Cash-strapped BART hands out free rides
BART handed out nearly $3.5 million worth of free rides to 17,000 workers, their families and law enforcement officers last year, district records show — and now at least one of the transit agency’s board members is calling on the cash-strapped system to sharply curtail the practice.
“If you are a system that is constantly struggling to balance the budget year after year — and you are looking at budget deficits for years to come — you have to start cutting expenses,” said board member
Debora Allen. She’s calling for a full accounting of BART’s free pass policy for employees and others.
BART gives free passes to its 13,000 employees, retirees and board members, along with their immediate family members. It’s been that way since trains started running in 1972.
Some 4,000 local, state and federal law enforcement officers also get free rides.
In all, the 17,266 pass holders took 895,187 free rides on the system last year — or an average of 26 round trips annually per person, according to BART records provided to us under a state Public Records Act request.
At an average cost of $7.80 per round trip, that works out to a $200 yearly perk per pass holder on average.
Records show that BART’s 3,615 active employees took the greatest advantage of the free rides, averaging 52 round trips apiece last year. Retired employees took an average of eight free round trips.
The 6,940 dependents of active and retired employees averaged 17 round trips apiece.
The nearly 4,000 Bay Area law enforcement officers averaged about 26 round trips each. The free passes for public safety officers were meant only for officers who were cleared to carry a gun while off duty. However, a recent BART investigation found that the annual law enforcement passes — which can be had for a $35 administrative fee — were also going to 146 San Francisco probation officers who were not cleared to carry firearms.
BART has moved to tighten the passes.
Allen said that as far as she’s concerned, the only people who should be getting free rides are BART employees — and only when it’s “part of their job to ride and monitor the trains.”
BART spokesman Jim Allison said the free passes don’t cost the system anything, because the cost of running trains would be the same with or without the free rides.
In any event, there may be a big roadblock in the way of any changes: BART board President Rebecca Saltzman said the free passes for workers and their families was “something negotiated in (union employees’) contracts among a whole lot of other stuff.”
If Allen or anyone else wants to re-evaluate the program, Saltzman said, they can bring it up in the next contract negotiations — in 2021.
But if there is a change, Saltzman said, “we are probably going to have to negotiate (to give the unions) something else.” Belly up: State Sen. Scott Wiener is not ready to give up on his drive to extend bar hours for cities that want to party hearty till 4 a.m., despite having had his legislation 86’d last week.
“I’m absolutely not giving up on this bill,” Wiener, D-San Francisco, said upon his return to the state Capitol after Friday’s 11th-hour ambush of the bill by state Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, D-San Diego, chair of the Appropriations Committee. The bill would have given cities the option to stay open an extra two hours past 2 a.m. “It was a matter of local choice,” Wiener said.
The measure had already passed the state Senate, and Wiener said the votes were there in the Assembly. Gonzalez Fletcher, however, used her power as Appropriations chair to gut the bill and create a task force to study the issue until sometime next year.
“There is nothing to study,” Wiener said. “Nightlife is becoming increasingly important culturally and to the economy of cities like San Francisco. It makes no sense to have a one-size-fits-all approach.”
Most of the state’s law enforcement agencies were neutral on the bill, but there were plenty of opponents, including Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the Marin and Sonoma county boards of supervisors, and the Police Chiefs and Sheriffs Association of Gonzalez Fletcher’s home turf, San Diego County.
Gonzalez Fletcher did not return calls Tuesday seeking comment.
“We are going to bring the bill back next year and limit it only to cities (spelled out in the measure) that want the ability to make the change,” Wiener said.
Those cities include San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, Long Beach and West Hollywood.