San Mateo County’s Transit District (SamTrans) Board and Santa Clara County’s VTA board each voted this week to support legislation that would put a half-cent sales tax increase on the 2026 ballot to bailout BART, San Francisco’s Muni, Caltrain, VTA and other transit agencies.
In San Mateo County, some officials — such as county supervisor and former Congresswoman Jackie Speier — favored a business tax as a more appropriate funding source for transit. She said at the agency’s Wednesday meeting that a sales tax is regressive, placing a greater burden on the poor than the wealthy. She said burden should fall on wealthy corporations rather than individuals.
In Santa Clara County, if voters approve a 5/8ths sales tax increase this fall, it would boost the total sales tax 9.75%. The additional half-cent mass transit bailout would raise the rate to 10.25% if approved in 2026.
The transit boards in the two counties voted to support Senate Bill 63, introduced by Scott Wiener of San Francisco and Jesse Arreguin of Berkeley. SB63 would put a ballot measure on the ballot in November 2026 in San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties. Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, through their transit agencies, voted to join the bill.
Normally a tax increase would require a two-thirds vote for approval. But a state Supreme Court decision lowered the threshold to a simple majority if citizens were to petition to put the measure on the ballot rather than a government. Polling results from January showed a half-cent sales tax was between 51% and 57% support. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which is working to get the bailout passed, is looking for a citizen to carry the measure forward so the threshold is lowered to a simple majority.
Mass transit advocates are grappling with a loss in fare revenue that started with the pandemic lockdown in March 2020. Ridership at most agencies hasn’t returned to 2019 levels. One problem transit agencies have is that employers have been leaving San Francisco and the Bay Area, reducing the demand for mass transit.
Transit agencies faced a $700 million annual deficit, MTC’s Executive Director Andrew Fremier said in January.
While fare box revenues have plunged, expenses have grown at many transit agencies. For example, VTA bus drivers got a 14.5% raise over four years following a 17-day strike in March. Before the new contract, a majority of members in the union were making over $100,000 a year. VTA’s budget shows the transit agency will go into a deficit of $800,000 for fiscal year 2026 and $14.1 million for FY27. VTA said in a statement in June that it plans to offset its projected losses through cost-cutting measures that do not reduce transit service, potentially supplementing with reserve funds.
Just vote no. Santa Clara County is also proposing another 5/8 percent sales tax increase that would set a new sales tax record. Pretty soon the tax is going to be more than the cost of the item or service.
When we approved Caltrain’s measure RR in 2019, wasn’t that enough to subsidize this railroad? And why does SamTrans need money? Every SamTrans bus I see is empty…maybe one or two riders. Why not replace SamTrans with Uber? We’d save millions every month…and this bailout wouldn’t be needed.
Cal train and BART are racking up huge deficits because so many employees are working remotely and aren’t paying fares since the Covid pandemic. The funding gap is so huge that one of the only ways to preserve these critical transportation resources is through taxation available to local communities. We need to preserve these resources until ridership recovers. Employees will need an affordable (non auto) means to get to work in employer locations from miles away.
The real reason Weiner, Speier, and the rest want these systems running around empty is to help their benefactors in the real-estate development complex. Any real-estate development within 1/4 mile of “mass transit”, gets special statutory privilege’s that make real-estate development much more profitable. How about a real-estate development tax to pay for these systems that almost nobody uses?
I’d like to see the incredibly profitable SFO Airport give back some of its ill-gotten gains to support local transit — namely, the $2.5 million rent BART and SamTrans are on the hook to pay for 50 years (ostensibly to compensate SFO for lost parking revenue). SFO held the BART extension for ransom at the last minute until this ransom was paid.