Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Pennsylvania state Rep. Jim Gregory, a Republican who recently nominated a Democrat to be speaker of the Pennsylvania House, stands in the State Capitol in Harrisburg, Jan. 10, 2023.

As state Rep. Jim Gregory walks into the Pennsylvania Capitol’s cafeteria, a table of Democrats all stops talking and turns their heads. One stands up to give him a pat on the back as he passes by.

Mr. Gregory, a Republican, ruefully remarks that this reception was likely warmer than what he’d be getting from Republicans in his home district. He’s not wrong.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Gregory did something that made him unpopular with members of his own party: He nominated a Democrat to be speaker of the Pennsylvania House.

As Mr. Gregory saw it, his action was a reasonable response to a unique and difficult set of circumstances. In November, Democrats won a majority in the Pennsylvania House for the first time in more than a decade, by a single seat. But three Democratic-held seats then immediately became vacant (one candidate died right before Election Day and two others resigned after winning higher office) – leading to heated debates about which party really held the majority, and who should become speaker.

Searching for a solution, Mr. Gregory, who represents a district in central Pennsylvania surrounding Altoona, started floating the possibility of nominating Berks County Democrat Mark Rozzi.

The two men had been friends for years, working together on legislation to help victims of childhood sexual assault. What’s more, Mr. Gregory says Mr. Rozzi told him he would change his party registration to independent if elected speaker. With the assumption that Democrats would win the upcoming special elections for the three vacant seats, that would give the Pennsylvania House a 101-101-1 divide – a better long-term outcome for Republicans, he notes, than if they’d temporarily seized the majority.

“We would actually have to run the calendar together,” says Mr. Gregory, referring to the House’s daily agendas. “We’d only be able to put forth bills that we could have, you know, real bipartisan agreement on.”

As Republicans in the nation’s capital were grinding through 15 ballots to elect California Rep. Kevin McCarthy speaker of the House, some states have been navigating their own razor-thin legislative majorities and intraparty divides in a different way – by reaching across the aisle. This month, 16 Pennsylvania House Republicans, including all seven GOP leaders, unexpectedly joined with Democrats to elect Mr. Rozzi as speaker. In another show of bipartisanship, the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, tapped Republican Al Schmidt, a former Philadelphia commissioner who had refuted former President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud, for secretary of state.

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

The State Capitol of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, Jan. 10, 2023.

Ohio also saw a surprise candidate elected speaker of the House – a Republican who won by drawing votes from both parties. And Republicans and Democrats in Alaska’s narrowly divided state Senate have agreed to form a bipartisan coalition.

It’s an alternative model for parties grappling with extreme wings: Instead of trying to hold an unmanageable caucus together, create a centrist, bipartisan governing majority. Whether this approach is workable in an age of hyperpolarization, however, remains to be seen. 

“That day [Mr. Rozzi was elected] there was this stark contrast between what was happening in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Alaska with these stories coming out about more centrist or bipartisan candidates emerging, and what was happening in Washington,” says Dan Mallinson, a public policy professor at Penn State Harrisburg. “But in Pennsylvania at least, it was a pretty quick retrenchment back into very polarized partisan politics.”

While bipartisan coalitions may start out with good intentions, they can easily break down because it’s difficult for the two sides to trust each other, he says – especially in a battleground state where the stakes are so high. 

“It’s not that it’s impossible,” adds Mr. Mallinson. “But it’s increasingly hard.”  

A bumpy start

Already, the path in Pennsylvania has been anything but smooth. Many Republicans view Mr. Rozzi’s speakership as a betrayal, and Mr. Gregory – who nominated Mr. Rozzi – has now called on him to resign. He and other Republicans say the new speaker has reneged on his pledge to register as an independent. (Mr. Rozzi, who publicly promised not to caucus with either party but was less clear about his registration, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.) 

Mr. Rozzi has had to delay the start of a special session after the House couldn’t agree on a rules package. The body remains essentially frozen over procedural questions, with committees still unassigned and no legislative days scheduled. On Tuesday, Mr. Rozzi announced a new working group tasked with brainstorming ways to end the stalemate.

“If they can’t even convene the [Pennsylvania] House, I’m not holding my breath that they can do something substantive,” says Harrisburg-based GOP consultant Chris Nicholas.

A similar situation has been unfolding in neighboring Ohio. Although Republicans have a sizable majority in that state’s lower chamber and could easily have chosen a speaker without any Democratic votes, the caucus couldn’t agree on a candidate. In early January, 22 Republicans joined with 32 Democrats to elect Republican Jason Stephens over Derek Merrin, a conservative Republican who had won an informal vote among the GOP caucus in November.

Minority Leader Allison Russo, a Democrat who represents an area surrounding Columbus, says she was glad for an opportunity to help shape the outcome. 

“Speaker Stephens is definitely conservative ... but there were some areas of common ground,” says Ms. Russo, who hopes the two parties can work together on issues like school funding and fair redistricting maps. “We have an opportunity to build a coalition to make that happen. Do I think it will be perfect? No. Do I think it’s better than the alternative? Yes.” 

Yet as in Pennsylvania, the arrangement is fast showing signs of strain. 

After the speaker vote, the Ohio Republican Party voted to censure Representative Stephens and the Republican lawmakers who backed him, saying the speakership vote “dishonors” the party. And Representative Merrin, who was in line for the speakership before Democrats helped elect Mr. Stephens, has declared himself the “leader of the House Republicans.” He reportedly plans to form a “third caucus” and has vowed to push for new House rules that would lessen the power of the speakership. 

Ms. Russo isn’t under any illusions that her statehouse will become a model of bipartisanship. Still, she argues that finding ways to work across the aisle will ultimately be necessary, given the ideological divisions in the GOP.

“I anticipate that there will be regret at some point. This is politics at the end of the day,” Ms. Russo says. “That said, I do believe given the dynamics in their caucus, to move some things forward there will need to be coalitions with Democrats.”  

Blowback from the right

At the Prime Sirloin Buffet in Duncansville, Pennsylvania, a group of conservative Republicans is saying the Pledge of Allegiance to a flag that has been suction-cupped to a table. It’s the bimonthly meeting of Push Back PA, which was founded in the wake of the 2020 election by Dan Ferrell, who worked for the Trump campaign. Dedicated to electing “true conservatives,” the group’s website includes a rundown of “Rino News” attacking GOP politicians who are seen as traitors to the cause.   

Mr. Gregory had originally planned to attend the meeting, to try to explain his nomination of Mr. Rozzi, but wound up stuck in Harrisburg, two hours away. That didn’t prevent him from being a primary topic of conversation. 

“I was a little disturbed that Mr. Gregory nominated a Democrat. The Republicans were in control, so they really could have done a lot of things that made a difference,” says the Rev. Roy Steward, who gave an opening prayer at the start of the meeting.

“I certainly don’t think Mr. Gregory’s vote represents the people of this district,” agrees Scott Barger, who is running for commissioner of Blair County, where Mr. Trump won more than 70% of the vote in both 2016 and 2020. 

Mr. Gregory says he expected this kind of response from his far-right constituents, and he’s working hard to win back their trust. On his way to Harrisburg, he spent the two-hour commute calling up various people in his district to talk about the speaker situation and how to find a way forward. 

Yet despite the blowback and his own frustrations with Mr. Rozzi, he says he remains hopeful that the coming months may still bring positive change. The Pennsylvania legislature has an opportunity to be “a whole lot better” than before, he says – in part because lawmakers witnessed the positive attention that comes with efforts at bipartisanship. 

“What we did, by doing something good, makes people feel better,” says Mr. Gregory. His high school basketball coach, among others, reached out to thank him for restoring his faith in government. “It’s a good lesson.”

Eraldo Peres/AP

Supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro hold a banner that reads in Portuguese "Military Intervention" on Jan. 8, 2023, as they storm the National Congress building in the capital Brasília.

The rioters erupted in cheers as soldiers marched into Brazil’s presidential palace on Jan. 8. “The Army is here!” shouted a man draped in a Brazilian flag, pumping a fist in the air.

Inside, people were ransacking Brazil’s halls of power in hopes of provoking a military coup that would annul an election they believe – without evidence – was stolen from former president Jair Bolsonaro. In this moment, they thought the Army was finally answering their pleas; instead, soldiers began handcuffing the insurrectionists.

“The Army handed us over to the police,” one woman said in a social media video filmed on a bus transporting rioters to a police detention center, tears streaming down her face. “Until an hour ago, we trusted the Army, we trusted that it would protect us. And the Army betrayed us.”

Mr. Bolsonaro spent much of his political career currying favor with the armed forces and, during his presidency, handed out thousands of top government jobs to current and former Army officers. Fears mounted in recent months over whether the armed forces would protect the country’s young democracy or side with Mr. Bolsonaro’s fervent supporters. During his time in office, the far-right populist routinely attacked democratic institutions, made baseless claims about election fraud, and spoke nostalgically about Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985.

On Jan. 8, when the military refused to prop up attempts to overthrow President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, just a week into his new term, global observers declared the failed coup a win for democracy. But new details on the Army’s role in the worst attacks in the history of Brazil’s democracy point to a more complicated path ahead for South America’s largest country.

In Brazil, like elsewhere in the region, the military has long played a prominent role in politics, historically presenting themselves as a stabilizing power in times of political chaos. But while countries like Argentina and Chile have worked to demilitarize their governments following brutal military rule, Brazil has struggled to keep the Army out of politics since its return to democracy.

Authorities now say the Army was complacent or even complicit in the attacks, turning a blind eye as rioters plotted in camps outside military headquarters, failing to bolster security of federal buildings ahead of the riots, and impeding the police from arresting key organizers in the hours after the insurrection.

Eraldo Peres/AP

Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva inspects the damage at the presidential palace after it was stormed by supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro in Brasília on Jan. 8, 2023. Protesters who refused to accept Mr. Bolsonaro's defeat attacked Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidential palace a week after the inauguration of the new president.

As authorities scramble to pinpoint those responsible for planning, inspiring, and financing the attacks on Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidential offices, larger questions loom over Brazil’s democratic health and whether Lula, as the president is frequently called, can succeed in reigning in an increasingly powerful military that appears unwilling to fully step back from politics.

“This is perhaps the biggest challenge facing Lula,” says Juliano Cortinhas, an international relations professor at the University of Brasília and a former official at Brazil’s defense ministry. But, “if we don’t see thorough reform, we will continue to run the risk of a coup,” he says.

“Our democracy will remain under threat.”

A political project

Brazil’s 21-year dictatorship was marked by censorship, torture, and repression – but few of the military leaders responsible were ever punished. And while steps were taken to shrink the Army’s role in politics, experts say democratically elected governments – including that of Lula, during his first two terms in office from 2003 to 2010 – didn’t do enough to rein in the military’s power.

“That was the left’s greatest error – not bringing the military under control,” says Mr. Cortinhas, noting both Lula and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, treaded too carefully in bids to avoid confrontation or revolt. “They chose not to deal with the problem at the time. And it just snowballed.”

Boundaries between the Army and politics further deteriorated under Mr. Bolsonaro, who handed over more power to the military in an effort to win their loyalty. In an unprecedented move, he even asked the Army to monitor and audit last year’s presidential votes.

But the military’s close ties with Mr. Bolsonaro have eroded public trust and tarnished its image in the eyes of many Brazilians. A global survey of 28 countries placed Brazil near the bottom of the list when it comes to trust in the armed forces.

“The military has become a tool of the right – and what happened in Brasília is proof,” says Daniela Maia, a pet groomer in Rio de Janeiro who voted for Lula. “The Army has sold out.”

Even among more conservative Brazilians, the Army’s role in this month’s attacks has raised questions.

“The Army did nothing,” says Ana Evelin Rodrigues, a hairdresser in Rio, who supported Mr. Bolsonaro but condemns the Jan. 8 violence. “I believe in the military. ... But they stood by as the vandalism happened.”

Even if Lula takes action, the military may not retreat quickly from politics. Military candidates made inroads in last year’s elections, consolidating the Army’s political presence. Gen. Hamilton Mourão, who served as Mr. Bolsonaro’s vice president, won a seat in the Senate, while Gen. Eduardo Pazuello, who led Brazil’s botched response to the pandemic as health minister under Mr. Bolsonaro, was elected to Congress.

Such electoral victories allow the military to amass political power without challenging democratic norms, says Army Reserve Col. Marcelo Pimentel, who has written about the military’s role in Brazilian politics. “There is no need for a coup – the military wants to win elections,” he says. “There is a political project underway.”

Antonio Cascio/Reuters

A supporter of Brazil's far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro prays in front of police officers during anti-government protests in Brasília on Jan. 8, 2023. She and others dispute the election victory of leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Failure to respond

Authorities in the federal government have been quick to blame the attacks in Brasília this month on poor security planning and a sluggish response by police and military officials. Following the riots, Lula accused “conniving agents” within the armed forces of facilitating the riots.

“I am convinced that the door of the Planalto Palace was opened for these people,” he told reporters, referring to the presidential offices. “Someone facilitated their entry.”

For 10 weeks before the riots, demonstrators camped out in tent cities outside military buildings across the country, protesting Mr. Bolsonaro’s narrow defeat in the October 2022 runoff election. Claiming the vote was rigged to favor the left, they demanded the military stop Lula from taking power on Jan. 1.

While the Army did not yield to these demands, experts say it sent mixed signals when it failed to dismantle the tent cities. Authorities now believe plans to storm federal buildings were hatched in the camp in Brasília, just meters from the military’s headquarters.

“These camps were set up with the authorization - and even the protection - of senior commanders,” says Colonel Pimentel. He says it is highly unusual for the Army to allow a political demonstration in a military area. “This literally brings politics to the doorstep of the Army barracks.”

Authorities are questioning why protesters could so easily break into the presidential palace, which is normally guarded by a unit of military troops made up of roughly 900 officers, according to experts. On Jan. 8, despite intelligence agencies issuing warnings of possible violence, just 36 officers were on duty.

“The military likely didn’t order the attack. But they closed their eyes and let it happen,” says João Roberto Martins Filho, a political science professor at the Federal University of São Carlos and author of several books on Brazil’s military.

Videos of the attack appear to show officers hindering the arrest of rioters. In the hours following the riots, top military officials blocked police access to the protest camp, which facilitated rioters fleeing arrest.

Lula now faces the tall task of holding the military to account and rooting out officers sympathetic to the far-right from top posts within his government. Many citizens, rattled by the physical attacks on their democracy, are looking for a firm response.

“I want to see the military doing its job and serving the people,” says Ms. Maia, the pet groomer.

When he took office, Lula struck a conciliatory tone, stopping short of reshuffling the country’s Defense Ministry – long under the control of the military – and even appointing an ally of the Army as minister.

Following the riots, the leftist vowed to “demilitarize” the government’s defense apparatus, placing his personal security in the hands of police, and taking control away from the military. He also tasked the Justice Ministry with bringing order to the capital.

Yet, some Brazilians don’t see empowering the military as a bad thing. Even with trust in the armed forces dwindling, Brazilians appear to have even less confidence in other authorities: just 6% trust political parties, while 63% believe in the armed forces, shows a 2021 survey by Brazilian think tank Fundação Getulio Vargas.

For Sebastião de Jesus, a building superintendent in Rio, the military isn’t a threat. He lived through Brazil’s dictatorship and isn’t interested in another assault on democracy. But he sees the military as Brazil’s protector.

“It’s hard to know who to trust – the politicians are all the same,” he says. “But I trust the military. They have always looked out for the people.”

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Army Reserve Col. Marcelo Pimentel's last name. 

Chao Tayiana Maina was doing digital heritage work before she even knew it had a name.

Trying to settle into university in Voi, a Kenyan town 215 miles from her home, she took to going on walks. One day, she stumbled upon Voi railway station, a single-story red-brick building that was once a key military transport point for British colonialists during the World War I.

Fascinated by the station’s beauty, and the wider history of the colonial-era Kenya-Uganda railway, she began thinking of how to preserve the memory of the stations. After more than a century of use, the railway was in decline. And with Kenya planning a new Chinese-built railway, some old stations were set to be demolished.

Over four years, largely through the financial and moral support of family and friends, Ms. Tayiana documented 50 sites – taking photos, making videos, and carrying out interviews with Kenyans who had worked or lived around the stations. “Save the Railway” first opened at a Nairobi gallery in 2016 and now lives on as a website with an interactive map. 

That project was the beginning of Ms. Tayiana’s mission to use technology to unearth hidden or suppressed history – and its injustices – making it accessible to a wide audience.

Across Africa, British colonialists romanticized the railway – whose deadly construction they oversaw through indentured Indian and African labor – with adventure narratives across “exotic” lands. Ms. Tayiana wanted to show, through her interviews, both the joy and the pain the railway represented for ordinary Kenyans. They had used it to carry children to school or produce to market, but their rulers had used it to carry thousands of anti-colonial liberation fighters to detention camps in carriages with barred windows and barbed wire.

Kenya was under crushing British rule from 1895 to 1963. But much of the East African country’s colonial history was written by the same colonial powers that centered narratives glorifying and whitewashing their rule. As the world increasingly unearths the horrors of British empire and colonialism, young Kenyans are working to change the narrative and recount a more balanced version of Kenya’s colonial history.

“There is a lot of power in reclaiming agency over your own past,” Ms. Tayiana says. “Having someone else define who you are … is very detrimental to how you see yourself.” 

Chao Tayiana Maina

Voi railway station, the building that led Chao Tayiana Maina to launch her Kenyan digital history project, in August 2012.

Bringing African Value

On a recent Friday night, dozens gathered on a Nairobi skyscraper rooftop to hear Ms. Tayiana talk about Africa’s astronomical heritage at an event called “Space for Culture.” Speaking under a cloudy sky, she asked why African knowledge is so poorly represented in the global field, even though many Africans historically have incorporated complex astronomical observations into their lives.

Next, she played a video interview with a man from Kenya’s semi-nomadic Samburu pastoralist community, who traditionally live in vast drylands of northern Kenya. Without hesitation, the elder described and named several celestial features – Nkakwa for the Milky Way, and Ngurikinyeji for Orion’s Belt.

“It helps to build more confidence in ourselves as Africans and realize that we’ve always had agency and knowledge of what was happening around us,” says Karen Mwangi, who sat captivated through the talk. “We may not have written about it the same way other communities did, but we still knew about it, and it was something that we interacted with.”

Meanwhile, the value of African astronomy has become increasingly apparent in recent years. Last year, the Southern African Large Telescope in South Africa, one of the largest telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere, contributed to the discovery of a system of four stars orbiting each other.

Digital heritage – the use of digital technology to present, preserve, and understand cultural or natural heritage – is a small but growing field in Africa.

Recent projects run the gamut from digital archaeology to conservation projects. And, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the field expanded further as cultural institutions looked to digital solutions to keep afloat.

Homegrown initiatives are “incredibly important” because organizations from North America or Europe have long held financial and institutional power over Africa’s cultural heritage, says Colleen Morgan, a senior lecturer in digital archaeology and heritage at the University of York in England. While such organizations can be well intentioned, their work tends to extract local and Indigenous knowledge to disseminate as they see fit, without making the data or tools available to local contributors, she adds. 

Paul Munene for Book Bunk Trust

Chao Tayiana Maina teaches a workshop on digitizing archives in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2022.

Growing up in the Rift Valley town of Ngong, Ms. Tayiana devoured books, maps, and old photographs in her grandparents’ rich home archives. By the time she was a math and computer science undergraduate at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, she was running a blog curating historical articles about Kenya.

“I consider myself a historian by passion,” she says. “I’ve always felt that I’ve been called to do this work and to be on this path.”

After graduating, she gained a master’s degree in international heritage visualisation at Glasgow School of Art in Scotland.

Back home, she quickly realized there was barely an industry to speak of. Lack of funding means the vast majority of digitization work on the continent relies on grant and donor funding. 

Over the next two years, Ms. Tayiana set to work redressing this. She and a group of women from Kenya and the United Kingdom formed a volunteer initiative called the Museum of British Colonialism to fill in gaps in British colonial history. And Ms. Tayiana set up a nonprofit called African Digital Heritage to encourage African cultural institutions to adopt new technology. 

Historically, the Kenyan government hasn’t probed deeply into official accounts of the country’s colonial history. That’s partly because the country’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, made calls to “forgive the past” as he sought to reconcile the fractured relationship between the country’s Indigenous people and its European minority into one post-independence nation.

From 1952 to 1960, British colonial authorities faced an uprising from local freedom fighters in what was known as the Mau Mau emergency, one of the bloodiest periods in Kenya’s history, in which some 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured, or maimed. A main feature of this period was Britain’s “villagization” program, in which an estimated 1.2 million Kenyans were forcibly resettled in concentration camps where they were subjected to cruel treatment as part of a campaign against Mau Mau freedom fighters and supporters. 

Using archives and oral histories collected from survivors, the Museum of British Colonialism produced 3D and digital reconstructions of a colonial concentration camp.

Courtesy of Chao Tayiana Maina

Chao Tayiana Maina’s grandparents' home library, which inspired her as a child to explore her country's history, in Ngong, Kenya, on Jan. 11, 2023.

Last year, they showcased the work in Nairobi at a multimedia exhibition titled “Barbed Wire Village,” exploring this overlooked and suppressed aspect of the Mau Mau emergency.

By not relying on official sources, digital heritage can empower communities to tell their stories in their own ways and record the histories that are important to them, says Melissa Terras, professor of digital cultural heritage at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. That opens up new ways to disrupt colonial and institutional power, she adds.

Despite the challenges that she regularly encounters, Ms. Tayiana is determined to forge ahead. She sees herself as a “headstrong historian” – a reference to a short story by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. One of the characters experiences discomfort with the way Westerners treat African culture and history but sets out to make change.

“For me, history is a verb. It’s not just something you consume,” Ms. Tayiana says.

When Rio Bronc leaves her home in the morning to go to her job as a teacher, she aims for an earlier bus than necessary since buses often run late or just don't show up at all. Ms. Bronc depends on the bus for her livelihood – and, in principle, it is a valuable resource. But practically speaking, she spends $20 per week for an unreliable commute.

The city council in Washington, D.C., unanimously moved last month to help thousands of bus stop denizens like Ms. Bronc by making all bus rides originating in the district fare-free starting in July. And in the next 18 months, the district will provide a $100 monthly subsidy for the Metro subway for residents and implement a $10 million expansion of service hours and service to underserved areas.

Public transportation should be considered a public good, just like schools, libraries, and sidewalks, says Charles Allen, the councilmember who introduced the bill, Metro for D.C. “I want to make it so people are able to use it for free.”   

This ethic underlies similar efforts to provide free transit that cities have toyed with for years. In 2020, Kansas City introduced a zero-fare plan covering all bus lines in its metro area in both Kansas and Missouri, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, launched a free-fare pilot program now being considered for renewal. And many – like Boston and Denver – have offered free bus service temporarily and on certain lines.

Metro for D.C.’s free service and improved operations, says Mr. Allen, address two needs: affordability and access. Free transit creates equity for lower-income and minority riders. And investment in better service will improve access in underserved corridors. Further, he says, systems operate faster when riders board without stopping to scan passes or pay fares, and there is less pressure for law enforcement of the petty crime of fare evasion.

And public transit isn’t just an important resource for residents; it’s also key to a healthy economy, generating business that, in turn, produces tax dollars for the city.

Nationwide, 30% of bus riders in 2017 had household incomes of less than $15,000, according to the American Public Transportation Association, and communities of color make up 60% of riders. In the District of Columbia, 68% of residents who ride the bus have household incomes below $50,000, while 51% of district residents who ride the rail have household incomes above $75,000 – and are far more likely to have transit costs subsidized by their workplace.

Reasons not to do it

While advocates of free fares across the country focus on public transit as a “public good” and how best to invest in it, opponents argue that money spent on providing free transit would be better spent on improving service.

There are many valid arguments in favor of and against making public transit free, says Jarrett Walker, a transportation consultant who is not an advocate for or against free transit.

Instead, Mr. Walker favors a holistic view. Bus and rail systems work together, he says, and to charge fares on subways but not on buses as Washington is doing doesn’t optimize the system as a whole: “If you’re going to do free fares, you’re going to need to do it across the board.”

A blanket approach to access is a blunt instrument in building equity, he suggests. For example, some who argue against free fares say there’s “no particular public value in reducing fares for people who can afford [them].”

Roberto Rosales/The Albuquerque Journal/AP/File

A Rapid Ride bus travels Central Avenue in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in February 2016. Free fares in Albuquerque are an in effect through June 2023. One proposal for the future of the program requires IDs to ride free. Proponents say the requirement would increase rider safety.

Another argument is the perception that offering free fares could raise security issues simply by virtue of allowing anyone to board the bus, says Mr. Walker.

Councilmember Allen dismisses the concern that unhoused people, for example, would ride buses all day, saying that isolated incidents shouldn’t jeopardize the entire free-fare program.

“Is the answer to not provide fare-free buses?” he asks. “Or does that mean we should really invest in trying to figure out how that person needs help and help get them housed?”

Free-fare math

Eliminating fare revenue may seem counterintuitive to improving service. But funding differs by city.

In Albuquerque, fares were a relatively small share of the agency’s revenue, says Mr. Walker. For Washington to go fare free is a different situation, because WMATA (bus and rail) received 35% of its budget from fares in fiscal year 2020.

The rest of the budget comes from federal grants and state and local funds. The D.C. Council will compensate for the loss of fare revenue by dedicating some of the district’s increased revenue from a growing economy to fund Metro for D.C., says Mr. Allen.

Whether free fare or lower fare makes more financial sense for a transit system depends in part on scale. For example, some small, rural agencies, says Mr. Walker, spend more on the systems to collect fares than they receive in fare revenue.

In Albuquerque, where fare-free buses have been offered since 2021, the impetus was to remove barriers and build a more equitable transit system coming out of the pandemic, says Megan Holcomb, spokesperson for ABQ Ride.

And, because ridership dropped so dramatically in Albuquerque in the 2020 pandemic, there was hope that free fares would provide a boost to ridership. “We still have a long way to go,” says Ms. Holcomb, “but we are definitely getting there.”

Mostly, feedback has been positive, she says. But her department has received complaints about security issues, because “security issues are kind of relative to ridership” – the more people on the bus, the greater the likelihood of incidents. 

Security officers make “proactive routes” around the city, she says, and security issues haven’t risen drastically since free fares.

In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu has pushed for free-fare buses, enacting them on a temporary basis for certain lines. Free or affordable fares are in the government’s best interest too, says Collique Williams, a community organizer. 

For example, when transportation is a barrier that prevents someone from getting to medical appointments, says Mr. Williams, the consequences often “fall back on the state anyways, when folks need emergency services.”

A low-income fare system (providing lower fares to lower-income riders) is the answer for Boston for now, says Mr. Williams, who works for Community Labor United. Not only is it easier for local government to embrace a low-income fare system than free fares right away, but focusing resources on riders in the most need “puts something like $500 [per year] back into the pockets of riders.”

D.C. Councilmember Allen is optimistic that other regions and cities will follow suit with free or affordable fares. Success in the district, he says, “will create pretty significant political will to help move in this direction.”

REUTERS

Geese enjoy the high water along a Sacramento road on Jan. 4.

Since late December, a stack of unusual storms known as atmospheric rivers has inundated California, dropping up to 600% of normal rainfall in a month. The visual impact is striking in a state parched by three years of severe drought: flooded streets, mudslides, and brimming reservoirs. At least 20 people have died, the state estimates.

Disruptive weather events tend to reinforce the central fear of a warming atmosphere: that environmental instability and human insecurity are “the new normal.” Floodwaters are still receding in Pakistan, months after heavy monsoon rains and melting glaciers inundated a third of the country. Abnormal rains are flooding wide swaths of the Philippines nearly two months into what should be the dry season.

Just measuring extremity, however, misses something else going on. Dire weather situations have helped raise a tide of global compassion. At the most recent United Nations conference on climate change, wealthy industrial nations agreed to establish a “loss and damage” fund to offset the impact of their greenhouse gas emissions on poorer countries. They have also brokered more targeted agreements to help coal-dependent countries like South Africa, Indonesia, and Vietnam shift toward renewables.

In California, the recent storms are adding momentum to a radical shift in thinking about land use and environmental stewardship – one that is dissolving competition into cooperation among rival interest groups and replacing the subduing of nature with ecological restoration and replenishment.

“Through multi-benefit partnerships that include water interests as key partners, we have the resources to manage our watersheds sustainably, even in a warming climate,” says Roger Bales, director of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at the University of California, Merced. In a Pacific Forest Trust webinar last year, he described what he called the “three-legged stool” of California’s environmental future: ecological integrity and resilience, human well-being, and environmental equity for rural communities and future generations.

All of that revolves around correcting the effects of human decisions and activity on California’s Sierra Nevada watershed, which accounts for 75% of the state’s water. That system has been disrupted in recent decades by warmer temperatures, which have resulted in less – and less reliable – annual snowpack. But the problem has a deeper history. A century of fire suppression strategies has resulted in thicker, younger forests. Trees drink water. During prolonged droughts, they die and become fire fuel. The U.S. Forest Service estimated that 9.2 million trees died just last year due to drought. That points to a common strategy for fire safety and drought alleviation. While the volumes of storm runoff over the past month underscore a need to transform California’s water catchment system for a warmer era, a growing number of initiatives between public agencies, the scientific community, and industries like timber and recreation are focused on thinning and diversifying California’s forests back to their natural pre-1900 balance.

The historian Kevin Starr observed that “Americans entered California and there, in a variety of ways, responded to its imperatives.” He might have written that sentence about today. Pressed with a need to restore the integrity of California’s watershed, the state’s varied interests are forging future security on a united ecosystem of thought.