(This content was created with the help of AI.) Bay Area riders may soon be asked to decide on a new sales tax that would bolster their signature rail system.
The New York Times reports that Bay Area Rapid Transit, which once shuttled packed trains of commuters to and from San Francisco, is now carrying less than half of its pre-pandemic ridership and staring at a $400 million annual budget gap.
The agency’s board has floated an attention-grabbing backup plan for 2027, or what Berkeleyside frames as a “doomsday scenario,” which would include not as many trains, increased fares (CBS notes they’d rise at least 30%), a 9pm shutdown instead of midnight, layoffs of roughly a quarter of its workers, and closure of 15 stations, mostly at the system’s edges…