SACRAMENTO — California legislators have agreed to a deal that would provide more than $3 billion to aid state transit agencies such as Caltrain and Bay Area Rapid Transit that say they are facing a “fiscal cliff”as a result of low ridership since the COVID-19 pandemic, the San Jose Mercury News reports.
The deal would restore $2 billion in capital funding that was to be cut under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget plan, and allows agencies to divert $1.1 billion over the next three years from funds that were to be used toward zero-emission buses.
The plan would allow agencies to use those capital funds for immediate operating needs, even though State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) told KQED that move is “really bad policy … for two reasons.
“First, obviously, it prevents us from making all the capital improvements we need to have better and better transit,” Wiener said. “But even more important, if we use these capital funds for operations, we will forfeit billions of dollars of federal matching funds.”
The legislature is expected to pass the proposed agreement, and the rest of the fiscal 2023-24 budget, on Thursday, but Newsom has not indicated whether he will support the deal, the Mercury News reports, stressing the state’s overall budget issues. The state, heavily reliant on income tax from its wealthiest taxpayers, has goen from a $97.5 budget surplus this year to a projected $31.5 billion deficit.
BART has said a funding cut of 20% to 40% would mean service cuts of 65% to 85% because of high fixed costs to maintain its infrastructure. That could translate into moves as drastic as trains running just once an hour, an end to weekend service, and no service after 9 p.m., the agency says.
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