HAS CORONAVIRUS KILLED THE MASS TRANSIT BOOM?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2020, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “HAS CORONAVIRUS KILLED THE MASS TRANSIT BOOM?”

          For most of the last 30 years, California saw a mass transit boom stretching from San Diego to Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay. Both light and heavy rail joined existing bus systems, providing new options for commuters and local residents to get around.

          Mass transit also took off as a planning concept. Cities that approve construction of new apartment and office buildings near rail stops often forego requirements for developers to provide parking. Even when they do demand parking spaces, it’s usually fewer than what was previously ordered.

          The presumption is that new residents and workers using those structures will use mass transit and their feet, that very few will drive cars.

          This has aroused both excitement and fear among many Californians, who envisioned the end of the car culture that has ruled this state for most of the last 100 years.

          But wait. That may not happen after all. The coronavirus pandemic has hit mass transit agencies harder than any government programs besides those directly involving health.

          The reason is clear: fear of contagion. No one who can avoid it wants to ride a crowded bus or train in the day of the virus, even if all aboard are masked.

          Take a look at the latest ridership numbers for the Los Angeles area’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), which runs buses and an extensive light rail system. Over the last few years, this system opened several new lines that cost state, local and federal taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. A major new subway project is underway between downtown Los Angeles and the Westwood area near UCLA, now something akin to a ghost town amid its plethora of virus-killed small businesses.

          During June, when COVID-19 cases eased up for about two weeks before their latest onslaught, ridership for the MTA’s buses and trains was 2.01 million, down almost exactly 3 million passengers from the previous June.

          Even with the new lines, rail ridership was off by just over 53 percent, from 281,010 in June 2019 to 132,532 this year.

          In San Diego, the Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) started considering service cuts as early as March, as the pandemic began. There was still pressure to keep things running as usual, because, as the MTS chief executive said, “Our buses and trolleys are taking our most vulnerable residents to critical services, and first responders, grocery store employees, nurses and other healthcare workers to their jobs when we need them the most.”

          Meanwhile, ridership is down so much on the San Francisco area’s Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) that it expects to lose $975 million on operations over the next three years due to ridership drops that at times have reached 92 percent. And CalTrain, the San Francisco Peninsula’s heavy rail commuter line, warned it cannot continue running almost empty unless authorities in San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties subsidize it via a new sales tax or some other device.

          Together, all California’s transit systems are asking $36 billion in aid from the next federal coronavirus aid package. That’s almost half the estimated cost of the entire partially-built bullet train system – and it would not buy one inch more rail. This is for operating expenses only.

          It’s all fueled by workers operating from home and a return to commuting in private cars for those who have them, with trust for the sanitation of ride-share services like Uber and Lyft also low. Californians realize that using their own cars, especially if they ride only with others sheltering with them, is about as safe as staying home. Which leaves public transit to the poor, already most likely to be victimized by the virus.

          The question is whether this new attitude toward mass transit and other forms of sharing rides will be permanent. For sure, it will be years before full trust is restored and folks again board trains and buses without worry.

          Which means no one should spend new money on transit until it all shakes out and we learn whether riders will eventually return or continue to shun buses and trains.

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

DETAILS A PROBLEM FOR NEEDED BAIL SYSTEM CHANGES

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:  FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 2017, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

   “DETAILS A PROBLEM FOR NEEDED BAIL SYSTEM  CHANGES”

          There are plenty of problems with the kind of one-party government California now has, with every statewide office in the hands of Democrats, who also hold two-thirds majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

          It’s easier to pass taxes this way and budget discipline can be hard to find, to name just two. But the one-party dominance also allows for addressing some rank injustices after they’ve spent years as festering societal wounds.

          Cash bail is one of those. Get arrested, whether you’re guilty of a crime or not, and there’s a good chance you’ll have to put up thousands of dollars in cash, real estate or other valuables to avoid spending many months in jail. One springtime report from the non-profit Human Rights Watch found that 459,847 persons were jailed in California for felony offenses between 2011 and 2015 – but never found guilty of any crime. They accounted for just under one-third of all arrests during that time and it cost California counties an average of $114 per day to keep them in custody, a total of more than $1 billion.

          While a large majority of arrests were for good cause, hundreds of thousands were detained for days, weeks or months without good reason.

          The average bail set in those cases approximated $50,000, with variances by county and by the type of crime involved. For many persons unable to come up with such a sum, bail bond agents are an answer. The agents often put up 10 percent of the bail amount for an accused person, and are responsible for the rest if the suspect jumps bail or does not turn up for scheduled court dates.

 The accused (or friends and relatives) must pay that 10 percent, or $5,000 when bail is set at the typical $50,000. That money is not returned.

          “With a lot of low income families, $500 can be a lot to come up with – so $5,000?” San Francisco City and County Treasurer Jose Cisneros told a reporter. “Particularly $5,000 they are never going to see again.” That’s why many prisoners don’t make bail and languish for months before trial.

          This, in turn, can cause them to lose jobs and see their children put into foster case, often for months or years after their eventual release.

          So bail can be a punishment just for being poor. That reality got little attention in Sacramento until this year, but now Democratic state Sen. Robert Herzberg of Los Angeles (a former state Assembly speaker) and Assemblyman Rob Bonta of Alameda, another Democrat, want to rectify the frequent injustices.

          A Bonta reform measure died in the Assembly in June, but Hertzberg’s virtually identical bill to ease bail passed the Senate. Now making its way through various Assembly committees, it’s an attempt to ensure no one now jailed and awaiting trial is held merely because of finances.

          Counties would have to set up an evaluation system to make sure no one gets an “own-recognition” release if there’s any threat to the community or any flight risk. There’s an apparent consensus that prior criminal records will have to be considered. But no cost figure is yet attached to the new bureaucracy that would result.

          Said the normally ultra-liberal San Diego Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, “I don’t see how this works without spending a lot of money.”

          So, like the single-payer health insurance bill that passed the Senate earlier this year only to die in the Assembly for lack of financial details, this equally humanitarian effort at equalizing bail treatment for all suspects leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

          No one now questions the essential inequality of today’s bail setup, where the wealthy usually walk free while most poor suspects stay in jail. But no one also doubts the assertion of the Golden State Bail Agents Assn. that reform would see “the mass release of defendants.”

          For sure, any fix for this flawed system will see plenty of would-be defendants freed. The trick will be to make sure as many of the newly-freed as possible are among the one-third of all arrestees who will never be convicted of anything. Sadly, no one right now knows how to make those judgments.

                  

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     Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net