Their term ‘transit cliff’ has become common, particularly in the Bay Area, to describe the coming crisis for transit agencies as the supplemental federal money supplied for operations during the pandemic are running out. Agencies such as BART and Caltrain that were heavily dependent on farebox recovery are probably in the worst crisis, other transit agencies to a lesser degree. SacRT was not as dependent on fares as some agencies, and doesn’t seem to be as worried.

A concern for STAR is that transit agencies are using the fiscal cliff of operations funds as a cover for asking the state to cover all of their transit funding including capital expenditures, such as rail extensions and new buses. The crisis is operations funds, it is not capital funds. Certainly the loss or reduction of capital funds might delay projects, might delay replacing buses, might cause problems with contracts, but that is less important than the current challenge in operations. If operations funds are cut, routes or frequency are cut, and if routes or frequency are cut, ridership declines, which means lower fare recovery, which means routes or frequency must be cut, and on and on in a downward spiral.

An idea that has come up is that all capital funds should be transferred to operations for a period of time. In some cases, this is a decision that transit agencies can make, but in most cases it requires action at the state or federal level, and in some cases even a change in law. But that is something that can be accomplished with intent. If the transit advocacy groups and the transit agencies get behind this idea, we can continue to have strong operations funding and therefore strong ridership, with robust high frequency routes.

For more information about the transit cliff issue and current status, see Hope for Bay Area Transit as State Budget Deal Reached on Streetsblog SF. Even transit champion Scott Weiner clouds the distinction between operations and capital.

• transportation funding