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The problems with public transit in the San Francisco Bay Area have been building for years. The election this November could determine whether they get better or much, much worse.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bay Area Rapid Transit, the agency that runs trains between San Francisco, Oakland, and other nearby cities, was the pride of the region. The agency made more of its revenue from rider fares than nearly any other transit system in the country. When ridership dropped, first because of the pandemic shutdowns and later because of the lasting shift to remote work, revenue dropped too. It was a similar story for the patchwork of smaller public-transit agencies within San Francisco and in the surrounding counties that make up the regional transportation network. Federal pandemic-relief funds and one-off state support have held things together, precariously, until now. But without new funding, agencies say they’ll need to cut service and hike fares, resulting in fewer choices for people moving around the region.

This is a political challenge. Backers of the upcoming Connect Bay Area Transit measure, which would raise the sales tax by 1 percent in San Francisco and 0.5 percent in the four surrounding counties, are hoping voters will agree to pay more essentially to preserve something they already have. That’s a tough ask at a time when the cost of living is the most politically salient issue around the country. To be sure, the campaign for the November ballot measure is highlighting the improvements that agencies could make with the estimated $1 billion annual revenue hike, including safety upgrades and better integration of regional services. But their basic pitch is to “save” public transit.

If the transit measure had been referred to the ballot by a local or county government, it would have required approval by two-thirds of voters. But because the measure is a citizen initiative, it needs only a bare majority of votes in order to pass. Backers of the measure designed it that way on purpose, with state enabling legislation sponsored by Bay Area Democrats having passed last year.

“The polling on this issue has been consistent for several years now and it is polling in the mid-50s,” says Adina Levin, director of the advocacy group Seamless Bay Area. But the public’s appetite to pay for transportation improvements is a moving target, even though the idea tends to be popular with voters. Most public transit referendums, raising sales taxes to pay for transit improvements, are successful once they make it to the ballot. But it depends a lot on what specifically the electorate is being sold, and on who is doing the selling.

Nashville voters in 2018 resoundingly rejected a transit tax that was meant to pay for an ambitious rail plan developed by a mayor who, by the time of the vote, had resigned amid a sex scandal. Half a decade later they approved a more modest plan to improve bus service along with upgrades to streets and sidewalks. So far this year voters around the country have approved 33 ballot measures supporting public transit and rejected four, according to the American Public Transportation Association. One measure that went down to defeat was a statewide gas tax increase in Oregon tied to an ill-fated transportation funding plan. The plan was focused largely on roads, but its defeat has been bad for transit riders too. Portland’s transit system, TriMet, instituted widespread service cuts in August and eliminated two bus lines altogether. Philadelphia’s transit system is still waiting for additional funding from the state, but the politics of the state legislature, with a Senate dominated by rural Republicans, have made it a tough sell. Other measures are on the ballot this fall, including a half-cent sales tax to support transportation improvements and other programs in Tempe, Ariz., and expansion of a transit-dedicated sales tax in Seattle.

A proposal to build intercity passenger rail service on Colorado’s Front Range, the booming population center in the eastern part of the state, will go before voters too. That proposal has been in the works for years, as the communities along Interstate 25 have grown and traffic in the area has worsened. The measure would create a 0.333 percent sales tax to fund rail service within the Front Range Passenger Rail District. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis had initially pushed to have the tax on the ballot in 2024. But planners wanted to continue refining the concept, especially in light of disappointment over a voter-backed plan to build out rail transit in the Denver area a few decades ago that failed to deliver on its goals. Two years ago, Denver area residents also approved a measure allowing the regional transit authority to spend more of the revenue it collects.

The funding environment for transit is in some ways more difficult now than it was a few years ago. Passenger rail received new support during the Biden administration, and ridership is up on Amtrak. Some new services, like the restored Gulf Coast train between Mobile, Ala., and New Orleans, have exceeded expectations for ridership. But Congress has yet to renew the surface transportation spending package, and some active proposals would reduce federal funding for transit and passenger rail.

The Colorado intercity rail service will start slow, eventually running 10 daily trips between Denver and Fort Collins to the north and eight daily trips between Denver and Pueblo to the south, according to a service plan. The trains would run on existing tracks. Partly because of the uncertainty surrounding federal funding, the service plan doesn’t rely on federal grants at all — unusual for new rail service.

“We want to be able to deliver regardless of where the political winds are blowing,” says John Putnam, a former U.S. Department of Transportation official who chaired the Front Range Passenger Rail District. (Putnam clarified he was speaking only in his personal capacity, not on behalf of the campaign for the tax measure.)

Asking voters to approve higher taxes is always a risk, and perhaps especially so when affordability is a driving political concern. But it’s not as if the future looks any easier.

“Things generally get more complicated and more expensive the longer you wait,” Putnam says. “Our hope and anticipation is that this is the right time.”