Project Summary
For decades, public transit has been asked to do more and more. Despite its waxing agenda, most policy recommendations in California and beyond center on making modest changes to service provision and fare policy to squeeze more out of the existing resources. Much greater change and new resources will be needed to substantially increase ridership in order to realize California’s ambitious transportation, climate, and equity goals.
This project is a research program to reimagine public transit as a central backbone of urban transportation systems and a service that can be relied by most Californians. California’s Transit Transformation Task Force (TTTF) was created in December 2023 and tasked, without outlining a program, to triple transit ridership. The research program outlined in this proposal aims to build on the work of the TTTF by conducting targeted reviews of case studies, in-depth policy analyses, and new research in areas critical to transit’s transformation (e.g., congestion pricing). The project includes four tracks of research centered around two key objectives: 1) Identify sustainable funding models for public transit in California in the near- and long-term; and 2) Help transit compete more effectively with other modes for street space and customers.
