And failing to fund transit seems unlikely to help the state’s finances — just the opposite. Buses and trains are not just a vital public service — they are vital economic infrastructure, no less critical to the state’s success than the roadways, railways, airports and shipping ports. Public transit is capable of generating far more in economic activity than it costs — according to a 2020 study by the American Public Transportation Association, an industry advocacy group, “a program of enhanced investment sustained over 20 years can have a total effect on the economy in the range of five times the amount being spent annually.”
In San Francisco, buses and trains are also integral to civic life. “It’s critical,” Larry Baer, the chief executive of the San Francisco Giants, told me. Oracle Park, the Giants’ stadium, was built in the 1990s to take advantage of transit — its plans call for half of attendees coming in via methods other than driving. “It’s just foundational — we’ve got to have public transportation operating at high efficiency, high reliability, and also safe and clean,” Baer said.
Cutting transit funds at this moment would be especially costly. In 2021, Congress passed the Biden administration’s trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, including billions for transit projects. But the money comes with a catch — in many instances, state and local governments must match the federal money. Underfunding transit, then, puts the federal windfall at risk. In a terse letter to Newsom last week, 19 members of California’s congressional delegation warned that his budget undermined their work.
“Many of us advocated for these funds and worked diligently to ensure they would fund projects that benefit Californians,” they wrote. Now, they said, “we are deeply concerned that California transit networks will be unable to benefit from these historic investments.”
Annie Fryman, the special projects director at the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, a nonprofit public policy group, underscored the absurdity of the proposed cuts, given the availability of federal money: “One of the most irresponsible things that you can do during a budget deficit like this is arbitrarily make decisions that disqualify your state from getting free money from elsewhere,” she told me.