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SB11, a bill pre-filed in August by state Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison, D-Birmingham, looks to institute an additional $5 license tax and registration fee on motor vehicles to raise funds for the Alabama Public Transportation Trust Fund.
As Birmingham-area resident and transportation advocate Marva Douglas explained in a recent speech addressed to the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority (BJCTA), Alabama’s public transportation has been deprived of adequate funding since the mid-20th century.
“In 1951, members of the automobile industry (General Motors, Triple A and Good Year) lobbied the Alabama legislature to put all gasoline tax dollars into bridges and highways only,” Douglas explained. “In the 1952-53 legislative session, the Alabama legislature passed the bill to do exactly that AND added the new law to the state’s constitution as Amendment 93. So, by 1956, when Rosa Parks sat in the front of the bus launching the Montgomery bus boycott, Alabama had already stopped funding bus service throughout the state [for] three years.”
In 2018, state Sen. Roger Smitherman, D-Montgomery, successfully passed a bill establishing the Alabama Public Transportation Trust Fund to raise funds for public transit. However, that fund remains empty — as Douglas put it, “the Alabama Public Transportation Trust Fund is only a name.” Sen. Coleman-Madison’s bill looks to actually provide the Fund with revenue through the proposed $5 annual fee.
Douglas told APR that she first became invested in public transit advocacy in 1996, when she opened a tutoring center in Fairfield, AL. She found that many of her students’ parents had to leave work to bring their children to the center due to the lack of adequate public transportation in the area. Douglas also found it necessary to hire tutors who had their own personal vehicles, as public transportation was unreliable — preventing some potential employees from being able to work at the center.
Douglas decided to try using the public bus system herself and was disappointed by how few buses there were and how infrequently they ran. Currently, the BJCTA’s buses run from 5:30 a.m. – 9:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and 6:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m. on Saturdays. Douglas gave anecdotes of individuals she knew who would ride the bus to work or school, but had to walk home because the bus routes were no longer active.
A lack of effective public transit can also harm the safety of Alabama communities. Elderly citizens who may no longer find it safe to drive are left without adequate alternatives, and individuals without personal vehicles may resort to walking in areas without proper sidewalks. Poorer Alabamians are disproportionately harmed by these realities, as they may not be able to afford their own vehicle or other means of transportation.
Douglas also stressed that better-funded public transit could be a benefit to local businesses, bringing in more customers by making it easier to travel across town while also giving potential employees more options when going to-and-from work.
“It is my hope you’ll want to help get better transit,” Douglas said in her closing statement to the BJCTA. “ACT (The Action Coalition for Transit) is trying to build an army of folks to help get Sente Bill 11 passed. ACT also has petitions for collecting signatures statewide, a group of speakers who can talk to organizations, [and] written speeches you can deliver if you care to.”
Douglas invited individuals interested in joining ACT to sign up for free on their official website.
