The struggling public-transit system in the San Francisco Bay Area received a financial lifeline Tuesday, with voters passing a proposed sales tax to fund the region’s trains, buses and ferries.
Commuters near a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train in San Francisco, on Sept. 5, 2025.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
An unlikely alliance of labor unions, transit advocates and major tech companies — including Anthropic PBC and Google — supported the measure, as transit systems in the area face annual deficits of more than $800 million.
Bay Area Rapid Transit, the area’s major rail network known as BART, had warned that if the measure failed, it would be forced to reduce service and close many of its outlying stations. …