Q&A with Sara Barz, Transportation Expert Running for BART District 8 Seat

Sara Barz is a transportation planner and San Francisco mom. She earned a master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from UC Berkeley in 2015. She currently serves as the District 7 representative on the San Francisco County Transportation Authority Community Advisory Committee. In 2024, Mass Transit magazine recognized Sara as a 40 under 40 transit professional. That makes her a strong candidate for the BART board’s San Francisco/District 8 seat, currently held by Janice Li, who won’t be seeking another term.

Streetsblog caught up with Barz to discuss her goals for BART and transit generally in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area.

Streetsblog: So you’re running unopposed. It almost makes me think nobody really wants this job.

Barz: (Laughs and points to herself) Except for one person! Is she okay? Seriously though, it’s a hard time for transit. The fiscal crisis is scary. If the regional transit measure doesn’t pass, that is going to be brutal at BART.

Streetsblog: Your job will be all about cutbacks instead of improvements.

Barz: We’re going to be faced with cutting it down, with cutting the transit system we love. But there would be no choice. It may not even survive—it’s that existential. And I am campaigning for it to pass. But I believe that the voters of the five counties will pass the measure and see the value of transit and keeping it. I believe we will not be in that doomsday scenario come January 2027.

Streetsblog: But how do we convince John and Jane Q public?

Barz: Well, first we have to be prepared for, God forbid, it to fail. The BART board has already adopted an alternative service plan which sets up a framework for the kinds of terrible decisions they will have to make and what kinds of service cutbacks would be acceptable. I support that framework. I will see my job as championing the needs of District 8 voters to get as much BART service to remain as possible. For example, Balboa Park BART is used by lots of students and lots of commuters around Mission Terrace. I would absolutely want to focus on the needs of vulnerable populations in the district. And the downtown stations, Montgomery and Embarcadero—there is no downtown recovery without BART to some extent. Maximizing the utility of those stations is top of mind.

Streetsblog: Assuming it does pass, where do you see yourself on the age-old BART question of focusing on the core of the system versus funding extensions?

Barz: I’m on the side of focusing on infill stations and the core service network. That’s where you get the most return on investment, since you don’t have to extend the right of way.

Streetsblog: I know it’s not your district, but you mean stations such as the proposed San Antonio stop in East Oakland, or looking at a 30th Street/Mission Station between Glen Park and 24th?

Barz: Yes. There are a lot of people who live within the system footprint who don’t have access. I also believe in the mayor’s Family Zoning plan and adding more homes in San Francisco; most of them are on the west side of the city, and that’s a part of the city that isn’t well served by transit.

Streetsblog: So if we’re going to add homes, we need good transit for all those new residents to get around.

Barz: We should plan for growth. And that means we should plan for transit that would serve those developments. A Geary subway? Yes, and the SFCTA also studied the 19th Avenue corridor.

Streetsblog: You see BART running under 19th Avenue? From Daly City?

Barz: Not specific to BART gauge. Or Muni. But the study outlined the opportunity to increase ridership through something that would connect to BART or serve as an extension of BART. I’m agnostic to the technology, but as we plan for more housing in places that don’t have good transit, BART has to be a part of that conversation for regional trips.

Streetsblog: So even something as simple as improving the bike infrastructure to S.F. State from Daly City BART?

Barz: And Stonestown, which is going to have tons of housing. We can already see how crowded things are on 19th Avenue. That’s a good sign that lots of people are living there and need to move around, so why not imagine better connections to BART.

Streetsblog: I know you’ve spent quite a bit of time overseas. Is there a project somewhere in the world you find inspiring for BART?

Barz: I’m a big fan of London’s Crossrail project, which became the Elizabeth Line. One of the main problems they were trying to address was figuring out how they’re going to put more people on the tube in the center of London. They were solving a real-world problem of trying to move more people through the Center of London to give them the opportunity to build more housing. It was a plan for growth, so they decided to connect the major east and west side train stations in London. The return on investment has been incredible from the year it opened, immediately after the pandemic. Ridership gains are already exceeding expectations.

Streetsblog: Right. And they were exploiting and connecting existing assets.

Barz: We can do that kind of planning too, but we have to solve real problems. That real problem is 19^th Avenue. We have to put high-quality transit there. And BART is going to be at the table for those discussions. I love planning for the future because I want the region to have more transit.

Streetsblog: But that’s not happening any time soon.

Barz: That’s why my immediate priority as a BART director for District 8 is getting the basics right. We need clean, safe, reliable trains and stations. We’re making good progress with that. However, the system-wide shutdowns (shakes her head). We need to do preventative maintenance, proactive replacement of parts; it’s not as sexy as asking where else BART could go, but that is priority number one.

Streetsblog: Reminds me of the San Leandro fire that shut things down for a while. When the board asked the engineering department heads what happened, they got kind of vague answers about relays and breakers failing. But to me the question isn’t what failed; it’s why these components failed and why they weren’t replaced once they became unreliable.

Barz: We have to replace 50-year-old, unreliable infrastructure. We passed an infrastructure bond for it. Let’s spend it down. If you know that a component fails sometimes, what are the options to make sure it won’t? At the end of April, the board was having its regular meeting and both Directors Janice Li and Edward Wright were late. Why? Because they both take BART to the meeting and it was shut down. When Janice got to the meeting, the very first thing she asked was why the system was shut down. The answers she got from staff were vague. They should not be vague. We need to ask staff to anticipate outages.

Streetsblog: What are some simple things we can emulate from other cities? I know you have experience in Paris and Montreal.

Barz: I want to make stations more welcoming. For one, I want to see retail. Let’s try some pop-ups at the stations, the way the “Vacant To Vibrant” brings them to empty storefronts. We can do that for BART stations. If you take the Montreal Metro, there is retail in every station. Okay, maybe we don’t need a Tim Hortons in every single station, but certainly in the downtown core. We can do that.

Streetsblog: Anything but Tim Hortons! What about the other thing you see in Paris and now Montreal with the REM, mainly, automated trains?

Barz: I want more automation for the BART system. But it should be a way to offer more service, not a way to fire everybody. Do more, be more efficient; this is the world I want. I lived in Paris when the Line 1 had just been automated and it was a game changer. In peak periods it ran every two minutes. You just never have to worry about missing a train. It makes such a difference.

Streetsblog: Okay. Thanks for your time and, uh, good luck against the opposition?

Barz: Well, there could still be a vigorous write-in campaign.