Transbay Blog

The SFCTA recently released a report (PDF), which, to no one’s surprise, affirmed the agency’s desire to pursue bus rapid transit on Geary instead of light rail. The BRT route would feature dedicated bus lanes and platforms on wide Geary Boulevard, but no dedicated lanes in the downtown segment of the route east of Gough. The report studied several alternatives to evaluate which should be forwarded into the EIR/EIS process. The recommended choices were BRT running in center lanes (considering both side and island platforms, although the latter would require vehicles with left and right doors), along with a less effective side-running alternative that was also moved forward. East of Gough, different versions of a two-way Geary Street (including a transit mall) were rejected; however, transit preferential treatment was moved forward for EIR/EIS purposes. These are the basic design standards that have already been contemplated in connnection with this project, and really the only potentially tricky section to design will be the configuration of the intersections at Fillmore and Masonic. No light rail alternative was recommended for further environmental review.

Those who dream of one day rebuilding the B-Geary line, figuring that it would be worth the investment, might not be swayed by the TA’s stated excuses for not pursuing light rail: the increased expense and complexity (see this memo or presentation, PDFs), and tight competition for considerable extra funding. From the cost persepctive, something does not quite add up. The TA may have escalated its cost figures based on the astronomically high costs of the Central Subway, because even using the numbers cited by the TA in its report, a six-mile Geary line — including a downtown subway terminating at Montgomery Station, with a west portal at Laguna — should cost something in the ballpark of $1.2-$2 billion, not $5 billion as claimed. Even on the basis of existing ridership (to say nothing of the new riders it would attract), rail would certainly be suitable for the Geary corridor. But there are also good arguments that favor moving forward with BRT at this time.  Corridor improvements (increased ridership, ride quality, and so forth) are diluted for the BRT project as compared to LRT, but those improvements would be implemented faster, and at lower cost ($150-$200 million) — and similar improvements could then be carried out more quickly on other major transit corridors throughout the city, as well. Disruptions associated with light rail construction were opposed by neighborhood merchants. Moreover, the T-Third and Central Subway contain a host of diverse planning infelicities that, to be frank, call into question the SFMTA’s ability to oversee additional major capital projects. The current design and alignment of the Central Subway damages a potential B-Geary/T-Third transfer station at Union Square (just as the T-Third transfer to Market Street will be inadequate) — and in the long term, it may make more sense to include Geary in the regional rail network with a BART line instead of Muni Metro. I suspect that there will be strong views on both sides as to whether the SFCTA is making the correct decision by pursuing BRT rather than LRT. I certainly do not want to discourage debate on this topic, since Geary is an important corridor that has been unwisely neglected, and it is worthy of the discussion. But BRT remains the mode of choice going forward.

BRT at Bancroft, near Sproul Plaza. Courtesy AC Transit, extracted from this video clip.

This past July, the Berkeley City Council voted to place Measure KK on this November ballot, thanks to the efforts of a vocal, persistent group of Berkeley NIMBYs whose goal is to prevent AC Transit from building dedicated bus lanes in Berkeley (only one to one-and-half miles long) as part of its bus rapid transit project on Telegraph Avenue and East 14th Street. The BRT project, estimated to cost $250 million for a roughly 17-mile corridor, would upgrade service on the 1/1R line, which is AC Transit’s most popular trunk line, carrying roughly 10% of its daily ridership. Running buses in a dedicated transitway that is wholly separated from automotive traffic, when combined with signal priority and Proof of Payment, will allow AC Transit to make better use of a fixed amount of resources; it will also ensure line reliability, thus creating a superior and dependable riding experience that will attract more riders.

If passed, Measure KK would require that a “designation plan” be prepared whenever a lane is planned to be reserved for transit vehicles or high-occupancy vehicles — not just for this BRT project, but also for all similar future projects carried out in Berkeley. The language of the measure is vague as to what exactly must be contained within a designation plan; but, at a minimum, it is required to describe how reserving an HOV lane could affect “drivers, transit riders, pedestrians, bicyclists, businesses, parking and emergency access.” The process of creating a designation plan would itself be required to include extensive public hearings. Once the designation plan has been completed, the City Council would then submit it to voters for their approval. No transit-only lane could be reserved unless its corresponding designation plan was approved by voters.

The extra expense of carrying out these procedures is hefty — each designation plan could cost $250,000-$500,000 to prepare. On top of that there would be $15,000 for placing the plan on the ballot, and $350,000 or over $700,000 to hold a special election, depending on whether it is conducted by mail or at polling places. Moreover, the need to prepare a designation plan and get it approved by voters would add considerable delay to BRT planning and implementation, not least because it would make it more difficult to line up the diverse array of funds needed to build the project. But still another potential problem lurks behind Measure KK’s vague language: if modifications are made to the project after the official close of the planning process, it is possible that such changes could trigger still another “designation plan” and another vote, thus compounding the delay and project cost.

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As things stand now, reasonably frequent rail service circles almost the entirety of San Francisco Bay. Caltrain serves the western shore of the Bay, while BART serves the eastern shore down to Fremont, and four BART routes operate in the Transbay Tube. The missing hole is the segment between Fremont and San Jose Diridon Station, and it is exactly this segment that VTA seeks to plug with the BART extension. This gap in rail service is currently bridged only by low intensity transit service: a handful of commuter trains daily and VTA express buses. It should certainly be filled with more robust rail service that runs on reasonable headways. But must the gap be filled with BART, whose technology is better-suited to subway-metro service than to regional commuter service with widely-spaced stations? What would justify constructing expensive elevated structures and subway tunnels to house BART’s broad gauge track, which would closely parallel standard gauge track already in use? Very high ridership would perhaps justify the price tag; but as we have already seen, the official ridership projections are exceedingly optimistic, and will not likely be met within the two-decade time frame.

With BART comes cost overruns; it happened with the San Mateo County extension to Millbrae/SFO, and it will happen with BART to San Jose. The difference between these two extensions is primarily in the magnitude of cost. BART to San Jose would be the largest expansion since the system originally commenced revenue service in 1972, conservatively estimated for at least $6 billion (already four times the cost of the Millbrae/SFO extension). VTA may not have a true handle on the cost, but $8-10 billion seems well within the realm of possibility. And with Measure B on the November 4, 2008 ballot, VTA is stifling the information that it has managed to piece together with regard to the extension’s increasing costs, so as to not jeopardize passage of the sales tax increase, the proceeds from which would be applied to the BART extension. But the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has allocated a limited amount of funds to transit expansion. The money for budget overruns must come from somewhere, and it will be siphoned from other transit projects. It’s not that this is a remote possibility: it is a very real danger. In fact, it’s already happening. Dumbarton Rail is a worthy plan to reinstate a southern Bay rail crossing. Had the Altamont alignment been selected for high-speed rail, high-speed trains would have used the rail bridge — but even without high-speed rail, Dumbarton Rail would connect Caltrain to rail services in the East Bay at an intermodal hub in Union City. But just last month, MTC snatched $91 million of Regional Measure 2 funds that were originally earmarked for the rehabilitation of Dumbarton Rail and tentatively reallocated it to the BART Warm Springs extension, an extension that Alameda County has supported, and which would be a first phase springboard into BART to San Jose. And if BART to San Jose commences construction, this would be only the beginning.

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Given the fact that the Berkeley City Council decided not to litigate against the anti-BRT voter initiative — choosing instead to “honor the initiative process” — it was clear that the initiative would indeed be added to the November ballot. That said, I thought I should probably add this update to clarify any potential confusion about the timing, because my previous post about the initiative went live at 8:00 pm, but the Council did not vote to add the initiative to the ballot until about 10:45 pm. During the Council open session, Mayor Bates admitted the initiative had “lots of problems” (therefore appropriate for voters), and both TALC and Friends of BRT stepped up to the plate to denounce the initiative. Meanwhile, one quite confused speaker claimed that giving buses a dedicated lane would cause them to “get stuck,” and that what we really needed was “flexibility.” She suggested that with “flexibility,” AC Transit could run buses every three minutes, while implying that three-minute headways would be impossible with a dedicated bus lane. Just incredible. Anyway, the language will be slightly fine-tuned, but the City Council moved unanimously to add the anti-BRT initiative to the November ballot, as expected.

The last time we picked up the seemingly endless saga concerning the mere 1 to 1.5 miles of bus-only lanes proposed for the Berkeley leg of AC Transit’s BRT project along Telegraph Avenue, the Berkeley Daily Planet had propagated an outright lie, alleging that the San Leandro City Council had already “opted out” of its portion of the project’s bus-only lanes — which the Council had not, in fact, done. A few months ago, though, the beginnings of a ballot measure were in the works, aiming to stop BRT once and for all, and then, just yesterday, the Chron reported that the anti-BRT contingent had gotten enough signatures to put the measure on this November’s ballot. The measure would require voter approval to set aside bus-only lanes (or any dedicated HOV lane) on any street owned or controlled by the City of Berkeley. Specifically, the initiative would require creation of a “designation plan” involving more impact analysis, possibly costing an additional $250,000 to $500,000 per project to prepare, and voters would then have to approve the designation plan. The designation plan is itself quite vague, requiring enough information to be given such that “a reasonable person can assess how the designation and use will affect them.” There is also a possibility that modifications to the project made after the close of the planning process could themselves require a separate designation plan and another vote. In other words, if the initiative proposed for this November’s election is approved by voters, it would significantly stall the BRT project, because no dedicated bus lanes in Berkeley could be reserved without the vote. These delays will make it all the more difficult to obtain the varied array of funds required to complete the project.

The voter measure, as the Chron correctly noted, is quite embarrassing for a city that prides itself on its (increasingly dubious) claims of progressivism.

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Not everyone in the East Bay hates BRT. Here is an article from the Daily Review, forwarded by Hank Resnik of the Berkeley group Friends of BRT. The Berkeley Daily Planet continues to cement its reputation as one of the Bay Area’s most definitive sources for fact-free journalism, by “reporting” that the San Leandro City Council has “opted out” of its transit-only lanes for the East Bay BRT project — thereby implying that Berkeley ought to do the same. Except for the small detail that San Leandro, well, hasn’t opted out of its transit-only lanes. In fact, after San Leandro City Councilmembers heard a presentation just this week about the BRT alignment along San Leandro’s East 14th Street thoroughfare, “most were encouraged by the proposal.” And as for San Leandro’s mayor, Tony Santos? “It’s reducing our carbon footprint and cutting down on greenhouse gases. … Anything you can do to get people on the bus is fine.” Let’s back up one step, though. By fighting for the “right” of motorists to drive without having to deal with the inconvenience of transit-only lanes getting in the way and slowing them down, Berkeley is just being progressive, right? Yes, that must be it.
[Daily Review]

Proposed BRT at Shattuck Avenue & Bancroft in Berkeley. Courtesy FMG Architects.

And so it continues: the ever-committed opponents of Bus Rapid Transit in supposedly progressive Berkeley have hatched a plan to stop BRT in the East Bay — “Rapid Bus Plus,” a brainchild of the group Berkeleyans for Better Transportation Options (BBTOP). Under “Rapid Bus Plus,” the comfortable bus stops and dedicated bus lanes that distinguish BRT would be removed. BBTOP instead suggests that AC Transit obtain Orion VII low floor hybrids, like those that the SFMTA obtained. These vehicles have not quite proven to be an unqualified success in San Francisco, but even so, new vehicles and cleaner fuels are collateral to a primary objective of dedicated lanes — namely, system speed and reliability. BBTOP also suggests that the signal preemption and NextBus technology currently used for the 1R and 72R be expanded to the full system, and that Proof of Payment (to be used on the proposed BRT line) also be expanded to the full system. These latter ideas are fine — certainly, it would be nice to see signal preemption in more places, and NextBus can go a long way toward reducing rider stress — but neither is a substitute for separating transit vehicles from automotive traffic, particularly on a high ridership route that serves a great many of the East Bay’s activity centers.

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This post will lay out a guide for future bus rapid transit expansion in the East Bay; it is the companion to a San Francisco BRT post from a couple months ago. The map at right (click through for a full-sized map, hosted on Flickr) is a visual depiction of what a future rapid bus network might look like. Just for reference, rail corridors are marked in red. As on the San Francisco map, the BRT corridors here are categorized into yellow and green. Yellow represents the most important corridors, streets that should receive full BRT treatment, including dedicated right of way, signal preemption, station platforms, ticket machines, and NextBus screens. Green represents secondary corridors that are lower priority than yellow corridors, and would receive a subset of full BRT treatment. The green label is slightly misleading in that not all green corridors are equivalent. There are several reasons why a corridor may have been labeled green — in most cases because the street is too narrow to create bus-only lanes, ridership is not terribly high, or serious enhancement is unnecessary. College Avenue, for example, currently served by the 51 bus, is marked in green, while Broadway, also served by the 51, is marked in yellow. Despite the narrow street width, service on College could be improved by removing a few lightly used stops and giving buses priority at traffic signals. Other enhanced green-colored corridors include crosstown lines on Ashby Avenue in Berkeley and Fruitvale Avenue in Oakland; Solano Avenue in Berkeley and Albany; Shattuck Avenue between Telegraph and Adeline; and routes that connect Emeryville to MacArthur BART station, West Oakland, and downtown Oakland. Enhancements have been added along the Alameda portion of the 51, and this route has been extended slightly to terminate at Fruitvale BART. Additional service could operate only within Alameda, connecting to ferries and development at Alameda Point.

The bona fide BRT corridors, marked in yellow, are AC Transit’s highest ridership trunk routes; some of these would also be natural candidates for future upgrade to light rail. They are placed on Broadway, Telegraph Avenue, San Pablo Avenue, East 14th/International, University Avenue (extending all the way to the Marina to meet ferries), and the downtown Berkeley/Gourmet Ghetto section of Shattuck Avenue. The improvements for Telegraph and East 14th marked on the map represent the BRT project that is currently underway, and the rest of the network is projected around this initial line.

The Grand/MacArthur corridor seems like another candidate for full BRT treatment. Unfortunately, mere wisps of one-way streets on either side of Interstate 580 make it difficult to introduce bona fide BRT on the whole corridor, though it is easier to do so west of Piedmont Avenue and east of Fruitvale Avenue. In any case, I marked MacArthur — and its extension past Eastmont along 73rd Avenue to Oakland International Airport, per the 805 line — in green rather than yellow, but the more spacious sections of the street offer the opportunity to build a fuller complement of BRT-like features, including transit-only lanes.

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It seems that when gauging reader interest about blog posts, the number of times a post is viewed is not actually that useful a statistic, because many of those views will be people who click through quickly from a search engine. A more useful metric of reader interest, I believe, is the number of comments readers write, and whether or not the discussion in the comments continues past the first day. Another useful metric is the number of times readers click links that are embedded in the post, because clicking a link in a post indicates (a) that the reader has made it past the first sentence, and (b) that the reader is interested enough in the post to see yet more material on a similar topic.

Recently, I compared comments and link-clicking (both on the actual blog posts, and on the maps posted on my Flickr account) for the post from last December about a fantasy subway rail network for San Francisco with the later post that discussed a fantasy bus rapid transit network for San Francisco. Some rather pronounced results emerged:

* Note: These numbers only reflect comments written by visitors; I did not count my own comments.
** Note: These numbers combine views from both the citywide map and the more detailed downtown map.

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Courtesy Flickr member in2jazz.

The Berkeley Daily Planet mentioned last week a problem point in the planning of the proposed East Bay bus rapid transit route, which would run from Berkeley to San Leandro via Telegraph Avenue, downtown Oakland, and East 14th Street. The issue concerns the new street replacing the expressway around Lake Merritt, which connects downtown Oakland to East 14th Street and Lakeshore Avenue. One component of Measure DD is to replace the messy twelve-lane expressway and its speeding cars with a slower six-lane city street, improved pedestrian and bicycle access, and also to add a new park on the west end of Lake Merritt. Of course, buses as well as cars would move more slowly through here, and the combination of having half the traffic lanes and the introduction of new pedestrian signals could cause delays in excess of two minutes at rush hour. Rebecca Kaplan, vice president of the AC Transit board, noted: “That is enough of a delay to destroy the entire purpose of [bus] rapid transit.”

As is often the case with the Daily Planet, the language of the article is cast so as to make BRT seem like a failure. The article references quotations of indignation about the lack of dedicated right of way on 12th Street, and in doing so, it misleadingly makes it seem as though this fact is a brand-new development. It’s not. The EIR, in fact, has already indicated mixed flow for this stretch of road, and it has long been known that bus-only lanes would be suspended here. So the BRT project is not all of a sudden a lost cause because of this “revelation”, as the tone of the article would imply.

In any event, Berkeley NIMBYs are almost foaming at the mouth in glee at the news of this snag, hoping that a difficulty in Oakland could mean the end of the whole project. To date, complaints have been raised in Berkeley and San Leandro, at either end of the proposed route — but the majority of the line and its riders are in Oakland, where there has been little to no complaint about the “destructive chaos” that will allegedly ensue after BRT is built. The Daily Planet continues to print reader letters containing rants that are disconnected from reality:

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