Transit Month Runs All September in the Bay Area, With Free Events and a Ride Contest

September is Transit Month in the Bay Area, the eleventh time the region has run it. San Francisco Transit Riders and Seamless Bay Area host it, with support from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the transit agencies themselves. This year’s theme is “Adventure starts on transit,” and the calendar has more than 80 events on it, most of them free.

Here is what is still ahead, and what you can do from a phone.

The ride contest runs all month

The Ride Contest asks you to log transit trips taken between September 1 and 30 at ridecontest.com. Some prizes go to whoever takes the most rides; others enter your name in a raffle once per logged trip. BART’s prize list includes a seat in the BART mobile for you and a guest during a 2027 parade of your choosing, a Legacy Fleet HO scale model train car, and a 2026 BART holiday sweater. Organizers are also taking nominations for Transit Heroes of 2026.

September 11: the agency chiefs ride with you

BART General Manager Bob Powers and other regional transit chief executives are doing an All Aboard with Transit CEOs ride-along on Friday, September 11, across AC Transit, BART, Muni and Caltrain. It is open to riders who want to come along and ask questions. This year’s stated theme is financial efficiency, tied to the roughly $1 billion in cost savings the four agencies logged between July 2019 and June 2025 in a Metropolitan Transportation Commission review.

September 12 and 13: three retired BART cars you can board

The Western Railway Museum in Suisun City is opening a Rapid Transit History Center exhibit built around three legacy BART cars, the fleet BART has been retiring. Visitors can walk through them. The exhibit is open to the public September 12 and 13, 9:30am to 5pm, and it is ticketed. BART’s merchandise store, Railgoods, is running a pop-up at the museum on September 12 from 11am to 3pm. The museum is in Solano County, northeast of the city, so plan the trip.

September 15: All Aboard Transit Day

On Tuesday, September 15, agencies across the region encourage riders to try their systems. BART staff will hand out stickers around the system in the morning, and BART says riders still wearing one later in the day can collect merchandise from staff while supplies last.

September 19: an anime festival at a BART station

Let’s Glow, BART’s anime festival, returns on Saturday, September 19 at Warm Springs/South Fremont Station. It covers anime, art, music, cosplay and transit fandom, and it is free. BART asks for an RSVP through Eventbrite to help with a headcount, though it is not required.

Closer to home

The San Francisco events on the citywide calendar include pop-up transit art galleries. The largest local one falls at the end of the month: Muni Heritage Weekend on September 19 and 20, with free rides on vintage streetcars and buses at the San Francisco Railway Museum on Steuart Street.

If you are riding Muni this month, note that the agency’s next 112 buses have USB charging ports, with the first of them entering service in October.

The full regional calendar is at ca.transitmonth.org. For the rest of the month in the city, see our September 2026 guide.

Photo: Pi.1415926535, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.