Three incumbents and a newcomer hold commanding leads in Bay Area transit agency elections
Four candidates vying for seats on the BART and AC Transit boards hold commanding leads, as voters decidesteering two of the Bay Area’s largest transit agencies through a pandemic-era ridership collapse and looming fiscal crisis.
In BART District 6 – including Fremont, Union City, and South Hayward – Liz Ames, a civil engineer, and one-term incumbent, leads her main competitor by nearly 20 percentage points.at BART, with the agency’s largest union and five directors endorsing Ames’s opponent, software engineer Lance Nishihira. Ames earned the support of fiscally conservative directors Deborah Allen and John McPartland along with the BART police union.
While Ames largely voted in tandem with the BART majority during her first term, she has often sided with the minority on contentious issues. Ames has voted against pay raises at BART citing fiscal concerns and backed the agency’s inspector general, who unsuccessfully sought more authority to investigate fraud, waste, and abuse.
At AC Transit, the East Bay’s biggest bus operator, Sarah Syed, a longtime transportation planner opened up a wide lead in the race for Ward 3, which includes Alameda and San Leandro. Syed’s opponent, Stewart Chen is president of the Oakland Chinatown Improvement Council. Syed said she would prioritize racial justice as AC Transit undertakes a service restructuring and touted her years of transit planning experience at LA Metro, BART and VTA. Her opponent, Stewart Chen, president of Oakland Chinatown Improvement, focused his campaign on making riders feel safer on buses and expanding Asian-American representation on the board.
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