BART could close 15 stations and end service by 9 p.m.
Bay Area Rapid Transit, locally known as BART, has linked five Bay Area counties for more than five decades through 131 miles of track and 50 stations. Its underwater transbay tube sits 135 feet beneath the San Francisco Bay, designed with flexible joints to absorb seismic activity from the region’s two active faultlines; the tunnel emerged from the 1989 earthquake unscathed. BART was the first US transit system made fully accessible for people with disabilities.
If voters reject both measures, the Guardian reported, BART could be forced as soon as early 2027 to close as many as 15 stations, reduce service frequency by 63%, raise fares and parking fees by 30%, and end all service at 9 p.m. The newspaper described the projected scenario as a potential “death spiral,” in which less frequent, more expensive service drives away commuters, reducing fare revenue and producing a downward cascade of financial austerity with ripple effects for all Bay Area residents, not just those who use public transit regularly. In a doomsday scenario, the Guardian wrote, the whole system could be deemed unsafe and shut down.
Unlike transit systems in other world-class cities that receive significant government funding, BART has historically generated 60% to 70% of its operating revenue through passenger fares, leaving the agency uniquely self-sustaining — and uniquely exposed to pandemic-era ridership losses. At its 2016 peak, BART carried 435,000 riders each weekday and brought in nearly half a billion dollars annually. The agency has struggled to recover as the Bay Area has led the nation in shifting to remote and hybrid work.
To lure back riders, BART has upgraded safety, cleaning, restrooms, fare gates and payment systems, shortened trains, retired legacy cars, re-aligned schedules for off-peak demand and synced operations regionally. Despite multiday delays this month from old equipment overheating and a rocky Clipper 2.0 card rollout, BART reported 95% on-time customer performance and record-high rider satisfaction.
The regional measure was spearheaded by the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, known as SPUR, which issued a new report describing the consequences of ballot failure. According to the report, traffic delays on the Bay Bridge and other chokepoints would more than double during peak hours. “Traffic is going to get a lot worse and I think this is a best-case scenario,” said Laura Tolkoff, SPUR’s transportation policy director and author of the report.
Commuters displaced from transit to cars would face bottlenecks and have to drive an additional 10 miles each way to reach an open station, SPUR estimated. They would also incur an estimated $3,280 per year in additional transportation expenses — a sum the proposed sales tax would cost roughly 3% of, SPUR estimated.
On a Wednesday morning, the Guardian rode the yellow line from Antioch, where the train bustles with commuters relaxing as they glide past the gridlock. Out the window, the highway is already choked with cars crawling along into Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco and other hubs for work and study in a region home to more than 7.5 million people. Riders told the newspaper they had made decisions about buying homes or working certain jobs because of the area’s relative affordability and proximity to BART — and now that segment of rail could be among those cut.
Regina, 34, who studies risk for JPMorgan Chase, said she and her husband bought a house in Antioch three months ago because her job required daily commuting into the office and she did not want to drive. “The biggest reason why I moved out here is knowing that there was a Bart line,” Regina said.
Carissa Spencer, an executive assistant for Airbnb in her 40s, takes BART almost daily from Antioch to downtown San Francisco. “Sometimes I sit here on Bart and just look out the window and laugh – ha, ha, ha! – at the people in traffic,” Spencer said. “It just is shocking to me that that’s how we operate in the United States of America in 2026, where people have to have a car to be able to survive.”
The economic stakes extend beyond individual commuters, according to Jeffrey Tumlin, former head of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, now on a sabbatical. “All of the large Bay Area technology companies and the business associations that represent them understand that there’s no Bay Area tech economy without Bart,” Tumlin said.
The transit system is largely what keeps the region’s road network moving, the Guardian reported, and people who cannot switch to driving, including low-income workers and people with disabilities, will be hit hardest. Alvina, 70, takes BART every day from Oakland to her job at McDonald’s in Lafayette. If BART went down, she said in Spanish, she would use Uber, which would significantly cut into her hourly wage. David, 42, a surgeon who takes the red line to work at dawn, supports the ballot measure but said large companies that rely on BART commuters should contribute more. “I think that they should pay some portion of the subsidy for our transportation to work for them,” David said.
In San Francisco’s Sunset district, nearly three miles from the nearest BART station, canvassers have been going door to door with polling data in search of persuadable voters. Anki, a 33-year-old software engineer, has spent months approaching strangers at bus stops, farmers’ markets and protests to argue for the measures. He gathered a record 2,501 signatures to put the regional measure on the November ballot.
Polling on the measures looks promising but remains within the margin of error, the Guardian reported. Anki said he plans to keep canvassing until November in early El Niño rains if he has to. “We refuse to wake up in January to creeping highways and choking bridges; to abandoned bus routes and boarded up Bart stations,” Anki said at a rally launching the final campaign push. “We will not stand clear of the doors.”