On the anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka. economic stimulus bill), several national groups updated a report on the jobs impact of various investments. They found growing data showing that investment in transit creates far more jobs than highway spending:
"Through the end of 2010, stimulus investments in public transportation have created almost twice as many jobs per dollar as highway spending – and the advantage is growing.The most recent data from states, recently made available by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, shows that every billion dollars spent on public transportation produced 19,299 job-months, compared to 10,493 job-months for every billion spent on highway infrastructure. That difference has grown by more than 1,000 job-months over the last two months of official state spending reports.
The new data confirms the findings announced in “What We Learned From the Stimulus,” a report the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), and Smart Growth America (SGA) co-released earlier this year.
Public transportation projects create more jobs than road projects because they spend less money on land and more on labor, and because the public transportation projects are often more complex, whether laying track or manufacturing vehicles. According to a report from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, in the fourth quarter, transit was the sector which created the most jobs of all the clean energy investments made with ARRA funds. . . ."
