BART could increase fares by at least 5.5 percent as soon as January 2024 in an effort to keep up with both wage growth in the Bay Area and inflation, officials with the transit agency said Thursday.
BART typically adjusts fares systemwide every two years by a rate that is 0.5 percent less than the rate of inflation over that two-year span, as measured by the U.S. consumer price index.
BART fares were generally aligned with the Bay Area’s CPI prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The change in fares has not kept up with inflation in recent years, however, particularly since 2020.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation was 11.9 percent between January 2020 and December 2022, the period of time on which BART is basing the next round of fare increases in January 2024.
However, BART finance officials suggested Thursday to the agency’s Board of Directors that fares should rise by 5.5 percent in January 2024 and January 2025 rather than in one 11.4-percent adjustment.
“This has been a critically important part of our fiscal policy for two decades,” BART financial planning director Michael Eiseman said. “I think folks are aware that inflation has been unusually high in recent times.”
According to Eiseman, a standard fare for a BART ride from Berkeley to the San Francisco Embarcadero station would rise by roughly 50 cents once both fare increases are in effect.
He also noted that non-farm wages in the four counties BART services rose by roughly 16 percent between 2020 and 2022 and total employment in the region has returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some BART board members were squeamish about the potential fare hikes, arguing that 5.5 percent increases in each of the next two years would be too much, too quickly and would affect low-income riders the most.
“Going from Berkeley to Embarcadero, it would increase 25 cents but that’s the first one,” Board Director Rebecca Saltzman said. “So by the second one, it would be at least 50 cents, which means $1 a day. Which is a lot of money, especially (because) there are still riders out there riding five days a week.”
Saltzman and some other members of the board said they would support fare increases in theory, but likely at a lower rate than the twin 5.5-percent hikes as proposed by BART officials.
The BART board is set to consider the potential fare increases during its budgeting process this spring.
21 comments
Current $13 round trip, Concord to Embarcadero, future $14.43. I wonder how much worse the system will be by that time. If they said 11% increase and only paying customers can get on the system, I could stomach that.
The idea for bart is to have a cheap way to commute 🤦 at those rates it is cheaper for me to drive to work and pay parking fees elsewhere!!!
Look, I’ve worked in SF for twelve years straight, and I take BART every day I go in to the city. It’s $13 for BART, $3 to park. If I drive, it’s $15 in gas, $7 bridge toll and $30 to park in my building. So while I hate BART as much as you, and believe it’s a mismanaged cesspool as much as you do – what you said is just not true. As long as BART is cheaper that gas/bridge/parking – then it’ll be the “cheap” way to go. You just get to suffer.
FYI: People who actually use BART to commute to SF aren’t allowed to post here.
Forgot to mention the wear and tear of start/stop commute traffic and depreciation on your vehicle due to the mileage, not to mention the significantly longer commute home going in isn’t bad though. Something needs to be done about the security on the trains. VOTE YOUR BART BOARD MEMBER OFF if your are not happy!!!!
so Concord to Ashby 4.50 each way (current) that is $9 along with from the house transportation 1.2 miles. Current gas is $4.651 (https://gasprices.aaa.com/?state=CA) so about $.32 each way to bart = $9.64 every day compares to about $10 in gas to not have the hassle of bart “worthwhile” and now with the rate increase more worthwhile.
Only the government can charge more for worse service.
It is subsidized enough that it might as well be government.
If BART was safe, clean, and free from bums and buskers I wouldn’t mind these increased fares. As it is, I won’t set foot on BART at any price.
To keep up with inflation?? Increasing price is the very definition of inflation.
How about making everyone on the system actually pay the fares? We all know that the fare evaders cause most of the problems.
Oh, look. BART paid $350,000 for a homeless program that served one person. It’s so nice the spend their money wisely.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/bart-salvation-army-homeless-17770286.php
Have to give those overpaid employees more money and benefits.
Right? Instead of decreasing bloated salaries for do-nothings, they make the public pay.
Fare rate increases were set on automatic a few years back. BART got tired of open forums about them and the board voted to make them automatic. So the only surprise here is that it will “only” be 11%.
Agree with everyone that BART needs to clean up its act, its stations, and do a real audit of everything from top to bottom – including the cost of nuts and bolts.
Ever remember the article (or book) “wasn’t the future wonderful?” I recall the predictions of the future like self driving cars with an image of a family playing a game as the car takes them to visit grandma. BART was pretty much a “pie in the sky” back then too.
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I lived in Seattle for many years and they figured early on that expanding the Monorail was not feasible or affordable. It became a tourist attraction. When I had a temporary job downtown I could either walk across the street from my apartment and hop on a bus and get downtown in 45 minutes but if I walked two blocks could hop on a bus and get there in 15. Seattle made their express bus system a solution back then. Of course Seattle didn’t look like a downtown scene out of “Blade Runner” as it does now.
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The solution for many metropolitan areas was light rail not things like BART. There were rail routes throughout the Bay Area that could have been used for that but the rails were torn up and turned into hiking trails. Good luck on taking those back now.
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And what about “remote work”. That’s the trend in at least the tech industry. But I can tell you having been a supervisor in that field not everyone has the discipline for it. Having successfully done remote work for years I was brought in house to help solve the problem wit their remote workers. The solution was to bring them in house. Interesting thing, a lot of those successful at remote work came from other fields where one works by themselves like music, art and writing. In those fields one learns to work on their projects by themselves and such skills transposed well to work like computer programming.
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The future may still be wonderful, slower and quieter.
It’s cheaper to skip the fare in the off chance you even get caught. And when you do, the fine would be cheaper than all the fares
Good! BART should raise fairs even more, start running on fairs alone, and end the public subsidizes that they currently survive on. The BART Board always says “we aren’t in the business of parking cars, we’re in the business of moving people from place to place” when parking problems exist at BART stations, yet they constantly engage in “mission-creep” when they choose to engage in social issues and social programs. Whatever happened to the BART Board plan to put the homeless on BART trains as “BART Ambassadors” and pay them $20.00 an hour to do so? We had better service when the Oakland, Antioch, and Eastern Railroad and the Sacramento Northern Railroad ran passenger service on much of the same right-of-way that BART runs on today through central Contra Costa County.
Sorry, meant fares, not fairs.
More fare for the evaders to evade. Just great.
Bart is a perpetual money pit.
I consider that an un-fare increase
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