California's coming transit apocalypse
Many transit systems are reeling financially in the aftermath of the pandemic, and the situation in California is particularly dire. In this episode, Nick Josefowitz of SPUR and Beth Osborne of Transportation for America discuss the urgent need for the state budget to boost transit funding, and the catastrophic implications if it doesn’t.
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Text transcript:
David Roberts
The pandemic was devastating to America's transit systems — not only the lockdowns, but the enduring shift to working from home that followed. It has left transit systems everywhere desperate for riders and funding.
Nowhere is that more true than California. The state’s transit systems find themselves at the edge of a fiscal cliff. If they do not receive some new funding from the state in this year's budget — which will be decided and finalized by June 15 — they are going to be forced to implement dramatic cutbacks in service. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) could eliminate weekend service! It’s grim.
As anyone familiar with municipal transit systems can tell you, once routes and service are cut, it is extremely difficult to bring them back. And without transit, it will be that much more difficult to build infill housing, get people out of cars, or revive flagging downtown districts.
It’s a looming catastrophe — for climate, for social justice, for the state’s reputation. So where is the governor? Where is the urgency in the legislature to prevent this? The deadline is rapidly approaching and the escalating urgency of transit activists has largely been met with silence or indifference.
To discuss the crisis, I contacted Nick Josefowitz. He’s the chief policy officer at SPUR, a California nonprofit focused on sustainable cities that has been one of the most prominent voices raising alarm about the situation. And to avoid total doom and gloom, I also contacted Beth Osborne, the director of DC-based Transportation for America, so she could share some stories about states that aren’t screwing up their transit systems.
With no further ado, Nick Josefowitz and Beth Osborne, thank you so much for coming on Volts.
Nick Josefowitz
Thanks for having us.
Beth Osborne
Glad to be here.
David Roberts
I have wanted to do stuff on transit for a while. It's always been a little difficult to know how to wrap my head around it, how to carve off a distinct issue or what angle to approach it from. But helpfully, reality has served up a horrible crisis. So just a wonderful excuse to jump into this subject. So before we back out to a more general picture, let's start there. Nick, with you. Just tell us, what is the transit funding cliff crisis and how the heck did it come to this?
Nick Josefowitz
Well, the transit fiscal cliff, as we're calling it, is sort of most acute in California, although it's something that's happening elsewhere as well. And as a result of more people working from home, fewer people are commuting every day. Transit agencies rely in part on fare revenue to sustain themselves, and in California, they rely more on fare revenue than in other places. And as a result, we are about to see massive service cuts for California transit agencies with the big transit agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area most impacted. San Francisco Muni is saying that they're going to have to cut one line a month for the next 20 months.
David Roberts
Yikes.
Nick Josefowitz
BART is saying they would have to stop weekend service, potentially stop serving certain stations. It's a real mess. And it's the type of mess that once you're in it, it's very difficult to get out of it.
David Roberts
And this was just the natural upshot or consequence of the pandemic and work from home. There's nothing beyond that that came and took money out of the transit kitty.
Nick J
