As Bay Area planners advance a proposal for a new regional transportation revenue measure, environmental and transit advocates are urging officials to avoid a tax aimed at expanding freeways.
“Widening highways when your streets are falling apart is like planning an addition to your house when your roof is caving in,” said Warren Wells, policy and advocacy director for the Marin County Bicycle Coalition.
Wells was among more than 50 speakers who addressed the Metropolitan Transportation Commission ahead of its vote Wednesday to seek legislation in Sacramento to put the measure on the ballot as early as November 2026.
“Every dollar going into capacity expansion is a dollar not going into maintaining the roads that we already have, much less transit operations,” Wells said. “To be crystal clear, we support spending money on roads — the roads we have.”
The proposed measure is expected to net $1 billion annually for transportation improvements. The commission hasn’t yet identified the revenue source of the potential measure, but the goal of the plan is to protect and enhance transit service by creating a climate-friendly, accessible and convenient service.
The measure is designed to make service faster, safer and easier to use. The plan would involve repairing local roads and making safety and access improvements for cyclists, pedestrians and wheelchair users.
Staff said polls show that voters would support a tax that would help streamline transit. To that end, staff is proposing that the potential legislation enable MTC to exercise greater authority in advancing coordination among the 27 transit operators serving the Bay Area.
Debate over whether the new tax should fund freeway expansion projects has been central throughout the development of the draft plan.
For discussion Wednesday, staff provided the commissioners with a report that proposed three options when it came to the eligibility of the funds to be used for highway expansion projects.
The first option suggested there would be no explicit limitation; the second proposed to limit expansion on managed lanes such as tolled, high-occupancy vehicle or transit-only lanes; and the third option would prohibit the use of revenue generated from this measure for freeway expansion.
Many of the commenters advocated for option three.
“We need more money for transit,” said David Watson, a Mountain View resident. “Don’t divert more money to widen freeways.”
Shane Weinstein, a member of ATU 1575, which represents 150 Golden Gate Transit workers, agreed.
“Golden Gate Transit, its bus operators and riders have been under constant threat of service cuts and job losses for far too long now,” Weinstein said. “There are many other sources of extra funding dedicated to capital projects. Commissioners, transit needs to be there for our most vulnerable, those that depend on bus service and that have no vehicle.”
Sonoma County Supervisor David Rabbitt, who serves as an MTC commissioner, said officials are still widening the Marin-Sonoma “Narrows” because the Highway 101 conditions were unsafe.
“Can you imagine if 80, 580 or 680 was a two-lane highway with left turn lanes, and driveways into it,” he said referring to East Bay highways.
“I hate to say it, but people look at measures as ‘what’s in it for me?’” said Rabbitt, who also serves on the board of the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit. “We need to find a sweet spot.”
Andrew Fremier, executive director of MTC, said that Bay Area transit operators are facing a fiscal cliff. Planners are strategizing ways to fund a $700 million annual shortfall that is necessary to keep transit services up to existing levels.
“The primary goal is really tied to the operations hole that we anticipate,” Fremier said of the measure.
“I think it’s very important that the first principal is to try to keep the buses, the trains, the ferries running,” Fremier said. “That’s an operational hole that we don’t have a real good solution for in the future unless we get a measure passed.”
After the meeting, Mike Arnold, a Novato resident and economist, said he is skeptical.
“Voters ought to be very concerned that the MTC is seeking enormous power by putting the cart before the horse,” Arnold said. “It is seeking legislative authorization for unspecified taxing options, in all or an unspecified subset of the Bay Area nine-counties, for yet unspecified purposes, and for unspecified geographic funding distributions on November 2026 or later.”
MTC staff said the legislation would seek authorization for successive tax measures.
“We’ve heard some initial concerns from North Bay leaders about this draft proposal and I look forward to bringing the Commission and local representatives together to have further conversations,” Senate President Designee Mike McGuire said in an email following the meeting. “It’s still early in the process and there’s a lot more work to do.”
Marin County Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters also serves on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission said this is an early action by the MTC board to initiate the legislative process.
MTC’s vote sponsors what’s called a “spot” bill, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco. The bill will be used to seek authorization from the Legislature in each of the nine Bay Area counties. The first opportunity to amend Wiener’s Senate Bill 925 will be in mid-February.
“The measure would prioritize funding for transit and reforms to improve service to riders and greater coordination and accountability of transit providers,” Moulton-Peters said.
“The funding priorities and funding mechanisms will be further defined over the coming months, with opportunities for the public to shape these priorities,” she said. “This is the beginning of the process to provide funding support to create a world-class transit system for the Bay Area. “