Versus Huge Deficits, $5 Billion Won for Bay Location Transit

BySelen Ozturk

Feb 29, 2024



Facing huge state deficits, supporters won $5.1 billion for Bay Area transit last year by framing transit as a problem of environment and real estate, with Californians' health and wellbeing at stake.

Against a deficiency estimated by Gov. Gavin Newsom's office to be $38 billion but predicted by the nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst's Office to be as high as $ 73 billion, the grassroots campaign convinced legislators to sculpt a lifeline from the $310.8 billion spending plan to avoid a transit "financial cliff," by passing an expense under Sen. Scott Wiener (D-11).

At a San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) online forum, leaders involved in the campaign, through a union organized by SPUR and Transform CA shared what it took to win.

Gaining traction

By December 2022, it was clear to regional transit funding firms SFMTA and MTC, which dealt with the union, that California was nosediving into a deficit.

The Bay Area, while consisting of 20% of the state's total population, includes nearly half of its transit riders.

That month, the groups had the California Transit Association "write a letter advising the legislature to take action," said Rebecca Long, director of Legislation & & Public Affairs at MTC and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). In January 2023, the guv's budget was released "with not only no help for transit operations, however setting us back" by $1 billion dollars, versus $2 billion that was assured.

The union prompted service, housing, labor and climate organizations statewide to compose more letters. In response, in February the state held a joint Assembly and Senate Transportation Committee hearing about what transit required as federal COVID relief funds subsided in the middle of monetary pressures caused by shifting travel patterns, remote work and inflated operating costs.

At the hearing, union members testified that "this is not simply about moneying public companies. Transit is an environment solution.
" On the news, it looked like spotlight came out of nowhere, however there were months of actually methodical preparation," stated Adina Levin, co-founder and policy director of Seamless Bay Area, a transit advocacy group that dealt with other groups to activate countless people to get in touch with agents, attend presentations, distribute flyers and speak at hearings.

" Lightning advocacy really highlighted the diversity of our supporters," she included. "When we were flyering, we wanted to use several languages, so Tenderloin Neighborhood Development actually rapidly produced Tagalog, the Bay Area Council produced Chinese, and so on. In those last couple of weeks, we generated over 10,000 calls and letters."

" On the ground, the turning point was a May 12 town hall with Phil Ting in San Francisco," stated Cyrus Hall, a public transit supporter.

" We collected 20 to 30 activists to get them to address the concern, as state Assembly budget plan chair, 'Are you encouraging of functional space funding for transit agencies?' We did not get a response," continued Hall, "and when we followed up after, we got an extremely direct response that, at that moment, was, 'No.' I think this signified that the state was not ready to action in and supply the financing essential to ensure that our firms didn't collapse."

In action, continued Hall, activists connected with "10 to 20 groups" like Safe Street Rebel, Telegraph for People and Kid Safe SF held a June 3 "transit funeral service beginning in Oakland, marching on BART under the Bay through the Transbay tunnel, coming out in Civic Center, and then marching down Market Street to San Francisco City Hall where we held a rally" with political leaders including Wiener, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and City Supervisor Dean Preston.

" Some activists followed up a week later on June 8, obstructing Octavia and Marquette in San Francisco-- a crossway that likewise occurs to be an exit ramp," he continued. "We got unbelievable media protection from people and helicopters shooting on the ground, and we made that video footage viral."

As an outcome, "more individuals got included composing and phoning into Sacramento," Hall included. "Talking to people directly on BART trains was likewise creating numerous letters and phone calls.
While 2 more significant Bay transit coalition letters by May had actually already pressured the governor's spending plan update "to verbally acknowledge that transit is extremely essential ... there were no specifics in dollars," Long stated. "That's when we stepped up the direct action: transit rallies on the ground, joint letters from Congress members ... and from huge city mayors, chosen authorities and City Councils, advising the legislature."

Officials and activists had "2 really strong justifications for why transit was the state's obligation," said Monique Webster, SFMTA Regional Government Affairs Manager: "one, the transportation sector is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, and so the centerpiece of the state's decarbonization environment strategy."

" Second," she added, "public transit also expands access to opportunity-- access to education, jobs, healthcare, for many susceptible Californians-- and the state just can not make development on that objective if transit goes under."

Secret to encouraging the state was "indicating what other states were doing," stated Raayan Mohtashemi, legal aide for Wiener. "New York and Minnesota, which were facing similar ridership and sustainability issues, had actually passed longer-term funding agreements to avert financial cliffs."

In 2022, for example, BART had the ability to cover only 70% of pre-pandemic operating expenses from rider income.

One year later on, in June 2023, BART balanced only about 40% of weekday transit traffic during weekdays and 60% of weekend traffic compared to pre-pandemic numbers.

That June, Newsom's workplace and the legislature finally struck an offer to set aside $1.1 billion in "versatile" financing for transit over four years, with transit firms allowed to dip into a staying $4 billion in state aid for operations as needed-- diverting from facilities jobs the money was initially set aside for, like the extension of BART to San Jose.

Though the cash suffices to prevent shortfalls and service cuts through "approximately mid-2026," stated Mohtashemi, "there's still a requirement for long-lasting sustainability."

That's why Sen. Wiener, having in 2015 withdrawn SB-532-- a defunct proposition to raise Bay Area bridge tolls by $1.50 to money transit, which was consulted with public opposition-- is planning for legislation this year to allow a regional ballot measure on long-term transit funding.