NRDC: Saving Transit is ‘Essential Climate Strategy’

A blog post by Zak Accuardi for the Natural Resources Defense Council, like others before him, calls on California leaders to save the state’s faltering public transit systems. “Steering public transit off a fiscal cliff,” Accuardi writes, is “no metaphor: the state is on course to leave hardworking people at the curb, choking on hot, polluted air—waiting for a bus that may never come.”

For Accuardi, Gov. Newsom’s latest budget doesn’t do nearly enough to restore effective service and give transit agencies the resources they need to grow into the future and move toward cleaner fleets. “Instead of impossible trade-offs that will hurt riders and workers, the Governor and Legislature should seize an opportunity to start doing for the state’s transit network what we have spent 70 years doing for the state’s highways—make the investments necessary to create a system whose benefits are accessible to all Californians.”

Aside from the obvious benefits to transit-dependent workers, Accuardi calls saving public transit an “essential climate strategy.” Accuardi believes California should reallocate highway funding to support transit instead. “Strong investment in public transit will preserve and expand jobs for bus operators, reduce cars on our highways, and clean the air we breathe.”