BART may seek tax increase to stave off projected $2.2B shortfall
Agency says it expects ridership to stay below 400,000 daily trips
A coronavirus surge fueled by the omicron variant peaked weeks ago in the Bay Area, but its effects on BART will be felt for years as it exacerbates a ridership collapse and worsens the agency’s looming fiscal crisis, according to a new BART financial outlook.
BART, which was already lagging the nation’s rail transit systems in its pandemic ridership recovery, is projecting an even larger loss of ridership over the next decade compared to its pre-omicron financial outlook in October.
With a drastic loss in riders, the agency will need nearly $1 billion to keep the trains running through 2032 and BART may turn to Bay Area taxpayers to foot the bill.
Over the next 10 years, the transit operator expects an enduring downturn of nearly a third of passenger trips, according to projections which will be presented at a BART board meeting on Thursday. This is up from a long-term loss of 20% of riders that the embattled agency was already projecting due to a pandemic that continues to upended public transit across the Bay Area.
The ridership loss is so severe that in its most likely scenario BART expects ridership to remain below the 400,000 daily trips the system sustained prior to the pandemic for the next decade.
Laura Tolkoff, a transportation policy director for the urban planning think tank SPUR, said the new projections show the pandemic’s continuing impact on public transportation as offices remain nearly empty in San Francisco and many people avoid transit out of health concerns. She said the latest highly contagious variant that spreads even among vaccinated people “has definitely led to lower ridership assumptions.”
Nearly two years after the start of coronavirus lockdowns, public transit across the Bay Area is still struggling to claw back ridership even as bridge traffic congestion approaches pre-pandemic levels. BART trains, which were once packed with daily commuters, carry less than 30% of pre-pandemic passenger trips — a recovery rate far behind BART’s peers in New York, Chicago, and Atlanta.
With the loss in passenger fare revenue, BART is projecting an up to $2.2 billion cumulative deficit over the next decade. The agency has an expected 28-month runway before it burns through $600 million in
remaining federal relief money that is currently keeping the trains running.
Rebecca Saltzman, the BART board president, said it’s hard to predict BART’s financial future past a couple of years, but the new outlook means the board needs to “plan for the worst scenario.”
“Ultimately we’re gonna have hundreds of thousands of people depending on BART every day — it’s still going to be important to put out a robust service, even if it’s fewer than we thought,” she said.
Now the agency is looking for some combination of regional tax hikes, state-level funds, and federal dollars to keep the trains running. On Thursday, the BART board will discuss different scenarios for regional tax hikes, including a ballot measure in conjunction with other transit operators spanning nine counties or a BART-only measure that spans three to five counties.
Agencies face an uphill battle to cross the twothirds threshold needed to approve any tax hikes. According to summer polling data that will be presented to the BART board, 62% of likely voters indicated that they will vote against any tax increase, up more than 14 percentage points from November 2019.
“Up until this point, it has been taxpayers across the country filling this budget deficit,” said Debora Allen, a BART board director, who has called for increased job and spending cuts at the agency. “Now we’re going to be talking about local taxpayers in the Bay Area having to put up more money.”