Tracking Transit
Politico Newsletter | Alex Nieves
State Sen. Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward) is pushing a new bill that would consolidate more than two dozen Bay Area transit agencies — a plan she hopes will reverse declining ridership and revenues that have plagued the region.
The move comes as California continues to reckon with a massive decline in public transportation ridership that has persisted for decades and was supercharged by the Covid-19 pandemic. A study from the University of California Institute of Transportation Studies found that public transportation use across the nine Bay Area counties declined by 27.5 million rides from 2017 to 2018, and ridership on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system hasn’t come close to fully recovering from an 88 percent drop in 2020.
SB 327, which Wahab amended Wednesday, would direct the California State Transportation Agency to develop a plan for consolidating 27 public transit agencies overseen by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which covers a region that stretches from Santa Clara to Sonoma and is home to nearly eight million people. The East Bay lawmaker framed the measure as a way to simplify the transit network and make it more attractive to riders.
“There is no reason for there to be 27 public transit agencies for just the Bay Area,” Wahab said in a statement. “The poor fiscal outlook demands consolidation.”
The proposal is opposed by Bay Area transit agencies, which are already doing a regional study and are part of a statewide task force exploring how to increase ridership and overhaul operations. That task force is required to report findings and policy recommendations to lawmakers by Oct. 31, 2025.
California Transit Association Executive Director Michael Pimentel said in a statement that the bill “would have sweeping and disruptive impacts on the governance structure of transit agencies, state and local funding programs, and transit workers and riders.”
The measure has its first hearing Tuesday and is a two-year bill, meaning it needs to clear the Senate by Jan. 31. — AN