American states are bailing out public transport
Sometimes, it turns out, protests work. On June 3rd, over a hundred San Franciscans mounted a mock funeral for public transport. Walking to city hall in the sun, they carried on their shoulders models of buses and trains like coffins, as musicians played a funeral dirge on trumpets and a saxophone. Their anger was over a proposal by Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, that would have cut $2bn of spending from public transport in an attempt to balance the state’s hefty deficit. muni, San Francisco’s local transport agency, had suggested it might have to remove the equivalent of 20 bus routes to stay solvent.
Within a week, a deal had been worked out by the state legislature. Assuming it passes (and Mr Newsom signs it), instead of cuts roughly $1.1bn a year will be made available to public transport, raised from the state’s emissions cap-and-trade scheme. California will thus stave off a problem afflicting public-transport systems across America: that of a fiscal cliff, as federal covid-relief money dries up. The Golden State is not alone in creating a financial parachute. In May New York legislators agreed a budget with over $1bn of new funding for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, New York City’s system. Minnesota has also introduced a new sales tax to raise $450m a year for the system in Minneapolis and St Paul.
Compared with other countries, public-transport use in America has been slow to recover from the pandemic. The number of bus and train passengers in May was still at only 69% of the pre-pandemic level, according to data from the American Public Transportation Association, an industry group. In May New York’s subway was carrying a mere 71% of the passenger total in 2019. Ridership on BART, in the San Francisco Bay Area, was at just 37% of the 2019 figure. In London in May, travel on the Underground system was already back to around 87% of pre-pandemic levels.
2023-06-15 08:20:26
Original from www.economist.com
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