LOS ANGELES, CA - JUNE 3: Passengers wait for Metro Rail subway trains during rush hour June 3, 2008 in Los Angeles, California. Skyrocketing gas prices are driving more commuters to take trains and buses to work instead of their cars. In the first three months of 2008, the number of trips taken on public transport in the US rose 3 percent to 2.6 billion, creating pressures on some transportation systems to cope with increasing ridership. Transit officials in southern California and elsewhere are now encouraging employers to stagger employee schedules to ease the rush hour crunch on trains and buses and Metrolink plans to add 107 rail cars to its fleet of 155 as soon as next year. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
San Diego, California – A new report from Circulate San Diego, a transportation advocacy organization, warns that California’s efforts to build the public transit system needed to meet its climate and housing goals are being hindered not by a lack of funding or political support—but by the very governments tasked with approving them.
Titled Powerless Brokers, the report outlines how local governments frequently delay or reshape transit infrastructure projects by using their authority over permitting processes to secure unrelated local benefits. Despite voter support and legislative mandates, state and regional transit agencies must obtain approvals from cities, counties, utilities, and other local entities before breaking ground.
This patchwork of local oversight, the report argues, gives municipalities significant leverage, often leading to costly concessions that can slow down or inflate the cost of projects. “While transit authorities have been tasked with building transit,” writes author Colin Parent, “to a significant degree they are powerless to do so.”
The report draws a sharp contrast between California’s ambitious transportation goals—reducing greenhouse gas emissions, concentrating housing in urban centers, and improving mobility—and the bureaucratic barriers that stand in the way. In effect, California’s transit agenda remains aspirational, even as the need for efficient, climate-conscious infrastructure becomes more urgent.
Circulate San Diego provides case studies to illustrate these structural challenges. One example is the $2.2 billion Mid-Coast Trolley extension completed in 2021 by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG). Though relatively successful compared to other projects, the extension still required $45 million in additional infrastructure improvements to satisfy the University of California, San Diego. These accommodations, the report suggests, may not have been strictly necessary for the trolley’s operation but were seen as political prerequisites for completion.
A more dramatic example comes from the Central Valley, where the small city of Shafter negotiated a slate of local infrastructure improvements as the price of allowing California’s high-speed rail project to pass through. While local officials justified the demands as mitigation for emergency response delays and traffic congestion, the result was a more complex and expensive state project.
The report also notes that unlike New York’s Robert Moses—whose unchecked authority over infrastructure led to rapid, if controversial, development—California’s transit planners face a fractured landscape of third-party veto power. Decades of reform meant to prevent the overreach of master planners have, in many cases, limited the state’s capacity to act decisively.
To address these challenges, Circulate San Diego recommends empowering transit agencies with permitting authority, standardizing the approval process, and extending environmental exemptions for sustainable transportation. Without these changes, the report suggests, California’s transit vision may remain stalled at the station.
