U.S. public transit agencies haven’t yet seen the bottom of a pandemic-induced fiscal crisis.
S&P Global Ratings dropped Bay Area Rapid Transit’s (BART) credit rating two notches last week. The new credit rating of A+ will make it more expensive for BART to borrow money—all while facing an increasingly dire fiscal cliff.
An article by Skylar Woodhouse for Bloomberg explains that BART might not be the only transit agency facing credit rating adjustments. BART is” one of several public-transit agencies put on notice by S&P, including the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and DC’s Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority,” according to Woodhouse.
“New debt sales by public transit systems are already depressed. Municipal-bond issuance for mass transportation totaled about $4.3 billion this year, down about 44% from the same period in 2022 and the lowest since 2018, according to Refinitiv data as of May 25,” adds Woodhouse.
The fiscal plight of BART and public transit more generally was also the subject of an on-air segment on WBUR’s Here and Now.
[Update: news broke late last night that California Governor Gavin Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders had stuck a deal to prevent service cuts on BART and other transit systems in the state. More coverage of that news to come.]
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