Seamless Bay Area strongly supports SB1031 The Connect Bay Area Act

Adina Levin, Advocacy Director of Seamless Bay Area, speaking at the SB1031 bill launch event at Powell Station alongside Senators Weiner and Wahab on March 18, 2024.

Senators Scott Wiener and Aisha Wahab have introduced the long awaited SB1031, or the Connect Bay Area Act, authorizing a Bay Area transportation funding measure with reforms to deepen transit integration, study the consolidation of public transit agencies, and more. 

Seamless Bay Area strongly supports this bill. It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform Bay Area transit with funding for more frequent, fast, coordinated service. The bill’s policy reforms will help guarantee that new and existing funding go further, delivering convenient, well-coordinated service and making sure our buses and trains are faster, safer, and more reliable.  

We are at a pivotal moment for the Bay Area’s future. Addressing the converging affordability, climate, and housing crises will require a robust, widely-used, and well-funded public transportation system. That’s why revolutionizing our public transit system has never been more important – the Connect Bay Area Act rises to meet these current and future needs. 

So what can you do to support SB 1031? Here are three actions you can take:

Funding and allocation

The bill was announced on March 18th, when Senators Wiener and Wahab joined transit advocates, elected officials, labor representatives, and transit riders at the Powell Station in San Francisco. It authorizes the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) to put a regional measure on the ballot as soon as the November 2026 election.

“We have never funded our public transportation agencies in a way that will allow them to fully succeed, so that we can truly have a mode shift where it’s not about forcing people out of their cars but giving people amazing options so that they’ll choose to take public transit,” Wiener said.

The initiative provides an overall framework for measuring spending while maintaining some flexibility for MTC to work with stakeholders to craft details closer to the measure going on the ballot. For instance, the measure can include all nine Bay Area counties or a subset thereof. Several revenue mechanisms are authorized, including a sales tax, payroll tax, parcel tax, or mix of these various sources - MTC will determine the exact revenue source based on future polling. The legislation is written so that it can be used for multiple measures over a long period of time. A regional income tax surcharge is not currently authorized by the bill, despite its popularity amongst Bay Area voters and potential to generate significant funding.

As currently written, the bill specifies that a minimum of $750 million annually must be spent on transit operations funding. This minimum is specified in order to guarantee against the possibility of transit service cuts, with additional funding for transit service growth and integration. Based on 2023 service levels, MTC estimates the combined transit agency annual operating deficit to be about $600 million per year starting in approximately 2026, when temporary federal and state relief funds are expected to run out.

Other than the minimum $750 million for transit operations, the bill doesn’t specify how much to allocate per category, but authorizes expenditures in four categories: 

The proposal approved by MTC in January 2024 called for a flexible category that can change with evolving needs. Interestingly, 70% of voters preferred that the measure have flexibility rather than fully fixed expenditures.

  • Transit Transformation: Increase transit operations funding and achieving customer-focused initiatives as outlined in the 2020 Transportation Transformation Action Plan (or successor plans by MTC)

  • Safe Streets Improvements: Investments to support safety, equity, and climate goals in our local roads, including bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure improvements, safe routes to transit, and pothole repairs. 

  • Connectivity: Mobility improvements that close gaps and relieve bottlenecks in the transportation network in a climate-neutral manner, and

  • Climate Resilience: Investments to protect transit infrastructure from climate change induced extreme weather.

It’s expected that the funding measure authorized by the bill will raise between $1-$2 billion annually. The Voices for Public Transportation Coalition, of which Seamless is a member, has advocated for $2 billion annually, to support significant increases in service to attract far more riders.

The bill also includes a provision giving the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and MTC the power to require large companies to make the unlimited, regional transit pass as one of the travel benefit options provided to workers. This could enable significant ridership growth through expansion of the region’s highly successful BayPass all-agency transit pass for organizations, while supporting important new revenue to the transit system.

Seamless Bay Area has long supported increased transit operations funding – there is a close correlation between the amount of transit service per capita and proportional ridership. As such, we are excited to see this bill focus on rider needs for more frequent and reliable service. We would like language in the bill to prevent funds from going towards highway expansion projects that would increase greenhouse gas emissions. 

Establishing a Network Manager Authority within MTC

The bill includes a key reform that Seamless Bay Area has long advocated - the establishment of Bay Area network manager authority, with the mandate and authority to oversee all Bay Area transit agencies. The bill identifies MTC as the region’s Network Manager, strengthening its existing authority to adopt and update rules and regulation to promote the coordination of fares, schedules, mapping and wayfinding, real-time transit information, and other customer-facing operating policies in an effort to create “a seamless transit rider experience across the region” and increase overall ridership.

Transit agencies will be required to comply with MTC’s network management requirements in order to receive new and existing funding. 

This is a critically important part of the bill that has been a key priority of Seamless Bay Area. Empowered Network Manager authorities are present in virtually all high ridership regions around the world. Right now, collaboration between MTC and transit agencies is voluntary and tends to slow the implementation of basic integration programs like integrated fares, wayfinding, and real time information.   

More specifically the bill outlines its intent to achieve the following outcomes: 

  • Common fare payment system for public transit agencies, universal regional transit pass for all public transit

  • An integrated transit fare structure with common definitions of adults, youth, seniors, persons with disabilities, and other categories of riders. 

  • A common fare transfer policy that strives to eliminate any extra fare for using multiple agencies 

  • Integrated mapping, signage, and real-time information. 

  • Transit services that are equitably planned and managed as a unified, efficient, and reliable network, including coordinating schedules at stops or station areas serving more than one public transit agency. 

  • Transit services for older adults, people with disabilities, and those with lower incomes that are coordinated efficiently throughout the region. 

  • Use of existing funding more efficiently and secures new, dedicated revenue to meet its capital and operating needs. 

In order for MTC to become an effective regional network manager, Seamless Bay Area has recommended, based on research of effective models, that MTC strengthen its network management policy body, providing additional appointed experts to lead network management and guide MTC’s transit coordination policymaking, similar to TransLink’s (Vancouver’s Network Manager) effective two-tiered board structure model. The current version of the bill keeps open this possibility of “establishing a body within the commission to guide regional network management efforts.”

Enhanced regional coordination with a Network Manager will ensure new and existing funding goes further – delivering more service and improving the speed and cost-effectiveness of customer-facing improvement projects.

Studying consolidation

Finally, the bill also requires a study of the benefits and drawbacks of consolidating Bay Area public transit agencies. The bill calls for the study to be conducted by either UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies or San Jose State University’s Mineta Transportation Institute and to be completed before January 1st, 2026. 

Seamless Bay Area’s mission is to bring about an integrated, seamless, and well-coordinated transit system for the Bay Area. Check out our Vision Map to see what this would look like and read our report Governing Transit Seamlessly: Options for a Bay Area Transportation Network Manager to see how a network manager can help bring transformation change to our system.

As stated before, Seamless Bay Area supports studying the costs and benefits of consolidating agencies and/or functions to advance goals of convenient service, efficiency and effectiveness. We believe consolidation has the potential to substantially benefit transit riders, agency capacity, and the quicker and cheaper deployment of transit projects. 

The bill indicates that the study must consider options for how to consolidate agencies in a manner that improves the speed of transit and the seamlessness of transfers, prioritizes cost savings to the public and other efficiencies, meets and exceeds climate goals, and advances other transit operations improvements. Labor agreements will be a major point of focus for the research and must identify the impact of consolidation on wages, pensions, retirement benefits, and work conditions covered by collective bargaining agreements. 

Based on these findings, CalSTA will then recommend to the legislature a comprehensive plan to consolidate transit agencies before January 1st, 2027. This plan must consider consolidation plans that will provide transit service that competes with private automobile travel, maintains affordable fares, improves accountability of the transportation system to the public, supports greater cost-effectiveness, and provides more equitable access to transit services across the region. 

Senator Aisha Wahab speaking at the March 18th bill launch event, next to Senator Wiener, elected officials from across the region, and transit advocates.

The state transportation agency will also recommend new governing structures and board member qualifications for a new consolidated agency or agencies, based on international best practices and recent regional and state studies. The recommendation will identify any further legislative steps required to implement the recommended governing structure and identify barriers to consolidating or eliminating transit agencies (and alternative actions, including memorandums of understanding between transit agencies for the consolidation of services). 

Conclusion

This bill aligns with many goals that Seamless Bay Area has long advocated – a focus on transit operations funding, creation of a Bay Area Network Manager, progressive taxation sources, and a regional consolidation study. 

Taken all together, this has the potential to transform our region's transit system into a world-class, coordinated, and widely used system that supports our mobility, housing, equity, and climate goals. 

It’s crucial that we pass SB1031 and get voters to approve the subsequent ballot measure. 

Again, here are three immediate actions you can take to support SB1031:

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