San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Don’t let state’s public transit fail
California’s public transit agencies are hurtling toward a fiscal cliff as they struggle to regain riders post-pandemic — and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest budget proposal does nothing to prevent them from falling over the edge.
The revised budget that Newsom recently unveiled doesn’t include new funds for transit operations, despite some lawmakers — led by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco — and transit advocates repeatedly warning that without at least a $5 billion infusion of state money over the next five years, public transit agencies will be forced to gut service as early as this summer.
Cuts would be particularly acute in the Bay Area, where agency shortfalls account for about half of the statewide transit deficit. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency estimates that it will have to slash one line per month for 20 months starting this summer if state funds don’t come in. BART, meanwhile, is bracing for a worstcase financial scenario that could result in closing service on weekends, shuttering two of its five lines and nine of its 50 stations, and running trains as infrequently as once per hour.
BART’s potential collapse would be especially devastating for San Francisco — where nearly 70% of regional weekday trips ended before the pandemic — and could shortcircuit the city’s pandemic recovery and help perpetuate a dreaded economic “doom loop.”
It would also hamper the Bay Area’s efforts to unclog its freeways and clean its air. A recent poll commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which represents the region’s 27 transit agencies, found that 74% of voters agreed it’s important to improve public transit so fewer people want to drive. Yet Newsom’s updated blueprint includes a $6 billion cut to climate programs — $2 billion of which would come from transit capital projects.
Of course, tough decisions are necessary when money is tight, and California’s fiscal outlook grows worse by the day. In January, Newsom projected
that California faced a $22 billion deficit for the fiscal year beginning in July. Last week, he revised that estimate to $31.5 billion.
But fighting climate change is a zero-sum game, and California’s transportation sector accounts for half of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions — something Newsom and lawmakers should keep in mind as they negotiate ahead of a June 15 deadline to pass a balanced budget. For California to reach its ambitious climate goals — including banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 — public transit systems will need to be strengthened, not diminished.
Newsom is still proposing to invest $48 billion in climate change mitigation, with a big chunk going to sustainable transportation. On Friday, he announced a legislative package and executive order aiming to streamline the development of clean transit and infrastructure. And last week, he awarded more than $690 million to 28 transit projects in disadvantaged communities, bringing the state’s total public transit investment in the first four months of the year to more than $3.2 billion. Ironically,
$11.3 million was earmarked to plan for a second BART Transbay tunnel — a project that will prove meaningless if BART is allowed to collapse.
Many other investments will be for naught if California’s public transit systems enter financial ruin.
That doesn’t mean that California should dole out money to transit agencies with no strings attached; unless service markedly improves, riders are unlikely to return. A recent Bay Area Council poll found that riders are desperate for improved safety and cleanliness on BART, with 80% calling on the agency to more aggressively enforce its ridership rules of conduct and 73% saying they would feel safer with a stronger police presence. Amplifying safety concerns, a BART rider last week stabbed another passenger with a meat-cleaver-style knife.
Thankfully, transit agencies are taking steps to show they aren’t just looking for a bailout to continue business as usual.
On Thursday, the California Transit Association released a proposed accountability framework that would require agencies receiving state funds to submit detailed plans to
recover ridership and address operating deficits. Agencies would also have to submit progress reports every two years outlining how they spent the money.
But oversight won’t be the only sticking point — there’s also the question of where the money should come from.
“If there are concepts or ideas that members of the Legislature or others wish to bring to the administration for consideration, we’re more than willing to look at them,” H.D. Palmer, a California Department of Finance spokesperson, told the Editorial Board. But “from a sheer issue of mathematics, when you’re closing a $31.5 billion shortfall … how do you fit an additional $6 billion component in there?”
The California Transit Association has identified multiple potential funding pots. Wiener has also proposed that California temporarily redirect some federal highway funding — the state is annually receiving about $1 billion more than anticipated — for transit operations. Lawmakers should consider this idea seriously: Citing the pandemic’s impact on public transit, President Biden’s budget “encourages
States to support their transit systems by transferring available Federal-Aid Highway funding for transit operating needs.”
Failure to heed Biden’s advice would leave Californians — especially those who are low-income — between a rock and a hard place as the state accelerates toward an all-electric future. Last year, Newsom’s aggressive campaigning against Proposition 30 helped tank a measure that would have raised an estimated $3.5 billion to $5 billion annually to subsidize zero-emission vehicle purchases and build charging infrastructure. He’s now proposing to slash another $1.1 billion for electric vehicle subsidies and infrastructure.
Without money to keep public transit from going kaput, and with fewer grants available to buy electric vehicles, how will lower-income Californians get to work or the doctor’s office?
It’s a question Newsom, who a 2018 New Yorker profile said had three Teslas in his driveway, would do well to ponder.