The Reform of Public Transit Governance in the Bay Area: A Comparative Institutional Analysis

<a href="https://embed.stanford.edu/iframe/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpurl.stanford.edu%2Fqd411dn4339" class="su-underline">Show Content</a>

Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Why is public transportation fragmented in the Bay Area, and what can be done to facilitate its consolidation? There are over 20 distinct public transportation entities in the Bay Area, all competing with one another for a declining rider base. The largest operator covers only approximately 45% of the region’s overall public transportation market. This contrasts with comparable areas such as New York City, whose largest operator, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, controls approximately 95% of the city’s overall public transportation market. I conduct a historic analysis of Bay Area public transit’s institutional evolution, supplemented by analyses of New York and the region around Seattle. Such analyses provide insights into how the fragmented status quo arose in the Bay Area. These analyses draw upon primary historic documents, such as contemporaneous committee reports and newspaper articles, institutional histories previously drafted about regional public transit, policy reports, legal statutes, public code provisions, and publicly available memoranda of understanding. Policy recommendations to help facilitate consolidation in the Bay Area are generated at the conclusion of this analysis. They are: amending Proposition 218, merging all pre-existing regional entities in the Bay Area, and imbuing the Metropolitan Transportation Commission with a wider array of administrative powers.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 8, 2019

Author	Rosen, Gabriel Milo
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Public Policy Program
Primary advisor	Hancock, Russell

Subject	Public Transportation
Subject	Institutional Consolidation
Subject	Comparative Governance
Subject	Regionalism
Subject	Public Policy
Genre	Thesis

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/qd411dn4339

Use and reproduction: User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Rosen, Gabriel Milo (2019). The Reform of Public Transit Governance in the Bay Area: A Comparative Institutional Analysis. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/qd411dn4339

Stanford University, Public Policy Program, Undergraduate Honors Theses and Practicum Projects

Loading usage metrics...