Metro's pandemic shortfalls in sales tax and fare revenue were more than made up for by receiving more than $3.3 billion dollars worth of federal COVID monies:
The proposed FY22 budget includes quite a bit of CRRSAA money, but neither the ARP transit monies nor FEMA funds. (It also doesn't include the still-in-flux fareless pilot, which the board is expected to vote on this month.)
Overall the FY22 budget is $8 billion, a 14 percent increase over last year's budget.
As is fairly typical for Metro, sales tax is the largest source of revenue, with transit fares accounting for very little.
On the spending side, capital expenditures continue to outpace transit operations.
One poor trend is that capital expenditures are increasing for highway projects much faster than for transit projects.
Highway capital spending would increase 80 percent, while transit capital would see a 20 percent increase. Though, overall, for direct Metro capital spending, transit construction ($2.538 billion) is still significantly more than highway construction ($0.477 billion.) Note that Metro passes some monies through to municipalities for their own capital projects, where expenditures serving driving vastly outpace other modes.
Growth of highway spending is a bad sign - especially as many Metro highway projects have come under criticism for harmful impacts to communities, housing, environment, climate, etc. The highway construction budget increases appear to be less of a deliberate board policy than to be somewhat related to the timing of new funding, including: Trump-era grants (that favored highways), new state gas tax monies awarded to highway projects, and longstanding highway projects passing from planning phases to construction phases.
To a large extent, Metro sales tax revenue is segregated - assigned to a specific purpose: highways, transit, operations, etc. - so the growth of the highway capital budget doesn't necessarily take away from other types of spending. Nonetheless, if Metro is to achieve its stated goals - equity, reducing single-occupancy vehicle use, staving off climate change - the agency should not be increasing its highway spending.
Metro touts transit operations returning to pre-COVID levels in September 2021. This is better than the Metro staff's earlier recommendation (December 2021), but overall annual operations spending remains below pre-COVID years. Some operations monies are going to promising new programs (alternatives to policing, customer experience programs) but other operations funds are going to questionable ones (conventional policing, MicroTransit.)
The new partially-protected Centinela facility is a welcome safety upgrade for a stretch that long lacked any type of bikeway, but the area remains not all that bike-friendly
Bike Month continues, Metro 91 Freeway widening, Destination Crenshaw, Culver City Bus, Santa Monica MANGo, Metro bike lockers, Metro Sepulveda Transit, and more
Short newly protected bike lane on Laurel Canyon Blvd, extensive NSFV bus improvements under construction this month, and scaled-back G Line plans should get that project under construction this summer