BART officials now warn that without emergency funding, the system could face layoffs, reduced service, and even station closures. Yes, closures. As in the station stops fucking operating. The trains stop coming and the platform becomes a very expensive wind tunnel with a Clipper reader.
According to agency projections presented to the board, the situation is not “tight budget” bad, it is “apocalyptic PowerPoint slide” bad. Officials say BART faces an annual deficit of nearly $400 million, largely because ridership never recovered after the pandemic and remote work hollowed out the commuter base. In a worst-case scenario, Phase 1 in January 2027 would close the 10 stations with the lowest ridership. Phase 2, just six months later, could shut as many as 15 stations and raise fares by 50 percent. Phase 3 would simply stop train service altogether — a bold cost-saving measure known as “not having a train system.” Board member Victor Flores emphasized these are contingency plans, but only if a new, sustainable funding source fails to materialize. (ABC7 News)
This is awkward, because BART is basically the Bay Area’s circulatory system. If it stops, the entire region turns into one giant parking lot stretching from San Francisco to Antioch, with everyone late to everything forever.
Naturally, the solution proposed so far is a sales tax because nothing says “fair funding model” like asking the person buying ramen in Pittsburg to subsidize a rail network that keeps billion-dollar office towers accessible.
Meanwhile, the Bay Area contains enough billionaire wealth to purchase several mid-sized countries or one modest home somewhere in the city or Marin with a view.
The irony is that tech wealth exists partly because BART exists. Without a regional train, San Francisco and Oakland would not have become dense job centers. Workers would have to drive, traffic would become apocalyptic, and companies would discover that “world-class talent pool” is hard to maintain when everyone is stuck on the Bay Bridge contemplating if it’s better to jump off of it..
But contributing to public transit is not nearly as exciting as building a rocket, founding a startup that delivers artisanal oxygen, or investing in a crypto project that collapses before the pitch deck finishes loading.
To be fair, billionaires do love infrastructure as long as it’s private, exclusive, and preferably unnecessary.
What happens if BART actually fails? Traffic would become biblical. Climate goals would evaporate. Downtown recovery efforts would consist mainly of staring at empty buildings and whispering, and Daniel Lurie wouldn’t be such a successful influencer.
Property values near stations currently marketed as “transit-oriented luxury living” would become “luxury living next to a sealed concrete bunker.”
And yet, a relatively small fraction of local billionaire wealth could stabilize the system for decades. Not even a painful fraction. More like the monetary equivalent of checking couch cushions.
Instead, the region is preparing to debate whether service should run less often, cost more, and go fewer places. This is a strategy known in business circles as “making your product worse until customers disappear.”
Perhaps the real reason billionaires have not stepped in is branding. “Saved regional transit from collapse” sounds suspiciously like civic responsibility, which does not trend well on venture capital Twitter.
Still, if they are looking for a legacy project, this is a good one. No need to terraform anything. No need to invent a new species of electric scooters or gentrify the moon. Just keep the trains running.
Because if BART shuts down, the Bay Area will finally achieve its ultimate startup goal: disrupting itself.
