A Modest Proposal for Funding Transit Instead of AI
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A Modest Proposal for Funding Transit Instead of AI
In the ’60s, the Bay Area almost got a high-speed train from Marin to San Jose. What could happen if we dreamed big again?
Annalee Newitz
Aug 3, 2026
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Power
A Modest Proposal for Funding Transit Instead of AI
In the ’60s, the Bay Area almost got a high-speed train from Marin to San Jose. What could happen if we dreamed big again?
Annalee Newitz
Aug 3, 2026
(Photo by Josh Wilburne on Unsplash)
August 03 2026<br>6:00 AM
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Transit drama always happens when I’m already late for something important, like an interview or a doctor’s appointment it took me months to book. We’ve all been there: The bus near my place in the city isn’t coming for half an hour, so I race down to BART, which takes me an additional 15 minutes. But when I reach the platform I discover that, for some infernal reason, the trains are delayed and I’m not going to make it to Oakland for at least an hour.<br>Now I face the existential choice that is all too familiar to Bay Area riders: Do I keep waiting for BART, or shell out 40 bucks for a rideshare that might get stuck in traffic? Can I afford that? Can I afford to be late?<br>Photo by Leo_Visions on UnsplashCome November, if two ballot measures for regional and local transit funding are not approved by voters, this already infuriating scenario is going to get a whole lot worse. Muni, BART, CalTrain, and AC Transit will all have to curtail their services and routes — in some cases, quite dramatically. This might precipitate what San Francisco’s former San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency head Jeffrey Tumlin calls a “death spiral,” where worsening service leads to decreased ridership, which leads to even less service, and so on, until it is impossible to get anywhere in the Bay Area without a car.<br>Meanwhile, investors have poured roughly $389 billion into San Francisco’s metastasizing AI industry since 2017. It’s impossible to understand why. Consumers hate the sparkly, invasive “get help from AI” prompts in every app we once loved, and workers outside the AI industry wonder if we’ll survive this economic black hole. But AI industry leaders insist they need all these resources to manifest a fantastical future where AI does everything.<br>The situation is so absurd that it reads like a satirical thought experiment. Billions of dollars are available for vaporware nobody wants, while funding deficits eat away at a reliable, longstanding utility many of us desperately need.<br>Aggressive AI ad on Muni, June 2026 in San Francisco/Hell. (Daderot via Wikimedia Commons)Respectfully, fuck that. If the AI industry is going to turn the Bay Area into its own private thought experiment, then we need to push back with a thought experiment of our own. It’s worth asking: What if we gave public transportation the same amount of money that investors have given to AI? With billions of dollars, what could transit do? And how might it transform our cities and lives?<br>This isn’t the first time people have asked these questions.<br>An austerity mindset<br>In the cozy upper-floor library of UC Berkeley’s Institute for Transportation Studies, bookshelves line one wall and work tables are scattered along another. An old-fashioned donut-shaped life preserver hangs next to a poster about how to use specialized aircraft to rescue people injured in highway traffic jams.<br>Librarian Kendra Levine emerges from her office to meet me, and points at a full-color diagram of the Golden Gate Bridge pinned to a bulletin board. “This is a prized possession,” she says. I peer at it more closely, and realize I’m seeing a Golden Gate with two levels; the diagram shows a version of the bridge that was never built.<br>A 1968 design for a double-decker Golden Gate Bridge. (Courtesy of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District)It’s the perfect symbol for this library, which holds records of the triumphs, complexities, and false starts in transportation history. The collection here is an archive of moments when engineers were paid to dream big about what public transit could be. But as the poster about car crash injuries suggests, it’s also a place for addressing transit mistakes.<br>The documents Levine has pulled for me today stand as evidence that government investment in transit can lead to a better future. The Institute itself was founded with state funds for transit research back in 1947. Researchers here helped...