A draft Federal Transit Administration policy would reward corridors with more births and marriages and weigh cost per rider more heavily, a formula that could disadvantage BART’s San Jose extension and San Francisco’s Portal.
By Staff Reporter
Two of Northern California’s largest rail projects, BART’s extension into downtown San Jose and the Portal rail tunnel to San Francisco’s Salesforce Transit Center, are seeking more than $8 billion in federal grants. A proposal from the Trump administration’s Transportation Department would rewrite the rules for awarding that money, and Bay Area transit officials say they cannot yet tell how much it will cost them.
The Federal Transit Administration published proposed policy guidance on Oct. 1 for its Capital Investment Grants program, the main federal source of money for new rail and bus rapid transit lines. Public comments are due Nov. 16 in docket FTA-2026-0331. The notice states that the final guidance will take effect immediately once published and that “no grandfathering will be allowed for any projects currently in the CIG pipeline.”
How the formula would work
For decades, the program has rated projects on statutory criteria including mobility, environmental benefits, congestion relief, economic development, land use and cost-effectiveness. The proposal would, for the first time, tie those ratings to a formal method for setting the federal share of a project’s cost, according to an Oct. 15 analysis by the Congressional Research Service.
Projects rated medium or better would start at a 40 percent federal share, then move up or down based on their scores. Cost-effectiveness, measured largely by cost per trip, would carry the most weight: a high rating would add 10 percentage points, while a low rating would subtract 25. Federal law caps the program’s share at 60 percent for major New Starts projects.
The proposal would also add as many as 10 percentage points for projects in corridors, defined as a one-mile buffer around the line, where birth rates or marriage rates exceed the national average, using census tract data. Each measure could add five points. There would be no penalty for below-average rates.
The F.T.A. said the cost-effectiveness and ridership adjustments “will ensure Federal taxpayer funds are supporting worthy investments,” the research service noted. The demographic bonuses implement a March 2025 order from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy directing the department to “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average (including in administering the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grant program).” Mr. Duffy has described the broader effort as a pledge to “make travel family-friendly again,” The San Francisco Public Press reported.
Why the Bay Area is exposed
The research service observed that places with relatively high birth and marriage rates tend to lie farther from urban centers, while fixed-guideway transit is most effective in dense urban corridors. Its analysis noted that combined bonuses for high birth and marriage rates could offset a medium-low cost-effectiveness score, potentially favoring longer-distance commuter rail.
Expensive tunneling projects in dense, high-cost cities are, by their nature, likely to score poorly on cost per trip. Both Bay Area megaprojects fit that description.
The Valley Transportation Authority’s six-mile BART tunnel, with four new stations beneath San Jose, carries a total cost of $12.6 billion, and the agency plans to seek a federal grant of up to $5.1 billion next year, The Public Press reported. The Transbay Joint Powers Authority is preparing to finalize its request for a $3.38 billion grant, covering 41 percent of heavy construction costs for the Portal, by next June. The Portal’s environmental review is complete, but rail construction has not begun.
“They are changing the guidance, which is not uncommon,” Adam Van de Water, the authority’s executive director, told The Public Press. “But this is probably the most significant change in the guidance in 15 years.” He said lower birth rates would not reduce a request as submitted, but called the effects “vague” and said he worried that pending applications could be re-evaluated or delayed.
The V.T.A., in a statement to The Public Press, expressed confidence that the BART extension would keep its existing federal cost-share ratio. Rebecca Long, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s director of legislation and public affairs, told the publication that a significant delay to the BART project could cost almost half a billion dollars a year, though she said agencies had some flexibility because of local and state taxes voters have already approved.
A partisan fight in Congress
The proposal has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, called it “the sort of bizarre and dystopian idea you’d expect in a TV show, not actual policy” in an Oct. 7 statement. Her office said the guidance would apply to 40 projects already in the pipeline and could push federal shares below a 40 percent floor that appropriations bills have set since fiscal 2020.
Critics in the Bay Area have focused on the demographic bonus. Andrea Broaddus, a transportation planning researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Public Press that the demographic criteria were an “ideological leap” from the program’s technical standards.
What to watch
The comment period, which closes Nov. 16, is the first formal opportunity for Bay Area transit agencies and the region’s congressional delegation to weigh in before the guidance becomes final. Congress has also used annual appropriations bills to set terms for the program, including the 40 percent floor Ms. Murray cited, which gives lawmakers a second avenue to respond.
The stakes extend beyond two projects. The program’s grant agreements typically lock in federal commitments for a decade or more, and agencies plan around them. A formula that can change midstream, with no grandfathering, makes that planning harder for every large project in the pipeline, in California and elsewhere.
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