09 May BART Meltdown Friday Spurs Calls for More Vigorous Public Transit Funding

(Image courtesy of BART via Bay City News)

By Kiley Russell
Bay City News

A pair of Bay Area state lawmakers along with various transit advocates are calling for more investment in public transportation systems after BART’s regionwide service meltdown Friday morning.

In a joint statement, state Sens. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, and Jesse Arreguín, D-Berkeley, said BART’s roughly four-hour systemwide service outage was “a window into what life in the Bay Area will be like without robust BART service.”

The system carries about 170,000 passengers on a typical weekday, according to the pair, and Friday’s service disruption during the height of the morning commute led to major traffic impacts on the region’s freeways.

It also forced other transit agencies, including Alameda-Contra Costa Transit and the San Francisco Bay Ferry system, to add more buses and bigger boats to their service schedules to accommodate desperate commuters.

Additionally, ride-hailing service companies implemented surge pricing — higher prices during peak periods of demand — while the fiasco unfolded and people scrambled to find alternative ways to work.

The BART system collapse was caused by “network devices having intermittent connectivity,” which meant that workers in the agency’s Operations Control Center couldn’t track train positions, a necessity for safe operations, according to BART officials.

Wiener and Arreguín used Friday morning’s chaos to advocate for their efforts to earmark $2 billion in the state budget for transit statewide.

“This outage showed once again how essential BART — and transit generally — is to life in the Bay Area,” according to the state senators’ joint statement. “Everyone suffers when we lose robust public transportation service: Our roads rapidly become choked with traffic, workers are unable to make it to work, children miss their rides to school, and businesses lose customers.”

A group of transit activists echoed the lawmakers’ plea Friday, saying that if BART’s budget isn’t shored up, the agency could cut its number of daily train trips from 4,200 to just 500.

Currently, BART is projecting ongoing structural deficits of between $350 million and $400 million per year beginning in fiscal year 2027.

“If left unfunded, BART will be forced to reduce service to one train per hour and cut entire lines,” said Dylan Fabris of the advocacy group San Francisco Transit Riders. “Muni will see 30 percent service cuts, and other agencies like AC Transit, Caltrain, and Golden Gate Transit will also need to cut service.”

On Friday afternoon, BART general manager Robert Powers issued an apology for the disruption.

“Reliability is our brand, and we understand the impact when the system isn’t working. This came down to the fact our control room did not have visibility of our system, and we will not run service if we can’t guarantee safety,” Powers said. “We will learn from this incident and are committed to continuous improvement.”

Copyright © 2025 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.