Trump voters, stand by your man

Even if it ruins you.

The transit authority in Wilmington, N.C., an area still suffering financially from last year’s Hurricane Florence, is considering whether to shut down all bus and shuttle service at the end of February if its monthly payments from the Federal Transit Administration don’t resume. An agency serving most of Missouri started cutting service hours Tuesday. One transit nonprofit in Arizona may have to cease operating for good.

The trauma for crucial transportation lifelines in rural or small-town America, including in states President Donald Trump won in 2016, underscores the damage the 34-day shutdown is inflicting hundreds or thousands of miles from Washington, D.C. While the loss of federal dollars is hitting transit systems large and small, including those inside the Beltway, the most vulnerable agencies are those that don’t get significant state support.

[...]

Though rural areas are more vulnerable, urban areas are also struggling. The Washington, D.C., transit system is losing $400,000 a day in fares and revenues due to the shutdown. Some New Jersey officials blame the shutdown for their inability to restore service on some transit lines that it had closed to install a federally mandated safety technology called positive train control before the end of last year.

[...]

Transit agencies are accustomed to continuing resolutions and short lapses in federal funding. FTA normally waits until it has four or five months of funding before it begins to distribute it to states and transit agencies. But agency heads worry that even if a deal were reached today, it could take months to process all the funding requests from all 50 states that have languished for a month.

[...]

Some agencies, if they shut their doors, may never reopen.

  Politico

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.