Bay Area voters back Measure RTM, sparing BART from 2027 station closures

Bay Area voters back Measure RTM, sparing BART from 2027 station closures Bay Area voters are backing Measure RTM, a 14-year transit sales tax, with 61.5% in preliminary results, a vote BART says prevents the station closures in its fallback budget plan. Unofficial returns posted by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) at 8:50 a.m. on November 4 show 714,460 votes for the measure and 446,326 against across Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Approval requires a simple majority of all votes cast on the measure across the five counties, and the measure leads in every one of them, from 54.2% in Santa Clara to 77.6% in San Francisco. The count does not yet include many vote-by-mail ballots, conditional voter registrations or provisional ballots. The regional district behind the measure does not count or certify votes, and where its tally differs from a county registrar’s, the county figures control. Sales tax rates and recipients The measure reached the ballot as the Connect Bay Area Transit Initiative, a citizen-signature effort under Senate Bill 63 of 2025. It creates a half-cent sales tax in four counties and a one-cent tax in San Francisco for 14 years. The revenue goes to transit operators including BART, Muni, Caltrain and AC Transit. BART’s fallback plan and remaining gap On February 26, the BART board initially approved an Alternative Service Plan to close a $376 million deficit for the next fiscal year if no new money arrived. Starting in January 2027, it would have cut service to three lines, with only limited peak-direction Red and Green line trains at rush hour, 30-minute frequencies and a 9 p.m. closing. That amounted to a 63% reduction in train hours, with fares up 30%. A second phase, set for July 2027 if it could be carried out safely, called for a cumulative 70% cut in service hours, the closure of up to 15 stations and/or up to 25% of track miles, and fares up as much as 50% in total. The plan also included 1,200 layoffs. In a statement after the vote, BART said the measure keeps stations open and averts deep service cuts but does not solve its finances: “Taxpayers and riders are doing their part, and we must continue to do ours. Sales tax revenue will provide BART an estimated $310M annually beginning in FY28, leaving an annual structural shortfall for BART to close.” In February, BART put its structural deficit at $350 million to $400 million, with ridership still 50% below pre-pandemic levels and a budget heavily dependent on fares. It now reports ridership up 14% year over year. A state loan is intended mainly as a cash-flow bridge until the sales tax money starts coming in. Caltrain and AC Transit shares Caltrain is due to receive about 7% of the revenue, an amount projected to fully fund its operating deficit over the measure’s 14 years. In April, its board reviewed a no-outside-funding scenario that closed more than a third of stations, ended all weekend service, reduced trains to one an hour and stopped service by 9 p.m. Caltrain ridership rose 47% in 2025. AC Transit expects roughly $55 million a year over the 14 years. Without the measure, the East Bay bus operator said it faced cutting service by as much as 16%, pulling up to 100 buses from daily operation and possibly laying off up to 300 employees.