The cash-strapped BART system has revealed its ‘doomsday scenario’ of drastic service cuts if a November transit tax measure doesn’t pass, with as many as 15 stations potentially closing, and service stopping at 9 pm every night.

BART’s social media accounts are talking a big game today about the throngs of Super Bowl riders they’re getting this week, which are indeed likely to set or break ridership records for what is normally a humdrum first full weekend of February. But these numbers are just a synthetic sugar high, because we do not have the Super Bowl in town every weekend, and rarely will these numbers be matched.

That boasting will end the day after the Super Bowl, and then BART will speak in ways intended to strike fear into riders’ hearts. In fact, they already have. The Chronicle reports that BART gave an update on its “fiscal cliff’/”doomsday scenario” financial panic, and in it the Chron notes that the transit agency may be forced to permanently close as many as 15 BART stations in 2027.

That is, unless voters approved their half-cent sales tax ballot measure in four Bay Area counties, which would additionally be a full one-cent sales tax in San Francisco County. That ballot measure is up for a vote on the November 3, 2026 ballot, and it will appear on the ballots in San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties.

There are other even more dire cutbacks than the station closures. As KRON4 points out, BART says they may have to stop train service at 9 pm every night, and might not begin weekend morning service until 8 am.  

The Chronicle has some maps of which stations BART says they might close. It’s a two-phase approach.

In January of 2027, the Antioch line would lose its Orinda, North Concord/Martinez, and Pittsburgh Center stations. Oakland International Airport, South Hayward, and Warm Springs/South Fremont would all be axed from the Berryessa line. The Dublin/Pleasanton line would lose its Castro Valley and West Dublin/Pleasanton stations, and the SFO line would lose the Colma and South San Francisco stations.

And that’s just Phase One. Come July 2027, they’d further shut down the Pittsburg/Baypoint and Antioch stations (that line would then just end at Concord, like it did in the early 90s), and the Dublin/Pleasanton-bound Blue Line would just cease to exist — with Orange Line service ending at Bay Fair. On the SFO line, San Bruno and Millbrare stations would also close, which means the BART would just go straight from Daly City station to SFO, with no stops between.


These are, for now, just proposals that the BART Board of Directors will discuss in an upcoming workshop.

“What we’ll discuss in our board workshop next week is not only the monumental scale of what’s in front of us but the incredibly high degree of uncertainty,” BART Board member Edward Wright told the Chronicle.

That meeting is Thursday, February 12, at 9 am, and will be livestreamed.

Related: That Half-Cent Sales Tax To Save Public Transit From ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Will Indeed Be on the November 2026 Ballot [SFist]

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