With Bay Area Transit Crisis Looming, Lawmakers Push for Urgent State Funding

With Bay Area transit agencies facing a well-advertised but far-from-solved financial catastrophe, state Sens. Scott Wiener (D–San Francisco) and Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley) are leading an effort to secure $2 billion in state funding to help bus and rail operators avoid major service cuts.

The new push for state dollars comes as regional officials have been working for more than a year to craft at least one tax measure for the November 2026 ballot that would raise much-needed money for transit. But there has been no clear consensus on the details, and Wiener said the state needs to step in now to make sure transit operators aren’t forced to make drastic service reductions before voters go to the polls.

Four of the region’s five busiest transit agencies — Muni, BART, AC Transit and Caltrain — are forecasting combined deficits of more than $800 million in the fiscal year starting July 1, 2026. The financial picture doesn’t get rosier from there, with all of the agencies and many of the 20-plus smaller operators facing continuing deficits indefinitely.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, meanwhile, said service cuts for the city’s Muni transit system may be inevitable.

“We’re in a very dangerous place when it comes to public transportation in the Bay Area,” Wiener said in an interview. “If nothing happens, if we just go with the status quo, Muni, BART, AC Transit and Caltrain will all have to make significant, big, big, big service cuts, and that will be devastating for our recovery and for the region.”

Wiener acknowledged that the $2 billion proposal is far from a done deal and that the state’s overall budget picture is likely to shift in coming months because of President Trump’s hostility toward California’s Democratic leadership.

“We do have risks from the federal government given the insane person in the White House,” Wiener said. “But we need to take care of business here in California, and it’s not tenable for the state to sit by while major public transportation systems in the Bay Area unravel.”

Wiener made his comment as Lurie told the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that, given the city’s larger budget emergency, Muni may not be able to avoid service cuts.

The Municipal Transportation Agency is working on a plan to close a $50 million budget shortfall in the coming year and faces a dramatically increased gap — $320 million — in fiscal 2026–27.

Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who represents District 7 on the city’s west side, used the mayor’s formal monthly appearance before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to ask him to address the Muni funding situation.

Echoing warnings that San Francisco’s post-pandemic economic recovery will be in jeopardy if Muni slashes service, Melgar asked Lurie if he would “do everything in your power to ensure that we can weather the next couple of years with no service cuts to Muni while we work together on long term solutions for the system.”

Lurie acknowledged Muni’s importance to the city and quoted City Controller Ted Egan’s recent remark that “if we don’t have a solvent transit agency, we will never have an economic recovery.”

“No one, especially myself, no one wants to see Muni service cuts,” Lurie said. “But the city’s budget crisis is real, and the reality is this is what Muni may need to do to solve the wider budget crisis they’re facing.”

In answer to Melgar’s follow-up question about what ideas he had for solving Muni’s funding shortfall, Lurie pointed to his Monday visit to Sacramento to lobby for state transit aid.

“I’m doing everything in my power to secure those resources,” Lurie said. “But we need a multipronged approach. It’s almost certain that we will need both local and regional revenue measures on the 2026 ballot to support Muni’s budget, and we’re going to need help with stopgap funding this year. So I’ll continue alongside all of you to advocate for our state officials for help from Sacramento.”