The Bay Area’s public transit systems are at risk of being decimated as soon as next year, and voters are divided on whether to help salvage them by approving a sales tax increase, according to a poll released this week.

Only 48% of respondents said they would vote for November’s Regional Transit Measure, or RTM, according to a poll conducted by Embold Research for Joint Venture Silicon Valley and the Bay Area News Group; 34% said they would not, and 18% said they were still undecided.

The measure is designed to bail out transit agencies across the region, including BART, SF’s Muni, Caltrain and Oakland’s AC Transit, which are all facing severe budget shortfalls. If voters pass the measure, it will increase sales tax by 0.5 percentage point in San Mateo, Santa Clara, Contra Costa and Alameda counties and by 1 percentage point in San Francisco, and is expected to generate roughly $980 million annually for the next 14 years.

If the measure fails, Muni could be forced to cut services by 30% and cancel around 20 lines, and BART may need to cut around 70% of services and close 15 stations as early as January, according to forecasts from those agencies. Caltrain would also potentially cut service on weekends and limit weekday service to once an hour. A September research brief from SPUR, a nonprofit, estimated that the cuts would increase traffic and congestion across the Bay Area, including doubling commute times across the Bay Bridge.

“The impacts would be dramatic,” the report said. “Our analysis finds that reduced transit service would push more people into cars, worsening congestion on already-strained highways and increasing travel distances, parking demand, driving costs, and greenhouse gas emissions.”

If voters match the poll’s 48% approval on Election Day, the measure would fail, as it needs more than 50% support to pass.

Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for the Yes on RTM campaign, told SFGATE in an email that the Embold Research poll’s results “should not be treated as an accurate” measure of voter sentiment because the polling question did not reflect what voters will see on the ballot. The polling question left out that the measure will help reduce traffic and pollution, increase transit safety and reliability, and prevent future cuts.

“Our own polling has shown that when voters learn what’s at stake, they move in our direction,” Cretan said.

He pointed to a July poll the group conducted that found 54% of respondents supported the measure, with 46% opposed. It also found that support increased to 58% after voters learned more about the severe consequences of cuts to Bay Area transit.

Tuesday’s poll found that younger people and renters were the groups most in favor of the tax. It found that 69% of adults younger than 35 and 60% of renters were in support. People between the ages of 50 and 64 were found to be the most against the measure, with 46% planning to vote no. And 42% of respondents 65 or older were against the measure.

The San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency said in April that it is facing its most challenging financial crisis in history. It blames rising labor costs and also points to mandatory increases in healthcare and retirement benefits.

The measure has received support from San Francisco state Sen. Scott Wiener and Berkeley state Sen. Jesse Arreguín, who helped bring the measure to the ballot, as well as from transit advocacy groups. The San Francisco Chronicle also endorsed the measure. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.) ConnectedSF, an advocacy group supported by Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, has endorsed a no on both RTM and Measure H, a local SF funding measure for Muni. Measure H would create a new tax on real estate based on flat fees per property parcel.

The main pushback against the measure comes from local anti-tax groups, who argue there should be fixes to the budget before the agencies receive more funding. Former BART Board Director Debora Allen has also urged voters in an editorial piece for the Voice of San Francisco to reject the tax until agencies cut administrative overhead.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has over 538,000 weekday riders, and over 40% of them use Muni to commute to and from work, while the rest use it for personal trips, according to a July report from the agency. BART recently reported that it had over 212,000 weekday riders in August, a 14% increase over last year.

The poll released Tuesday was conducted by Embold Research between Aug. 5 and 18, and it surveyed 1,801 adults across Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The margin of error was 2.6 percentage points.

© 2026 SFGate, San Francisco.
Visit www.sfgate.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.