Don't buy the scare tactics.
We can fix transit without a massive new tax.

Proponents claim a traffic catastrophe if the measure fails but they assume 25% of riders will abandon transit even if it keeps running. People and companies will adapt. A NO vote does not mean dead trains and endless traffic. It means forcing transit agencies and state government to act responsibly.

The state legislature has both the authority and the existing progressive tax revenues to fund transit operations directly just as Massachusetts now does. The only reason they haven't is because it is easier to pass the buck and dump a massive regressive sales tax on the entire Bay Area.

It is time to make our elected leaders in Sacramento do the work of prioritizing transit with the money they already have. We should use existing state resources to keep transit moving for the next couple of years until leaders deliver a plan that doesn't unfairly burden working families.

In fiscal year 2024-25, Bay Area transit operators took in roughly $6.2 billion in tax, toll and government grant support across the five counties. State and local officials should figure out how to get people where they need to go with that money before demanding more.

The state can divert some of the $1 billion it spends on High-Speed Rail to fund local transit operations. It should do so. Whether or not cap-and-invest money goes to the bullet train in 2027 and 2028, there is no prospect of high-speed trains reaching the Bay Area before 2038.

Get more money to balance transit agency budgets by pausing two other costly capital projects in the Bay Area:

• BART Silicon Valley Phase II would extend BART six miles through downtown San Jose to Santa Clara at a cost of $12.75 billion. Service would not begin until at least 2037 and if Phase I is any indication few people will ride it.
• The Portal, the proposed downtown San Francisco rail extension connecting Caltrain to the Salesforce Transit Center, has a federal cost estimate of $8.25 billion for just 1.3 miles which commuters can easily cover by switching to Muni, biking or walking. Projected start date is 2036.

The Yes side says that money budgeted for construction cannot simply be spent on operations. But the Legislature can change that restriction and it has already done so. In 2023, Senate Bill 125 distributed $4 billion through the Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program with explicit flexibility to use the money for either transit operations or capital improvements.

This would not have to become a permanent funding model. Capital-to-operations flexibility could instead provide a two-year bridge while the region works on a longer-term solution.

That does not mean all of this money is available to cover operating deficits. Some cash is legally restricted for debt service, capital projects, grants, pensions and other purposes. Agencies also need working capital to pay employees and vendors and maintain prudent operating reserves.

But the amounts are large enough that policymakers should determine how much is genuinely available before concluding that a new 14-year tax is the only way to maintain service.

According to BART's fiscal year 2025 year-end financial report, the agency held approximately $1.05 billion in cash and investments as of June 30, 2025. BART classified about $982 million as unrestricted and $70 million as restricted. Most of the unrestricted total was associated with capital funds but BART's General Fund alone contained approximately $391.5 million of unrestricted cash and investments.

BART itself explains that restricted money is limited by statutes or regulations to specific uses while unrestricted funds can be used for general operating purposes. That does not mean BART could prudently spend its entire unrestricted balance. It does mean that the amount of immediately available liquidity should be part of any discussion of how to bridge a temporary operating deficit.

If New York City can combine all its agencies into one, shouldn't the Bay Area make some consolidations to fix this before asking for more funding?

A NO vote creates leverage to demand the reforms the agencies have avoided: merging overlapping agencies to cut administrative cost and management pay, replacing the lowest-ridership routes with subsidized on-demand service, transferring historic and specialty services to private operators, increasing the use of part-time operators, reducing layers of management and creating a genuinely independent inspector general for Bay Area transportation. None of this is in the measure. All of it should come before another 14-year tax.

Ridership has been dropping for over a decade, yet agencies continue to spend more to do less. The decline has been apparent since 2001 in per capita terms and 2016 in raw numbers.

Moving capital money or drawing on reserves to pay operating expenses is not a permanent solution, but it buys time. A two-year bridge could give transit agencies and regional officials an opportunity to address expenses that a 14-year stream of new sales-tax revenue might otherwise leave unchanged.

Begin with establishing an Inspector General office above the MTC and all agencies funded independently and reporting to the State. Have that office conduct forensic and performance audits of all agencies. Currently only one major Bay Area transit agency has an IG (BART) and she quit because she was blocked from doing her job—after she found fraudulent billing by the co-author of the SPUR Carmageddon report. The findings of those audits will inform the rest of the reforms required to provide public transit efficiently.

That review could include:

• reducing duplicative administrative and management costs across the Bay Area's numerous transit agencies
• examining whether agencies can share functions or consolidate where doing so produces genuine savings
• reviewing work rules, overtime, executive compensation and long-term benefit costs
• replacing lightly used fixed-route service where appropriate with smaller vehicles, microtransit or on-demand transportation
• considering competitive contracting where it can provide service more efficiently
• preparing for autonomous buses, trains and other vehicles that could change transit operating costs during the next 14 years

The technology issue is especially important. Autonomous passenger vehicles already operate commercially in the Bay Area while autonomous buses and shuttles are being tested elsewhere. A transportation funding plan extending well into the 2040s should take into account the possibility that transit technology and cost structures will change substantially during that period.

And they would have two more years of evidence about autonomous transportation and other technologies that could reduce the cost of providing mobility.

If transit still needs additional dedicated revenue at that point, policymakers could return with a more targeted proposal and evaluate alternatives to a general sales tax including their distributional effects on households at different income levels.

The resulting funding plan should also tie additional revenue to measurable operating and financial objectives rather than establishing a fixed revenue stream for 14 years before those reforms are completed.