☆ Rubin: more tax money for “dirty” and “unsafe” BART, no signs of improvement
“People are leaving BART and other transit systems because they feel unsafe and because it's dirty,” says transit consultant Tom Rubin. While the Mercury News promotes a massive sales tax to rescue the troubled trains, Rubin asks of tax-happy government leaders: “why should they think if they give BART more money, that something will change? An Opportunity Now exclusive rebuttal to the Merc.
The Mercury News: On Thursday, in an effort to help stabilize the region’s transit services, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a $590 million state loan to BART, AC Transit, Caltrain and San Francisco MUNI, which will help the agencies cover operating costs until they can collect new tax money, assuming the measure passes. The transit agencies would have 12 years to repay it.
Opportunity Now: And if the measure doesn’t pass?
Tom Rubin: The debt needs to be guaranteed. The main backup guarantee is the funding for BART to San Jose. If BART to San Jose just never gets approved, then the funding the state had put aside for a capital project could be utilized. Or the state could forgive the loan. But it’s kind of hard to throw a lot of money at a region that is a little under 20% of the state population without throwing a more or less similar pot of money at the rest of the state
Merc: Orinda Councilmember Darlene Gee told this news organization her city’s BART station is a cornerstone of Orinda’s downtown. She said a tax measure won’t solve all transportation funding issues in the region, but it will help give transit agencies time to do “some serious rethinking” about the long-term structures of these systems.
TR: This has been obvious to anyone for well over a decade, even pre-COVID. Transit was having less and less of an impact, fewer and fewer people were riding it, and the transit agencies refused to take any steps to reduce costs and provide greater productivity.
If we bail them out again, why would anybody believe them when they say now they have to really, really seriously start thinking about what we can do better and at less cost. It's just not realistic.
Merc: Gee’s biggest fear, she said, is the possibility that voters will make a decision based on old experiences and assumptions about BART — that the system is unsafe and dirty.
TR: Why shouldn't voters consider the number of times that BART has unexpectedly, with no notice, totally shut down large parts of the system. People are leaving BART and other transit systems because they feel unsafe and because it's dirty. And why should they think if they give BART more money, that something will change? This bailout money doesn’t do anything it only replaces previous bailout monies with a new type of bailout money.
Merc: Carter Lavin, co-founder of transit advocacy organization Transbay Coalition, told this news organization that his biggest concern with a possible failure of the proposed ballot measure is “the Bay Area economy shuts down, the Bay Area becomes an inaccessible place to millions of people and traffic becomes even more unbearable.”
TR: People say transit needs more money, but transit has been failing for decades. In 2016 the total bay area transit trips was almost exactly the same, down to less than a million of the more than half a billion riders in 1980. During that time, the population of the Bay Area had climbed by about 50%. So, transit has been becoming less and less important, even as the spending has gone up two and a half times, inflation adjusted.
Merc: “This is happening because, as a region, as a state, as a nation, we don’t invest in transit. We haven’t done it in any significant amount,” Lavin said. “We have a great opportunity to fix that.”
TR: We have been investing. I did the numbers from 1980 to 2024 in the Bay Area. We had spent over $200 billion over that period. That's a lot of money. Nationally, similarly large investments, every year.
Plus, something in excess of 20% of the Highway Trust Fund is spent on transit. Car and truck drivers put a lot of money into the Highway Trust Fund. Transit doesn't. Also, a lot of what you pay in gas taxes goes to transit.
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