Barnali Ghosh Wins Uncontested Race For BART Board Director

Berkeley-based transportation activist and historian Barnali Ghosh has effectively won the election for the position of BART Director from District 3 after no other candidate filed their application to run before the August 14 deadline. To celebrate her win, her campaign hosted a small reception at Elaichi Co., a café in downtown Berkeley on September 5.

At the reception, Ghosh spoke about the significance of BART in her own life, using it almost exclusively to commute in the Bay Area for fifteen years when she did not have a driver’s license. She highlighted the challenges facing BART today, chief among them the lack of funding. BART is currently going through a fiscal crisis , and is expected to operate on a deficit to the tune of $26 million in the next financial year starting July 2025.

She urged everyone gathered to take an active role in shaping the future of BART by attending the BART Board’s public meetings and making their voices heard, which will help lobby for additional federal, state, and regional funding.

“I’m going to be fighting for a thriving BART that we can all enjoy; that our next generation enjoys and our current generation enjoys,” she said. “I want to make sure that the elevators are working, the escalators are working, and I want to do this in a way that makes sure that the BART workers are healthy and thriving.”

Ghosh will be representing District 3, which includes the Richmond, El Cerrito del Norte, El Cerrito Plaza, North Berkeley, Downtown Berkeley and Ashby BART stations.

Ghosh’s campaign earned endorsements from the outgoing Director of District 3, Rebecca Saltzman; President of the BART Board of Directors Bevan Duffy; Vice-President of the BART Board of Directors Mark Foley; and BART Directors Lateefah Simon and Janice Li. The mayors of Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito, and Pinole also endorsed her candidature.

Before her foray into politics, Ghosh was a transportation activist and a local historian in Berkeley. During the pandemic, she spearheaded a successful campaign to rename a street in downtown Berkeley after 20th-century South Asian activist Kala Bagai.

As a historian, she runs Berkeley’s South Asian Radical History Walking Tour with her husband Anirvan Chatterjee, which chronicles the history of South Asian immigrants in the region.

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