BART will receive nearly $271 million in relief funding from last year’s federal American Rescue Plan Act, the transit agency said this week.
The $270.8 million grant is the second-largest award for any transit agency in the country, trailing only New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and will help keep BART operating as its ridership remains below one-third of pre-pandemic estimates.
“The pandemic has made clear our operating funding model of relying so heavily on riders is outdated and hampers our efforts to provide equitable service, especially for low-income riders and marginalized communities,” BART General Manager Bob Powers said. “Increased federal funding allows BART to continue to invest in service improvements and safety enhancement as we welcome riders back to transit.”
BART has previously received roughly $1.3 billion in funding from the federal relief packages that have been approved since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
BART budget officials said last month that the agency has used roughly half of the $1.3 billion it has received, spending $25 million per month over the prior six months.
At that pace, BART budget officials said the agency will likely exhaust its federal relief funding some time in 2024 between January and September, depending on how many riders have returned to the system by then.
The funding announced Thursday came from the $2.2 billion American Rescue Plan Additional Assistance grant program, overseen by the U.S. Federal Transit Administration.
Five Bay Area transit agencies, including BART, received a total of $525 million from the grant program.
Now they can afford to keep their crappy service.
“The pandemic has made clear our operating funding model of relying so heavily on riders is outdated and hampers our efforts to provide equitable service, especially for low-income riders and marginalized communities…”
Holy crap. they want to become AMTRAK.
Fat pay, fat union, fat pensions, and taxpayer support when ridership is down.
IOW, no incentive AT ALL to provide quality service at a reasonable price.
If ridership fails to return, no valid argument can be made that BART should even exist. People can take the bus.
Ridership? Heck, who needs ridership when you have federal subsidies! Yippee!
Accountability and results? Those are for suckers!
This sums up the BART Board ethic quite nicely.
Throwing that kind of Federal money at a poorly managed transit system is mind boggling! The chronic stupidity of the BART board insures that this bailout will kick the can of their financial problems down the road. So sad!
Continuing to fund the ineptitude of BART seems to be the new business model, totally ridiculous and unsustainable.
Debora Allen is the only Director with any financial sense and she is outnumbered.
I completely agree!
If BART cant break even what chance would high speed rail to nowhere have?
What a waste of money and its all borrowed at the federal level with 30 year treasuries!
+1
+1
More “lettuces” down the rabbit hole.
BART is terrible! Last week, I saw a fare inspector told a rider to get off the train instead of issuing an citation because the rider didn’t have a ticket. Then those riders who didn’t have tickets wait until the inspector left to board next train.
That’s a lot of money. Curious what it’s going to be used for?
There ya have it.
Just another $271 Million Tax Dollars down the effing drain to BART!
Sure seems like a whole Lotta money for the worst transit system I’ve ever been on. No tips for the “Entertainment” thank you.
Call it what it is:
..a BAILOUT.
.
Management will use it for bonuses and extravagant expense accounts. Can’t trust anyone who wants to be a leader – their motive is always
self-agrandizement!
… $371M to support their outrageous bonuses and again reinforcing that they don’t need to do their job – just give it 50% and watch the state & feds line their pockets… disgusting leadership (or really lack thereof)
Use a bit of that taxpayer rip-off to remove that ugly mural of Grant!
Use the money to secure the system. Nobody get’s in the system without having a ticket. If this is done things will change overnight, no more people sleeping on the trains, using them as a bathroom or attacking other passengers. These improvements will increase ridership.
Good now they can keep paying there janitors 250k a year that work unlimited OT! What a Joke!!!!!
Gredt..Let the pay raises begin!!
I know several of the board members are climate change enthusiasts. Isn’t it detrimental to the climate to run empty trains using petroleum generated electricity? If so, why run empty trains? Isn’t that worse than plastic straws?
Time to privatize BART and eliminate the overhead of management and the unions.