Public transit faces a financial cliff: Support the November ballot measure

NO

Enough is enough . At least 5 petitions going around to raise taxes of all different kind .

Thanks for your letter, San Mateo County Citizens’ Climate Lobby youth group, but how does transferring our hard-earned money to union transportation workers help our global warming footprint? Union transportation workers have been operating at 100% capacity for-ever even though ridership has never reached 100%. Since the beginning of COVID, ridership has been at 50% or less yet public transportation has continued to operate at 100%. If lower emissions were the goal, shouldn’t public transportation have ramped down their capacity and their number of union workers to 60% or less? The fact that they didn’t and don’t want to exposes the fact that this sales tax is nothing but a money grab and has nothing to do with emissions.

I’d recommend everyone not sign the ballot measure because it does nothing to save the planet or reduce emissions. Closing down one-third of stations and stopping rides after 9 p.m. will do much more to save the planet than funding ever-increasing union salaries, pensions, and benefits. BTW, as high schoolers, it’s likely you’re not paying for this increased sales tax. How do your parents feel about it? And for high schoolers or anyone working, there’s no law preventing you from donating to public transportation/unions. But will anyone? I highly doubt it.

Perhaps instead of shilling for public transportation unions, the Climate Lobby, adults or not, should focus on pushing for forest and fire management to decrease the severity of wildfires. Those actions are much more effective at reducing carbon emissions than funding public union workers. And for extra credit, convince as many of the 50000+ climate conference attendees to use Zoom instead of taking 400+ private jets and who knows how many public jets to attend a conference to, of all things, lecture everyone else on carbon emissions while they spew carbon to their hearts’ delights.

Now we must take advice from a bunch of indoctrinated kids? The climate lobby has been rendered a farce. In desperation for attention, we get another attempt to tax us out of existence. Don't these kids realize that they are making living here even more expensive and that they could not afford to live here either when they finally grow up? There must be some guru out there influencing these vulnerable, innocent youths. Likely a limousine liberal.

Highway-widenings are the problem of public transportation around here - certainly NOT the lack of funding.

How can Adina Levin be a "Friend of Caltrain" (an organization that wants to stay separate) and a director at "Seamless Bay Area" (an organization that should want to merge all transit organizations into one). https://www.seamlessbayarea.org/aboutus

This smells like political "Astroturfing" - there goes the credibility.

Fact is that SamTrans is 100% funded through previous sales tax measure - by definition they cannot be broke. They would not even need to ask for fees, they could do everything for free.

Almost the same with Caltrain, except Rico E. Medina and Diane Papan sabotaged Caltrain's ridership with their highway-widening project disguised as "HOT Lanes". Jeff Gee is doing the same with his highway-widening project on 101/84 and Rob Newsom is still pushing for highway-widening on 101/92. Both projects even require eminent domain.

By the way, where is Bob while we’re having all this fun?

No money without consolidation and meaningful reform. Passing a measure is irresponsible and there would likely be service cuts even if passed. Lastly everyone thinks they are to important and will drive or have themselves Ubered to wherever they need to go. Why because time is money (miss a train or a bus it is at least 30 minutes to an hour) and unless you are a young person or retired public transit makes zero sense. Is my boss going to work my schedule around a transit schedule I don't think so.