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 Josefowitz

Not really, no. It's really just sort of people commuting less. And so much of our transportation infrastructure and our transit systems were built around the commute, and that's what's sort of driven the crisis. But the fact that we've allowed ourselves to be on the precipice is a decision that we've all collectively made, or that I should say in this case, the state government has made. The federal government stepped up during COVID and provided operating support to transit agencies around the country to help them continue to run buses and trains.

David Roberts

Through the infrastructure bill.

Nick Josefowitz

Right, exactly. Through all the COVID relief bills, there was really meaningful support for transit. But that's run out and there's not any more coming. And now it's really up to the state of California to support transit like other states have done.

David Roberts

And this is really coming down to the wire. So what is the wire exactly? What is the deadline here?

Nick Josefowitz

So the deadline is June 15. That's when California is constitutionally required to adopt a budget. And so it's a good 15 days away. And so we basically have, I think, two weeks here to convince the state, the governor, the legislature that this year would be the year that we need to save transit.

David Roberts

And so what exactly are advocates asking the government to do? Is this taking money from some other bucket? Is this just raising taxes? Is reallocating something, or is there a pool of money that they have their eye on? In particular, what precisely would you like California legislators to do?

Nick Josefowitz

Well, there's really two things. The first one is that in the Federal Infrastructure Act, the IIJA, there was money that was allocated to transportation and it flowed through highway accounts but is eligible to support transit operations. And President Biden, even in his budget memo, said "Hey, states, we gave you this pot of money and you can use it on transit operations if you want." And so we're asking the state to use some of that money that is not allocated yet, over one and a half billion dollars, to support transit operations. And then the second thing is that California has a cap and trade system —

David Roberts

Yes!

Nick Josefowitz

which I'm sure all your listeners are sort of familiar with. And transit is an essential climate strategy. We're almost certainly not going to be able to meet any of our climate goals without massive increases in transit ridership. And so we're also asking the state to take some of the money that's generated by cap and trade and put it into transit operations.

David Roberts

And I bet I'm not the only person that hears it this way. It just sounds weird to be in a blue state, a liberal state, an allegedly climate forward, climate leading state, you're begging them not to let transit die. Why do you have to beg them? Why isn't Gavin Newsom, the climate governor, et cetera, et cetera, why isn't he first in line pounding the table about this? Our legislators like, why on earth has it come to this? Why does this require advocacy at all?

Nick Josefowitz

There's a lot of reasons, but I think, like with a lot of things, it comes down to