Leaders in Silicon Valley are looking at the innovations that might emerge in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. One thing is clear: This time, it won’t be an engineering solution. The Silicon Valley Recovery Roundtable, launched to help businesses safely reopen, realized that its goal was not to return to “normal” but to repair the systemic disparities that existed before the pandemic.
A new request for applications may not, on the face of it, seem like a big deal. But, when the California Department of Social Services posted its request for applications for the California Fruit and Vegetable EBT Integration Pilot Project in early September, it marked an important milestone in SPUR’s long-term goal of making healthy food incentives a permanent supplement to the CalFresh/SNAP program.
Around the world, building major transit projects is notoriously difficult. Yet the Bay Area has an especially poor track record: Major projects here take decades from start to finish, and our project costs rank among the highest in the world. SPUR offers policy proposals that will save time, save money and add up to a reliable, integrated and frequent network that works better for everyone.
SPUR’s report More for Less examines how the Bay Area can reverse its poor track record of delivering large, complex public transit projects on time, on budget and without major defect. This companion report details one of our most significant recommendations: to establish Infrastructure Bay Area, a specialized entity that would lead the procurement and delivery of all the region’s major transit projects.
The Bay Area has underinvested in transit for decades. Today, in the midst of a pandemic, it’s hard to imagine how the region will catch up: Our major transit projects regularly take decades to build and rank among the most expensive in the world. SPUR’s latest report offers three big ideas for delivering transit projects in less time,for less money and with better public value.