StreetSmart 5: Silicon Valley Transit Advocate Monica Mallon Chronicles the VTA Strike

Episode 4 of the StreetSmart podcast features Monica Mallon and a discussion of the VTA strike in Silicon Valley.

If you’re not familiar with Mallon, she is a one-person advocacy machine focused on transit in the Bay Area Peninsula, specifically the VTA. When bus drivers and rail operators were on strike Mallon documented the various ways she commuted to and from the office on foot, Caltrain and even Amtrak for a series of social media videos. My favorite is this one, where she walks for 14.3 miles. But it was this one earlier in the strike that caught the attention of the local media.

A court order has put VTA workers back on the job, but they are still working without a contract. In this podcast, we discuss what Mallon thinks will happen next in the strike, what she hopes people learn by watching her videos, and why it's important that people get involved in the issues they care about.

You can follow Mallon on Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, and BlueSky. You can catchup on her video series on the strike (or any other transit issue) at any of her channels.

DN - As mentioned in the pre-show, I'm here today with Monica Mallon, who is  an independent advocate. But if you are writing about VTA, covering the strike or anything else, I don't know how you do it without talking to her. 

Thank you for being here today.

MM - Thanks so much for having me.

DN - We are hoping to get this podcast up today, but you never know how things are going to work editorially. We are recording on April 3rd of 2025. I only use this specific date because things move fast in a strike environment and if we don’t get this up quickly, things may have changed.

So if things have, it's my fault as a podcast editor, not “us” the interviewer and interviewee. 

Why don't we start with what is the current state of the strike? They are not physically striking because of the court order, but there is not an agreement either.

So where does that sort of leave VTA service at the moment?

MM - It's very much up in the air right now. ATU members are working without a contract and full service was restored earlier today. So all bus service and all light rail service (are currently running.)

But, they're working without a contract. So it is a little bit of this middle ground situation. And then there's also the appeal. I'm So we'll have to see.

DN - Right. And the appeal is an appeal of the court order that they have to go back to work. It's not an appeal of anything else. The negotiations are happening separately from the legal appeals.

MM - Yes. So there's been a lot of discussion about the negotiations as well. APU is saying VTA isn't coming to the table. VTA is saying APU isn't coming to the table. So there's a lot of back and forth there. But, hopefully those talks are able to continue soon.

DN - I know VTA reached out to the governor's office to help mediate. It would seem that if both sides are posturing that the other one won't come to the table, that maybe a third party mediator would be useful. At least you'd have someone to say, “Hey, we were here and this is who did and didn't show up.”

We haven't had a transit strike like that down here in Southern California, but it seems like we have a teacher strike every three years and in those both sides always claim the other isn’t willing to negotiate.

MM - Yeah, it seems pretty common. And I think it would be really helpful to have some sort of third party there to mediate and also just be able to show who's the one that's not coming to the table and also just to help resolve the issue quickly.

DN - I find it odd that when there's a strike going on to that the agency that's being struck against is, regardless of whether or not they are in the right or in the wrong in the negotiations,in an odd place because most of the time they talk about how great their workers are and how essential they are. 

And then all of a sudden they're having to argue about the dental program.

The flip side of it is the union members usually are very proud of their jobs at whatever agencies where they work. 

Has the strike rhetoric gotten ugly or uglier than you think might be necessary?

MM - There's always been a lot of conflict between VTA and ATU. They're always kind of coming after each other a little bit here and there. But I guess on the VTA side, there has been a little bit more aggression from VTA, because they're trying to get ATU to accept the offers that are on the table.

But I haven't really seen anything that's too out of the ordinary. If anything, I felt like the strike was pretty quiet and I didn't see a lot of coverage of it. I didn't see business leaders and political leaders speaking up about it…especially on the rider impact side. I don't think there was really anything in those first few days that was said about riders really at all from anyone other than what I was saying or just random riders that were being interviewed by the news.

DN - I was about to say that I only really saw the local Bay Area news coverage which was: here's a press conference from VTA, here's a press conference from ATU, here's a person who was stuck out in the rain.

And the person being interviewed in the rain is saying, “I don't care. I just want to get on the bus.” It’s not hard to find someone that feels that way when they have to walk in the rain.

But, you did something interesting and unique. You chronicled your own trips to work online during the strike.

Once you had to walk 11 miles each way?

MM - Yeah, I walked 11 miles home a couple of times.

Once it was partially raining, it was really windy. It was not like the perfect California weather a lot of the time. 

And when the strike happened, I knew that I could take the easy way out and do what everybody else is doing and just use ride shares or get rides from people, but I decided to showcase what actual riders were going through and highlight the more difficult aspects of the strike and what it's actually like if, you're completely without transit and not using ride shares or getting rides from people or renting a car or something like that.

It was a really interesting experience. I was trying all these different things: walking a bit and taking Amtrak, and walking a bit and taking Caltrain. And then sometimes even just walking the whole distance home and documenting it and showing that it's so much more difficult to get around when you don't have access to transit.

It's pretty easy to do these commutes on a bus or on a train. But when you're walking, it can take, in my case, three and a half hours.

DN - That was one of the useful things (about her video series) because as people are looking at things from a statewide position, they hear there's a transit strike in the Silicon Valley and everyone's taking rideshare. But there's a lot of VTA riders…it's a hundred thousand passengers a day…and not all of them are choice riders. 

Probably, the majority of them aren't. 

And so the impacts of what that strike for them is being shown in these short videos that you put and edited together. Links to some of them are going to be in the text that accompanies this podcast at Streetsblog California and wherever else it is that people are downloading this from.

If people want to watch those videos, you are showing what the impact was. You show  going on for the  people that are transit dependent and not to hop in a rideshare…or do you guys have Waymo? Could you take a Waymo?

MM - I think Waymo actually just started here, but it wasn't fully ready in those earlier days of the strike. But I guess that's probably something that people might use these days.

DN - (laughing) First trip's free. So that's the time to use it, right?

MM - (laughing) Yeah, yeah.

DN - Ok, but you said it was you decided to do these because you wanted to show people…you wanted to humanize what the strike is for the people that were impacted, for transit riders.

MM - It was one of those moments whereI thought, “What if I just actually showed what it's like when there's no transit to show why transit's essential?” 

Even during the pandemic, we did have transit running. Here, I could tell the story that there are people that are essential workers that need to get where they need to go. And, we're able to tell that story. 

But this is just a situation where there's absolutely no service at all…not even the Sunday schedule or reduced service. People were really scrambling to get around because with VTA, most riders don't own cars. 

Most riders aren't choice riders.

A lot of riders are young and don't have a lot of options. 

I was hearing…because I was documenting my struggles and what I was going through…I was hearing a lot of other people were walking as well or just spending hundreds of dollars a day on rideshare.

Especially in the earlier days, people didn't think the strike would last very long. So they were calling out of work or not showing up to school.

But as it started to drag into the second week, I think people had to really figure out what to do. You just can't miss that much work and expect to keep your job at that point.

DN - So as we mentioned, they're working without a contract right now. 

What do you see as sort of the best case scenario going forward? Because VTA is basically saying that they can't afford the contract that the ATU transit workers are demanding.

And ATU is saying it doesn't make financial sense for us not to get what we're demanding for our workers to be able to maintain a healthy quality of life in the area that they're servicing.

What do you see as the sort of end game for this? I mean, at some point they have to reach an agreement.

MM - There really needs to be some compromise. 

There's truth to what both sides are saying, but the reality is the federal government isn't providing operations funding and we have to live within our means. Something has to give, whether it's cutting service or raising fares, if we want to increase the salary. 

Like there has to be a balance of all that. And the budget does have to balance without getting federal operations funding because that's just not something that's not feasible right now. 

The board doesn’t really want to use all the reserves and bet on that to provide the raise, and keep the service, and not raise fares. 

It’s not possible to give everybody what they want. So there has to be some sort of balance and compromise and everyone is going to need to give a little bit at some point.

DN -  Senator Wiener is pushing to get more money put in the state budget (for transit operations.) Is there any thought on a short-term continuation and then see where things look a year from now? There's also been talk of a transit fund ballot measure in the Bay Area, I know VTA would get some of that. 

Or is everyone just trying to get the negotiations done and we'll just see what happens down the road with these other measures?

MM - They probably want to solve this problem first. At least on the board side, they want to solve it in a way that's going to be sustainable for VTA's future without expecting any additional funding. Because I know that there's this feeling that things are really difficult at the federal level and tax measures aren't pulling very well right now. They want to make sure that they're not getting themselves into this deep hole and then slashing service. 

We all know how that sort of thing goes and that's happened a number of times at VTA which is why VTA already has lower service levels compared to other agencies in the Bay Area.

There’s a lot of concern there…just trying to figure out some sort of balance that allows them to move forward for the time being and then potentially look at new revenue sources later on in the future.

DN - Is there anything you would like to say or add that maybe we haven't covered on or something you'd really like to emphasize about the strike or VTA or a transit service in the Valley or pretty much anything at all that you just want to shout out?

MM - It was just this really interesting experience where we got to see what life was like without transit for an extended period of time. As a rider and advocate, it made me a lot more grateful for the service that we had and just how easy it can be to just hop on the bus and get where you need to go compared to what I was doing during the strike, which was at times walking three and a half hours home.

I just remember that first day when I was able to get on the bus, even though I didn't have the light rail, which is what I normally use. 

It was still so much faster and I was just grateful to be on a nice warm and dry bus going home. It just really was something that made me appreciate what we have.

It also showed how important it is to keep speaking up for transit. I was working a full-time in-person job while this was happening, but I still took every opportunity to advocate for myself and advocate for other riders.

DN - You take the time to advocate for yourself and other riders while having jobs that were not “transit advocate” for a big chunk of your adult life and you deserve a ton of credit for that. 

I was telling you off camera, I was talking to a person at Transform who's the subject of our next podcast. When I mentioned that we were doing something on VTA, the first thing he said was, “You got to talk to Monica.” And I was like, “Yes, that's good. That's who I'm talking to.” There's a lot of people that see you as the VTA advocate, the go-to VTA person.

And this has mostly been volunteer work over the years. I think you mentioned once or twice you've had some gigs with some of the advocacy groups, but for the most part, this has just been something you're passionate about.

MM - I've mostly just been doing it completely for free because it's something that I really care about and I hope the other advocates out there know that. 

If you feel like there's not a lot of advocacy in an area, you can just step up and become that person. You're going to learn a lot through the process and figure out how to do things and figure out what works best. I've certainly learned a lot over the years. and I didn't start at the place that I'm at now where everybody kind of knows who I am. There's a lot of people that respect my work. And it certainly took time to build a platform and to build expertise and credibility and all those things and relationships with reporters and things like that. 

But anyone can do it. You can do it while you're working a full-time in person job.

It's about having the passion and the drive for it and just finding those little opportunities where you can tell a good story like the one that I was able to tell during the strike.

DN - Thank you for everything you do. And thank you for joining us today. Again, links to all of your social media and some of the highlights from the past month or so are going to be available in the text that accompanies this podcast. But it's just at MonicaMallon on the Twitter X site.

MM - Yeah.

DN -  That's where I follow you. Are you on Blue Sky or Instagram or any of those other ones?

MM - Yeah, pretty much on everything as MonicaMallon and then the TikTok where I was documenting everything is at TakeTransit.

DN - Taketransit?

MM - Yeah.

DN - That’s ironic because…you weren't taking transit. 

Thank you again for everything that you do and for being with us today. And I am sure we'll talk soon, although hopefully not about this. Hopefully this will just get worked out.