https://www.ppic.org/blog/whos-leaving-california-and-whos-moving-in/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=whos-leaving-california-and-whos-moving-in?utm_source=ppic&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=blog_subscriber
Most striking, California is now losing higher-income households as well as middle-and-lower-income households…the state is no longer a significant draw for people from other states of any age, education or income…
DB2
Bob,
You keep chasing those liberals who tax. The numbers who left are around 134k net? Right? Last I thought we had as figure. It is make believe that it matters.
Again I had the old fashioned third grade math teacher.
By quietly you mean what? There are some superfund sites that are doing no harm and just sitting waiting to be cleaned up. But (I think) the biggest site is halting a large project right near Apple HQ. This site was a Sears Auto at a now defunct mall and has been sitting waiting for cleanup for years.
Everything is relative
Mike
As in everything is relative most guys on the East coast would never guess SV has major toxic waste sites.
You know more about this than I do. Years ago in college I heard about SV in geography. The location was not the entire point in that lesson.
Senate Bill 1031 would amass between $750 million and $2 billion a year through taxes to beef up funding across the nine Bay Area counties in an attempt to avoid service cuts and improve roadways…
Across the entire region, public transportation services are only seeing about two-thirds as many riders compared to pre-2020 levels, according to Metropolitan Transportation Commission spokesperson Rebecca Long. Recovery figures vary for specific agencies: BART is at 45% of pre-pandemic ridership, while Muni is at 70%…
Without a boost in funding, transit advocates on Monday warned of a “death spiral” whereby service cuts could further diminish ridership, leading to ever-worsening budget crises. The commission estimated that Bay Area transit operators will face a budget deficit of at least $600 million if new funding doesn’t come through.
DB2
And the automakers and gasoline sellers smile at the prospect.
“public transit is a big gummit plot to take your freeedom away” (Sean Hannity)
Steve
Aand the typical government response: more taxes! more spending! Ignore the fact that the ridership is down because the population is leaving - in part because of escalating taxes and costs. The stupidity continues to be mind-boggling.
The “death spiral” is yet another apocalyptic sensationalist term. But it will never end at 0. They just want to keep providing jobs, of course - admirable. But have the jobs shift to areas where they’re short staffed or needed - construction? infrastructure? housing? homeless support? Run 20% less trains. Helps the climate. Wastes less time, money and fuel for the power plants.
I’m sure they don’t mind, but surveys have shown that the main reason people aren’t riding BART is a lack of safety. And, of course, fewer people work downtown these days.
DB2
Maybe Jeff can give us an update here. My dad visited NYC often. He commented, in the late 60s, there was a transit policeman in ever car. The solution to reduced ridership on a subway seems obvious: run fewer cars in each train. Still need to pay the motorman, but reducing the number of cars in use reduces maintenance and power needs.
Steve
Well, stupidity might be mind boggling, but transit ridership is down in every city with transit. Every one.
Even cities where population is growing.
Perhaps you want to rethink the hypothesis?
Ridership is down because: hybrid work and empty buildings. Fewer people are commuting on fewer days. Additionally many businesses have adjusted hours to give employees a “benefit” so they don’t have to drive in rush hour, making it more convenient and impacting mass-transit which is, after all, designed to handle peak loads in morning and afternoon when traffic is (was) at its worst.
If you look across the spectrum, most major city transit systems are reporting loads of 50-75% of pre-pandemic use. This is also true whether you are measuring subways, bus ridership, downtown trolleys, etc.
Dallas has gained population in the past two years; DART ridership is at 71% of pre-pandemic levels.
Atlanta has gained population since 2021. Use of MARTA trains, busses, streetcars is down 58% this year.
It’s true that some northern cities have lost population: New York, Boston, Chicago for example, but those losses are, as a percentage, pretty small. The decrease in ridership of mass transit for 2023 is, respectively, 66%, 89%, and 66% compared to 2019. (All three of those are increasing, Y-o-Y, but remain far behind pre-pandemic levels.)
I lived in North Jersey and went to NYC pretty frequently in the 60’s. There was never a time when there was a cop in every car. There might have been more than there are today; I only go to the city once a year or so now, but somebody’s memory is playing tricks. I would say there wasn’t even a cop on every train, frankly.
I lived in NYC in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and there was never a cop in each car or anything close to that. In fact, cops didn’t really work down in the subways all that much. The subway did have a few conductors in each train in the 60s, and maybe still in the early 70s. After that, it was just the train operators (in their little locked cubicle), probably because it became too dangerous to be a conductor (the 70s and 80s weren’t particularly good times in the subways in NYC).
I live in NYC (when I’m not on the road) and I have to agree with Mark. There are always conductors on the subway trains, but rarely cops aboard. Cops seem satisfied hanging around d the stations (sometimes in a group, frequently, not at all).
Jeff
The latest “sport” in NYC is people taking photos of cops in the subway stations doing stuff on their phones and posting them to social media.
There’s even a rumor that the mayor asked people to do it!
Anybody seen the National Guard there?
DB2
Rethink the hypothesis? Actually your post reinforces it. To put a finer point on it, the logical answer is NOT raising taxes to support a declining / decreased operation. The logical answer is, cut spending as a reflection of / reaction to the lower ridership for whatever reason.
Guess you don’t understand the concept of “doom loop”. OR perhaps just don’t care. But I have to say you’d make a pretty bad Mayor of a large city if you think mass transit isn’t important enough to think about beyond the most simplistic terms.
Bay Area transit agencies had been praying for a new transit tax that promised to save them from dire financial straits. But lawmakers pulled the plug on the bill BART and Muni had been banking on—amid growing opposition. Now, the transit operators will have to wait at least another year before a new effort to save the cash-strapped systems can be launched…
BART, whose ridership has been decimated by the work-from-home revolution, is running on federal emergency funds that’ll dry up in 2025.
Muni’s revenue is down to nearly half its pre-pandemic level, which has led the San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Agency to declare a “catastrophic” budget shortfall.
DB2
It is also possible that COVID and WFH were just the last straws for many…the other straws being crime and dirty trains. And don’t forget the lack of enforcement of paying for your ride…widely known that you can jump the turnstiles and no one seems to care.
To be fair there is a plan to fix this for many millions
BART has said previously that evasion costs the system between $15-25 million annually. The agency plans to install new fare gates in all stations by the end of 2025 at a total cost of $90 million. Once BART determines which of the three prototypes is the best, they will continue adding new gates.
Mike
In many mass transit systems, the fares only cover a part of the operating costs. Detroit has a small, elevated, train running around downtown. Faced with the cost of installing new fair collecting equipment, TPTB decided to make riding the thing free, as the fairs collected for several years would go to covering the cost of the new equipment, as opposed to contributing anything to the running costs of the train system.
When I was in Seattle in 94, city busses downtown were free. I only paid when I ventured outside of downtown, heading to Boeing HQ and the Museum of Flight.
SFO already has a reputation as a Commie hotbed. Why not make BART free?
Steve
They would still have to find a billion a year to run it.
DB2