An encounter between a dapper downtown business leader, a policy think-tank wonk, a passionate labor organizer and a transit advocate in a faded Muni T-shirt sounds like the setup to a very bad, very San Francisco-specific joke.

But this rendezvous is real, and it’s the start of a massive effort to save Bay Area public-transit agencies from financial calamity.

“This is going to be a huge, huge grassroots effort in five counties and it starts with all of those core folks — but it is going to expand tremendously from there,” said Maggie Muir of KMM Strategies, which is providing political consulting for the effort.

The passage this month of California Senate Bill 63, authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener and now awaiting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature, should pave the way for a one-of-a-ki

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