Campaign to Fund Bay Area Transit Smashes Signature Gathering Goal

Campaign officials said they planned to submit the signatures to county elections departments on Tuesday, which will verify whether the signatures are valid.

”This is the culmination of what is the largest grassroots transit advocate organizing effort I’ve ever seen in the region,” said Jeff Cretan, a spokesperson for Connect Bay Area.

Over 1,000 volunteers collected some 77,000 signatures, more than double the goal for the volunteer side of the campaign, according to Cyrus Hall, manager for volunteer signature gatherers.

“ What was really magical about this was the energy and the number of people who volunteered to be a part of this,” Cretan said.

Organized labor and business groups support the campaign and have so far seen no formal opposition.

”The business community has invested significant resources to ensure that this campaign is successful because they know our economy depends on our ability to get people to and from work,” said Emily Loper, the Senior Vice President of Public Policy at the Bay Area Council, which represents some of the largest employers in the region.

The top funders of the campaign include Salesforce, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen and the Service Employees International Union Local 1021. Cretan said the campaign has raised around $5.5 million, about $4 million of which has so far supported paid signature gathering and volunteer efforts.

When people expressed hesitation about signing the petition, Hall said it usually had to do with a concern about how the transit agencies handle their finances.

“There’s a feeling that the budget may not be getting spent optimally,” he said.

Under SB 63, the 2025 state law that authorized the regional sales tax measure, authored by state Sens. Jesse Arreguín and Scott Weiner, AC Transit, BART, Caltrain and the SFMTA must undergo a two-stage fiscal-efficiency review.

”This is a way to actually get to that accountability that people want to have,” Hall said. “ When you explain that, some people literally got excited because they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s amazing.’”

The first phase of the review, a report released last week by the transportation planning and engineering firm Nelson Nygaard, found that the four agencies had saved over $1 billion cumulatively between July 2019 and June 2025 through efficiencies and revenue-enhancing measures.

The report also makes recommendations for further efficiency gains and rider improvements that the agencies should make. SB 63 requires the agencies to adopt some of these recommendations by July 1, 2026.

The second phase of the financial review will happen only if voters approve the Connect Bay Area Act in November.

If it fails to make it to the November ballot or is rejected by a simple majority of voters in the five affected counties, Bay Area transit agencies have warned of service cuts that would render the systems unrecognizable. AC Transit, BART, Muni and Caltrain have floated shortening nighttime service, cutting lines and reducing service frequency.

“ Either we make the decision to keep these services, or we face a very long and costly rebuilding process,” Hall said.

A separate signature-gathering effort focused solely on shoring up the SFMTA’s budget is still underway. The Stronger Muni For All campaign would create a parcel tax in the city to fund Muni service, in addition to the Connect Bay Area campaign. That measure would also be placed on the November ballot if the campaign gathers a sufficient number of signatures.

“We are on track to far exceed the number of signatures required to qualify,” said Max Szabo, spokesperson for the Stronger Muni For All campaign.

The Connect Bay Area campaign expects the signature verification process to take up to a month.