America's public transit fiscal crisis, tokenizing infrastructure, and the promises of virtual power plants

Transit agencies across America are struggling to regain ridership post-COVID.

The country's eight largest agencies (NYC's MTA, BART, LA Metro, MBTA in Boston, the DC area's WMATA, SEPTA in Philly, New Jersey Transit, and the Chicago Transit Authority) are also collectively facing a $6.6B cumulative budget shortfall through 2026. But despite serving regions that contribute over $6T annually to domestic GDP it is difficult to imagine the federal government stepping up, again, to help plug that shortfall after the COVID largesse of the last few years (where the feds distributed nearly $55B to the ten largest US transit agencies).