Golden Gate district proposes bus, ferry fare hikes for next 5 years
Facing a deficit of up to $423 million as revenues remain well below pre-pandemic levels, the Golden Gate Bridge district is proposing to raise its bus and ferry fares for the next five years.
The proposed fare hikes will not be enough to cover the fiscal cliff that the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District and other Bay Area transit providers are facing as federal relief money they received during the pandemic runs out in the coming years, staff said.
“We've lost so many passengers and we're at a situation where we need to address that difficult cliff in other ways,” Joe Wire, the district's chief financial officer, told the agency's governing board at its Jan. 26 meeting.
Denis Mulligan, the district general manager, said the proposed fare increases, which would take effect in July, would help cover rising costs and inflation.
“Our biggest cost is our people, and if we're going to give pay raises to employees, if we're going to make additional contributions to their pensions, we need our revenues to do that,” Mulligan told the board. “This is one way to partially pay for that.”
The district has proposed several options for increasing fares.
Depending on the option, the district estimates it would receive $260,000 to $620,000 in additional annual fare revenue.
The district is proposing similar options for ferry fares. The ferry fare increases would provide an estimated $380,000 to $540,000 in new annual revenue depending on the option, according to the district.
The district is having public meetings to hear comments on the proposal. More information on the meetings and the fare proposal can be found at goldengate.org/fareplan. The district is expected to vote on the proposals at its
March 23-24 meetings.
The proposed fare increases would not apply to local fixed route service by Marin Transit, which contracts with the bridge district for bus drivers.
“We are currently not considering any new fare increases on local services,” said Robert Betts, Marin Transit operations director.
Bus and ferry ridership remain well below prepandemic levels. Farebox recovery for buses is about 7% compared to the agency's target of 20%, staff said. Ferry farebox recovery is about 17%, short of the 40% target.
“These proposed fare increases in these different scenarios do not meet these farebox recovery targets at this time,” district Planning Director Ron Downing told the board, “but we're looking to increase fares in a percentage similar to the increase in expenses that we have to provide the services.”
Local ridership in Marin County is about 80% of pre-pandemic levels, according to district spokesperson Paolo CosulichSchwartz.
By comparison, the commute routes between the North Bay and San Francisco are at about 17% of pre-pandemic levels as employees who once commuted continue to work from home.
Overall, ridership on bus and ferry service is down about 55% from prepandemic levels. Though ferry service levels have nearly recovered, the district has continued to run about half of its pre-pandemic bus service in response to low ridership, Cosulich-Schwartz said.
Both ferry and bus services are primarily funded using bridge toll revenues, which also remain well below normal. Bridge crossings are about 80% of normal, resulting in a loss of about $1 million in toll revenue per week, CosulichSchwartz said. That means bus and ferry services are receiving about 40% less funding compared to before the pandemic, he said.
The district has been able to maintain service from the nearly $282.5 million it received in federal relief funding during the pandemic, but that money is expected to run out in fiscal 2026.
Once the funding is depleted, the district projects it will have a $93.8 million shortfall, according to Cosulich-Schwartz.
The projected $423 million deficit the district faces assumes that the district will resume pre-pandemic bus and ferry service levels within the fiveyear period. The district has reduced service in response to the lower ridership.
The district does not have plans in the near term to resume those service levels given current ridership, CosulichSchwartz said. If the district continues to restore service based on ridership levels, the projected deficit would be closer to $187 million in the next five years.
Many Bay Area transit services have been sustained by billions of dollars in federal relief funding. But as the funding begins to dry up and ridership continues to recover sluggishly, transit agencies such as BART, Caltrain, San Francisco Muni and others face the possibility of having to make significant service cuts unless other funding can be found.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission — the nine-county Bay Area's top transportation planning and financing agency — is exploring options to address the financial crisis, including a proposal for a Bay Area tax measure on the 2024 ballot.
David Schonbrunn, director of the Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund in San Rafael, said Bay Area transit agencies face a “disastrous financial cliff” if ridership doesn't return, but said the district's plan does not address how it will recover ridership.
“Golden Gate's financial planning assumes that all of the previous ridership returns, which is an aggressive assumption because of the shift to partial in-office work weeks,” Schonbrunn wrote. “The staff report doesn't deal with that at all, which seems ostrich-like, to me. Golden Gate's practice is to see the fare-setting process only as a financial decision.”
“What's missing is how the fare affects the people who use the service,” Schonbrunn said. “This is important, because the whole point of the service is to carry people. There is no analysis of the impact of fare increases on ridership, which is partly a function of the income distribution of the riders.”