Every day, people throughout the Bay Area take nearly 1 million trips on public transit to get to work, school, medical appointments, run errands, see family and friends, and enjoy the amazing culture and outdoors of the Bay.
Public transit is the lifeblood of the Bay Area. Without the bus, train, and ferry service our communities depend on, freeways would become clogged, our economy would stall, our air would be dirtier, and people would have to shell out thousands of dollars more each year on car payments, gas, and insurance.
But our communities are at risk of losing transit service if we do nothing. Federal and state support for transit has run out and unless the Bay Area passes a long-term funding measure at the ballot, our communities will lose the service we depend on.
Without additional funding, you, your neighbors, and everyone in the Counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara will lose the transit service that keeps our region going as BART, Muni, Caltrain, and AC Transit will essentially collapse. VTA and SamTrans will be forced to make significant cuts. Without the regional measure to fund transit:
BART, which directly serves nearly 200,000 trips a day in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties with trains running every few minutes during peak periods, would be forced to run trains only once an hour, close nine stations, stop service at 9pm, and lay off over 1,000 workers.
Wait times for Muni buses and trains – which hundreds of thousands of people take every day in San Francisco – would double as service gets cut in half, entire routes are eliminated and regular service would stop at 9pm, with only bare-bones late-night service.
In Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, AC Transit would be forced to cut up to 37% of its service.
Caltrain would be forced to close 10 stations, run service only once an hour, provide no weekend service, and no weekday service after 9pm.
VTA and SamTrans are also looking at significant upcoming budget deficits which would force cuts.
Worse transit service would drive away riders, which loses agencies money and forces even more service cuts.
It cannot be overstated how disastrous these cuts would be for Bay Area families, businesses, and our entire community.
However, there is a way we can save families money on transportation, unsnarl traffic, grow the economy, clean our air, and create a more equitable and affordable Bay Area.
How do we fix it?
If residents in the big 5 Bay Area counties – San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara – pass the regional ballot measure to fund transit in November 2026, it will raise $1 billion per year to prevent cuts and improve service.
But first, we must gather over 200,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot.
This measure saves our communities from disastrous cuts AND it would make service easier, faster, more efficient, and affordable for all by funding special "transit transformation” investments aimed at making transit more rider-friendly. Learn more about the specifics of the ballot measure and next steps in this blog post.