While it may seem daunting to create a lexicon, it would be beneficial to casual but interested readers to have a little glossary at the side of this blog. That’s what Web 2.0 is for, right? Bringing everyone into important discussions?

Unfortunately, the Bay Area is California, and a large proportion of the population is unwilling to take transit. Also, our job centers are not as neatly divided as New York’s, and so our needs are less obvious. But if we look at transit as economic necessity (Amanda above is completely right that AC Transit, especially because it depends on sales tax revenue, should try to make it more convenient for Oaklanders to shop locally), and are rational about allocating resources, we’d be focused more on buses and existing rail than new light-rail and BART. There’s just no excuse for Silicon Valley to want a multi-billion dollar BART extension when there is an existing commuter train serving the same route, just an obsession with image and an overemphasis on attracting leisure riders (though BART Fan is right that our transit options need to be desirable).

A big problem for setting priorities is that the MTC / ABAG* is completely unaccountable and unrepresentative. The Los Angeles MTA was overhauled ten years ago to be more democratic (ie, population-based representation rather than strictly jurisdiction-based), and they’ve unquestionably done a better job expanding and improving transit than we have. They also lost the same lawsuit currently in litigation with the MTC, which forced them to stop rail expansion until buses were brought up to equal levels of service; they used that ruling to pioneer Rapid Bus.

If the region can agree on some fresh and rational priorities (and abandon the awful Central Subway and BART-to-SJ projects), we could use our newfound clout on the national (and state) level to make some smart investments. It would take real leadership, but the headless MTC and unexciting local transit officials are not up to the task. Maybe Mayor Dellums will step into the void!

* FYI, the Metropolitan Transit Commission is an agency of the Association of Bay Area Governments; Iwriting about transit involves much more jargon than other local issues! Maybe CC could provide a glossary, so the casual reader knows what everyone’s talking about?

Not just public transit, but nearly all transportation is subsidized. Public roads, public airports, shipping ports, nearly all transportation infrastructure is publicly owned and paid for through taxes. We subsidize this infrastructure with sales taxes, property taxes, bonds (paid back through other taxes), etc.

Examples: County sales taxes used for road and freeway projects. The recently-passed twenty billion dollar transportation bond which will be spent largely on roads and freeways, and paid back through future general fund revenue (e.g. sales taxes).

Capricious Commuter continues: “…we are still left with what we, as a society, are trying to accomplish with all that tax money.”

True, and that’s not just for public transit, but our entire transportation system.

I realize that living for six months in Europe without a car doesn’t make me an expert, but one of the things I noticed was a different attitude toward the place of public transportation in society. Where I travelled (primarily in Germany), people seemed to view transit as an essential city service, much the way we view fire and police departments. Just as we don’t expect such services to “pay their own way,” the Europeans I met did not expect transit to pay for itself.

Instead, public transit was seen as a means to the end of mobility in an urban setting. It was not just a conveyance for those who could not drive or who are too poor to afford a car, though it did serve that important purpose as well. I saw people of all backgrounds, incomes, and walks of life on the same buses and trains — in other words, it was truly public transit, not just transit for a certain subset of the public. Here we are stuck with the stereotypes of buses for the urban poor and commuter trains for the suburban rich.

What I saw in Europe was certainly not utopia. For one thing, it cured me of the delusion that good transit will solve the problem of urban traffic congestion. The only thing that truly eliminates congestion is restricting (either physically or financially) the number of cars entering an urban roadway network, not providing transit alternatives alone. (London’s congestion charge is a great illustration of this.) However, I found the “transit as essential public service” attitude was much more productive than the “transit is a business that must pay its own way” attitude that is so prevalent here. Failing to plan and budget for high-quality public transit is the main factor that makes so many contemporary American cities a great deal less livable (not to mention less energy and land efficient) than their European counterparts.

I should say in closing, however, that I actually agree with American transit critics on one point: Far too much transit spending in this country is, in fact, wasteful. We need more focus on cost-effectiveness and accountability and less on transportation spending as a means of political horse trading. A positively disgusting example of this is San Francisco’s Central Subway boondoggle, which was born as a political favor of Willie Brown’s for Chinatown power brokers and, in the face of cost overruns, it has been whittled down to the point where it brings little to no transportation benefit at a staggering $1.4 billion cost. This is precisely the kind of public transit spending we can all do without.

A question for Director Franklin, how is “free or discounted travel after taking x trips per month” any different than the high value discount already available? Mathematically and practically speaking, it’s the same, or very similar, isn’t it? In any case, further discounts would mean BART would have less revenue thereby increasing the need for tax subsidies. As I understand it, BART is already more than 50% subsidized by taxpayers. While nationally, this is on the low side, BART should be working toward reducing the need for subsidies with smart cost reduction and more efficient operation. Public perception of safety, cleanliness and reliability will go a long way toward increasing ridership, which is the ultimate goal of transit.