After Edward Hamilton lost his job last year, money got awfully tight, meaning there was not much chance he could get his 11-year-old car fixed up
–much less buy a new one.
”My wife is not able to work,” said the 57-year-old man, who had worked at the same store for 13 years before it went out of business. ”I drew unemployment, but it wasn`t much.”
So when the store re-opened under new management recently and Hamilton got his old job back, he had to take the bus between the downtown store and his home on the West Side, a few miles away.
”I sure do need this bus,” he said one very cold afternoon as he headed home. ”I don`t know what I`d do without it. I guess I`d walk.”
Both Edward Hamilton`s situation and his attitude say something about American government and American politics at the end of 1985. His situation is that he is one of the minority who depend on mass transportation. Like most of that minority, he depends on it because he doesn`t have much money. And like many others who depend on it, his convenience and even his livelihood are threatened by the policies of the Reagan administration, which wants to abolish all federal operating subsidies for buses, subways and commuter railroads.
Hamilton`s attitude is that he does not expect much from society, from government and, perhaps, from life. Like almost all of the bus passengers interviewed during a recent afternoon rush-hour, Hamilton revealed that had not voted last year, that he belonged to no organization committed to improving his life and that he didn`t even know that the bus line on which he depends might be in trouble.
This outlook is not unusual among traditional, low-income, nonunion working people, especially white working people. Many members of racial and ethnic minorities, union members, even welfare recipients have organizations that fight for them and an activist political culture to propel them to political and social activity. But no group speaks for the unorganized, low-income white worker, whose political attitude is likely to be passive.
”They have no network or organization of institution that speaks for them,” said Sar Levitan, the director of the Center for Social Policy Studies. ”Many are getting the minimum wage, government de-emphasizes all their problems and so there`s a feeling of apathy, a feeling that nothing can be done about it.”
This is one reason Democrats and liberals find it hard to win elections. Though not all non-voters or even all low-income residents would choose Democrats if they voted, the vast majority of the non-voting bus riders here certainly fit the profile of the Democratic voter, if only they voted.
”The typical rider is a woman in her 40s going to a full-time or part-time job that pays the minimum wage,” said Vickie Shaffer, the general manager of the Tri-State Transit Authority, which runs the 23-bus system that carried some 827,000 passengers this year on a budget of $1,662,430.
About 40 percent of that budget came from Washington, via an agency called the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA), which was created in 1964 and which, before Congress capped the aid formula in 1981, gave local companies enough money to make up half their operating losses.
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This method–providing a set percentage of the deficit–obviously provides no incentive for operating efficiency and the subsidies have their critics, not all of them inside the Reagan administration.
Early in December, Sen. William Proxmire (D., Wis.), gave one of his
”golden fleece” awards to UMTA, saying that it had been ”playing Santa Claus to the nation`s mass-transit systems at a 20-year cost of more than $30 billion” even though a smaller percentage of commuters now use mass transit. Unlike most recipients of Proxmire`s mock ”awards,” UMTA Administrator Ralph Stanley gave it an ”embrace,” insisting only that it be shared with
”a strong supporting cast in Congress who have continued to appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars in operating subsidies over the objections of the Reagan administration.”
Congress has cut mass-transit assistance but it has refused to abolish it, largely because mass transit remains popular.
Part of that popularity comes from the larger cities where a broader segment of the public uses mass transit. In New York, Chicago, Washington and other cities, the affluent as well as the poor ride the subway and elevated trains while wealthy commuters use the subsidized passenger rail services.
Even in Huntington, where only about 10 percent of the people ever ride the buses, the system is popular. Twice in recent years the authority has gone to the voters for an increase in property taxes to keep the buses running. Both times the voters approved by big margins.
”But this is not a prosperous area,” Vickie Shaffer said. ”Coal is no longer king. Nothing is thriving. The state of West Virginia is doing all it can to meet its current programs. Without the federal subsidy, we couldn`t operate.”
Perhaps the popular support stems from a realization that all transportation of people is and always has been subsidized. People seem to know that the interstate highway system, state and county roads, air traffic controllers and airports all represent public support for getting people from here to there.
Certainly Collis P. Huntington knew it, even before he founded this city on the Ohio River in 1871. One of the owners of the Central Pacific and Chesapeake & Ohio Railroads, Huntington was known in his time as ”The Great Persuader” for his finesse in getting Congress to help build the railroads.
When railroads and coal were in their heyday, Huntington prospered. Both heydays are long gone and while the city is not without its appeal, this is one of those parts of the country to where the economic recovery barely reaches. Unemployment in West Virginia is at 12.5 percent, and while Huntington is less coal-dependent and therefore less impoverished than some of the state, it is hardly a boom town. The population, 83,000 in 1960, fell to 63,000 in 1980, and though it may have stabilized, it isn`t going up.
Even here, of course, the vast majority of people have cars so they do not need the buses. But for various reasons some people can`t or won`t drive. Edward Hamilton can`t afford one. Amy Clagg, who goes to beautician`s school, said she can`t either.
Clagg, 18, can afford to go to school thanks to a student loan guaranteed by the federal government. Like so many of the bus riders, she was unaware that the administration wants to end bus subsidies, and also unaware that it wants to cut deeply into the student loan program. She was just old enough to vote last year, she said, but she didn`t. As to President Reagan, she thinks
”he`s OK.”
Several of the bus riders said they were now too old to drive, at least after dark. ”I`d kill me or somebody if I got behind a wheel now,” said one man, who declined to identify himself but said he had been a lawyer before he retired. ”My eyes aren`t what they used to be. I need the bus.”
Several other riders also would not give their names, another indication of the go-it-alone pride so common in these parts. West Virginians are sensitive about the poverty and lack of education in their state, as shown when state officials complained about the portrayal of a down-and-out West Virginia family on recent episodes of the NBC television program ”Night Court.”
”I won`t give my name, you`ll just make fun,” said one woman who appeared to be in her 60s. ”I need the bus, period, to go to and from work. I could have afforded a car but I have sickness in the family, a sick mother 85 years of age and my sister lost her job when the shoe factory closed.
”I didn`t vote. I just didn`t want to. Reagan? He`s OK. He shuts everything else down; he might as well shut the bus down. What will I do without the bus? I`ll manage.”