BART Sets Ridership Record During Bay Bridge Closure
A quick remark on the slow posting around here lately: I am now in the middle of a several-week period of time that has been one of the personal busiest and most stressful periods in recent memory. There are several posts and news developments that I have been wanting to write about, but there has just been literally no time to blog. My apologies for the erratic schedule. Things will probably continue to be slow here for a couple weeks, and there will probably have to be a similar “hiatus” in December, as well. During that time, I will try to catch up on queued posts as I can, albeit a bit sporadically. I appreciate your patience.
For now, just a quick update. As you know, the weekday commute shutdown of the Bay Bridge that we just narrowly avoided on the first Tuesday after Labor Day finally caught up to us when the Bay Bridge was shut down for emergency repairs, and we are now on the second consecutive workday without this critical regional link. I suspect that while some people may have stayed at home yesterday, more will find that to be difficult a second day in a row, so the crowds on transit and the freeways may have worsened somewhat as compared to Wednesday. In any event, here is a traffic snapshot, depicting the state of the Bay Area’s freeways around 6:20 p.m. on the night of October 28, the first day of bridge closure:
Courtesy of Google Maps.
Upcoming Meetings in San Leandro
The exact fate, scope, and timing of AC Transit’s bus rapid transit project is now up in the air, since AC Transit announced it would like to divert some of the project’s funding toward operations. Nonetheless, the planning work that has been underway for BRT still continues — so that the project can be built in the future, when there is a better understanding of the funding situation and what a realistic timeline would look like. This fall, meetings will be held throughout the East Bay to educate citizens and get feedback on the locally preferred alternative for BRT. The goal then will be to the complete environmental documents by about spring 2010.
An initial set of meetings will be held in San Leandro over the next couple of weeks. The first meeting is tonight, and there will be two additional meetings, on the evening of October 27, and the morning of November 7. The focus of these meetings is how BRT will operate on the southernmost segment of the route, in San Leandro along East 14th Street, between the Oakland city limit and the Bayfair BART station. AC Transit, plus all three cities along the route, should know that despite the recent funding setback, this project remains an important priority for their constituents who want to see better transit in the East Bay. So these meetings are not only a nice opportunity to learn more details about the project, but are also a key opportunity for advocates to express their support for BRT.
The meeting details:
- Thursday, October 22 – San Leandro Public Library (300 Estudillo Avenue, San Leandro), 6:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
- Tuesday, October 27 – Bayfair Mall, 2nd floor (15555 East 14th Street, San Leandro), 6:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
- Saturday, November 7 – City Hall South Office (835 East 14th Street, San Leandro), 10:00 a.m.-12:00 noon
Click here to see the flyer (PDF) with full details, including information about how to win a free AC Transit ticket.
Vallejo and Benicia Work Toward Transit Consolidation
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| Vallejo Transit. Courtesy of munidave. |
If Bay Area transit is balkanized — and with so many operators serving a single region, one is on safe ground in saying that it is — then Solano County may be its most fragmented quarter. In San Francisco, the SFMTA’s service area includes about 800,000 residents; and in the East Bay, well over one million people call AC Transit their local provider. By contrast, six transit operators — Benicia Breeze, Dixon Readi-Ride, Fairfield-Suisun Transit, Rio Vista Delta Breeze, Vacaville City Coach, and Vallejo Transit — serve the 407,000 residents of Solano County with a combination of fixed and flex routes. It’s an arrangement of decentralized fiefdoms, consisting of small transit operators that even many longtime Bay Area residents have never heard of. These operators provide some local lifeline service within urbanized areas, as well as limited regional service that connects Solano County’s fringe cities to nodes in the region’s core transit network.
The New Market Street: 6th and 8th Street Turns
After years of seemingly-endless discussion, the quest to remake San Francisco’s Market Street took a step forward, moving beyond talk and studies to action. In a six-week trial that began today, motorists traveling inbound on Market Street are encouraged to turn south off of Market at 10th Street, and are required to turn right on 8th and 6th Streets. The goal is to discourage motorists from using Market for long-distance car trips, thereby reducing traffic congestion and easing the way for numerous Muni routes and bicyclists.
The pilot study for the intersections at 8th/Market and 6th/Market is only the first step in a long-term plan prepared by the SFCTA, which consists of a variety of changes — incremental ones like those that began today, along with more ambitious recommendations — that will eventually transform Market Street into a premiere urban space and improve its functionality as an important corridor for transit riders, pedestrians, and bicyclists. Although cars are not planned to be banned outright, a combination of forced southward turns and restricting turns onto Market at key through-traffic intersections will substantially reduce auto traffic, by making Market an even less desirable street for motorists than it is now.
I stopped by the intersection of 8th and Market today, at about 9:00 a.m. At that time, the new operation proceeded pretty smoothly. Only a couple drivers were confused and attempted to steer straight through the intersection; but traffic control officers were there to guide motorists to turn south on 8th, while keeping the crosswalk safe for pedestrians. The Chronicle noted that bicyclists outnumbered motorists on inbound Market. Judson True of the SFMTA and Leah Shahum of the SF Bicycle Coalition were on hand to do interviews, field questions, and generate interest and goodwill toward the Better Market Street project.
New signage has been posted in advance of the intersection, putting motorists on notice about the required southbound turn. Drivers lined up in the southernmost lane of Market Street to turn right, opening the adjacent lane for buses, bicyclists, and taxis:
Whither East Bay BRT?
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| Courtesy of AC Transit. |
The AC Transit Board of Directors held a meeting to confront head-on the risk that the agency’s current financial crisis poses to its planned 17-mile bus rapid transit (BRT) project, which would extend from downtown Berkeley to San Leandro, via Telegraph Avenue, downtown Oakland, and East 14th Street. The State has postponed allocating an important chunk of funding for BRT, which will delay the project. AC Transit also plans to cut about 15% of its service hours to set right its operating deficit. The agency is thus considering using BRT funds to enhance its operating budget. Doing so would alleviate the pain of service cuts, but it would also put on hold a major regional project that is the centerpiece of AC Transit’s planning vision.
The directors finally decided upon a compromise solution, authorizing some of the money to be redirected toward operations and restore some service that was to be cut. However, they also decided to hold onto another portion of the funding, at least for now. That likely won’t be the end of the story.
PARK(ing) Day 2009
Last week on PARK(ing) Day, I carved out some time to run around to a few different neighborhoods in San Francisco, enjoying parking spots that were transformed temporarily into miniature parks and pockets of usable public space. While I had planned to get a post up with some pictures much sooner than this, I didn’t even get a hold of the pictures until several days after the fact. Anyway, I hope that you’ll enjoy these additional, albeit tardy, snapshots of this wonderful annual event.
The prize for the wonkiest park(ing) spot may have to go to the San Francisco Planning Department, which set up shop behind Caffe Trieste, at Gough & Market. The Planning Department corner featured a “build your own urban environment” exhibit that even attempted to get visitors excited about transit and the density bonus:
FTA and TIFIA Funds for AC Transit, Central Subway, and Transbay
This week, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) announced various grants, including money that will be coming to the Bay Area. One pot of money in the ARRA federal stimulus bill that we have not yet discussed here are the Transit Investments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction (TIGGER) grants. Not to be confused with the TIGER grants (which have not yet been announced), TIGGER grants are awarded to applicants pursuing programs that are specifically geared toward greenhouse gas reduction. The money could be used for technological upgrades, or it could be used to replace diesel buses with hybrids, which is what will happen in states like Nevada, Michigan, and Alabama. But before you get too excited, only $100 million is available nationwide, and the FTA has spread that money thinly among 43 transit agencies. AC Transit received the third-largest allocation in the bunch: a $6.4 million grant for photovoltaic modules. From the USDOT press release:
Install photovoltaic capacity to generate “green” hydrogen: Install multiple PV modules at its Central Maintenance Facility in Hayward. Combined with AC Transit’s already-installed solar capacity, this solar installation will produce the renewable electricity equivalent to what will be required to produce 180 kg/day of “green” hydrogen.
Separately, the FTA also announced that the Central Subway has received a $9.9 million grant, which will the SFMTA will apply toward carrying out further design of the T-Third Street light rail extension from 4th & King, through South of Market to Chinatown. The federal government will ultimately supply roughly $950 million toward this project (about 60% of the $1.57 billion that is now believed will be the total cost). To date, the Central Subway has received $66 million of federal New Starts funding.
Charting the Bay Area Seismic Retrofit Effort
On October 17, 2009, the Bay Area will remember the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake. By the numbers, the Loma Prieta was not something to sneeze at. Roughly 7.0 magnitude; 63 people killed; thousands injured; significant damage in places like the Marina District; and, of course, the silver lining: the collapse and ultimate removal of the Embarcadero Freeway, the Cypress Structure, and part of the Central Freeway. And yet, as we are often reminded, the Loma Prieta — which the U.S. Geological Survey has indicated was merely 6% as intense as the 1906 earthquake — will pale in comparison to the far more serious quake that will inevitably strike in the future. The Hayward Fault has not had a major earthquake since 1868, before the East Bay was densely populated, and both the Hayward and the San Andreas are due for major quakes. It hardly needs to be said that such a quake — whether located here in the Bay Area, or located just to the east of the Bay Area in the Delta, at the hub of California’s water conveyance system — will carry with it potentially profound destructive and disruptive capabilities. We will spare you repetition of the doomsday predictions that have already been offered (since we will probably get an earful of those throughout the next month), and instead simply encourage you to take simple steps now to prepare in advance.
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| Retrofitted properties, courtesy of EERI/base map Google. |
Readying the Bay Area so that it can bounce back, rebuild, and regenerate its economy after the next major earthquake will be a regional and multidisciplinary effort. An important part of the solution is clearly to strengthen existing buildings, to give them a fair shot of standing in the next quake, thereby saving lives. The race to complete retrofits has an unknown finish line — but it is a critical component of the effort to diminish the risk, extent, and severity of the damage that will occur to inhabitable structures and infrastructure in a major quake. And that raises an interesting question: just how much has been accomplished in the 20 years that have elapsed since the Loma Prieta? It’s estimated that thousands of structures around the region have already been and continue to be seismically retrofitted. Tracking down all those retrofit projects would be a Herculean effort for any single person. As a result, a complete catalog of such retrofits has proven elusive. But thanks to a community mapping project conceived by structural engineer David Bonowitz and sponsored by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) in Oakland, the general public now has at its fingertips a new source of information about seismic retrofits undertaken since 1989. The Bay Area Seismic Retrofit Map, which is developed by EERI and Northern California structural engineer volunteers, attempts to keep track of it all — everything ranging from modest residential structures to high-profile seismic retrofits of government buildings and transportation infrastructure. As the map is completed, it will become an increasingly valuable tool for determining trends; for studying the geographic distribution of retrofits that have occurred to date; and for encouraging people to fill in holes on the map, by taking advantage of incentives to retrofit their own homes. But the map is very much a work in progress, and filling it in is a collaborative effort. Anyone — be they an engineer, architect, government agency, or individual citizen — who was either involved in a retrofit project, or who knows about a project that is not yet charted on the map, is highly encouraged to contribute. Check it out.
