Pandemic costs BART $1 billion
Unprecedented crisis for agency — traditional commute may not return
BART expects ridership won’t be close to rebounding to prepandemic levels for years and is grappling with “a crisis without precedent in our history,” the transit agency’s staff told its board Thursday.
The pandemic is expected to cost the train system more than $1 billion in revenue losses through fiscal year 2022.
Ridership plunged to 12% of pre-COVID levels under shelterinplace and has barely budged for nearly a year. Before the pandemic, twothirds of BART trips had an origin or destination at a Market Street station in downtown San Francisco. Board President Mark Foley said BART “can’t assume” all its fiveday commuters will come back. Staff expects ridership to rebound to between 65% and 90% of prepandemic levels by fiscal year 2027.
“The pandemic has triggered a huge drop in BART’s operating revenue, leading to both a nearterm fiscal crisis and extraordinary uncertainty for the years ahead,” BART’s financial planning director,
Michael Eiseman, told the board at a Thursday workshop. He said the collapse in ridership is “a crisis without precedent in our history.”
BART, with 4,192 employees and a $2.42 billion budget this fiscal year, now faces a tenuous financial situation that is forcing the transit system to debate
its priorities. Economic recovery, remote work and the future of vaccines and coronavirus variants remain uncertain, but the agency is trying to do what it can to get riders back and keep costs down. While waiting for daily commuters to return, the train system may focus more on serving leisure travelers on the weekend and evenings, directors said Thursday.
Transportation experts said transit, vital to supporting essential workers and economic recovery, has been one of the industries hardest hit by the pandemic — and BART is one of the agencies in the country that has been most reliant on fare revenue as a percentage of its operating budget.
“The fact that an agency like BART is struggling is incredibly troubling but also not surprising,” said Nick Josefowitz, chief policy officer with nonprofit think tank SPUR. “Whatever structural financial challenges BART had before the pandemic are dwarfed by the impact of the pandemic.”
Josefowitz said that a comprehensive local, state and national response to bring back transit with sustainable funding is needed.
“The scale of the challenge I think is greater than any one agency can deal with on their own,” he said.
BART, which cut service by 40% during the pandemic, expects that preCOVID service levels might not return until 2023, Eiseman said. On this timeline, service may return before full ridership is expected.
Over the next 10 years, annual deficits may range from just under $50 million in the bestcase scenario and could be up to $200 million.
How the agency may make up losses is uncertain. The lifeline of federal stimulus funding — $377 million of Cares Act and $104 million so far from the more recent stimulus bill, with more to come in March — doesn’t completely offset shortfalls. The agency did submit two requests to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reimburse COVID19 expenses, but hasn’t received funds yet. Staffers are advocating for more legislative support and grants.
In response to lost revenue, BART truncated expenses and offered a retirement buyout to employees. Eiseman said 286 workers — 7% of the workforce — took it, although exact savings from the program aren’t yet known. The agency is not turning to layoffs.
A challenge in trying to save money is that 30% of BART’s costs are fixed, such as its pension plan, with a majority of the agency’s operating expenses not scaling down proportionally even when service is cut. Further cuts would limit BART’s ability to get more revenue, staff said.
Board directors said Thursday that they want to see possible scenarios about which service could be brought back when depending on returning ridership — and how the agency will fill gaps if ridership doesn’t recover. Board Vice President Rebecca Saltzman wondered whether there could be more frequent offpeak trains for leisure travelers.
Director Liz Ames said she would like more investment in capital projects. She stressed moving forward on new, more secure fare gates — unanimously supported by the board — which aren’t yet fully funded. General Manager Bob Powers said fare gates are a high priority.
Director Debora Allen said “safe, clean, affordable transit” will get people back the fastest. She pushed for new fare gates and more police enforcement.
Foley agreed that safe, clean, affordable transit is the priority — with one caveat.
“Sometimes safety is racist. Sometimes it’s about privilege,” Foley said. He supports a fully staffed police force to keep riders safe and other programs, including crisis intervention specialists and unarmed ambassadors to respond to drug use, homelessness and mental health issues.
Union leaders who called into the meeting Thursday praised the agency’s collaboration with labor to cut costs without layoffs.
“This year this is very sobering,” Sal Cruz, president of AFSCME Local 3993, said. “We all shared the pain this year and I’m sure there’s still more to come.”
Transit advocates and riders expressed frustration at the situation.
“That’s the bad part about BART, a lot of it depends on people paying their fares at the gate with the Clipper card, if they don’t try and find a way to improve that, they will be forced to make cuts,” said Richard Burnett, who commutes from
Vallejo to San Francisco using BART and two buses.
“Cuts will make getting around even harder than it already is,” said Stephanie Beechem, an Oakland resident who doesn’t own a car and is a board member for nonprofit Seamless Bay Area. “If that becomes a permanent way of life, that’s a really scary prospect.” Beechem was heartened that BART is trying to still serve essential workers using the system.
Darrell Owens, a member of the East Bay Transit Riders Union and lifelong BART rider who lives near North Berkeley Station, said his initial reaction to the news was that “BART brought this upon themselves.” He said the multicounty transit system historically prioritized suburban expansion, serving carowning riders with parking lots, instead of carless riders in dense urban areas — the latter of whom are now its most loyal riders.
“For years we were saying it’s not an effective transit network, it can’t be a suburban commuter shuttle service forever. BART never heeded this warning, and now they’re going to reap what they sowed,” he said. “We’re going to do whatever we can do protect BART and make sure it doesn’t collapse.”