BART trains arriving once an hour. Muni light rail abandoning entire swaths of San Francisco. AC Transit buses rusting by the dozens in Oakland yards.
Bay Area leaders are launching an effort to prevent what they call a dark future for regional transit.
State senators Scott Wiener and Jesse Arreguín on Monday announced a sales tax proposal to fund regional transit.
“If we do nothing, we will see massive, devastating service cuts,” Wiener said. “BART, Muni, Caltrain, and AC Transit. These systems will be shadows of what they were.”
To steer clear of that future, the Connect Bay Area Act, or Senate Bill 63, proposes a 2026 ballot measure to approve a tax in San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties. The sales tax would be half a cent in the participating Bay Area counties, with an option for San Francisco to raise it to 1 cent for additional Muni funding.
San Mateo and Santa Clara counties could opt in to the tax by the end of July. That’s also the deadline for local transit agencies to map out their plans for the funding. The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, however, has come out against the measure, saying it would interfere with its ability to renew local sales taxes.
Transit agencies have yet to fully recover from pandemic-era ridership plunges. Muni’s ridership continues to climb, though it remains at 75% of pre-pandemic levels. BART, which used to be so crowded that finding a seat on commute mornings was low-stakes warfare, last year was at half of its pre-pandemic ridership levels in peak times.
Transit agencies faced dire times in 2023, but Wiener and other lawmakers secured $1.1 billion in emergency funds. That money runs out in 2026.
Some of those agencies faced decades-long disinvestment that were worsened by the pandemic. Facing declining revenue, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency directed staff to prepare to curtail downtown Muni lines and raise minimum prices at parking meters citywide.
The stakes are consequential. Lawmakers agree: San Francisco’s downtown revival is impossible without robust transit to bring in workers from outlying neighborhoods and cities.
That carries consequences for the city’s tax base, too. Without robust downtown businesses, the city’s deficit has expanded to a whopping $840 million. Mayor Daniel Lurie ordered departments to make 15% cuts in the latest budget.
Without a new funding source, BART may make “draconian” service cuts, said Edward Wright, who represents San Francisco on the BART Board of Directors. The service may not run after 9 p.m., entire stations could close, weekend service could end, and the agency could face mass layoffs.
“BART is facing its greatest existential challenge we’ve faced since the system was created,” he said.
In a blog post describing its dire budget need, BART officials said the problem isn’t the number of riders — most of them have returned. Many of them are hybrid workers, however, and ride BART less frequently, challenging the agency’s finances.
Motorists have reason to care about the sales tax, too, Wright added.
“Even if you’re someone who never steps foot on BART, you don’t want everyone who rides it every day suddenly competing with you for parking spaces or clogging up the Bay Bridge when you’re trying to get to work,” he said.
The bill requires improvements in transit that Bay Area leaders have long called for, including a requirement to work toward seamlessness so people can more easily transfer between transit systems. The bill also requires an efficiency analysis for local transit systems.
Despite rising inflation, steep grocery costs, and uncertain fiscal futures in Bay Area cities, Wiener has hopes that voters will back the sales tax.
A recent poll shows a viable path for the ballot measure because residents see the utility of transit to the region, Wiener said, though it doesn’t show “a landslide.”
“We can’t take anything for granted, and we’ll have to run a very strong campaign,” he said. “But it is winnable.”