For folks who favor giving control of transit agencies to cities (I’m agnostic), this is a bit of an odd moment. The theory is that cities have better incentives than states. But many cities are utterly failing at the one transportation thing they (mostly) control, their streets.

The theory posits that giving a city control over transit agencies will enable a political coalition to blossom that favors good policy. Coalitions can’t crop up overnight during a pandemic. But there’s been a movement for better streets for decades. And cities control them.

To the extent cities have embraced better streets policies it’s in large measure because of pressure from that movement. So that’s probably in the “pro” column. But I think it a mistake to see this as a level-of-government/incentives issue. We need a massive effort at all levels.

To sharpen this a bit, I'm asking how much transpo should be framed as an institutional vs. a substantive question. There's often a preference for the former, and there's some evidence supporting that. But (surprise) I favor going directly into substantive. https://twitter.com/greg_shill/status/1254786013810982914?s=20