Riders Rally to Keep Bay Area Transit Loan Running on Time

Public transit riders in the Bay Area are used to the occasional delay, but news that sorely needed state funding could be running late has sent advocates into emergency mode.

Dressed as medical responders, activists carried mock transit vehicles on stretchers across San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza on Monday to implore Gov. Gavin Newsom to deliver a promised $750 million loan. The money, meant to prevent looming service cuts at some of the Bay Area’s largest transit agencies, would bridge the gap until lawmakers can put a regional funding measure on the ballot.

“ This emergency loan would stave off imminent service cuts that would devastate working people, seniors, students, families and businesses,” said Carter Lavin, co-founder of the Transbay Coalition.

The rally came after state Sens. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, and Jesse Arreguín, D-Oakland, said Saturday that the California Department of Finance informed them that it would not finalize the loan before Friday’s legislative deadline.

“This failure by the Department of Finance is unacceptable,” the senators wrote in a press release.

But by Monday, Newsom’s office sought to dispel the notion that the loan would not be delivered.

“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,” the governor’s office said in a statement.

Newsom and state lawmakers agreed to the loan earlier this summer, and it was included in the June budget passed by the Legislature. Since then, Wiener said he and others have been working with the Department of Finance to negotiate terms to implement the loan, and have submitted three different proposals to the department.

“They just kept saying no. But now they’ve said that this [latest] proposal is something that they can work with, which is great,” Wiener said. “ We’re working to take a strong step before we adjourn on Friday. We’ll keep working on it over the fall. This is really important, and we need to get it done.”

Bay Area transit agencies like BART, Muni, AC Transit and Caltrain are staring down immense budget deficits beginning in fiscal year 2026–27, as one-time state and federal funding related to the pandemic is exhausted, and ridership numbers fail to rebound to pre-pandemic levels.

The loan is intended as a stopgap measure to prevent service cuts between now and 2027, when funding from the potential regional tax measure would kick in.

That measure, SB 63, would impose a 0.5% sales tax in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and a 1% sales tax in San Francisco County to fund local transit agencies. If passed by lawmakers, the bill would need to be approved by voters on the November 2026 ballot and would provide funding for 14 years.

Advocates caution that without both the loan and the regional tax measure, Bay Area public transit service would wither.

BART is facing a budget deficit of approximately $375 million in the 2027 fiscal year, the most severe of all the local transit agencies. Officials say that if SB 63 fails to pass, the agency could be forced to end weekend service, cut two lines entirely or end service at 9 p.m.

BART has experienced two major systemwide outages this year, which snarled morning commutes and contributed to worse-than-usual traffic on Bay Area roads. Supporters of public transit warn this could be a regular occurrence if both the loan and the regional sales tax measure fail to materialize.

“ The Bay Area does not run without buses and trains. We saw this last week when, for just a couple hours, [BART] was down,” Assemblymember Matt Haney, D-San Francisco, said. “It brought the Bay nearly to gridlock. People couldn’t get to work, they couldn’t get to school.”

Wiener said the loan is needed by next spring, but he stressed that time is of the essence in getting it secured.

“Whether the loan gets finalized now or in a couple months, it doesn’t matter, but it needs to get finalized soon,” Wiener said. “ The transit agencies need to have confidence that the money is coming.”

He said he is “more optimistic now than I was a few days ago,” but “it’s still not guaranteed.”

KQED’s Farida Jhabvala Romero contributed to this report.