Public Transit Is A F***ing Joke (Script & Sources)

Good Morning, Bad news: public transit in the United States is a fucking joke. This year, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the US transit system it’s lowest grade ever, a D-, which is the same grade it got 4 years ago, when the transit funding deficit was $90 billion dollars. Today, it’s $176 billion dollars and expected to grow to a quarter TRILLION by 2029.

About 45% of Americans have absolutely no access to public transit, and the average number of transit riders has been in a steady freefall. To be clear: it’s not because America loves cars - it does - but that’s only because public transit isn’t a serious option for most Americans.

And this only becomes more obvious when you look at the rest of the world. Since the 1960s, European, Asian, and Latin American countries have heavily invested in public transit in a way that made it a realistic attractive alternative to driving. Switzerland, for example, had a much higher per-capita income than the United States in the 60s, but barely a quarter of the car ownership, and that was solely because public transit was cheap, clean, reliable, and everywhere.

In the United States, given the choice between spending more money every year to ride a dirty subway car that randomly skips stops or shuts down in the middle of a tunnel with no AC because of failing infrastructure, versus driving a car that you’re actually in control of - the choice is pretty obvious, if you can afford it.

And that’s the problem: not everyone has that choice. Transit riders are separated into two categories, “choice” and “dependent”. There are those who have the option of buying a car, maintaining it, and paying for parking, tolls, and garages. Then there are those who don’t and are dependent on public transit to get to their jobs, schools, shopping, and healthcare. It probably won’t surprise you, that “choice” riders tend to be higher and middle-income earners, and are disproportionately white. Their commutes tend to be faster, and the areas that service them are better maintained, with newer vehicles. Meanwhile, “dependent” riders are disproportionately lower-income and BIPOC, and they see longer commutes on worse equipment. It also probably wouldn’t surprise you, that these systems were intentionally separated very early on in order to literally keep rich white people from having to be on the same transit lines as poor BIPOC.

An article by Christof Spieler, a director of transit planning, and lecturer at Rice University, points at San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit as an example. In Oakland, San Antonio, one of the densest and most racially diverse neighborhoods, which is about 4% white, the trains run without stopping for almost 3 miles. Compare that to the neighborhoods of Walnut Creek or Pleasant Hill, which are 75% white and have half the population density: stations are less than 2 miles apart. Spieler says, “BART was literally designed in the late 1960s, to speed white suburban commuters past Black inner-city residents”.

And fundamentally, the reason public transit is falling apart is because the people who depend on it the most are low-income and BIPOC, two groups that generally have to fight tooth and nail to get any sort of funding for the infrastructure they rely on, while trillions are spent without asking on “high-income, white” infrastructure, like electric cars. These infrastructure investments pull “choice” riders away from public transit, instead of improving it for everyone.

President Biden’s infrastructure bill makes that very clear. Out of a total $2 trillion dollars, just 4.25%, or $85 billion would be spent on improving public transit systems, with another $80 billion specifically for Amtrak lines - but $174 billion, more than the entire public transit budget combined, would be spent on electric car infrastructure.

And *of course* it’s a good idea to invest in renewable energy and the future of car sustainability - but it’s obviously geared towards people who can AFFORD electric cars. So while these investments will be great for you if you’re wealthy enough to make use of them, there is a massive population of people who will never be able to afford a car, electric or otherwise, and those people are watching their only form of transportation fall apart in front of them.

And frankly, all of that info is totally outdated, and way worse, because the COVID-19 pandemic has changed our work-commute situation forever now that everyone is working from home. Except obviously, it’s NOT everyone, it’s middle and higher-income workers, who have the option of working from home. All of the transit shutdowns and budget shortfalls that have happened over the last year have made it a thousand times harder for our “essential workers” to get to work. And now, to make up those shortfalls, transit organizations are cutting routes, vehicles, stations, and operating hours.

The “choice” between public and personal transit has become a lot clearer for those who can make that choice, while absolutely screwing those who can’t.