Cutting BART service enough to shore up its projected nine-figure annual deficits in the coming years would result in a “death spiral” for the transit agency, officials said Thursday.
BART planning officials prepared a five-year financial outlook at the behest of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the regional transit coordination agency, to estimate how three levels of post-pandemic ridership recovery would affect service.
A full return to the transit system’s pre-pandemic ridership levels would enable BART to balance its budget each year, but such an outcome is “not feasible” without a new source of annual revenue.
Meanwhile, BART recapturing 85 percent of its pre-pandemic revenue by the 2028 fiscal year would result in annual deficits of $125 million.
Those deficits would climb to $233 million per year if fare revenue remains stagnant through mid-2029, when the 2028 fiscal year ends, according to BART officials.
But the agency’s budget officials argued that BART cannot realistically make cuts to its operating costs to fully close those deficits because rail transit has high fixed costs — in BART’s case, roughly 30 percent of its overall operating costs are fixed.
According to BART financial planning director Michael Eiseman, the cuts necessary to at least meet the annual deficits with stagnant fare revenue would eliminate service on the Richmond-Millbrae and San Jose-Daly City lines, close nine stations, reduce service to weekdays only and limit trains to arriving once every hour.
“Cutting to balance in two of the three scenarios results in minimal service that would not meet the region’s needs or even provide enough capacity to meet demand,” Eiseman said to the BART Board of Directors.
“Critically, this poor service would lead to further loss of ridership fare revenue and further deterioration of our fiscal position,” he said.
BART officials were quick to stress that the agency is not considering cutting service or eliminating train routes at this time.
Transit officials across the region have already floated ideas to save transit agencies that have suffered heavily from reduced ridership during the COVID-19 pandemic, as fewer riders are traveling into and out of downtown San Francisco for work five days per week.
Those proposals have included a ballot measure for a regional tax as well as identifying consistent state or federal funding.
For BART, a new revenue source will likely be needed by mid-2025, when the agency is set to exhaust its federal relief funding.
“Ultimately, BART’s future depends on working to develop a funding model that includes more public investment so that we are less reliant on passenger fares,” Eiseman said.
RELATED STORY: Sound Off – BART & School Bonds On Our Contra Costa County Property Tax Bills
Aww,they are worried that their piece of crap will get flushed?
Maybe they are worried that every inch of track land will turn into the worlds longs chain of homeless.
Making Calif the most pathetic place on earth,if it isn’t already.
It will never get shut down. Taxpayers will just keep subsidizing their bloated budget year after year.
BART. The perfect example of the ineptness and fecklessness of California government.
Whatever much they say they want vote NO! Whenever they say they want it vote NO! They guzzle money like a drunk on speed.
Absolutely not. Did they think shutting down the entire state would have no consequences for themselves? BART’s money problem is that it is poorly run. Constant delays, equipment problems, and scheduled maintenance during commuter hours or on weekends when people might be willing to ride it to an event. It takes two to three times as long to travel somewhere as it does by car and they treat riders like we are dirt. I do not miss it one bit. BART needs to stop trying to build tiny cities in parking lots until it can run the trains reliably. They got power hungry and bought a building in Oakland that they couldn’t afford but I see no mention of this in the article. Could have at least bought one here in Concord so they could be an example of how great a reverse commute is since that is what they are always preaching. These are trains that run in single straight lines back and forth – it shouldn’t be that complicated to improve.
“Ultimately, BART’s future depends on working to develop a funding model that includes more public investment so that we are less reliant on passenger fares,” Eiseman said.”
The key word here is “more..” Like Seymore in Little Shop of Horrors all BART really wants is “more.”
More public investment? That is just us being taxed to death, whether people actually use this circus or not! Crazy. But, hey. Super glad to pay for that one homeless addict passed out on a bench, just so he can ride it back and forth all day.
The whole point of this announcement is to “grease the skids” .. to get everybody used to the idea that they will be wanting more in the future. Then, they”ll keeping hammering that home until we’re so sick of hearing it, we just tune it out … which should be about the same time we vote on it and forget how they are soaking us. It’s like getting a blank check. They’ll just starting a little earlier than usual, that’s all.
Oh, please. FULL trains still would be a loss for BART because they pay their do-nothing employees WAY too much. They cannot spend responsibly and reply on bailouts.
Companies and their employees have found that it’s not necessary to commute to a centralized office 5 days/week . With the pandemic, everyone found out that one can get more work done remotely without a 2-3 hour commute each day.
BART and the HSR are all based on a 1970s mindset and 1800s technology.
Nope – if they want to keep it running, better go with a zero-base budget and look hard at what’s really NEEDED….. not what’s “nice to have.”
They can start by cutting their bloated salaries.
NOPE! If they cannot survive off of tickets / fares and what public funding they already receive – it just shows they are bloated and need to be dismantled LIKE TWITTER!!!
4,400 + employees in the bloated underutilized system sucking excessive amounts of tax dollars from the state. Just take a look at how many people make more than $200k a year at this agency…………. https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2021/san-francisco-bay-area-rapid-transit-district/
I could be wrong, but a quick review of BART financials makes it look like the workers and retirees are getting about $257 million per year of stuff that regular workers like most of us would not get, like Calpers pensions and subsidized medical. This $257 million is way above all fare revenue of $166 million for the year. The rest of the money to actually run the system like for wages and trains is coming from the generosity of your taxes and money showered on them from the federal government. As I’ve pointed out in the past, the board of directors for BART is populated by bicycle activists and such, while the Washington DC metro has directors who have actually worked in the transportation industries professionally.
Cold day, no make that a frozen over . . . in short ballot measure, NO FRIGGIN’ way !
Transit in Tokyo if memory serves was sold decades ago and is privately run at a profit.
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Then again if destination (SF) turns into an open sewer of drugs, crime and homeless . . . .
Add to that working from home, coming recession, layoffs and companies leaving the state.
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Prediction, they will ‘revise’ train schedules then raise prices, thereby reducing ridership. A year or so later they’ll do it again. Each time management will be completely baffled as to cause of the problem. People running the state and SF have allowed drug use and crime to escalate and they refuse to accept any responsibility for both people and companies leaving this state.
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Then again DEMs are never held accountable at the ballot box, . . . . enjoy
Bart has a monopoly on viable rush hour transportation between contra costa and the city. Most of the commute hour riders are affluent and wouldn’t flinch at paying 2x the current fare. Moreover, homeowners in cites with Bart station paid — and enjoy — premium property values relative to similar cities without BART access (eg, pleasant hill vs Martinez). Those of us who own residential property in central contra costa, especially along the 24 and 680 corridors, thus have an incentive to
approve considerable parcel tax hikes to preserve BART’s viability. The rest of central contra costa’s economy depends on affluent commuters’ largess.
Without BART, Walnut Creek becomes about as appealing to commuters and the small businesses they patronize as Novato or Livermore and used house values crater.
A rephrase of your comment is that we should invite higher taxes for BART to increase your house price. Right? Aren’t you the same guy that just about a year ago said that we are silly to worry about inflation because wages will rise with goods prices and it will all equal out. Well, yes, you are! Most of the country seems to disagree with your economic analysis.
What do you think happens to property values — not to mention local businesses that cater to high income commuters and the school districts that educate their children — in central county if BART goes away? Concord would devolve into Stockton 2.0!
With respect to your inflation comment, wages and core inflation are increasing roughly in tandem, and anyone who owns a home with a mortgage is making out like a bandit (ie, borrowing at 3% while rent prices and wages rise at 5%+). “Most of the country” is misguided and myopic.
This has to be satire???
Cut salaries, bonues, etc – they’re not doing their job now… quit giving away fare days , tighten up security and safety, and stop fare evaders…it’s easy – BART, do your job!
Put a stop to the blatant fare evaders and I may show some support to BART.
You people made your bed….,
Well anyone consider voting out or otherwise removing these people now? Probably not. It still needs to get much worse. We need another 10 years of this and maybe the younger generation will want change.
Bart is a smelly hellhole that serves as a democrat money laundering scheme. It should be raised to the ground and the land given to the public.
So… How is that fare evasion problem doing? Solved it yet? No? Then f… off.
And if BART wants public subsidies (city, state, federal – doesn’t matter), they should be in the form of subsidized tickets for Bay Area riders. Meaning that BART can get their grabby hands on these money ONLY if people do ride their system. So that BART has to work to improve it and make it attractive for users, instead of just sitting and moaning about their high “fixed operating costs”.
Did they not get the memo on the coming population reduction? BART was not a good solution but sounded good back in the mid 20th century. Should have stuck with light rail.
The government cares not for the people, their success is measured by the atrocities they commit and the monuments to nothing that are built.
Such as the high-speed rail and Bart.
Horrendous costs to an already bankrupt state and the government just keeps on smiling and passing laws protecting deviants, criminals, and abortions.
Until the people speak with one voice, nothing will change.
So, BART and high-speed rail lines will be lasting monuments to arrogance and narcissism as the pyramids of Egypt were? I like it. Would be a great essay for someone. Three thousand years from now near a cement column archeologists will find a pile of broken glass, and the learned expert will explain to his students it was likely a BART parking lot and the site of another car break-in.
Not only that, it’s a literal ***t hole. A physical location that represents everything that’s wrong with society. A monument to living in the dark matrix of an unnatural and fully cultivated evil existence.
They made millions selling plastic clipper cards,insisting it would save you money.Where did the money go?
Maybe they’ll have to layoff some of those people that went on strike and didn’t give a damn about the riders. What goes around comes around!
But, hey, let’s keep pouring money into building high-speed rail to nowhere! This nation will never be able to pay off CA’s transportation boondoggles.
It is time to privatize BART so it can be ran as a business. Tax payers should not have to continue to subsidize BART for their lack of management. As a business if they are not making a profit they cut cost, have you ever heard BART talk about cutting cost? They will continue to hit the tax payers for more money.
Today, Concord has 2 BART stations, Downtown Concord and North Concord/Martinez, but when the predecessors to BART, the Sacramento Northern Railroad and the Oakland, Antioch, and Eastern Railroad, ran on the same right-of-way Concord had stops at Meinert, Whitman, Gavin, Moore, Walword, Hillside, Kilgore, Concord Depot (CVS parking lot), Dorenda (Port Chicago Highway x North 6th Street), Adeline (Port Chicago Highway x Olivera Road), Ohmer (Port Chicago Highway x Panoramic Extension), and Government Ranch (Clyde). Had we kept running the previous overhead electric trains on the existing track, that freight trains continued to run on to downtown Concord until about 1980 and that military trains ran on until at least 2005, we would’ve had train access to Martinez and West County, Sacramento, and East County for the last 50 years. Bay point, Pittsburg, and Antioch wouldn’t have had to wait multiple decades for BART and diesel eBART service. BART with its unique gauge, used only in a few places in the entire world, has been a waste of time and money, and suffered from poor management and a lack of vision from the beginning. The BART Board needs to stop their constant forays into social mission creep issues and get back to the basics and the reason for their existence, providing parking for riders and moving people from place to place in a safe, clean, and efficient manner funded by rider ticket sales!