The TARC board has granted a stay of execution on some of the routes slated for cancellation. The best coverage of the cuts is at the KIPDA transportation blog.

TARC's cut will not be sufficient to reach financial balance. Thus the Metro Transit Trust Fund (MTTF) will dip down to $7.5 million dollars from its healthy level of $10 million dollars. The MTTF serves as a way to keep service on the streets in an emergency, and also as buffer cash for reimbursement projects ("if you build it we will pay...someday" as oppposed to "we will pay you then you build it").

While everyone awknolwedges this is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation, I have to give credit for them having the guts to deficit spend. There's a strong argument that government shouldn't cut jobs during a recession, and we've had plenty of state and local job cuts already, just as the feds are pouring money into creating new jobs.

This is no game and there is an element of risk for the livelyhood of 60,000 TARC riders. So far TARC has not had the roller-coaster ride of severe service cuts experienced at many other transit agencies. (c.f. today's front page New York Times article on the MTA cuts). That's a possibility that Possibility City has avoided.

CART remains committed to creating a better federal funding structure for transit in the new authorization in 2010.