Kezl 🔜 🟦☁️

September US transit data is in today, & all of the largest US rail networks are growing! The Bay leads the way, with ridership up 15% on BART & 14% on Muni MBTA (Boston, 11.1%) and LA Metro (10.6%) also have strong growth, while MTS (San Diego, +1.7%) is the slowest🧵

L.A.'s modern bus network has like three times the level of service this map does. And most of these lines were essentially just glorified buses. With the exception of a handful of trunk routes (which have largely been replicated by the modern Metro Rail, the A Line follows that big vertical route from Downtown to Long Beach), these weren't running in their own dedicated corridors like modern light rail. These were smack in the middle of streets in mixed traffic, and you had to dash across active lanes to board one. L.A.'s streetcar system was a marvel in many ways, but let's not let nostalgia blinders mislead us. There's a reason it went under, and L.A.'s modern public transit system is in fact better than this.

We're coming to the end of the Measure RTM campaign, so here's a concluding thought. Proponents didn't understand or didn't care to understand our opposition group. We're NOT against transit. Speaking for myself, I have used transit since I was a little kid growing up in Queens and know its value. For us opponents, this has been about EFFICIENCY, or more precisely, the absence of it in Bay Area Transit. Agencies are wasting billions on overpriced expansion projects, overpaying consultants in the process. Executive compensation is often too high and not tied to results, while employee benefits are out of line with private sector packages. The 14-year sales tax with its fake accountability provisions will lock in the status quo, allowing agencies to largely ignore opportunities for automation. The only way for voters to demand more careful spending of their tax dollars is to refuse to pay more.

When I post about Social Security running out of money in six years, many say we just need to cut waste, fraud, and abuse. We should. But that only addresses a small fraction of the shortfall. If your Congressman says that alone will fix Social Security, they aren't being straight with you. We need real solutions, not political talking points.

Another win for bus riders. 🚍 Today, Miami-Dade restored $9.2 million to Metrobus service. That means 4,211 more riders will still have a bus home come March. So far this year, $21.5 million in cuts have been reversed.

Your bias against monorails is deeply problematic