Overview
- Connect Bay Area delivered about 305,000 signatures to elections offices across San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties on Tuesday, far above the roughly 186,000 signatures required to qualify.
- County-by-county verification is expected to take up to about a month and if enough signatures are certified the measure will formally qualify for the November 2026 ballot and trigger a campaign phase of fundraising and voter outreach.
- The ballot measure authorized by SB 63 would create a Public Transit Revenue District and impose a 14-year sales tax of 0.5% in four counties and 1% in San Francisco, projected to raise about $1 billion a year for BART, Muni, Caltrain, AC Transit, VTA and other regional operators.
- Regional operators say they face large structural deficits—BART projects $350–$400 million annual shortfalls and Muni roughly $300 million—and warn of station closures and deep service cuts without new revenue even as a Nelson Nygaard audit found more than $1 billion in agency savings since 2019 and requires agencies to adopt first-phase recommendations by July 1, 2026.
- The Connect Bay Area campaign has raised about $5.5 million and spent roughly $4 million on signature gathering, with more than 1,000 volunteers contributing some 77,000 signatures, and will shift to paid outreach and fundraising if counties certify the petition while some local taxpayer groups have signaled possible opposition.