First Look at 2026 Tax Proposal to Keep Bay Area Transit Running

Bay Area lawmakers are unveiling the first draft of a November 2026 regional sales tax measure designed to help the largest Bay Area transit agencies deal with a long-term financial crisis that could lead to deep, long-lasting service cuts.

The measure is outlined in a bill, SB 63, by state Sens. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Jesse Arreguín (D-Berkeley), who released the first details of the proposal Monday.

Their bill would authorize a sales tax measure in San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties. The legislation includes a provision that allows San Mateo and Santa Clara county officials to decide whether they want to participate by July 31.

The sales tax, to be set at a half-cent in Alameda and Contra Costa counties and up to 1 cent in San Francisco, would help pay for day-to-day operations at BART, Muni, AC Transit and other agencies as well as for regional initiatives to make transit easier to use.

“We must do everything we can to strengthen our public transportation systems to prevent major service cuts, which would be devastating not only for transit riders, but for everyone in the Bay Area,” Wiener said in a statement.

Rebecca Long, director of legislation and public affairs for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, said the bill is promising.

“This appears to move in the right direction to avert major transit service cuts, on BART in particular, and funding critical customer improvements that we know Bay Area residents want to see to make transit a more attractive option,” Long said in an interview.

The measure announced Monday is a dramatically scaled-back version of an ambitious plan floated last year that would have covered all nine Bay Area counties and aimed to raise $1.5 billion for a wide variety of transit, street and highway improvements.

But that effort, embodied in Sen. Wiener’s SB 1031, collapsed amid a series of bitter disagreements, including what kind of tax should be imposed and how revenue would be distributed.

If last year is any indication, SB 63, too, will be the subject of intensive negotiations before the details of the measure are finalized and can be placed on the November 2026 ballot. Even if it wins voter approval, the proposed tax measure will not be enough by itself to erase the deficits the Bay Area’s biggest transit agencies are facing.

It’s unclear how much money the proposed three-county sales tax would raise, but the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has estimated that a four-county tax including San Mateo County would raise $560 million a year.

BART is projecting deficits of more than $350 million a year starting in July 2026. Muni forecasts a yearly shortfall of more than $300 million. Deficits at AC Transit and Caltrain are smaller but erasing them would still require significant service cuts.

To maintain transit operations at a level close to current levels, officials in San Francisco and at BART have discussed supplemental revenue measures that would also likely appear on ballots in 2026.

Bay Area transit agencies have received billions of dollars in federal and state emergency funding to make up for fare revenue lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. But with that funding running out, transit operators, elected officials and transportation advocates across the region have been looking to a regional tax to avoid deep cuts in bus, train and ferry services.

A regional measure has also been seen as a vehicle to pay for making transit more frequent, reliable and affordable across the region. It would do that not only by helping agencies purchase more vehicles, but by integrating fares and schedules among agencies.