Obama FY 2011 Budget Includes Transit Funding for the Bay Area
The Obama Administration has released its proposed budget for FY 2011. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s portion of the budget, which accounts for $78.8 billion, mostly perpetuates the status quo approach to transportation spending. In particular, it includes requests for FHWA ($42.1 billion), FAA ($16.5 billion), FTA ($10.8 billion), the National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund ($4 billion), and FRA ($2.9 billion). The bulk of the FRA request consists of Amtrak ($1.6 billion) and high-speed rail ($1 billion). The budget also specifically allocates $527 million for the Livable Communities Program, to be used on projects that “increase transportation choice and integrate housing and land use into transportation decisions.”
Killing Muni Softly: End of FY10 Budget Scramble
In December 2009, the San Francisco MTA implemented sweeping changes to Muni service that affected more than half of the routes in the system. The changes redrew routes, renumbered routes, eliminated a few routes, eliminated some route segments, and even added some service. While those changes have not been completely successful in all aspects, we can point to at least some instances of positive change. The Valencia Street portion of the 26 did unnecessarily duplicate the workhorse Mission corridor, which was typically the better choice to minimize wait times. Despite the elimination of the 53 Southern Heights, one can make a good case that the current orientation of Potrero Hill routes provides more logical service. What’s more, eliminated routes and route segments were balanced with additions, as with the 5 Fulton (the evening Market Street segment and increased peak service) and the new 9L San Bruno limited service.
The State of California’s continued theft of transit funding has kept the MTA perpetually occupied with budget discussion — lately, with a $16.9 million gap through the end of this fiscal year. But the service changes that are now under consideration, while no less sweeping in the number of routes they touch, are of a quite different nature from the variety that were enacted in December 2009. That is, the goal of the latest proposed changes is not to make the system more efficient, but rather, smaller. Lines would retain their same routes, but service would run less frequently and end a little earlier. Some monthly pass holders would have to pay more, as well, adversely affecting a cross-section of transit-dependent San Franciscans. The total effect will, unfortunately, be to degrade the experience of riding transit in San Francisco, which will also likely chase away some choice riders. Less frequent service will not only exacerbate vehicle overcrowding and increase pass-ups, but will also diminish what, to my mind, is the primary convenience of urban transit: the luxury of service that is meant to be used spontaneously, without dependence on a timetable.
High-Speed Rail Stimulus Grants Announced
After almost a year of anticipation throughout the United States, the recipients of the discretionary high-speed rail stimulus grants have finally been announced, to time with President Obama’s State of the Union address. California has been especially excited by the opportunity to obtain much-needed federal money to add to the portfolio of funds that will be used to build California’s high-speed rail project. California was in fact so eager that the State applied for $4.7 billion (PDF), over half of the nation’s total allocation. We were actually awarded $2.344 billion, or about half of the amounted requested in the application. Of that, most ($2.25 billion) is set aside for high-speed rail, with a small remainder ($94 million) for other conventional rail improvements. It is indeed a respectable sum of money — intended to give a tangible boost to California’s startup corridor, which could become the test case for American high-speed rail, while still distributing enough money to other major corridors, so as to maintain widespread political support for this nascent national effort.
Numerous other areas around the country also received grants, including: $1.25 billion for Florida’s Tampa-Orlando corridor, $1.2 billion of HSR/Amtrak funding for the Northeast (of which the high-speed grant was just $485 million), $1.1 billion for Chicago-St. Louis-Kansas City, $823 million for Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Twin Cities, $620 million for Charlotte-Raleigh-Richmond-Washington, $598 million for the Pacific Northwest, $400 million for Ohio, $244 million for Chicago-Detroit-Pontiac, $17 million for Iowa, and $4 million for Texas. The list quite rightly hones in on the known priority corridors: Florida, but also the Midwest routes that are planned to feed into Chicago, which were awarded a total sum just shy of California’s (albeit distributed for use by several states).
An Open Letter to the Green Governor
To Governor Schwarzenegger:
It’s quite clearly the case, Green Governor, that we need to
fix California’s transit systems, which are broke and breaking.
Under-served areas had critical lifeline service put to the chopping block, but
climate change demands that we reduce vehicle miles traveled statewide.
Killing the gas sales tax and raising the excise tax will only facilitate
your relentless theft of transit funding, in this budget, as in so many
others — though your action now undermines the rulings of state courts.
Undeniably, you have started down the wrong path. For shame, Arnold, for shame.
Sincerely,
Transbay Blog
P.S. Rest assured that any message you may find hidden in this letter is merely coincidental.
Gearing Up for Livermore and Altamont (Part 1)
Residents of Livermore are fond of reminding us every so often that there is an outstanding “debt” to their city. They remind us that they have been paying BART taxes since the district’s beginning, and and that they have been waiting patiently for decades for the construction of their long-promised and past overdue BART extension. Indeed, a petition circulated a few years ago by Linda Jeffery Sailors (former mayor of Dublin, active in transportation efforts in the Tri-Valley, and an ardent supporter of both the Dublin/Pleasanton and Livermore extensions) gathered hundreds of signatures to demonstrate local support for the extension. In the meantime, Livermore has taken a back seat to the San Jose extension, which is a more expensive and complicated project serving a county that is not even in the district — even though Livermore is located within the district, albeit at the Bay Area’s easternmost fringe. But planning for the Livermore extension is moving forward, and BART has released its Draft Program Environmental Impact Report (DPEIR) for the project.
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.
