CA: EDITORIAL: Bay Area transit needs a cash infusion -- and an overhaul. Cut the politicking and get it done

The Bay Area recently got a glimpse of what a future without robust public transit looks like — and it wasn't pretty.

On Friday morning, BART's entire system shut down for hours in the wake of a glitchy network upgrade, throwing a wrench into workers' commutes, hampering students from getting to school and causing headaches for travelers heading to the airport. By 7 a.m., traffic on the Bay Bridge into San Francisco was at a standstill, and the cost of an Uber ride from downtown Oakland to San Francisco International Airport soared to more than $100.

The shutdown made more obvious than ever the carnage that's in store for the region if BART, Muni and other public transit systems are dramatically scaled back due to funding shortages.

Yet that dystopian reality will be here sooner than we think if Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers don't quickly resolve their stalemate over transit funding.

Late last week, lawmakers — led by state Sens. Scott Wiener, D- San Francisco, and Jesse Arreguín, D- Berkeley — began sounding the alarm that the Newsom administration was suddenly backtracking on a deal to give cash-strapped Bay Area transit agencies a $750 million loan.

That loan — included in the state budget lawmakers approved in June — was meant to help the agencies avoid making draconian service cuts ahead of 2026, when voters in five Bay Area counties likely will be asked to approve a sales-tax increase to fund transit.

But an obscure provision in amendments to the budget stated the loan was contingent on "trailer bill legislation" enacted "during the 2025 legislative session" establishing its duration and terms — including a clear timetable for full repayment of the loan, plus potential interest. That legislation has yet to emerge ahead of a Tuesday deadline to introduce bills before the legislative session ends Friday — and it's looking increasingly unlikely that a deal will be reached before then.

Newsom's office and lawmakers are blaming each other for the holdup.

The governor's office told the editorial board that lawmakers never provided it with a draft bill or a legislative proposal and said they only shared a draft of loan terms on Thursday night.

Meanwhile, Wiener and Arreguín said in a joint statement that Bay Area lawmakers, transit operators and advocates "worked all summer proposing various terms to implement the loan." Newsom's Department of Finance, they argued, waited until there were "just days remaining until the end of the legislative session" to inform lawmakers it wouldn't be finalizing the loan. (A finance department spokesperson referred this editorial board's questions to the governor's office.)

Such he-said, she-said politicking is especially frustrating given the gravity of the situation.

BART's emergency funding is set to dry up in spring 2026, and the agency expects to face ongoing structural deficits of $350 million to $400 million annually beginning in the 2027 fiscal year — which could lead to BART closing at 9 p.m., running trains just once per hour and shuttering nine stations. Meanwhile, Muni is confronting a $322 million annual deficit even after consolidating and shortening some bus lines, and top officials recently ordered each agency division to slash between 5% and 7% of their budgets.

Thankfully, hope for maintaining functional transit in the Bay Area isn't lost.

At a rally Monday in San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie said that his office has been communicating "hourly" with Newsom and that he and the governor plan to meet this week with Bay Area transit agency leaders, businesses and labor unions.

Also Monday, Newsom's office said in a statement, "We are working closely with all stakeholders on the parameters of a funding deal. Our shared goal is to agree on the terms of a deal by this fall."

It's still unclear what exactly that means. What is clear is that Newsom's administration doesn't seem to share the same sense of urgency as Bay Area lawmakers and transit agencies, who say certainty is needed now to craft future budgets. The governor's office told the editorial board that the Newsom administration believes there is "plenty of time" to work out the deal, adding that while BART will likely need money by the middle of next year, other operators "have longer timelines."

His office added there isn't a set path for the deal to take shape, but suggested the money could be included in Newsom's January 2026 budget proposal.

It's disappointing that something as crucial to the Bay Area's lifeblood as public transportation is being put on the back burner.

So long as the governor and the Legislature are going to take their sweet time, however, they should get things right.

Newsom and lawmakers should craft thoughtful but strict loan terms that make clear that Bay Area transit operators can't continue to rely on state funding without significantly improving their quality of service. Yes, the bill authorizing the regional sales-tax ballot measure requires a financial efficiency review, encourages safety and cleanliness reforms and supports increased regional coordination, but there's no reason such commitments can't be included in the loan as well.

The BART meltdown last week was just one in a series of recent mishaps that raise serious questions about the agency's operations. In May, there was another systemwide outage that snarled morning commutes, and later that month, there were two separate fires at the San Leandro Station and between the Balboa Park and Daly City stations that forced closures. In late August, a BART train suddenly stopped inside the Transbay Tube and began filling with smoke — yet no information was immediately shared with passengers, stoking fear and panic.

Far more also needs to be done to explore consolidating the Bay Area's fragmented 27 transit agencies — which could help save money by streamlining fares, schedules, wayfinding and administrative costs, among other things.

About Opinion

The editorial positions of The Chronicle, including election recommendations, represent the consensus of the editorial board, consisting of the publisher, the editorial page editor and staff members of the opinion pages. Its judgments are made independent of the news operation, which covers the news without consideration of our editorial positions.

California cannot let public transportation die. But it also can't afford to wallpaper over obvious systemic failings with cash.

Newsom and lawmakers need to set their differences aside and prioritize finalizing this loan — one that makes clear that public transit is essential for the Bay Area and that riders deserve a higher quality of service than they've been receiving.

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