Merging BART and Caltrain is an opportunity to create the world-class regional transit system the Bay Area deserves
A merger between BART and Caltrain should result in new, better agency, with a single board that has representation from all five counties the rail systems connect.
The Bay Area urgently needs a lead Bay Area transportation authority - a network manager entity - to integrate dozens of transit operators in the region to create a seamless regional system, with integrated fares, schedules, branding, excellent connections, and increased service levels.
Independent of the value of setting up a network manager, Seamless Bay Area also believes that in certain cases, merging multiple transit agencies into a single entity with one governing board can benefit riders and promote better decision-making.
Specifically, we believe that a thoughtful merger of BART and Caltrain can be in the best interest of Bay Area transit riders and our region as a whole. A new combined agency -- which should be an altogether new agency with a new board and management structure, as opposed to a takeover of one agency by another -- would be uniquely positioned to lead the Bay Area toward a world-class transit system, becoming a center of excellence in transit innovation, customer experience, and project delivery and construction.
We have identified six key reasons to support a thoughtful and deliberate merger of BART and Caltrain, which we expand upon in detail in this post.
A merger enables us to more quickly and effectively create a seamless rail system around the Bay with integrated service, fares, and customer experience.
A merger can provide improved accountability to riders and the public for regional transit service and connections.
A merger supports better and faster project definition and design.
A merger supports faster and cheaper project construction.
A merger supports improved agency capacity, and attraction of better leadership and professional expertise.
Past mergers in the Bay Area and elsewhere have led to good customer outcomes.
Working out the specific details of a merger will require hard work, detailed analysis, and time to negotiate. The outcome of analysis and negotiations should be clear and fair financial terms, reformed governing structures, clear expectations of service levels, and adoption of practices that can lead to a customer-oriented agency culture. While a merger can lead to cost savings over time, up front funding may need to be identified to initiate a merger, including to transfer assets from one entity to another. Yet, if we are guided by doing what’s right for riders, we won’t shy away from these difficult questions; we will invest in setting up an effective regional transit agency that will serve us for the next generation.
After discussing the reasons we support a merger, we’ll respond to some common arguments against a merger. Finally, we’ll identify what next steps are needed to advance a merger, including the importance of state leaders stepping up and signaling they support serious discussions between BART and Caltrain.
It’s important to note that there’s nothing inevitably good or bad about a merger. A merger can be done thoughtfully and deliberately, or it can be done recklessly. If done thoughtfully, it opens up significant opportunities for improved service and decision-making that result from a merged agency’s increased scale, capacity and breadth - including some opportunities that are not achievable without a merger. But a reckless merger that isn’t guided by clear goals involving deliberate internal restructuring is of no value.
A merger should therefore not itself be seen as the end goal in and of itself, but as a unique opportunity to get more out of our transit institutions. For BART and Caltrain, there’s a limited time window of opportunity that has resulted from several ongoing regional processes - the Caltrain governance reform process, the Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force, and an upcoming Regional Rail Study from MTC. The question for the Bay Area is before us: will we seize this opportunity to pursue a merger that could bring tremendous benefits for riders? Or, will we forgo the opportunity due to fear of the unknown - or lack of bold political leadership? Now, more than ever, riders must speak up and urge leaders to do what’s right: set up the effective regional transit institution we deserve that can quickly bring together our two major rail systems into a seamless network that rings the Bay.
Six reasons to support a merger of BART and Caltrain
1. A merger enables us to more quickly and effectively create a seamless rail system around the Bay with integrated service, fares, and customer experience.
Anyone who looks at a map can see why Caltrain and BART should logically be run as one system - together they make a connected loop, connecting most of the Bay Area’s major population centers. Operating them as one seamless system with hassle-free connections and a fare system that doesn’t penalize transfers would expand millions of Bay Area residents’ access to jobs, housing, and opportunity. It could significantly increase transit use. Think of how many more people would connect between BART and Caltrain at Millbrae - and in the future in Downtown San Jose and San Francisco - if connections were as easy as going between two BART lines at MacArthur, with timed transfers, transfer-friendly station designs, aligned schedule frequencies, and the same fare system?
While it sounds easy, the mechanics and politics of having two rail systems run as one is actually quite complicated and requires extreme clarity of purpose, close collaboration, and alignment in priorities over many years. Unlike buses, train schedules are much more difficult to adjust and depend on a variety of physical factors including train storage, track configuration, and infrastructure. Some of the capital upgrades needed for full integration will take years to complete. For BART and Caltrain to be on a course for full service integration years from now, there needs to be complete alignment in goals and decision-making as early as possible between the two systems, and clear governance that has the unwavering goal of a fully integrated system. Until the two agencies are brought together under a common board, this will be very difficult to achieve.
2. A merger can provide improved accountability to riders and the public for regional transit service and connections.
Merging BART and Caltrain into a single agency would result in the Bay Area finally having one lead agency responsible for planning and operating an integrated regional rail system across a majority of the region’s population centers. For the average member of the public, this means clearer, simpler accountability - one agency in charge of all regional rail transit and connectivity.
Currently, BART and Caltrain each have governing boards that only oversee a limited part of the region - three counties each - and have a narrow focus on just one type of rail. BART is a special district that includes San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa Counties, with a directly elected board representing custom-drawn districts. Even though BART has operated in San Mateo County since 2000 and Santa Clara County since 2018, BART has no directors from these counties, creating an accountability problem to riders in those counties.
BART’s lack of accountability to Santa Clara County contributed to the decision to develop a complicated arrangement where VTA, an agency with no prior experience planning or delivering heavy rail infrastructure, is leading the BART extension to San Jose. Inter-agency disagreements between VTA and BART have led to numerous delays - the result has been increased costs, questionable design decisions, and riders in all counties suffering the consequences and still waiting for service.
Caltrain has its own accountability challenges that need fixing - it was formed as a Joint Powers Agreement between San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara Counties, with a board consisting directors from each of the three counties, and sharing staff and a general manager with SamTrans. San Francisco and Santa Clara board members claim the arrangement with SamTrans provides insufficient accountability, which they seek to address in the current Caltrain governance reform process, scheduled to adopt recommendations by December 2021.
The board has separately committed to transformative equity and connectivity policies as strategies to meet long term goals for increased ridership, but which cannot be accomplished by Caltrain acting alone.
A new combined board of directors overseeing both BART and Caltrain, with equitable representation from all five counties and a single general manager, could provide improved accountability to riders in all five counties for a connected and customer-focused system. A merged agency should combine the best aspects of legacy senior management of Caltrain and BART, and bring in new leadership to address existing agency weaknesses. Rapid transit riders in all five counties could have fair representation. Policies, from transit-oriented development to station access to fares, would be universally applied in all five counties. With undisputed responsibility over the Bay Area’s core regional rail system, a BART-Caltrain merged agency would provide desperately needed accountability for seamless rail integration.
3. A merger would result in better and faster project definition and design
Our region’s most expensive and important planned transit projects can be planned, designed, defined, and approved for construction years faster than presently, helping save billions of dollars, with a thoughtful merger of BART and Caltrain.
For example, three of our region’s highest priority planned transportation projects - The Downtown Extension of Caltrain to San Francisco (DTX), BART extension to Downtown San Jose, and the Second Transbay Crossing (now part of Link21) together add up to over $43 billion. All three projects continue to this day to be plagued by a lack of regional leadership and poor design decisions, leading to delays and constantly escalating costs. DTX and BART to San Jose have been identified as high priorities since 1982 and are still in the “Planning & Design” stage, with several more years likely until construction even begins. Planning for a second transbay rail crossing has been punted back and forth between MTC and BART since at least 2000. Link21, as it is now called, is estimated to need at least another seven years of planning, with project completion estimated no sooner than 2040. Other long-discussed rail projects like Dumbarton Rail have limped along for decades aimlessly because they fall between agency boundaries, and no one is responsible for the connectivity of the rail network as a whole.
The extremely protracted timelines for the planning of these projects is not an inevitability, and is closely tied to fragmentation of decision-making - no single transit agency board or jurisdiction can move these projects forward. SPUR’s report More for Less provides numerous examples of how a more expensive option for a project is often advanced because an agency doesn’t have a regional purview: “Fragmented institutions, timelines and funding sources often stand in the way of planning collaboratively or selecting investments rationally. Adjacent or connecting projects are often planned independently instead of as one project — on different timelines, with different budgets and without sufficient consideration for phasing of decisions and construction. These differences tend to be ‘solved’ by increasing the scope and size of the infrastructure or by sacrificing operational efficiency.”
The fact is, we can’t afford not to merge BART and Caltrain if doing so could result in cost savings or better decision-making on these projects. For evidence of how funding can be wasted when the goals of agencies are not aligned, look no further than the proposed Santa Clara BART station. The station, which we estimate will cost at least $100 million, will unnecessarily duplicate existing Caltrain service rather than bring BART to another part of Santa Clara county without rail service. Another example is BART’s costly overbuilding of the Millbrae station with extra tracks to enable a potential southward extension of BART that would duplicate Caltrain service. San Jose Diridon station is already being planned to be extra costly - and inconvenient for passengers - because the BART station is being designed to be completely separate from the Caltrain and High Speed Rail station. The decision of whether to build one tunnel or two across the Bay will have major cost implications for Link21. We must make sure that a potential decision to build two tunnels instead of one is driven by a real need, rather than our inability to figure out how to make BART and Caltrain run as one seamless system.
With the planned upgrades and extensions of Caltrain and BART to create more connection points in Downtown San Francisco, Downtown San Jose, Redwood City, Union City, and other locations, now is the time to put in place decision-making bodies that can can ensure the billions we hope to spend on capital improvements are focused on the right projects that will bring the most access to most people. Those projects must be planned and designed efficiently in a few years rather than a few decades; and, once built, the network must be operated seamlessly as a network for riders instead of as isolated lines.
4. A merger supports faster and cheaper project construction
BART and Caltrain both suffer from high project construction costs. The most recent example is Caltrain’s recent announcement that its electrification will be delayed by an additional two years until 2024, with costs escalating by another $300m.
We support SPUR’s recommendation to set up a specialized Bay Area project delivery authority, Infrastructure Bay Area, that can oversee major regional transportation projects. This could be housed within a Bay Area network manager, or in a different entity. Unfortunately, despite the urgency of creating such an entity, it is still years away from reality, with MTC just kicking off a study that will look at regional project delivery this year.
A regional project delivery authority is the right ultimate goal, and merging BART and Caltrain project delivery functions can be a step toward that goal. With a merger, BART and Caltrain would immediately benefit from a pooled, larger team of in-house professionals, such as engineers, designers, project managers, and construction managers. Like many US agencies, BART and Caltrain are heavily reliant on outside design consultants for a significant share of design and construction related work, in contrast with the many cost-effective European and Asian agencies who have significant in-house design and project delivery teams. While a merged agency would still likely be very reliant on consultants, it would have a greater amount of capital project work to justify hiring more-in house specialists, which could help improve oversight and quality, reduce costs, and speed up project design.
5. A merger supports improved agency capacity, and attraction of better leadership and professional expertise
Attracting bright, innovative and experienced employees is important for any transit agency’s success. Unfortunately, like many Bay Area public sector bureaucracies, Bay Area transit agency hiring practices can be highly insular, leading to little movement between experts within the transit industry and other sectors. While many extremely bright people work for Bay Area transit agencies, hiring practices can be slow and outdated; promotional practices can be highly hierarchical, rewarding agency tenure over innovation. While experience in transit is critical for many agency positions, Bay Area transit agencies must become more open to hiring experts from non-transit backgrounds that help bring more innovative practices to the transit industry - especially in the area of customer service and user experience.
In addition to revising hiring practices, attracting top talent and innovative leaders -- competing against the major transit agencies like Washington Metro, or Transport for London, or Metrolinx, and companies like Google, Apple, Uber and Lyft that are positioning to capture a share of the transit market -- requires offering candidates a prestigious position with a sufficiently large scale opportunity to make a major impact. The leaders who can bring transformation are in high demand, and often have many offers. Why would a top national or global candidate choose to be a senior leader at BART or Caltrain, with a team of one or two, as opposed to the same opportunity at LA Metro, where they’d have a staff of dozens, and the ability to impact a multi-modal transit system serving 10 million people? Caltrain for years has reported difficulty in recruiting for important positions - agency officials report that candidates may feel that working for the San Mateo County Transit District doesn’t come with the prestige, excitement, or job security of working at a much larger agency with more capital projects and opportunities. The Transbay Joint Powers Authority, a special purpose entity that exists only to build the Downtown Extension of Caltrain, is still struggling to hire an Executive Director after almost a year.
While having a network manager responsible for the full Bay Area transit system would be the most competitive in attracting top global talent for senior transit positions, merging BART and Caltrain offers clear advantages over the status quo for both agencies to attract talent to leadership positions. By both merging staffs and simultaneously revising hiring practices to help bring the best and the brightest into transit from other sectors, a combined agency can become a new center of innovation and leadership in Bay Area transit customer experience.
6. Past mergers in the Bay Area and elsewhere have usually led to good customer outcomes.
Finally, one would think that, given all the heartburn and anxiety some feel around the concept of a merger, that there has been a bad track record of transit agency mergers here in the Bay Area and elsewhere. The truth is that most transit mergers are almost universally agreed to be successes - and merged regional transit operations elsewhere point to excellent customer outcomes.
San Francisco’s Muni system was created in 1912 as a merger of many previously privately-owned rail lines, bought out by the City of San Francisco; the Market Street Railway and Cable cars were purchased and merged into the system by 1951, creating the fully integrated Muni service we have today with seamless fares and coordinated schedules within the boundaries of San Francisco - something most people within the City take for granted.
The Bay Area’s most recent experiences with mergers were the creation of SolTans (a merger of Vallejo Transit and the Benicia Breeze) in 2010 and the creation of WETA (a merger of Alameda and Vallejo Ferries) in 2007. Both are broadly agreed to have been a major success, building ridership and political support for increased funding and service that has flowed in subsequent years. In Southern California, LA Metro’s creation as a merger of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (LACTC) the Southern California Rapid Transit District (SCRTD or more often, RTD) in 1993 is viewed by many as a turning point for transit Los Angeles, helping create both clear leadership and accountability for connectivity of transit within the county of 10 million. LA Metro’s clear leadership and vision was critical to the passage of Measure M in 2016, which raised an unprecedented $120 billion for transportation.
Notably, the mergers that created Soltrans, WETA, and LA Metro were considered controversial at the time, and had many local opponents who claimed that local communities would lose out under any kind of merger. In all cases, political leadership from key regional and state representatives, and ultimately state legislation was critical to the merger taking place.
Finally, some cite European network management entities, and particularly verkehrsverbunde in German-speaking countries as indicating that the benefits of integration can be achieved without mergers. Michelle DeRebortis, author of a recent Mineta Transportation Institute study of 10 different regions with high ridership and coordination, pointed out at a recent webinar that even the European regions with dozens of transit operators generally only have a single dominant regional operator. In contrast, she observes that the Bay Area is unique among all the regions she studied in its sheer number of regional agencies - at least eight of the region’s 27 agencies are regional. She implies that coordination under the verkehrsverbund model is much more straightforward when there is only one main regional provider covering a majority of the region - something that merging BART and Caltrain would create.
Response to arguments against a BART-Caltrain merger
Some continue to paint a BART-Caltrain merger as bad for riders, unworthy of even being studied. Here are our responses to the most common arguments we’ve heard leveled against a merger:
Argument #1: BART is terribly run; a merger with BART would ruin Caltrain.
This is probably the most common argument one hears against a merger of BART and Caltrain. Therefore it bears repeating that we believe a merger between these two agencies should be a new entity entirely, with a new board and management structure - not a takeover of Caltrain by BART.
It’s true, BART has problems that need fixing. For decades BART enjoyed high customer satisfaction marks, but since 2012, customer satisfaction has been in steady decline, reaching an all time low of in 2018; since 2015, ridership has also been on the decline. While a range of factors are at play - including the more widespread growth of ride-hailing, and regional challenges of skyrocketing housing prices and increased homelessness - BART’s board and management is ultimately responsible, and must improve.
A merger between BART with Caltrain doesn’t make either agency’s problems go away, but does provide an opportunity to rethink how each is managed and design the best possible agency structure for future success. A new board and management structure must learn from BART’s and Caltrain’s strengths and weaknesses. Caltrain is strong at some aspects of customer service, but has historically been relatively weak at advancing equity policies and transit-oriented development; it has also struggled recently with project delivery. BART has a strong public communications department and is known for excellent, efficient, and innovative train maintenance, yet often criticized for poor customer service, station experience, and other issues.
Both agencies can become better with a merger. The change that comes with a merger shouldn’t just be seen as a disruption - it should be seized as an opportunity to improve practices, build on existing successes and competencies, and invest in areas where each agency underperforms. If we care about equity, we should be trying to make all rail transit universally excellent. Caltrain fans that oppose a BART merger on the premise that they view Caltrain service to be superior, and integrating BART will ‘bring down’ Caltrain should clarify whether they in fact believe that BART customers are for some reason not worthy of the same ‘quality’ of service that Caltrain provides.
Argument #2: Suburban interests would dominate the board of a unified agency and would starve dense areas of transit
An argument leveled by some BART supporters is that a merged transit agency that includes San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties would become more dominated by suburban interests and have an anti-urban bias. Together, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties have a population of 2.7 million and would make up 40% of the residents of a five-county agency. Some fear that under a merged board structure, BART would become less ‘progressive’, and return to old practices like expanding parking, or pursuing expensive extensions instead of investing in core capacity.
Like the prior argument against a merger, this argument assumes that the method for a merger would be a BART ‘takeover’ of Caltrain, in which additional directly-elected BART directors from San Mateo and Santa Clara would be added to the current 9-member BART Board, instead of an altogether new agency with a different Board structure and selection process.
As explained in Governing Transit Seamlessly, we don’t recommend applying BART’s current directly elected board structure to a merged agency. Such a structure would not guarantee board members have relevant backgrounds or expertise and would not include any representatives that represent the whole region. Instead, we support a board structure that learns from best practices in other regions, that ideally balances region-wide representatives and district representatives, and includes a significant number of appointed experts who can bring valuable insights to decision-making. Regional transit agencies across the world, from RMV in Frankfurt, to Translink in Vancouver and SoundTransit in Seattle, show it is possible to have urban, suburban, and rural interests represented on a regional board but not have the agency have an anti-urban bias. We can create a BART-Caltrain unified governing board that is progressive, professional, and pro-transit if we pursue governing board models that balance expertise, regional voices, and local representation.
Argument #3: The different sources of funding for BART and Caltrain would prevent a merger.
The fact that different funding sources exist across the five counties serving BART and Caltrain does not legally prevent there from being unified governance of the two services. As described in our report Governing Transit Seamlessly, many Bay Area transit agencies cover geographic areas that have different levels of transit funding - these agencies are able to align revenue sources and expenditures in a way that is fair. AC Transit has a single governing board over two different transit districts with different funding levels. WETA and BART both already collect a variety of fund sources from different counties and provide service in accordance with local investment levels and the terms of ballot measures approved in each county.
Specifically, some are concerned Caltrain’s recently approved ⅛ cent sales tax (Measure RR) funds would get diverted to other uses if Caltrain merged with BART. This would not be legal. By law, voter-approved sources must go toward specific uses in specific counties, and that doesn’t change by bringing the service under a different governing board.
For example, Alameda County voters passed Measure B in 2000 providing funding for Alameda/Oakland ferry service to San Francisco, then operated by the City of Alameda. WETA was a merger of the Alameda and Vallejo ferry systems, and was only created in 2007. When WETA took over the service from the City of Alameda, it began receiving the Measure B funds to operate that service. Those funds must legally still be spent on Alameda/Oakland ferry service, and cannot be diverted to some other county. In the same way, Caltrain Measure RR funds can only be spent on voter-approved uses, which is restricted to being spent on the Caltrain corridor. They can’t be spent on BART.
BART’s major local funding sources include 75% of a ½ cent sales tax and a 1% property tax collected in Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco Counties. Even though San Mateo and Santa Clara aren’t paying those specific taxes, these counties are making investments in transit in other important ways - San Mateo riders pay extra in fares and presciently purchased the Caltrain right-of-way from Southern Pacific in the 1990s; Santa Clara is contributing huge sums toward numerous BART core capacity improvements that will benefit the whole system.
Some contend that, while there’s nothing legally preventing there from being unified governance over a geographic region with different local funding sources and service levels, it nevertheless wouldn’t be politically viable. Again, the existence of agencies like AC Transit and WETA that have unified governance over areas with multiple local funding levels suggests that it can be politically viable, if we place a priority on serving riders instead of insisting on local control.
Over time, it may make sense to even out local funding sources, which would mean passing additional funding measures in counties that have historically funded transit at lower levels. We will be in a much better position to do so if we have a unified governing body across all five counties that begins to deliver an integrated system. (With 89% popular support, MTC’s recent poll found seamlessness to be immensely popular with voters). But we cannot condition unified governance on equal local contributions among all counties - if we do, we are condemning ourselves to an eternity of fragmented transit.
Argument #4: A big agency would be bureaucratic, slow, and inefficient, and that would be bad for riders.
While it's understandable to think that, because small agencies have fewer layers of complexity, that they make better decisions, are more efficient, and lead to better outcomes for riders. The data doesn’t back this up.
In terms of cost per passenger mile - the cost of transporting a passenger 1 mile on transit - it’s true that BART and Caltrain are both relatively efficient agencies, and have very similar costs. According to the National Transit Database, BART’s average cost per passenger mile in 2018 was $0.36 and Caltrain’s was $0.31. Considering the agencies have very similar costs already, it is unlikely that a merger would result in a significant shift in average cost per passenger mile.
An analysis from MTC in 2011 found the Bay Area’s biggest transit agencies collectively had relatively higher administrative costs than their national peer agencies that were bigger and more centralized. Bay Area large agencies averaged 19.9% administrative costs as a share of operating costs. The Bay Area’s largest agency by ridership is SFMTA carrying 225m passengers annually (pre-COVID) and BART, which carried 129m annually (unfortunately the analysis excludes Caltrain). Compare this to much larger agencies that have relatively lower administrative costs -- CTA in Chicago carries 526m passengers annually and has just 9.4% administrative costs; MBTA in Boston carries 368m passengers and has 9.7% admin costs; New York MTA has 3.3 billion passengers annually and 11.7% annual costs. Compared to the biggest US transit agencies, the Bay Area’s fragmented operators are less efficient.
Regions outside the US with much higher transit use include agencies that are both extremely large, efficient, and innovative. Transport for London has over 25,000 employees and carries over 3 billion passengers per year. Berlin’s largest transit agencies, BVG and Berlin S-Bahn, which also are regulated by an overarching ‘network manager’, VBB, are both far larger than any single Bay Area transit agency.
The reality is, there’s wide variation across the country and the world, and no clear relationship between how big an agency is and how efficient it is. Large agencies can be efficient and customer-responsive, if those are explicit goals of an agency.
Argument #5: A merged BART-Caltrain would starve Caltrain of service and resources, and would result in Caltrain not getting the increased service levels planned in Caltrain Business Plan.
As discussed in our response to argument #3, voter-approved funds approved for Caltrain can only be used for Caltrain. This is also true for federal, state, and regional-approved funds for capital projects - funds already procured for Caltrain’s modernization can’t be redirected for some other purpose.
In addition to it being difficult to redirect approved funding, why would a merged 5-county regional rail authority want to slow down or stop Caltrain’s modernization into a frequent-all-day service? Upgrading Caltrain and increasing service levels is one of the best opportunities to increase transit ridership across the region. More Caltrain riders means more BART riders, and more transit riders overall. A theoretical East Bay board member of a merged agency would know that many East Bay residents regularly need to go to San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and that completing those journeys requires more than just good BART service, but also good Caltrain service. It’s implausible that a combined agency who’s main mandate is to deliver an integrated regional rail network would somehow choose to slow down Caltrain’s modernization, rather than doing everything in its power to speed up the upgrading of Caltrain to BART frequencies or better so riders can have a seamless experience.
Argument #6: BART and Caltrain are different types of rail and therefore incompatible.
Having different types of rail is not an impediment to unified management and seamless operations. Nor is it anyone’s expectation that a merger would somehow enable BART trains to defy the laws of physics and run on narrower Caltrain tracks or vice versa. Many transit agencies, such as LA Metro, operate different types of rail seamlessly as one network with common service standards. BART already operates three different types of rail within its system - traditional BART heavy rail, diesel multiple unit trains for the Pittsburg-Antioch extension, and the Oakland Airport Train. It operates them seamlessly with coordinated schedules and fares. Different rail gauges are not an impediment to seamless operations.
Argument #7: BART and Caltrain have different labor arrangements and this would prevent a merger.
More investigation certainly needs to be done on how merging BART and Caltrain could work from a labor perspective. Both agencies' workers are unionized, but under different operational models. Most of BART’s unionized workforce is directly employed by BART, whereas Caltrain uses a service contract for train operations and maintenance, and unionized workers are employed by TransitAmerica Services Inc. (TASI). Due to the agencies’ different rail types and totally separate operations, we understand that BART and Caltrain have relatively little overlap in job classifications. This may make merging BART and Caltrain more straightforward, if legacy contracts can remain in place for years even if the agencies administrations merge. We support more research into the details of this issue - it’s a challenge to address, for sure, but certainly not something that makes a merger impossible.
Next steps
If riders and policymakers agree that a merger of BART and Caltrain makes sense to pursue, an important first step is telling this to Caltrain board members as they consider governance options throughout 2021. The Caltrain Board has a special meeting on October 22 to consider regional options, including the potential value of a BART-Caltrain merger - hearing from riders by email and in public comments can help.
While the current Caltrain governance reform process could result in the Caltrain Board expressing support for further studying a merger, that process is not likely to be the forum under which a merger gets pursued. There still needs to be distinct forum in which a merger is formally investigated and pursued, where BART and Caltrain are both at the table with some kind of third party.
One possibility for the BART-Caltrain merger forum is an upcoming Caltrans-funded Regional Rail Study being led by MTC. If scoped and facilitated appropriately, this could bring together the right key elected officials, as well as Caltrain, BART, and state staff to focus on designing a merged regional rail agency. However there is a real risk that this region-led study, which is expected to take up to two years, will just be ‘yet another study’, suffering the same fate as so many region-led initiatives.
One thing that’s missing to help advance a BART-Caltrain merger is the focused encouragement from higher levels of government. This should come both from the California State Transportation Agency, which seeks to implement an integrated statewide rail network, and from state legislators.
One possible idea to advance the BART-Caltrain merger would be for state legislators from the five counties covering the two systems to take a united stand in support of a focused, time-bound effort to unite BART and Caltrain. Considering legislation would ultimately be needed to create a merged entity with a new type of board structure, a unified show of support from Bay Area legislators early on - say, signing on to a joint letter to the GMs of BART, Caltrain, and MTC - would help keep a regional rail study focused on meeting key legislative deadlines - and help avoid the risk of studying dragging on for years.
Despite strong polling for a BART-Caltrain merger, with 83% of Bay Area residents in support, elected officials at all levels of government need to continue to hear from riders that seamless transit is an important priority. We encourage you to write your Caltrain board members to express your support for pursuing a merger and to sign up for Seamless Bay Area’s mailing list to keep informed about upcoming opportunities to take action.
Seamless Bay Area believes the case for bringing together BART and Caltrain under a unified board is a strong one - and ultimately a political decision. We welcome further study into the costs and details to ensure any restructuring is guided by clear goals around improving transit and mobility for the most people. The opportunity to create something great by merging the agencies is there - let’s seize it, and finally do what the majority of Bay Area residents and transit riders are calling for.