Vol. I, No. 50 · San Francisco — Wednesday, October 14, 2026 · Price: in the office Tuesday to Thursday

BY INES CALLOWAY, TRANSIT DESK

In the 2003 fiscal year, the bottom of the dot-com bust, an average of 29,417 people a weekday got off BART at Montgomery Street, the Financial District’s station. This September, 18,908 did.

That is 41 percent of the station’s riders in September 2019, and fewer than in any pre-pandemic year of BART’s station record, which begins in 1999. September is a fair stand-in for the year: in 2019 it averaged 46,263, against 45,842 for the fiscal year. Every rider leaving the station passes a fare gate, so the count is a firm tally of BART riders arriving downtown. It is not a count of office workers, since anyone who drives or rides Muni never shows up in it. BART’s 2025 hourly counts show the station’s five-day week turned into three busier days and two thin ones.

Montgomery’s dot-com high was 36,409 riders a weekday, in fiscal 2001, and it hit bottom two years later. By fiscal 2019 it reached 45,842. In September 2020 it averaged 3,444. Each September since has beaten the last; this one’s 17.5 percent gain was the biggest since 2022. September included Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference at Moscone Center. August, without it, averaged 18,382, only 3 percent less.

Montgomery trails the city. Among San Francisco’s eight BART stations, September riders ran from 41 percent of 2019 levels there to 56 percent at 24th Street Mission. Embarcadero, the district’s other stop, was at 47 percent. Powell Street, the shopping and cable car stop one station west, was at 54, and the whole system at 52. Much of Montgomery’s drop is shared across BART; it trails the whole system by about 11 points.

In 2019, Montgomery’s Fridays drew 41,727 riders, 88 percent of a Tuesday-through-Thursday day, and its Mondays drew 96 percent. In 2025, Fridays drew 11,314, or 67 percent of midweek, and Mondays 77 percent. On a Friday the station’s busiest hour, 8 a.m., went from 10,395 riders to 2,087, about one in five.

The Friday drop belongs to the office stations. Embarcadero’s Fridays fell from 88 percent of midweek to 67. Powell’s Fridays fell too, from 26,762 riders in 2019 to 11,405 in 2025, but its midweek days fell about as far. A Friday there still drew 101 percent of a midweek day, against 103 in 2019. That made Powell’s average 2025 Friday slightly busier than Montgomery’s (11,314). In 2019 Montgomery led by nearly 15,000.

BART counts paid trips, and it spent 2024 and 2025 installing taller gates against riders who skip paying. Skippers went uncounted in 2019, so on that point the drop is understated. The Friday figures come from 2025, the latest hourly file, with holidays and systemwide slowdowns left out.

BART’s counts are solid; reading them as office attendance is less so. Montgomery also serves shoppers, hotel guests and conventions.

In 2003, 29,417 riders a weekday was the bottom. No September since 2019 has come close to it.

The ban, written after the Nuru corruption case, covers asking anyone with business before an official’s department. It has been waived 29 times since 2023, more than half of them last year. Board President Rafael Mandelman wants supervisors to be able to get waivers too.

BY CONSTANCE FEENEY, CITY HALL

On Thursday, July 16, PG&E gave the San Francisco Fire Department a new fire engine. The utility said the gift came through the city’s behested-payment process: a donation made at a city official’s request.

Since 2022, San Francisco officials have been barred from asking anyone with business before their department for such donations. The Board of Supervisors can lift the ban for six months at a time. It has done so 29 times: 5 in 2023, 4 in 2024, 16 in 2025 and 4 so far this year, the latest on September 29. By the desk’s count, 7 of 2025’s 16 went to an office that had won a waiver for the same purpose less than a year before. The waivers now help pay for fire engines, shelter beds and parks. The city’s rule requires no report of who was asked.

The ban answered federal corruption charges against city officials. In the 2010s, Mohammed Nuru, then the director of Public Works, often had companies with business before his department give to an account he controlled at a nonprofit. Nothing in the waiver records shows that any donor got something in return. The waiver was added later in 2022; the Ethics Commission approved it 3 to 2. Most waivers name only a type of donor, such as “various private entities and organizations.”

They have also covered the APEC summit, pandas for the zoo, cancer screening for firefighters and the District Attorney’s “technology needs.” The mayor’s office was named on every waiver in 2023 and 2024. In 2025, Daniel Lurie’s first year as mayor, it was on 11 of 16. The Assessor, the District Attorney and the homelessness department’s own directors got the other five.

A waiver lasts six months, but the Board can always pass another. The homelessness department has had six for shelter since October 19, 2023. Counting six months from each approval, it has been free to ask on 981 of the 1,092 days since, about nine days in ten.

The Board cannot grant a waiver to itself, a limit the supervisors wrote in 2022. In September 2025, Board President Rafael Mandelman introduced an ordinance to remove it. “It is not great to be taking us, other elected officials, appointed officials, off the field in this moment when we are finding our public resources so constrained,” he said, as quoted by Mission Local.

The Ethics Commission approved his bill in July. It added a rule that every waiver holder report donors and amounts within 60 days, and an end date of June 30, 2029, for the Board’s own waivers. The bill needs eight of 11 votes and is still waiting for a committee.

Supervisor Jackie Fielder wants tighter rules: a list of everyone approached, a year’s wait before a repeat waiver for the same fundraising, and eight votes for any waiver. Mandelman opposes the wait. On September 17 she joined a 3–0 committee vote for his waiver letting the Film Commission ask San Francisco Travel and hotels for marketing money. The full Board adopted it 11–0 on September 29, the 29th waiver.

The count of 29 holds through the Board’s October 6 meeting, the latest with minutes posted. The clerk’s list does not record what the waivers raised. State law makes elected officials report such payments of $5,000 or more a year from one source, the commission’s staff notes. The city’s own reporting rule was replaced by the 2022 ban, and the waiver law asks for no report. At least one waiver carries its own promise. The holders of the May 2025 waiver for fire engines agreed to report their donations to the Board within 60 days of its end.

PG&E’s engine arrived with a news release. No rule yet requires the city to say who else it asked.

ON THE CALENDAR

The Afterburn: TechCrunch Disrupt Edition. Drinks and appetizers for founders, investors and others coming off a day at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, thrown with Backblaze and Flamethrower; the page promises no panels and no presentations. 349 had registered as of early Tuesday, up from 3 when the desk first saw the page on September 17; one spot was left at that count. A one-off, not part of a series, with one host listed, James Leaverton.

Wednesday, October 14, 6:00 PM · Yerba Buena (address on registration) · free · lu.ma/n5rphnfy

From the desk’s calendar: public Luma pages, counts as of October 13, 1:54 AM. Tell the desk about the gathering it missed.

SOURCES & RECEIPTS

1. BART, “Fiscal Year Weekday Average Exits” by station, FY99–FY20 (July–June years), bart.gov, downloaded October 14, 2026. 2. BART Monthly Ridership Reports, average weekday exits by station, each September, 2011–2026, and August 2026; Dreamforce ran September 15–17, 2026, per Salesforce. 3. BART hourly origin-destination files, afcweb.bart.gov, 2019 and 2025 (the 2026 file is empty); weekdays more than 25% below that weekday’s systemwide median dropped, 17 in 2019 and 24 in 2025. 4. BART news release, March 17, 2025; CBS News Bay Area, January 11, 2024. Figures and queries in receipts.json.

2. NBC Bay Area, July 16, 2026. 6. Clerk of the Board, Behested Payments Waivers, DataSF 8w9a-q5s8, queried October 14, 2026, 28 rows, current through July 14, 2026; the 29th is File 260857, adopted September 29, 2026; Board minutes (draft), July 14 through October 6, 2026, show no other. The grouping by purpose is the desk’s. 7. SF Ethics Commission staff memo, November 14, 2025 (Ord. 232-21 and 204-22). 8. Mission Local, November 7, 2025, and September 29, 2026. 9. Ethics Commission, File No. 250947 as approved, July 2026; Executive Director’s report, October 9, 2026; Fielder, File No. 261016. 10. Government Audit and Oversight Committee minutes, September 17, 2026, File No. 260857; Board of Supervisors minutes (draft), September 29, 2026. 11. Res. 261-25, File No. 250398, adopted May 20, 2025. Queries in receipts.json.

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