MTC is applauding an additional $536 million in American Rescue Plan funds to help Bay Area transit agencies battered by two years of pandemic-related ridership and revenue losses sustain operations.
Allocations to Bay Area transit agencies accounted for nearly a quarter of the $2.2 billion in additional American Rescue Plan distributions nationwide that were announced by the Federal Transit Administration last week.
These include more than $270 million for BART; $115 million for Muni in San Francisco; $75 million for Golden Gate Transit and Ferry; nearly $39 million for Caltrain; more than $26 million for the San Francisco Bay Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA), which operates the San Francisco Bay Ferry service; over $7 million for Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART); and more than $2 million for the FAST bus system managed by the City of Fairfield in Solano County.
“The entire Commission is enormously thankful for the work done by all the Bay Area’s congressional representatives,” said Alfredo Pedroza, MTC chairman and Napa County Supervisor “We’re especially grateful for Speaker Pelosi’s effective advocacy on behalf of our region’s transit agencies, many of which have been hit with ridership losses as deep and long-lasting as any in the country. Now that more and more Bay Area residents are returning to their workplaces and other destinations, it’s essential that our region’s buses, trains and ferries be there when the customers need them.”
The American Rescue Plan is the wide-ranging $1.9 trillion Covid relief package passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden in March 2021. Enactment marked the third wave of emergency federal support for public transit nationwide since the March 2020 onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. MTC last year distributed a total $1.7 billion in American Rescue Plan funding to Bay Area transit agencies.
MTC is the regional transportation planning, financing coordinating agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.
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