A path forward to the unified transit agency the Bay Area deserves
Last week, the BART board made headlines when several board members expressed that exploring consolidation with other Bay Area transit agencies should be considered in order to help address the agency’s long term financial challenges.
Bringing up consolidation in the context of a budget crisis implies that the primary goal of consolidation is to cut costs by eliminating duplicative functions of Bay Area transit agencies. However, as Seamless Bay Area has stated before, while there are certainly opportunities to be more efficient, the creation of a well-governed, empowered, unified Bay Area transit agency - made possible by consolidation - covering the majority of the region could have potentially enormous benefits that go far beyond improving efficiency.
The benefits of creating a unified Bay Area transit agency with authority over regional rail, bus, and ferry services include:
Quicker deployment seamless rail and bus system around the Bay with integrated service, fares, and customer experience.
Improved accountability to riders and the public for regional transit service and connections.
Better and faster project definition and design, reducing the costs of capital projects
Faster and cheaper project construction for transit projects
Improved agency capacity, and attraction of better leadership and professional expertise.
It is not just the opinion of advocacy groups, a vast majority of the public, and numerous state legislators that consolidation would bring benefits. Transit agencies themselves explored and documented the benefits of consolidating regional rail. The MTC-led Rail Partnerships study, which was done with participation of Caltrain, BART, Capitol Corridor, ACE, and other California rail agencies. It concluded that “there are key potential benefits of ‘regionalizing’ some decision making and organizational capabilities”, and identified the next step “conducting a detailed-cost benefit analysis” on several restructuring, including a Consolidated Bay Area rail authority. Unfortunately, eight months after the Caltrans-funded Bay Area Rail Partnerships Study concluded, MTC has not taken any additional actions that were identified in the study.
Above: Excepts from MTC’s Bay Area Rail Partnership Study Summary Report (Page 26-27). In March 2023, MTC, working with Caltrans and Bay Area rail agencies, concluded the Rail Partnership Study, which was one of the 27 Actions in the Transformation Action Plan. The study recommended conducting “a detailed cost-benefit analysis” of four different options to reorganize governance of Bay Area rail agencies, including a Consolidated Rail Authority. The study has not been presented to the commission since its final report was posted, and no follow-up analyses have been initiated.
While the recent interest from the BART board in this topic is welcome - BART is clearly a key stakeholder in any consolidation scenario - it’s critical that MTC, with support from experts with experience in this topic, take a central role on any next steps to examine and recommend a specific consolidation option. Regional leadership, not driven by a specific agency’s needs or interest, can help ensure that an analysis is legitimate, objective, and done in the interest of the public. Examining consolidation options should happen in consultation with BART, Caltrain, other regional agencies - and most importantly, riders - and be oriented toward developing a proposal that could be introduced in coordination with a regional funding measure that could bring in new funding that can increase service.
Developing a robust, fundable concept for a unified, empowered Bay Area transit authority is needed to reignite the public’s faith in the future of public transportation. There is not a moment to lose. If the Bay Area wishes to ask voters in November 2026 to raise taxes to fund public transit, we need to identify reforms - including consolidations that will bring benefits and improve efficiency - as soon as possible, ideally in the next six months.
It’s time for MTC to follow through with the recommended next steps identified in its own study. In the next six months, MTC should analyze feasible options for transit agency consolidation - bringing key stakeholders from all transit regional agencies together to identify a unified transit agency that can best serve the Bay Area for the next generation of transit riders.