
“The noise is what makes us who we are,” she said.
“The noise is what carries those (millions of) riders. Those buses are what we are all about.”
Draggoo and other representatives of Lansing-area businesses and organizations gathered Monday morning to discuss transportation and infrastructure in Michigan, criticizing the federal government for not creating a long-term transportation investment plan.
Mark Schauer, former U.S. representative and national co-chair of the BlueGreen Alliance Jobs21! initiative, said a bill to reauthorize funding for highway and transit services expired in 2009, and Congress has been unable to reach a long-term goal.
Schauer said when he was elected to Congress, one of his biggest concerns was infrastructure, and he served as vice chair of a highways and transit committee to address the country’s crumbling roads and underfunded transit systems.
The bill, called SAFETEA-LU, calls for continued efforts to “enhance the surface transportation system” of the 21st century by planning and investing in changing travel needs.
But the bill has been inactive for 965 days, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association’s Gridlock Clock, launched earlier this year to urge Congress to act on restoring the nation’s infrastructure.
Draggoo said building partnerships in state and federal government is essential to secure road safety and create transit-related jobs in Michigan.
For construction workers like longtime Michigan resident Arcangelo Tucci, the lack of funds for road construction projects in the state is discouraging.
He said he knows many tradesmen who have gone to other states because of funding for transit work in Michigan.
“I’ve always liked it here,” he said. “To hear you have to move (because of) financial instability, it really sucks.”
Schauer said continuing the highway transportation bill is essential to putting people back to work and jump-starting the economy.
“(U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray) LaHood calls America one big pothole, and it’s hard for me to disagree,” he said.
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