It’s decision time for state leaders: save public transit, or consent to its collapse | Opinion
Public transit is in trouble.
When the COVID pandemic decimated transit ridership, one-time federal relief funds helped transit operators avoid bankruptcy and enabled them to sustain most service. However, most agencies will exhaust these funds over the next few years.
Meanwhile, remote work and changes to commuting brought on by the pandemic have proven durable, reducing fares and other funding streams. Collectively, these challenges amount to a serious and urgent financial crisis for public transit.
If you think this is only a Bay Area problem, it’s not. Over 70% of transit agencies across the state anticipate serious shortfalls totaling more than $6 billion over the next five years. Less than half of that shortfall is in the Bay Area.
And there are more reasons the state should worry: The largest operators in the state play an outsized role in the state’s ability to meet its ambitious climate goals. Of California’s 210 transit operators, just 10 carry over 80% of the state’s riders and transit trips, according to a San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association analysis of the National Transit Database. If these systems fail, so too do the state’s climate goals.
Opinion
Other states like New York are stepping up to fund transit operations in big ways. New York just averted a fiscal cliff with a state budget that offers a new tax to provide more than $1.1 billion annually to their public transit system, plus one-time funding to stave off service cuts and fare hikes this year.
According to SPUR’s analysis, state funding makes up only a relatively small portion of the operating funding that California’s largest and most productive transit systems rely on. This is particularly true for many of the largest and most productive systems in the state. Only 4% of BART’s operating budget and 9% of Muni’s operating budget comes from the state. Most operating funding is local; in the Bay Area, voter-approved measures already generate more than $1 billion a year in operating funds.
This pales in comparison to both the amount and the share that other states invest in operations for large and productive transit systems in other states, especially those on the East Coast. For example, 28% of the New York transit system’s operating budget comes from the state.
Our hope is that California fills the $6 billion statewide shortfall and funds transit improvements with a multiyear commitment of funds. This is a solvable problem: there are ways to find roughly $1 billion per year with minimal impact to the general fund.
If our current transit systems aren’t good enough, California’s leaders need to help transit agencies do what it takes to deliver higher frequencies, better safety, affordable fares and fix the many barriers that discourage people from riding. Sometimes this is a matter of funding, and sometimes it’s a matter of political will.
The transit system we have is the unfortunate yet predictable result of inadequate funding combined with laws and city planning that favor cars above all. It’s up to California’s leaders to pass laws that make it possible for transit to succeed.
There is simply no path towards financial stability, let alone improvement, if the state permits transit to slip into a death spiral of ever deeper service cuts and disrepair. Now is the time for state leaders to respond with speed and unity to prevent the total collapse of public transit.
Laura Tolkoff is transportation policy director for SPUR, which is a member of the Survive and Thrive Coalition fighting to save and improve public transit. Other coalition members include Transform, Bay Area Council, Seamless Bay Area, Public Advocates, Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Natural Resources Defense Council.
