Fuel Costs Pinch Cities; Mayors Push Mass Transit

NY Times

June 21, 2008

By DAMIEN CAVE

MIAMI — Higher fuel prices are forcing cities across the country to cut public services, limit driving by employees and expand public transportation in what has become a sprawling movement to conserve energy.

A survey of 132 cities, released Friday here at a meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors, found that 90 percent were altering operations because of fuel costs. Republicans and Democrats from New Jersey to Hawaii are essentially becoming energy-pinching nags.

They are pushing City Council members, whether they get along or not, to car-pool. They are telling housing inspectors to arrange site visits in clusters so they stop criss-crossing neighborhoods. And, even as many of them still use S.U.V.’s, the mayors are asking nearly everyone to do a little more walking.

“It’s costing us millions of dollars a year,” said Mayor Manuel A. Diaz of Miami, the incoming president of the mayors’ group. “We can’t deal with a deficit, so everyone has to drive less.”

Several mayors — as they gripped-and-grinned at a downtown hotel — said the cost of fuel had become their obsession.

Coinciding with a real estate meltdown, rising energy costs have wreaked havoc because many city budgets were passed months ago with the assumption that gasoline would cost $2 a gallon. Now mayors are finding themselves squeezed by rising costs, declining revenues and increased demands for public transportation.

In the survey, 88 percent of mayors said their cities had experienced growth in the use of public transit, with nearly half of those reporting that the increases were significant or very significant. Some studies have documented growth of 10 percent to 15 percent over the last year in parts of the South and West.

“Public transportation is the way everyone is going,” said Mufi Hannemann, mayor of Honolulu. “Right now in my city, it’s all about the public bus.”

Mr. Hannemann said the federal government needed to give cities more money to expand their offerings. “We’re starting a ferry system, and making more bike lanes, more opportunities for people to walk,” he said. “And the federal government can help us immeasurably.”

For smaller, poorer cities, the shift away from driving can at times feel transformative. Mayor John Robert Smith of Meridian, Miss., population 40,000, said local officials never talked much about driving. It was just how everyone got around.

Now, he said, the topic of gasoline prices and transportation comes up at nearly every public meeting. To cut costs, he said he had asked city workers not to chat with their cars idling. Mr. Smith has also begun promoting bicycles and bike lanes and asking elected officials to share rides to events.

“We’re on the edge of people changing their travel patterns,” he said.

In the long term, Mr. Smith said, Meridian was working with the state to become part of a commuter line that would connect his city with Jackson, the capital. But he said the gains for most cities would be limited because the nation had relied heavily on cars for decades. “We have waited until we are at a crisis point to address transportation,” Mr. Smith said.

Other mayors agreed. And yet, some of them also acknowledged that higher gasoline prices could eventually make their cities bigger, better and richer.

“There is a strong argument that over the last 10 years there has been a trend of young professionals and empty nesters coming back to downtowns,” said Mayor John Hickenlooper of Denver. “We built 15,000 housing units in the past few years. If gas gets up to $8 or $10 a gallon, that will dramatically accelerate something that’s already going on. There is a silver lining.”

Yolanne Almanzar contributed reporting.