As fears set in that BART trains would run just once an hour and Muni might cut frequency by 50%, state Senator Scott Wiener is proposing a funding package to save them, but it involves voters approving a new sales tax.
Bay Area transit planners have been sounding the alarm for years over a looming “fiscal cliff” and “doomsday scenario” where BART, Muni, and other transit agencies have not seen fare revenue rebound from the pandemic, and now under Trump they will likely lose any form of federal funding. And the resulting service cuts would be drastic and unthinkable.
BART might have to shut down entire stations, run train lines only once an hour, cut service at 9 pm, and eliminate weekend service completely. Muni could have to shut down as many as 20 bus lines, and cut some remaining lines’ frequency by up to 50%. That would put more cars on the road, and as many as ten hours a week to drivers’ communes.
To stave this off, state Senators Scott Wiener and Jesse Arreguín of the East Bay just introduced a regional sales tax measure to bail out transit, as the Chronicle reports.
It’s called the Connect Bay Area Act (SB-63), and as KQED explains, the tax is proposed for San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties, at a half-cent in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and a full one cent in San Francisco County.
They would hope to put this on your November 2026 ballot. The proposal also adds a mechanism where San Mateo and Santa Clara counties could join in the measure if they decide to do so by July 31, 2025.
“If we do nothing, we will see catastrophic service cuts,” Wiener told the Chronicle before a Monday press conference introducing the measure. “When you cut service, more and more people stop riding. That means even more of a reduction in fare revenue, which leads to more service cuts, which leads more people to stop riding. Rinse and repeat.”
Of course, tax increases generally need a daunting two-thirds majority to pass. In this case, the Chronicle reports that “citizen groups will sponsor the measure so that it only needs a bare majority to pass,” so we’ll see how that plays out.
Wiener tried for a similar ballot measure last year, but that effort did not even make it out of the state legislature. And San Diego voters rejected a transit tax in 2024, which failed because of what KPBS called an “urban-suburban divide” where suburban voters were not inclined to pay for public transit that fewer of them use. That could be an issue here, particularly in Contra Costa County.
But Wiener claimed to the Chronicle that he’d seen polling that showed (in the Chronicle’s words) “recent surveys in Contra Costa, Alameda, San Francisco and San Mateo counties in which [this measure] drew 55% approval.” So it seems Wiener’s office may have done some internal polling here, and seen numbers that led to this parliamentary workaround of avoiding the two-thirds majority, with confidence they can pass the 50% threshold.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is said to be considering a proposal for a similar local Muni tax, but there are no public details on that.
Image: BART.gov
