A glaring example of such obtuseness is the report recently issued by the California State Transportation Agency’s Transit Transformation Task Force. Established by “the transit recovery package signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom as part of the 2023-24 state budget,” the panel’s mission was to make “recommendations to grow transit ridership, improve the transit experience and address long-term operational needs.”
With a mandate to entrench the status quo — and avoid any cage-rattling — the task force’s 25 members included representatives from the Southern California Association of Governments, Eastern Contra Costa Transit Authority, Riverside County Transportation Commission, Amalgamated Transit Union, California Transit Association, Move LA and the Monterey-Salinas Transit District.
Released in the middle of the holiday season, the “SB125 Transit Transformation Task Force Final Report” garnered paltry media attention. But taxpayers, activists and elected officials committed to affordable and efficient government shouldn’t ignore the document. It’s a preview of things to come.
Let’s start by noting how curious the report’s very existence is. Why is “transformation” necessary? If one accepts the assumptions of smart-growthers’ worldview, transit should be thriving in California. As researcher Wendell Cox wrote, the Golden State has America’s “highest urban population density and … highest urbanization share of total population.” There are more people, per square mile, in California’s metro regions than in New York’s — and a “total of 94.2% of California residents live in urban areas.” Throw in a mostly favorable climate and widely embraced “green” habits, and the typical urbanist couldn’t help but conclude that transit is Californians’ preferred way to move around.
And yet, it isn’t.
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that transit’s share of the commuting market in California is smaller than the portion it covers for the nation as a whole — 3.3% vs. 3.7%. In 2019, the order was reversed: 5.2% vs. 5.0%. Getting granular with individual MSAs makes the irrelevance starker. From its 2019 peak of 18.9%, transit’s share of commuting in San Francisco collapsed to 10.9% in 2024. That same year, Los Angeles stood at 3.5%, San Jose at 2.8%, San Diego at 1.9%, and Sacramento at 1.8%. Many smaller metro regions posted lower percentages: Fresno (0.8%), Salinas (0.8%), Stockton (0.8%), Bakersfield (0.7%), El Centro (0.7%), Chico (0.6%), San Luis Obispo (0.4%) and Yuba City (0.4%).
The task force’s report admits that “transit ridership … has declined.” Several culprits receive blame for the downward trend, including “sprawl due to housing costs, the availability of drivers’ licenses for undocumented people, and the emergence of” ride-hailing apps. But an anecdote — always of dubious use in credible policy analysis — is cited to offer true believers hope. While transit’s post-lockdown recovery is “uneven,” San Francisco’s Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit increased “ridership to 130% of pre-pandemic levels.” Hmm. The route didn’t exist before COVID-19. It opened in April 2022. With no passenger data available before then, it’s impossible to assess the “success” of the wildly over budget BRT project.
Given its dedication to persuasion over impartial analysis, deep insights aren’t found in the “SB125 Transit Transformation Task Force Final Report.” That’s particularly true for financial affairs. Transit funding, it is argued, “can be increased and diversified by reshaping existing resources and creating new revenue opportunities.”
Options include “allowing transit agencies and regions” the authority to put tax-hiking measures on the ballot, granting “transit and other government agencies the ability to sell air rights or other development incentives to create development opportunities above and near transit stations and facilities to generate additional revenue via sale and/or investment,” and exploring “opportunities to allocate revenue from managed lanes and other forms of pricing in California’s most congested regions to fund transit service, giving travelers reliable alternatives to driving alone.”
The unintended consequences — economic, behavioral, environmental — of “new revenue opportunities” were not considered. Nor was the inconvenient fact that showering California transit entities with cash not derived from user fees is already standard procedure. In 2024, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District’s fare-box recovery ratio was 24.8%. The comparable share for the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System was 18.9%. Nearly everywhere else in the state, transit is essentially free. Fares meet just 7.2% of the Sacramento Regional Transit District’s day-to-day costs. For the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, it’s 6.2%. For the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, it’s 6.1%. Capital expenditures are, of course, provided entirely by taxpayers.
Task force members compounded their revenue misfire with a breathtakingly ignorant recommendation to “redefine the way people move, live and experience their communities statewide.” Since “California’s housing shortage and transportation crises are linked,” it is necessary to concentrate “homes, jobs and essential services near reliable transit.” Doing so “can boost ridership, improve the return on transit investments, and advance California’s housing, climate, equity and mobility goals.” But according to the Thoreau Institute’s Randal O’Toole, “there is little correlation between changes in urban population densities and changes in either per capita ridership or transit’s share of commuting” — and the task force’s report offers no evidence to refute the scholar’s assertion.
The Golden State’s pro-urbanism decision-makers pine for “a more resilient, equitable and sustainable transit system — one that will strengthen communities, drive economic prosperity and inspire future generations to see transit as the backbone of California’s shared future.” But their playbook has been followed for decades. The results? Declining ridership, “fiscal shortfalls” and heavy opportunity costs.
The Transit Transformation Task Force had its say. Now it’s time for California to establish a Transit Replacement Task Force.
D. Dowd Muska is a researcher and writer who studies public policy from the limited-government perspective. A veteran of several think tanks, he writes a column and publishes other content at No Dowd About It.
