Most of BART's Capital-Funded Jobs Aren't New Construction

BART -- the Bay Area's regional rail system, which budgets its capital account (new stations, cars, construction) separately from operations -- lists 4,599.75 authorized full-time positions in its own FY26 position budget⧉.▸ Of those, 839.625 -- 18.3 percent -- are paid from capital and reimbursable funds, not the $1.19 billion operating budget carrying BART's $375 million structural deficit⧉. The distinction matters: capital dollars mostly arrive as time-limited project grants, not a recurring base like fares and sales tax, so a position paid that way rests on a less permanent pipeline than one on the operating payroll. BART's own department breakdown⧉ shows where that capital-funded headcount sits: 327.5 positions in Maintenance and another 104 in Rolling Stock & Shops -- 51.4 percent of every capital-funded job at the district -- versus 296.3, or 35.3 percent, in Office of Infrastructure Delivery, the department built to plan and construct new capital projects.

This is legal, and it is not unique to BART.▸ 49 U.S.C. § 5302(4)(E)), the federal statute governing Federal Transit Administration grants, defines "preventive maintenance" as one of the activities that counts as a "capital project" -- the same definition that covers acquiring rail cars, constructing stations, and rehabilitating buses. Capital grants generally draw on a wider pool of federal, state, and regional dollars than the fare and tax revenue funding operations alone, so classifying maintenance work as capital gives a transit agency room to pay some of its everyday repair staff from a different account than the one squeezed by ridership shortfalls.

That capital share hasn't always run this size.▸ BART's own summary shows capital and reimbursable dollars funded 22.7 percent of positions in FY24, falling to 18.5 percent by FY25 -- almost the entire agency-wide drop of 182.6 positions concentrated in one department. Maintenance's capital-funded positions fell from 508.25 to 325, a decrease of 183.25, while its operating-funded headcount rose by a nearly matching 167.3. BART's own table records the change; it does not explain the reason, and the capital share has held close to 18 percent every year since.

Put in dollars, the scale is comparable to a meaningful slice of BART's own deficit.▸ BART's FY27 income statement⧉ books $803,651,684 for labor and benefits across 3,697.55 preliminary operating-funded positions -- about $217,300 per position, agency-wide. Applying that average to the 328.5 capital-funded Maintenance positions in BART's FY27 preliminary budget would put roughly $71.4 million of payroll on the capital side of the ledger rather than the operating side -- about a fifth of the $375 million gap the FY27 budget was built to close. BART's actual maintenance-craft pay scales differ enough from the agency-wide average that this is an order-of-magnitude comparison, not an official BART estimate.

The split isn't uniform across BART.▸ Police, which carries no responsibility for track, stations, or rolling stock, holds 409 positions in FY26 -- all funded from the operating budget, none from capital or reimbursable dollars. Infrastructure Delivery runs the other direction: 296.3 of its 357 positions, 83 percent, are capital-funded, appropriate for a department built to plan and build new construction rather than maintain what already exists.