A few weeks ago, the Antiplanner reported that transit advocates were holding up rush hour traffic in San Francisco in order to blackmail the legislature into giving billions of dollars to transit systems that few people are riding anymore in order to prevent a fiscal cliff. I also noted that the blackmail worked as the state gave transit $2 billion including $1.1 billion for BART.
Is there a fiscal cliff ahead? Photo by Cary Lee.
Fiscal cliff averted! Except state senator Scott Weiner wants to “temporarily” raise Bay Area bridge tolls by $1.50 (from the current $7) for five years in order to provide more subsidies to transit. The increase will only be needed for five years, Weiner says, because by then he hopes Bay Area voters will have passed another tax increase to support transit systems they are no longer using.
No matter how much money politicians and taxpayers give transit, it is never enough. When ridership increases, it needs more money to increase service. When ridership decreases, it needs more money to maintain service and recover those riders. It’s all just a giant scam.
How about this: if ridership doesn’t recover by the time the latest bailout runs out, can we take it as a market signal that maybe transit should reduce its costs? Unless we have some agreement like that, then it is clear that transit “advocates” such as Weiner are really advocating for bureaucratic bloat, not for transit riders.
When grand solution is fleecing auto drivers to pay for something auto drivers aren’t using
People remark Why Asia and Europe have such good transit quality.
Answer is 2 fold
Population dynamics
(Europe 700 million, Asia 1.5 billion, USA 330 million
2nd is Asia’s stuff is all fairly new and dense living conditions make transit operationally effective. If nit not profitable at least financially feasible.
In Europe infrastructure is fairly new. In US some this stuff is 100 years old. Cannot be replaced without total tear down.
Asian Megacities have built monorail to accommodate transit needs without tearing city streets up for underground infrastructure.
I don’t care if or when flying cars are invented but hypothetically if they were drastic change in transportation sector….ehhh not really. Tech Innovations are economic game changers IF they are easy to implement, convenient and financially feasible.
Transit is of so little value, that the riders refuse to pay its actual cost.
Is there anything else to know about transit?
“… riders refuse to pay its actual cost….”
Actual cost?! Heck, there’s a huge body of evidence that proves riders refuse to pay even a small fraction of actual costs. Where I live, transit has been free since summer of 2020 and still, buses run around nearly empty most of the time. Homeless bums going to their free meals make up the lion’s share of riders.
So … how do we, the taxpayers, stop this grand theft?
If San Francisco still had Streetcars….. not just the cable car.
But it’s streetcars how many people could they honestly move