Bake Sales Turn Heads On Transit

BAKE SALES FOR TRANSIT—Volunteers use bake sales to highlight funding shortfalls for public transportation. Commuters that bought baked goods also made phone calls to the governor, asking him to restore funding..

PIRGIM supports more and better transit as a key part of the solution to our traffic, energy and global warming problems. Recently, our allies in other states came up with a novel tactic to draw attention to our society’s under-funding of public transit. They had “bake sales for transit.”

CALPIRG made headlines in three of the state’s major newspapers, thanks to our “Bake Sales for Transit.” The events highlighted the chronic under-funding and low prioritization of transit in the Bay Area.

Curious commuters came for cookies or brownies and ended up making calls to the governor’s office opposing a major diversion of funds originally planned for transit.

The bill failed, after facing an uphill battle. CALPIRG will continue to oppose budget cuts that could endanger transit funding, or put on hold the plans for a high-speed bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

Illinois PIRG was the first state PIRG to adopt the bake sale, attracting attention from radio and TV and generating 129 calls to the governor in less than an hour. Illinois PIRG’s Brian Imus also released a major report, “Finding Solutions to Fund Transit: Combining Accountability and New Resources for World Class Public Transportation.”