Transbay Blog

BART survey data (2008). Top: rider home locations; bottom: rider employment locations. Courtesy of BART.

BART has released its 2008 Station Profile Study, updating its last study from 1998. The data, which is collected from rider surveys, is BART’s version of the census. It reveals the demographic profile of BART riders, and it provides valuable information on how riders use the BART system: where they are coming from, where they are going, how they travel from their home a nearby station, and how they travel to their destination after riding BART. The data, which is available both system-wide and for each individual station, confirms what we know anecdotally about the role of urban vs. suburban stations: 81% of riders at 16th/Mission walked to BART, while merely 3% walked to Orinda; 72% of riders drive to North Concord/Martinez, but a miniscule 1% drive to Powell. I plan to do some number-crunching on the data in the future; but for now, I wanted to share some interesting results and initial impressions. In addition to clarifying how BART riders currently make use of the system, the survey data reveals how the Bay Area could better take advantage of this critical regional asset than we do today. The lesson we learn from the data is the lesson that we already knew: we need to do a better job of linking transit and land use, particularly along BART’s heavy rail metro lines. This is something that we are always talking about, and the BART surveys do suggest that the region is moving in the right direction in terms of promoting transit-oriented development. Bicycle trips from home to station bumped up from 3% to 4%, while transit trips declined from 23% to 15%. Nearly half (49%) of riders access stations by car (34% solo, 10% dropoff, 5% carpool), the same as in 1998. However, more people are now walking to BART stations from their home than they were a decade ago: 31% in 2008, compared to 26% in 1998. More people are also walking from BART to work or other destination: 74% in 2008, compared to 67% in 1998. Furthermore, at 6 major CBD stations (12th St, 19th St, Lake Merritt, Berkeley, Montgomery, Powell) and 5 other mostly urban stations (Ashby, North Berkeley, El Cerrito Plaza, Colma, and Balboa Park), home origin points increased by 10% or more, while car and transit origins decreased. More home-based pedestrian trips at downtown stations reflect a trend toward urban/downtown infill housing, epitomized by Jerry Brown’s 10K housing initiative in Downtown Oakland and San Francisco’s Rincon Hill plan.

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UPDATE (24 April 2009): At its April 23 meeting, the BART board decided to postpone approval of the Oakland Airport Connector, but nonetheless approved the transfer of $50 million of seismic retrofit funding and $70 million of ARRA stimulus funding to the project. Meanwhile, the FEIR for eBART was approved 8-1, with Tom Radulovich dissenting. More details on those projects below.

My apologies for the slow posting schedule lately. I will be very busy in upcoming weeks, so posting will be on the slow side by necessity, and may have to go on hiatus. I have not yet forgotten about the promised posts on the Delta; but for now, here is a post on tomorrow’s BART board agenda.

BART’s $54 million FY10 budget deficit — which it is projected will enlarge to a $249 million deficit over the next four years — has already gotten quite a bit of publicity. To close that deficit, BART is considering several measures, including additional parking fees at East Bay stations, and a 10% fare hike starting July 1, 2009. BART may also reduce evening and weekend headways from 15 minutes back to 20 minutes, restoring the pre-2008 timetable; also under consideration is a reduction of service to the Peninsula stations from two lines to only one. Even if these changes were implemented, there would still remain a $23 million deficit for this fiscal year. To deal with that remaining $23 million gap, some combination of additional fare hikes are possible, including: a $2 increase to the SFO station fare, a 25-cent increase to the minimum fare, a 10-cent increase for transbay trips, or increasing the proposed 10% fare hike to 15%. Further service reductions are also a possibility, although raising fares would bring in considerably more revenue than the amount of money that would be saved by cutting service. Midday service between South Hayward and Fremont may be reduced from two lines to one line, and direct service between Richmond/Fremont and San Francisco may also be eliminated during midday hours.

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This morning, at a press conference held at the Lake Merritt BART station in Oakland, officials from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission revealed a regional transit plan for the Bay Area. Just days after announcing revisions to Transportation 2035, the current regional plan for the nine Bay Area counties, the Commission announced that it will now discard certain features of that plan. Planners now offer a replacement plan that will put the Bay Area on a different path, including transit infrastructure that will serve the region for decades to come. What was it that prompted MTC to develop a new plan?

“We realized the error of our ways,” admitted Steve Heminger, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.* “The climate change crisis demands that we take a truly new direction. If the Bay Area is to preserve its natural beauty and curb worsening air quality, it must grow in a way that reduces dependence on the personal automobile. Likewise, maintaining our position as a competitive region at the forefront of the state and the nation means getting more people off congested freeways and onto transit, in order to recoup millions of hours of productivity lost each year to traffic congestion. To get people out of their cars, we will need to invest in high-quality, cost-effective transit throughout the region. But the best strategy is to maximize space for new jobs in existing urban centers, rather than in far-flung office parks. So, in particular, we must dramatically improve and expand transit options in the dense urban core, which our former RTP largely neglected. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission is proud to unveil a new plan that corrects this deficiency in a bold and revolutionary way.”*

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First, A Few Numbers (and Acronyms)

Regular readers may recall our previous discussion of Transportation 2035, the latest update to MTC’s ongoing efforts on the Regional Transportation Plan. Earlier this year, we wrote a special feature that describes the multifaceted plan, fleshing out how MTC has proposed to allocate $226 billion of local, state, and federal transportation funding that was expected to become available to the Bay Area over the next quarter century. However, changes in the economy and funding climate have necessitated that MTC revise a few aspects of the RTP. The State of California yanked away STA money that funds transit operations; in the Bay Area, this means that local transit operators will lose access to over $55 million that they were relying upon for the remainder of this fiscal year, and no STA funding at all will be provided in upcoming years. Assuming that the state reinstates STA funding in five years, the Bay Area will have lost $1.2 billion of STA and spillover funds in the interim; MTC also projected a $4.5 billion loss in TDA revenue over the 25-year RTP timeline. Another change is VTA’s recent announcement that it can only afford to build the BART extension to San Jose as far as Berryessa Station, postponing the construction of the downtown subway alignment. This, in turn, is connected to the issue of declining transportation sales tax revenue; this is potentially problematic throughout the region, not just in Santa Clara County, although it is not yet clear just how problematic. Considering the new forecasts for transit revenue, the region’s transit operation shortfall will increase from $3.2 to $8.5 billion. This includes a $283 million shortfall for AC Transit, a $442 million shortfall for Golden Gate Transit, a $1.6 billion shortfall for SamTrans, a $1.9 billion shortfall for Muni, and a whopping $3.2 billion shortfall for VTA, which is the worst operation shortfall in the region. Meanwhile, the transit capital shortfall will increase from $16.1 to $17.1 billion. It also takes into consideration that the cost of the BART extension to San Jose has increased from $6.1 billion to $7.6 billion (year of expenditure). Overall, the $226 billion plan has been reduced in size to a $218 billion plan. The plan adds $1.3 billion of revenue: about $280 million in connection with AC Transit’s Measure VV parcel tax, and $1 billion of VTA joint development revenue. It also anticipates $3 billion of funds for high-speed rail, with half coming from Proposition 1A, and the other half coming from the federal stimulus package’s $8 billion allocation to high-speed rail.

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This morning, Judge Frank Roesch (of Alameda County Superior Court) heard arguments in the Lewis v. Metropolitan Transportation Commission case we discussed two weeks ago. The petitioners (former BART directors Lewis and Nakadegawa, and TRANSDEF) sought a preliminary injunction of MTC’s and ACTIA’s total allocation of about $315 million to the BART extension to Warm Springs, seeking to have those discretionary actions reversed as an illegal expenditure of public funds. However, Judge Roesch denied the preliminary injunction and took the case under submission, so none of the funding for BART to Warm Springs has been disturbed. In order to grant a preliminary injunction, Judge Roesch considered the irreparable harm that would be incurred by both parties by granting or not granting the injunction — and he appeared to be sympathetic to MTC’s and ACTIA’s arguments that the irreparable harm to them (by delaying and increasing the cost of the project) exceeded, or at least balanced, the irreparable harm to petitioners by proceeding with the project. Although BART was not listed as a party to the lawsuit, BART was also present and defended the project as being an important source of construction jobs. That said, if money is improperly allocated to a project, declaring the status of that project as shovel-ready is rather beside the point.

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Transit ridership has reached a 52-year high, reports APTA, with 10.7 billion transit trips taken in the year 2008. This represent a 4% increase over 2007, and vehicle miles traveled decreased 3.6% nationwide during the same period of time; it also represents a 38% increase since 1995, a rate that outpaces growth in both population and VMT. APTA’s data indicates that light rail systems enjoyed the largest ridership jump (8.3% increase), followed by paratransit (5.9% increase), commuter rail (4.7% increase), buses (3.9% increase), and heavy rail subways (3.5% increase). Although the Overhead Wire cautions us with a reality check, it is so encouraging to see that interest in transit nationwide survived both job losses and the decline in gas prices from a high near $5/gallon earlier in 2008.

With the notable exceptions of VTA’s light rail system and San Francisco Muni generally (both of whose ridership growth per mode fell behind the national average), ridership increases for major Bay Area transit operators not only reflect, but in most instances actually outpace, the national trend. Our commuter rail operators (ACE, Caltrain, and Capitol Corridor) significantly outpaced the national average, as did bus ridership for AC Transit and VTA:

APTA’s statistics also noted that some of the largest jumps in bus ridership occurred in cities with population under 100,000 (9.3% increase for smaller communities, compared to a 3.9% average increase across all bus operators). This trend was also reflected in the Bay Area. Some of our smaller bus-only transit operators enjoyed comparable increases in ridership, e.g. Fairfield-Suisin Transit (9.73% increase), Tri Delta (9.91% increase), and Rio Vista Delta Breeze, whose 3,400 daily bus riders in 2007 jumped to 8,400 in 2008. WHEELS ridership increased just 5.35%.

BART announced in February 2009 that it was moving forward on a $225 million contract to construct the subway portion of its planned extension to Warm Springs, which will tunnel under Central Park in Fremont. The 5.4-mile extension south of the existing Fremont terminal station will be the first stage of BART to Silicon Valley. Furthermore, VTA has announced that notwithstanding the passage of 2008 Measure B in Santa Clara County, BART to Silicon Valley will still be built in phases — and that the agency only intends to apply for federal New Starts funding to build BART as far as Berryessa Station. This proposed first phase would include only two of the six proposed stations and would completely postpone the expensive subway tunnel under Downtown San Jose. In the meantime, though, an additional wrinkle has developed. As we have mentioned before, in order to complete the funding portfolio for Warm Springs, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission diverted $91 million of Regional Measure 2 funds to Warm Springs, away from Dumbarton Rail, on the ground that the Warm Springs project was ready to go, but that Dumbarton was not yet ready. This decision has resulted in Dumbarton Rail being postponed indefinitely. Furthermore, the Alameda County Transportation Improvement Authority approved an over $220 million contribution to Warm Springs. These two contributions, combined, sum up to about one-third of the total project cost for Warm Springs. A lawsuit has now been filed against MTC and ACTIA, protesting the legality of both MTC’s swap of funds and ACTIA’s contribution to the Warm Springs extension. The challenge was filed by former BART Directors Sherman Lewis and Roy Nakadegawa, along with TRANSDEF. (TRANSDEF is a local transportation, environmental, and smart growth advocacy group that has quarreled with MTC over updates to the Regional Transportation Plan. TRANSDEF has also in the past year filed a lawsuit against the California High-Speed Rail Authority concerning the Altamont-Pacheco route alignment dispute, and again for recount of votes on 2008 Measure B, the sales tax for BART to Silicon Valley.)

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Although the underlying objective of BART to Silicon Valley may have been to furnish Diridon and Downtown San Jose with new gleaming subway stations, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority is currently setting its sight only as far as Berryessa Station in East San Jose: about two miles short of where the tracks are planned to dive into a subway under Santa Clara Street. The Berryessa station area is currently home to the San Jose Flea Market; it is hemmed in by nearby low-density, auto-oriented residential development, and it features no major transit connection point. It is, to say the least, an unlikely location for the terminus of a major rapid transit line. But the terminus it may indeed be, thanks to the fact that VTA is now faced with flat sales tax revenue through the year 2036 and cannot afford to build any more of the line. The extension to Berryessa is now expected to be complete by the year 2018, with the remainder of the extension following by 2025 at the earliest. The ballot text to 2008 Measure B opted against clearly explicating for voters the possibility (or was it near certainty?) that the project would be built in phases, rather than in one fell swoop from Milpitas, through San Jose to Santa Clara. Indeed, official reactions from Reed, Guardino, et al, immediately following the November 2008 election cried grudgingly for a phased project only before it became apparent that Measure B had actually passed — immediately followed by heaved sighs of relief once the vote tallies barely edged out past the required 2/3 mark. Nonetheless, the segment of the BART extension that VTA plans to submit this year for federal funding includes only two of the six planned stations: (i) the station at Montague and Capitol in Milpitas, where BART would connect with VTA light rail, and (ii) the station at Berryessa, a rendering of which is pictured below.

Rendering of Berryessa BART station; courtesy of VTA.

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It turns out that Transbay Blog does not excel at taking vacations, since we posted even during our “hiatus.” But in light of the interesting developments that are in store for 2009 on the local, state, and federal levels, this site is returning from hiatus, with the caveat that posts may appear on a somewhat irregular schedule. To make up for somewhat spotty posting during the past couple of months, here is the second installment in our series of track maps, this one focusing on the South Bay; I will probably add more details in the future, so you might consider it a first version. The image at right depicts the intermodal Caltrain/VTA station in downtown Mountain View, extracted from the map. San Jose and its environs possess quite a bit of track used for commuter rail (Caltrain, Capitol Corridor, ACE), freight, and VTA light rail. The map depicts track used by these various systems, with a focus on passenger rail, but select freight track is included to call attention to certain features. The map also includes potential track for the planned BART and light rail extensions, marked lightly in gray so as to not infringe on existing track that is more boldly colored. Since VTA has formally announced its intention to pursue the BART to Silicon Valley extension at the expense of all other Santa Clara County transit projects, we will probably not see both BART and new light rail any time soon. Nonetheless, the extensions are included to illustrate how they connect (or don’t quite connect, as the case may be) to service currently in operation. The map is high resolution and there is quite a bit of white space in places where track is sparse, so you may want to scroll or zoom around to catch the different sections. More detailed notes are included on the map itself, which you can click here to view.

Yes, Transbay Blog is technically still on a hiatus of sorts, but, at the risk of having to rename it the BART-to-San Jose Blog, I couldn’t resist sharing a gem from Michael Burns, General Manager of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority:

“Given that voters have endorsed BART not once, but twice,” VTA General Manager Michael Burns said, “from the staff’s perspective the priority is clear, and that priority is BART. [...] It’s clear we can’t see the BART project getting ($750 million in federal) money if we’re spending our local money on other projects,” Burns said in an interview earlier this week. “That just doesn’t add up.”

Sacrificing countywide transportation improvements, and funneling all money and efforts into BART? You don’t say. The reference to “other projects” of course includes Caltrain electrification; building high-speed rail will require electrification in any case (along with grade separations and other upgrades to the Caltrain corridor), albeit over a longer timeline than if VTA had prioritized funds earlier. “Other projects” also includes improvements to the Santa Clara-Alum Rock corridor, which could use an upgrade as much as any corridor in the South Bay. At one point in the not-so-distant past, this corridor through Downtown San Jose and the largely transit-dependent neighborhoods of East San Jose was slated for a light rail line that was supposed to debut service this year, in 2008; but it was not built, then it was later downgraded to a rapid bus, and it has since been put on hold altogether. Also envisioned was bus rapid transit for Monterey Highway, a completed Vasona light rail extension, and a Capitol Expressway light rail extension that would circle around to meet the existing Guadalupe Line, via incremental extensions built to Eastridge and Nieman. Michael Burns emphasizes that in 2008, the voters spoke in favor of BART; but in 2000, the voters had already spoken more definitively in favor of a countywide transportation plan that included not just BART, but also a more complete light rail network, along with electrification and and expansion of Caltrain. (2000 Measure A, which assessed a larger 1/2-percent sales tax for transportation, earned 70.6% of the vote that year; in contrast, 2008 Measure B will establish a smaller 1/8-percent tax, and it squeaked by with 66.78% of the vote this year.) VTA’s prioritization of the BART extension above all else is long-standing, cemented in place years before Measure B; Measure B simply gave VTA the green light it has long been aching to speed through. Bringing the axe to the forsaken “other projects” should not be interpreted as VTA’s eagerness to respond to the will of the voters, as Burns might have us believe. It has been the case all along that VTA has not had the wherewithal to finance both BART and the “other projects,” thrown anew into sharp relief by the sales tax revenue shortfall. We will, of course, wait with bated breath for VTA’s updated cost estimates for the BART extension, to be released in February 2009.