As climate activists mourn the November election and steel themselves for a second Trump presidency, a small, countervailing trend seems to be emerging at the local level: Leftists championing public transit are running for office and winning. Last month, Mike Siegel won a City Council seat in Austin, Texas, on a platform heavily focused on climate issues, including transit, promising to support and protect a popular plan currently underway to add a new light rail system, and expand commuter rail and bus service throughout the city. He also supported improvements and extensions to a major transit hub. Even in suburban Atlanta—not a place associated with rail or bus-riding culture, where a public transit referendum unfortunately lost in November—Gabriel Sanchez won his election for state representative in a landslide after making transit central to his campaign.

Meanwhile, in New York City, congestion pricing began on Sunday. After years of advocacy, litigation, and gubernatorial shenanigans, New York is set to charge motorists for entering the city, using the tax to improve public transportation. Building better public transit is a key plank in socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s campaign too. Mamdani, promising “fast, fare-free buses,” raised a quarter of a million dollars in the first three weeks of his campaign, making him the fastest mayoral candidate in 2024’s growing mayoral field to reach that milestone.

Public transit, done right, could be politically powerful: Not only does........

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