Fwd: The Real Cost of Cutting Transit
Tawnya Mullen
From: Carlos A. Michelen Strofer from Downtown ABQ Lab <cmichele...@substack.com>
Date: Sun, Apr 19, 2026 at 1:40 PM
Subject: The Real Cost of Cutting Transit
To: <tmiente...@gmail.com>
The Real Cost of Cutting TransitThe Mayor is proposing cuts. The data shows we’re already far behind. And why that matters for long-term solvency.
Every year, our budget stretches a little less far and the tradeoffs get a little more painful. That’s the slow reality of a city whose growth pattern doesn’t pay for itself. This year, due to our national fiscal environment, the strain is much sharper, and significant cuts are on the table. The Mayor is proposing a $4.6 million cut to transit, including removing 52 (currently vacant) positions, the largest cut to any department. Before we talk about whether that’s a good idea, it’s worth asking a more basic question: how much transit do we actually provide today? To evaluate the city’s level of commitment to transit, I look at two simple metrics: how much money we spend on transit and how much service we provide. In this post, I compare how Albuquerque measures up to peer cities across the western US. Spoiler: it’s not good. How much transit service do we provide?Transit agencies across the country report standardized data to the National Transit Database. For our purpose here, we’ll use the reported annual vehicle-hours of service and the service area population to get the amount of service each city provides per person. I looked at 9 peer cities, including true peers such as Tucson and El Paso, as well as larger, aspirational cities across the Southwest and Western US, such as Denver, Salt Lake City, and Portland. Out of nine cities, eight provide more transit service per resident than Albuquerque. Oklahoma City is the only one that does less.
Tucson is often considered the closest peer city. It has a similar population, a similar development pattern, and a similar climate. These similarities, however, do not extend to transit. Tucson provides twice as much transit service per person as Albuquerque. Not 10 percent more. Not 20 percent more. Two times more.
El Paso, our other closest peer, provides about 30 percent more service. Not as dramatic a difference, but still significantly more. Other cities also lap us entirely, providing several times more service per person than we do: Denver (2x), Austin (2.4x), Kansas City (2.6x), Portland (3.3x). Across the region, cities consistently provide more—often several times more—transit than Albuquerque. How much do we invest in transit?Our second metric for how committed a city is to transit is how much they are willing to spend on it. Using the same NTD dataset, I look at how much each city spends on transit operations per person.
The pattern is not exactly the same because dollars can go further in some cities due to differences in labor costs, transit modes, and operational efficiencies. So, in some ways, how much you are willing to spend is a stronger measure of how much of a priority transit is to a city. Looking at this metric, there is one pattern that is unchanged: Albuquerque consistently underdelivers. Out of nine cities, seven spend more per resident on transit than Albuquerque. Again, only Oklahoma City spends less. Tucson spends about 40 percent more per person. El Paso spends roughly the same as Albuquerque, but delivers significantly more service with it. Then there are the cities that have made transit a clear priority. Salt Lake City spends about twice as much per person. Denver spends more than three times as much. Portland spends over five times as much. These are not small differences. They reflect fundamentally different priorities. So, does Albuquerque take transit seriously?For a city our size, Albuquerque spends a laughably small amount on transit and provides a similarly low amount of service. We could double our transit spending and the amount of service we provide, and still end up in the middle of the pack compared to peer cities in the region. That’s how far behind we are. And now the mayor is proposing transit budget cuts. That is how unserious our city is about transit. Why does this matter?The obvious question is then: should we be taking transit seriously? And if so, why? There are many reasons why we should aspire to have a functioning transit system in the city and promote multi-modal transportation over car dependency. From social justice to public health, to attracting a younger generation that prefers alternative modes of transportation, just to name a few. But given the ongoing budget woes and the nature of this blog, I want to highlight the role of transit on long-term fiscal solvency. We’ve made the case that a sprawled city is an insolvent city. The cost of maintaining infrastructure and services grows with land area, not just population, and that math is starting to catch up with us. We can’t fix that without more compact, productive development. But density, safe streets, and car dependence don’t fit well together. Transit is part of the solution to this fundamental geometry problem. As such, transit is an integral part of a long-term solution to making the city financially sustainable. Cutting transit budget, in a city so far behind on transit, is a bad idea. Doing so as a “solution” to the city’s financial strain is a Data:Annual Vehicle-Hours Annual Vehicle-Hours  | Created with Datawrapper Annual Operating Expense 
© 2026 Carlos A. Michelen Strofer
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