Tricky-Dick & The Politics of Urban Mass-Transit

1972 was a wild year. Bell-bottom jeans swayed ever so gently in the breeze, an 11 year old pop singer named Michael Jackson dominated the pop music charts, and Richard Milhous Nixon roamed the halls of the White House, presumably promoting evil around the world and maybe even plotting a break-in of Mother Teresa’s house. This is hyperbole of course, but the point is that Nixon gets a decidedly bad rap these days. This is for good reason, the man was a well-documented bigot and tarnished the presidency with the Watergate scandal. But let’s forget about Nixon the man for a second and return to 1972. It was truly a different world, made clearest by the fact that in 1972 Republican President Nixon achieved a fivefold increase in annual funding for urban mass transit. In a speech to Congress promoting the budget increase, he lamented the fact that the Federal government would almost cover the cost of highways, yet barely contribute to public-mass transit funding — when at the time an entire quarter of our population could not even drive due to disability, income barriers, or age. You don’t see public transit budget increases or even discussions on mass transit like that anymore. In fact nowadays the Federal Transit Authority, the federal government agency that oversees public mass transit, routinely faces calls for its dismantling, and if transit is promoted at all it is too often in a privatized form. Say what you will about Nixon, but he was a pro-public transit president, and he understood that a functional and well-funded public mass transit system makes for a more equitable and healthy society. One can’t help but also wonder why that understanding has been alluding our politicians for the past few decades.

As part of his 1972 public transit improvement campaign, Nixon visited San Francisco to promote the public transportation system of the future — Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). “You know, it does look like NASA,” Nixon said with pride to reporters as he toured BART facilities. He arrived with federal bonus funding specifically for BART that would help make possible the Transbay Tube, connecting Oakland and San Francisco in an underwater tunnel. It seems like for those few years in the early 70s BART and other well-funded urban mass transit systems around the country stood for something great about our society — increasingly equal access to state of the art transportation.

Freeway funding had been increasing in the U.S. since the mid-1950s, when President Eisenhower signed into law the Federal Aid Highway Act. But freeways are inherently unequal — they serve only those who already own a car, and federal subsidies for highway construction are essentially just federal aid for those who already live comfortably enough to drive. Mass transit serves a population in a vastly more equal way. While there are still the obvious barriers to entry in the form of fares, they are nothing in comparison to barriers to entry for a freeway (cars, insurance, and tolls). Furthermore, when rich or poor people get onto their BART train or on any other transit system in America, they have access to the same quality seats, travel just as fast, and have the ability to get to the same places. Nixon referred to this effect as “balanced transportation,” and balance in our society is precisely what public transit at its best can achieve.

Fast forward a few decades to 2016 in the Bay Area. Bellbottoms are decidedly passé, and public mass transit is in the same boat. Every morning flocks of the San Francisco tech class load into pristine private buses to get to their workplaces. BART riders, meanwhile wake up to face any of the litany of problems that typically plague aging public infrastructure — the dust and dirt, the screeching tracks, and the train failures. There is no call for urban mass transit to be saved now, though. Those with the means find an alternative, and those without have their mobility continually limited as every year brings more damage to poorly funded transit systems throughout our country.

Forty years ago a Republican President pushed for an increase in federal funding for transit on the grounds that it makes for a more balanced society. In the decades since we’ve listened to politicians from both sides of the aisle push for reduced funding for all infrastructure and more privatized options that would only limit the mobility of low income earners, the disabled, and other marginalized groups. We don’t need Nixon back, we need funding for our trains and buses, and more importantly we need the understanding to exist at the highest levels of government that public transportation creates a better society.