(KRON) — The Bay Area Rapid Transit District announced Monday that it eliminated the $35 million budget deficit that was projected for fiscal year 2026. BART officials credited the installation of new fare gates, running shorter trains and hiring freeze as a few of the methods used to curtail spending and generate more revenue.
The Fiscal Year 2026 Preliminary Budget Memo “will now show a balanced budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1st,” BART said in a news release, “but structural deficits of $350 million to $400 million loom in following years unless long term, stable funding sources can be identified.”
According to the transit agency, which has been in service since 1972, the deficit was closed “through a combination of cost controls and revenue generation.”
Some of the cost controls include a “strategic” hiring freeze, reducing near term retiree healthcare costs, non-labor budget reductions, running shorter trains, locking in renewable energy rates and implementing efficiency recommendations, BART said.
Methods of revenue generation identified by the agency include installation of its new fare gates, maintaining inflation-based fare increases, offering new fare products such as the Clipper BayPass, improving transit coordination, growing ridership through events and negotiating new agreements for telecommunications revenues.
BART stated that reliance on fares to pay for operations, which it has historically relied on, is “no longer sustainable.”
The agency explained that “rail has high fixed costs to maintain infrastructure and low marginal costs driven by changes in service.” Continuing, “For example, when BART closed at 9pm and reduced frequencies during the height of the pandemic, it represented a 40% cut in service, but it only reduced operating costs by 12%.”
BART posed the hypothetical situation of a 90% cut in service — meaning a 9 p.m. closure, one-hour train frequencies and running only three of the five BART lines — and said that those measures would only close less than half of the $376 million deficit in fiscal year 2027.
BART’s Fiscal Year 2026 Preliminary Budget Memo is expected to be released at the end of March. The agency’s board of directors is set to vote in June to adopt a two-year budget for fiscal years 2026 and 2027.
(KRON) — The Bay Area Rapid Transit District announced Monday that it eliminated the $35 million budget deficit that was projected for fiscal year 2026. BART officials credited the installation of new fare gates, running shorter trains and hiring freeze as a few of the methods used to curtail spending and generate more revenue. The […]
Leave a Reply