BART Threatens Layoffs, Service Cuts if Voters Reject Tax Increase

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) has been struggling. Commuters in quarantine and working from home stopped using the fare-dependent transportation system. In early February, BART threatened to close fifteen stations because ridership remains over 50% lower than profitable pre-pandemic levels (2019). It seems BART officials would punish the Bay Area for an irreversible societal shift in what essentially amounts to extortion. Is the seemingly victimized agency plagued with operative issues justified in withholding its duty to the public? 

BART has also experienced tangible and consequential infrastructural problems: electrical fires, mechanical failures, littered trackways and more. On more than one recent occasion BART shut down the Transbay Tube, sometimes for hours until service gets restored. As of tonight, the last of these disruptions occurred on February 22, when a nearby fire fried communication cables. A data center failure caused loss of visibility from Operations Control at Lake Merritt Station four days later. 

In October 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom authorized a measure for the 2026 ballot proposing a modest sales tax increase. A half-cent sales tax increase would apply to Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. San Francisco would get a 1% hike, but if that sounds high, remember that’s 1% the present 8.63% rate. What a $100 item sells for in the city—$108.63 after tax—would sell for a whopping $108.71. Meanwhile, BART’s Board of Directors threatened to gut service if voters reject the tax increase, and their agenda is punishing.

If BART officials don’t get their way, the extortion will begin with reduced train frequency to once every half hour. Next they threaten to cease operations at 9 PM, a kiss of death to a system that already closes too early. They would cancel stops on the Dublin/Pleasanton and Richmond lines, stranding significant portions of the East Bay. Fares and parking fees would jump 30%, charging already embittered riders far more for much less. But perhaps the cruelest cut of all: 600 layoffs among maintenance and custodial crews, people whose work makes a difference. 

The San Francisco Standard says that BART could close as many as 15 of its 50 stations by July if its Board of Directors vote in favor. 

These ten stations could close as early as January 2027 if funds are not allocated:

Although BART has no immediate plans to shutter stations and cut staff and service, the chance looms large. Chief Financial Officer Joe Beach has pledged $10 million of the agency’s reserves to delay station closures. Other board members worry that service cuts would merely amount to a Band-Aid solution. Even with station closures and staff and service cuts, the agency will need further funding to survive. Director Victor Flores also warned such cost-cutting measures would frustrate and drive away passengers, presenting another fiscal challenge. Board of Directors VP Edward Wright agreed that cuts would not solve this crisis, remarking that BART must update its fare-dependent model to survive.

What does the future hold for our only regional connector? What happens if, or when, we lose it? Data from 2024 says that on a typical weekday, approximately 164,000 passengers commute on BART. If they drove instead, they’d consume nearly 32,000 gallons of fuel, putting 300 more tons of CO2 into the air. BrokeAss Stuart editor and meme king Abe Woodliff sees "apocalyptic" traffic jams in the event of BART station closures and service reductions. In his vision, all that pollution squanders over sixty years of ecological rehabilitation efforts. The Bay Area becomes “one giant parking lot stretching from San Francisco to Antioch, with everyone late to everything forever.”

BART is waging consequences if we don’t fund them with your votes and tax dollars. If that isn’t extortion, what is?