The coronavirus has made it essential that every transit supporter use the word “essential” in their discussions, as in how essential it is that transit carry essential workers to their essential jobs. Ridership may be down by more than 80 percent, but the remaining 19 percent of riders are really essential, so that makes it essential that we keep giving more subsidies to essential transit agencies.
Transit Is Essential is, in fact, the name of a new paper from the California Transit Association. The paper skips over the whole messy part about why transit is so essential and instead goes immediately to demanding more subsidies. “Another round of emergency funding is critical to preventing significant and permanent reductions in transit services.” In other words, subsidies aren’t just essential, they are critical.
According to the New York-based TransitCenter, “an estimated 2.8 million American workers in essential industries commute[d] to work on transit” in 2018. That doesn’t say how they are commuting to work now, in the midst of the pandemic. But let’s say it is still 2.8 million: for less than the cost of the annual subsidy to transit in a normal year ($54 billion in 2018), we could give every one of those people a brand-new car, which the CDC says is safer than transit during the pandemic. So, tell me again, why is transit so essential?
Sometimes it seems like these groups just string random paragraphs together in order to get quoted in Streetsblog or similar pro-transit web sites. A four-page paper signed by 39 different California transit groups rambles about such things as how African-Americans are four times more likely to use transit than whites and how transit is healthy because “car dependency increases sedentary behavior.” Without ever really stating the problem, the report concludes that the “solution” is to “Reprogram existing state transportation funds to keep transit running.”
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Among other things, they demand that, “Federal stimulus dollars or state transportation dollars should fund PPE (personal protective equipment) for every transit worker; a mask for every rider who is missing one; hand sanitizer on all transit vehicles and at all transit hubs; hazard pay for transit workers and paid sick leave for workers who are infected or exposed to COVID-19; daily routine sanitation to properly disinfect all transit vehicles following the latest guidelines and recommendations from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); on-site testing when possible and daily temperature checks of transit workers, and for line relief operators.” Or we could save all of that money and tell people to drive their own private vehicles instead.
If transit is so much healthier than driving and blacks ride transit more than whites, they must have longer life expectancies, right? Wrong. Of course, “four times more likely to ride transit” only means that 9.8 percent of blacks take transit to work compared with 3.1 percent of non-hispanic whites (in California the numbers are 8.5 percent of blacks, 3.5 percent of whites). My calculator says 9.8 is a lot less than four times 3.1, but even 9.8 percent isn’t very much. But, hey, it’s essential.
The truth is that, outside of New York City, transit was practically irrelevant before the pandemic. The pandemic made it even more irrelevant: while driving in May was down 25 percent, transit ridership was down 81 percent. Clearly, transport users felt that driving was more essential than transit. But that’s not a message the transit industry wants you to hear.
It’s all about feeding the transit unions, which kicks taxpayer money back to democrat election campaigns, which buys more democrats empowered to feed more tax money to transit unions—completing the perfectly corrupt loop.
What we need are the auto worker unions to do something positive for their members (rather than just being a funnel to corrupt politicians).
They should push your idea to provide cars to people who formerly used transit or who want to stop using it. Use the billions of transit $$$ to buy millions of cars.
Full employment for auto workers. profits for car manufacturers and all the related jobs. Plus freedom and safety for former transit riders.
Everyone wins except the transit industry – the opposite of the current system, where everyone loses except the transit industry.
“They should push your idea to provide cars to people who formerly used transit….”
I totally disagree. If and when it’s determined that taxpayers are responsible for providing somebody with transportation, those people should be given credits then allowed to decide what kind of transportation suits their needs. Transit companies can and should be allowed to compete for their dollars, as should used car dealers, jitney service providers, bike shops, etc. Giving people cars helps nobody and hurts taxpayers. Why don’t we ever learn that?
No problem at all with giving people the opportunity to choose.
As long as we don’t have to give transit ten of billions of $$ whether or not the public chooses cars over transit.
If we have to subsidize transit at all, it should be based on riders, not on what they want to split up among their political friends.
Streetsblog, Antiplanners Bizarro world opposite put out a stunning tweet.
Only 17.2% of @limebike scooter riders are Black or Latinx, the company has revealed and some advocates think the disparity points to a raft of still-understudied barriers to micromobility in communities of color.
I’m giggling at the fact a company whose only business is scooters; bothers with gathering racial demographics data of it’s customer base. Isn’t that considered racist by the standards todays leftists judge, the film industry; among others like skin care products, hair care products, music, foods, etc?
How about govt kindly fix the road I was already taxed to fix, so I’m not casuing damage by the car I’m taxed annually to drive, which I purchased with income government took 40% of in taxes, which sits in the driveway of my highly property taxed home…
…hazard pay for transit workers and paid sick leave for workers who are infected or exposed to COVID-19…
Now do grocery store workers, etc.