by Eli Walsh, Bay City News Foundation : sfgate – excerpt
Barring a sudden return to pre-pandemic ridership levels, BART’s long-term future will likely hinge on a future ballot measure that would partially subsidize the transit agency, officials said Thursday.
The San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas have the lowest office occupancy rates among the top-10 biggest metros in the country, with San Francisco sitting at just 20.8 percent according to badge swipe data from Kastle Security…
That lack of in-person workers, particularly in San Francisco, has punched a massive hole in BART’s annual revenue and the agency could soon cut service and close stations in the coming years as a result…
“We built our budget around peak worker riders, and when they went away, it sort of broke our back, it broke the budget,” BART Board member Mark Foley said Thursday during a presentation by the agency’s budget and operations officials…
With that sword of Damocles hanging over BART as well as the region’s other major public transit operations, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the region’s transit coordination agency, has considered placing a long-term funding measure on the 2026 or 2028 ballot.
The MTC is also considering placing a $10 billion bond on the November 2024 ballot, which the agency argues will support the development of more than 45,000 affordable housing units across the Bay Area’s nine counties.…(more)
Here is a suggestion. If BART wants to be a transportation system, they should stay out of the housing business. Transportation is risky enough, without trying to compete with the big real estate players. If they want to get into real estate, they could try to figure out what to do with the empty offices in San Francisco that BART was built to serve.
You must be logged in to post a comment.