Transbay Blog

Yesterday’s big news item (alas, I had not a scrap of free time to write about this yesterday, but better late than never) in the world of transportation was the Obama Administration’s unveiling of its strategic plan for a national high-speed rail system. The so-called “down payment” on this system is $13 billion: $8 billion of stimulus funds, and an additional $1 billion per year for five years proposed for the FY2010 budget. Video footage of President Obama’s announcement is posted on the White House blog; the strategic plan, corridor map, and other materials are available at this link.

The strategic plan identifies ten high-speed corridors (California, Pacific Northwest, Chicago Hub Network, South Central, Gulf Coast, Florida, Southeast, Keystone, Empire, and Northern New England), in addition to the Northeast Corridor. The identified corridors are based on the previously designated 90 mph corridors:

Courtesy of FRA. Link to full-size map (2.28 MB PDF).

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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%.

Courtesy of Politico.com.

So now that outgoing Mary Peters will officially be replaced by Republican Illinois Rep. Ray LaHood as the new U.S. Secretary of Transportation, all we can say is: seriously? The news comes right on the heels of news that the much-anticipated federal stimulus package will be hastily applied to shovel-ready road projects that will only prompt more driving, and transit advocates have erupted in protest over President-Elect Obama’s excessive commitment to expanding our nation’s system of roads and bridges. Yours truly is not exactly a devoted fan of MTC’s Steve Heminger, who was one of the top candidates for the post, but he at least has a developed transportation record. For LaHood, there is a record, albeit a somewhat spotty one. Encouragingly, though, that record shows Ray LaHood crossing party lines on transportation issues. This year, he co-sponsored HR 6030, a bill that amends the Internal Revenue Code, allowing a tax credit for half of the cost an employer incurs to furnish its employees with tax-free transit passes. He voted in favor of Amtrak reauthorization and the Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act, and he has advocated on behalf of bicyclists. That strikes us as more of a minimum for someone filling this post under an Obama cabinet; is that as good as we can do? LaHood has served on the House Appropriations Committee, but he has not worked specifically on funding for transit. Some have expressed optimism about his managerial skills. Still, what truly matters is the underlying policy that Obama will drive once he is in office. He has pledged in the past that he will to do battle with climate change, and we hope that Obama will not undermine the importance of the role for progressive transportation and land use policy in that battle. What does it say that Obama has chosen this appointment as a sacrifice to bipartisanism, and what does that reveal about Obama’s commitment, or lack thereof, to this increasingly critical issue? Quite a lot, we fear — but not too much, we continue to hope; we refer you to the title of this post. Update (19 Dec 2008): CQ transcript with brief LaHood blurb here.

The Congress for the New Urbanism has issued a list of the top ten freeways in the United States whose demolition, as CNU has aptly phrased it, would “stimulate valuable revitalization by replacing aging urban highways with boulevards.” These are the freeways on the list:

1. Alaskan Way Viaduct, Seattle, WA
2. Sheridan Expressway, Bronx, NY
3. The Skyway and Route 5, Buffalo, NY
4. Route 34, New Haven, CT
5. Claiborne Expressway, New Orleans, LA
6. Interstate 81, Syracuse, NY
7. Interstate 64, Louisville, KY
8. Route 29, Trenton, NJ
9. Gardiner Expressway, Toronto, ON
10. 11th Street Bridges and the Southeast Freeway, Washington D.C.

Embarcadero Freeway. Credits: Telstar Logistics (top), Wayfaring (bottom).

Since San Francisco’s infamous Freeway Revolt, the Bay Area has enjoyed first-hand examples of successfully reborn neighborhoods that bloomed on the land once occupied by freeways, but then returned to human access. Given the successful revitalization of San Francisco’s Embarcardero — the addition of spacious pedestrian plazas; the adaptive reuse of the Ferry Building; and historic streetcar service so well-used that it is apparently “too popular for its own good” — it is easy to forget that before the 1989 earthquake, there was a functioning double-decker Embarcadero Freeway that viciously sliced the waterfront off from the rest of the city. Meanwhile, empty fenced lots that still remain on and near the redesigned Octavia Boulevard in Hayes Valley retain an eerie deadness that feels decidedly out of place, when set off against the density that characterizes the rest of the neighborhood. Those empty lots serve as a keen reminder of the Central Freeway that once stood there. But one day, they, too, will be filled with new homes, in accordance with the zoning controls adopted in the Market-Octavia Plan that was approved this past spring. And yet, for these successes, we might have done even better. It would be a bit much to hope for the removal of Interstates 580 and 880 in Oakland, but what if they had never been constructed? Instead of thousands of drivers using freeways to speed past largely neglected neighborhoods in East Oakland, what if those thousands of people rode trains through subway tunnels aligned under East 14th Street and MacArthur Boulevard, with a neighborhood station serving each of the commercial districts that are strung along those two thoroughfares? It is a fun thought experiment to consider what the Bay Area’s urban landscape would look like had our transportation network developed to look more like that of Europe, and less like California.

None of the top ten freeways in the CNU list are in the Bay Area, or even California. If the choice was yours to make, which freeways would you demolish (either in California or elsewhere)?

It’s official: according to the WalkScore.com rankings, San Francisco has been determined to be America’s most walkable city, as reported by the Chronicle. Our fair city’s score of 86 out of 100 just edged out New York’s 83, Boston’s 79, Chicago’s 76, and Philadelphia’s 74. The WalkScore algorithm does have some shortcomings (which the site frankly admits) — pedestrian conditions on Stockton Street in SF’s Chinatown could be much better than they are now, but that did not stop Chinatown from receiving a top score of 99 out of 100, a score largely based on the high density of a large variety of shops and services in a very compact area. But for anyone who has strolled through San Francisco’s downtown or neighborhood commercial districts, this news does not really come as too much of a surprise. Check out the complete listing of neighborhood scores here.

But the most revealing part of the article was not the part glorifying San Francisco, but rather, the part indicating that the Bay Area, taken as a whole, could be much more walkable than it is now. The Bay Area region fell in third place, “well below the greater Washington, D.C., and Boston regions,” according to the Chron. This reflects the fact that while the Washington, D.C. area has allowed Metro to shape dense land use patterns near stations (even for stations outside of the central core), the Bay Area has been slower to allow BART to have the same effect. We should be careful about discussing density and walkability in the same breath, as they are not equivalent. An older suburban downtown whose buildings front directly onto the street is quite walkable, if not particularly dense, and on the flip side, high-rises alone cannot make a neighborhood truly walkable if the street level fails to provide safety and amenities for pedestrians. But well-planned density that is sensitive to the street provides the extra bodies that make a walkable district that much more bustling and successful.

Courtesy Beyond DC.

Consider Bethesda, Maryland, pictured at right. Located on the D.C. Metro Red Line, Bethesda is a great example of how dense, walkable districts can bloom around rail nodes, even in an otherwise suburban setting. (Check out this Google satellite map of Bethesda. It shows how the densely urbanized streets that are within easy access of a Metro station are very clearly delineated from the suburban neighborhoods further from the line.) The Bay Area, by contrast, is adamantly low-rise, not just in the suburbs, but also in most neighborhoods in San Francisco and Oakland. In general, only the urban downtown districts make any attempt to reach for the sky — so we have not truly leveraged the potential inherent in most of the rail nodes scattered around the Bay Area. The idea of mid-rises or even shorter high-rises at places like San Leandro and Millbrae BART stations might seem unthinkable — but the Bay Area’s conception of cities, walking, and transit would be quite different if even suburban cities had permitted miniature skylines to sprout at their rail stations. It is also interesting to note that the different development patterns have given rise to contrasting effects on transit ridership. Both BART and Metro are slightly over 100 miles long, and the two systems are of comparable age (Metro is just a few years younger). And yet, while BART reported an average of 367,570 daily riders last quarter, Metrorail set a record last Friday, July 11 of 854,638 riders — a higher ridership than BART can even support as long as its service patterns require operation of four routes through a single transbay tube. What explains the pronounced difference? The fact that Metro has twice the number of stations as BART for approximately the same amount of track certainly goes a long way toward making the system accessible to more people. But another factor (though certainly not the only other factor) that explains the difference must be that Metro has helped give rise to dense, walkable cities, which feed the system with a natural ridership base that is largely missing from BART because the land use around BART stations (already too few to begin with) is often not that intense.

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Which citywide surface parking lots would these be? Why, the congested streets of Manhattan, of course. Members of the Assembly, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves: ashamed of your unwillingness to improve quality of life for millions of New Yorkers, and ashamed of your utter lack of vision. Even Mary Peters — Mary Peters! (remember her? If not, here’s a refresher: she tactfully asserted that bicycles are not transportation) — gets it. Mayor Bloomberg said it best: it is a sad day for New York City.

London is on the move. London, a city that is famous around the world for the bold steps it has taken to curb congestion and encourage use of alternative transportation, continues to prove its worth as a global model for mobility policy, as it strives for a goal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by the year 2025. San Francisco is finally starting to investigate some of the good ideas that have been put into action in London, most notably congestion pricing, but also cameras mounted on buses to ticket drivers who make illegal use of bus-only lanes. But in the meantime, London moves full steam ahead with plans to invest $1 billion in a bicycle plan that would make 6,000 bicycles available at rental stations located throughout the central city, roughly every couple of blocks. This plan is a smaller version of the Vélib’, launched this past summer in Paris; other cities throughout Europe have adopted similar rental programs. But if that weren’t enough, London’s mayor Ken Livingstone has also announced that gas guzzlers entering central London will be faced with a new congestion fee, to the tune of £25 each time the vehicle enters the congestion zone; in comparison, the fee for average cars is £8. About 150,000 vehicles enter central London’s congestion zone on a daily basis; of those, about 20% would be subject to the increased fee. Livingstone estimates that with the fee, there will be a 30% decline in the number of these gas guzzlers driving around central London; as such, the fee is supported by over 2/3 of Londoners. The extra revenue collected from the increased congestion fee would be applied to help fund the new bicycle plan.
[Guardian]

Despite the most recent furor about eliminating all fares on San Francisco Muni, the Chronicle recently reported the completely unsurprising result that fare-free Muni would be, to say the least, a poor idea. The faulty underlying supposition was that in light of the fare evasion problem, Muni might not be collecting much more money in fare revenue than they spend collecting fares in the first place, and that perhaps it might make sense just to dispense with fare collection altogether. Of course, it does not make sense: Muni’s $112 million annual fare revenue is offset by spending just $8.4 million each year on collecting fares. What is more, the system could not successfully handle the increased ridership that would result from eliminating fares. Sharon Greene & Associates, the consultants who prepared a report for the city about fare-free Muni, estimated that the MTA would need to spend over half a billion dollars to add roughly 267 buses and streetcars to the fleet — but simply adding capacity will not solve the underlying problems. Indeed, additional trains would overburden the already suboptimally-operated Metro subway tunnel, and simply adding more buses to crowded streets will not increase service efficiency. And so, the idea of fare-free Muni is already fading into the distance — a vision that befits San Francisco’s transit-first aspirations, but will nonetheless remain a noble fantasy without a substantial plan underlying it that might bring it closer to reality.

But Mayor Gavin Newsom is not the only one with free transit on the brain. New York attorney, labor arbitrator, and environmental and transit advocate Theodore Kheel has also been thinking about it recently. And rather unlike the SFMTA, Kheel actually has a thorough, detailed plan that analyzes what would need to happen to make free transit a reality in New York City. His report (alert, hefty PDF there), which was released this past week, is well-timed, in light of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s recent approval of a fare hike for New York City subways and buses. The plan is centered on the creation of a congestion pricing zone in the Manhattan CBD, which has been the subject of debate in New York for awhile, and which is starting to be more seriously studied here in the Bay Area. Under Kheel’s plan, a 24-hour toll would apply to enter the island south of 60th Street — $32 for commercial vehicles and $16 for private autos. The plan includes a 25% increase on medallion taxi fares (amounting to about $340 million annually), although taxis would not pay the congestion fee. It would also triple the number of metered parking spots and increase curbside parking fees south of 96th Street (summing to about $700 million annually), to help minimize the number of people who drive into Manhattan and then scout lower parking rates uptown. The final result? Free subway, bus, and commuter rail service within New York City. All the funds drawn from these sources would be applied towards offsetting the loss of fares, and there would also be about $170 million in annual savings associated with halting fare collection.

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BRT in action. Naysayers who claim that building dedicated BRT lanes will only increase traffic without removing cars off the road need look no further than Bogotá, Colombia, to see the difference that cost-effective but well-planned transit investments can make. TransMilenio, Bogotá’s BRT system, on average moves over twice as fast as Muni and carries roughly double the passengers on any given day. Bogotá is not the Bay Area, and in terms of population and density, the comparison is not a direct one, but planners should carefully study both domestic and foreign examples to see what would and would not work here, while remaining steadfast that Bay Area BRT projects be built with key characteristics — dedicated lanes, signal priority, well-placed stops, and comfortable stations — that will allow for truly effective and unhindered transportation. They should visit places like Bogotá to maintain their own vision, but for those of us who are not lucky enough to visit Bogotá, Streetsblog has posted a substantial video clip that gives us a flavor of TransMilenio in action.
[Streetsblog]

The Overhead Wire and the Live from the Third Rail blogs report the news that urban planners in Beijing have approved planning permission for six new subway lines that will begin construction by the end of the year, to be completed in 2012. From China View:

The six new lines – the No. 6, 8 and 9 lines, the second phase of the No. 10 line, and the Yizhuang and Daxing lines, have a total length of 152 kilometers, according to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning. They will be completed in 2012.

Beijing currently has five subway lines in operation, with a total length of 142 kilometers.

“The city aims to raise the proportion of citizens choosing public transport from the current 30 percent to 45 percent by 2015, and the subway passenger volume will increase to eight million a day from the current 2.2 million,” said the commission’s Zhou Nansen.

In other words, Beijing will not only more than double the size of its subway system, but it will also execute a huge increase in transit share: all in just five years.

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