MUNI, BART Part Of Financial Meltdown?
The LA Times reports on how the nationwide/worldwide financial meltdown might hit transit riders hard in the very near future in LA - and possibly SF:
The next potential victims of the nation’s credit crunch: nearly 1.5 million people who ride buses and trains each weekday in Los Angeles County. Transit officials say riders could soon be facing serious service cuts.
That’s because the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority might have to quickly come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to pay investors under terms of deals it made involving American International Group, the troubled financial and insurance giant.
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Many of the nation’s largest transit agencies participated in such deals. Among them are the San Francisco Muni system, the BART rail system in the Bay Area, the Chicago Transit Authority and the Washington, D.C., Metro system.
Bay Area transit already faces draconian cuts - and I don’t take any pleasure in knowing that the working people of the Bay Area will feel the brunt of any economic downturn. But it’s definitely a relief not to be dependent on transit to get where I need to go. I want to see fewer people dependent on transit. The freedom that a bicycle gives one to go where you want to go when you want to go is underappreciated.
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