Transit Renaissance: The Future of Public Transport and Its Finance and Governance

Project Description

While the COVID-19 pandemic caused ridership on public transit and shared mobility to drop precipitously and put severe strain on their finances and operations, all was far from well prior to the pandemic.

Transit ridership had dropped across the state in the half-decade prior to the pandemic, despite increasing public investment, and the relationship between shared mobility and regulators was oft-disputed. Thus, looking during and beyond the recovery from the pandemic, this project seeks to answer the question: what is and should be the future role and structure of public transit and public shared mobility in California?

This question has many facets. First, the pandemic threatened to upend public transit finance, potentially bankrupting agencies and forcing massive service and job cuts, but federal stimulus funding and continued strength of local and state revenues helped operators avoid disaster. One element of this project explores the financial effects of the pandemic for transit operators and provides an outlook on their financial future. Second, the project includes a roadmap of four scenarios for transportation and land use, which are deeply connected policy realms, fleshed out by a panel of experts.