Archive for the ‘California’ Category
Bay-Delta: Shaking Things Up
This is the 3rd post in a series of posts on the crisis facing the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. It has been a few months since posting the first two installments, but it’s my intention to start it up again. Click here to see a list of all posts in the series and to refresh on the older posts.
Since the year 1900, 166 levees in the Delta and nearby Suisin Marsh have failed (with a number of islands flooding repeatedly), thereby putting at risk the agricultural and other land uses that these levees protect. As I suggested in a previous post, the piecemeal response method we have adopted to protect Delta islands has been an expensive affair — curing the most recent failures, which culminated in the 2004 breach at Jones Tract, has cost hundreds of millions of dollars. But this method is ultimately unsustainable. Indeed, under current practices, 140 more levees are projected to fail in the next century, which is only a slight improvement over the failure rate of the last century. And yet, despite the long string of levee failures over the past century, the failures that are the greatest cause for concern are those that have not yet occurred — in particular, those breaches that will be induced by the next major earthquake that will inevitably strike the Bay Area in the future.
Courtesy of Dept. of Water Resources (DWR).
Open Thread and Early May News Roundup
I have been too busy lately to post regularly, but there is still plenty going on in the world of Bay Area planning and transit. My guess, and hope, is that people will still want to discuss the news, even though I am unable to pull enough time together to prepare full posts on these topics. Others may want to initiate topics, rather than simply respond to prompts in blog posts. Many websites fill in this niche by setting up open threads. I haven’t tried that yet, because I was not really sure if there would be enough interest, or if there was a critical mass of people commenting and checking in. I am also testing the waters with removing comment moderation, despite ongoing problems with managing spam comments. So this is an experiment with open threads. If it looks to be well-used, it could be made into a regular feature. Please feel free to leave any feedback on the open threads if you feel so inclined.
The last post discussed the SFCTA report on Geary BRT, so here is a roundup of other recent news:
SFMTA Budget is up for debate: To close a $128.9 million shortfall, the SFMTA Board adopted a budget that raised the adult and paratransit individual fares to $2 and adult fast passes to $60 on January 1, 2010. The budget also raises some parking fees, but it eliminates several lines altogether and institutes considerable service cuts on many other lines. As promised, Board President David Chiu will introduce a motion (PDF) at today’s Budget and Finance Committee meeting to veto the MTA-adopted budget. If you’d like to attend, the meeting is in the Board chamber, 2nd floor of SF City Hall, at 1:30 pm.
Update: At the Budget and Finance Committee, the vote was 4-1 (Carmen Chu dissenting) against the MTA’s budget, and Chiu has the seven votes needed to overturn the budget at the full Board.
New parking lot in Oakland defeated: Last night, I learned via Twitter that the Oakland City Council rejected the Redevelopment Agency’s proposal for a temporary surface parking lot on Telegraph Avenue in Downtown Oakland, next to the Fox Theater. The City Council requested that staff investigate the possibility of art installations instead, which would be a considerable improvement over a parking lot. Whatever use is ultimately installed will be temporary, to be dismantled in 2011 when construction will begin on the second phase of Forest City’s Uptown project.
Caltrain to declare a fiscal emergency: Despite ridership gains in 2008 and already having raised fares 25 cents on January 1, Caltrain is scrambling to close its budget shortfall, in light of the lost STA funds; it plans to declare a fiscal emergency in order to exempt service cuts from environmental review.
In Search of a Stable Equilibrium
The elimination of State Transit Assistance (STA) funds in California has forced transit operators throughout California to scrape the bottom of the barrel, so to speak, in search of replacement money for operations; this has resulted in controversial proposals to raise fares while trimming service. But if there is any silver lining to be found here, it’s this: now that we have reached the bottom of the barrel, we have the opportunity to start anew — and to think critically about stable sources of money to fund transit for the long haul. The Commission on the 21st Century Economy has been charged by Governor Schwarzenegger to issue a report by July 31, 2009. That report will detail the Commission’s suggested revisions to local and state revenues so as to stabilize those revenue streams — including, but of course not limited to, funding for transit. Meanwhile, the California Transit Association has compiled a list of recommendations for the Commission to consider for the transit portion of the discussion. Reflecting on the current state of things — the need to support and stimulate a dynamic economy, the need to reduce emissions and comply with SB 375 and AB 32, and the fact that the State has pillaged some $5 billion of transit funding in the past decade — the CTA urged the Commission to pursue stable funding for transit.
Bay-Delta: Levees, Climate Change, and Water Quality
This is the 2nd post in a series on the crisis facing the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Click here for a list of all posts in the series.
For several decades following the Gold Rush, almost a half million acres of the Delta, then a tidal marsh, were drained and reclaimed. Since then, the uncovered soil has been made available for agricultural use, but reclamation has led to a profound level of land subsidence. When early Delta settlers drained and lowered the land in order to farm it, they exposed the soil to oxygen. The now oxygen-rich peat soil decomposed and then released carbon dioxide, and the loss of carbon resulted in the subsidence of land. Continued Delta reclamation throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries compounded the problem. Indeed, most the Delta is now below sea level, and a great deal of the western and central Delta is at least fifteen feet below sea level (see map below). Land subsidence renders unstable the Delta’s 1,100-mile system of protective levees, instigating levee failure and subsequent flooding.
Land subsidence in the Delta (1995). Original map courtesy of DWR/PPIC.
Bay-Delta: An Introduction
This is the 1st in a series on the crisis facing the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Click here for a list of all posts in the series.
 |
| Bradford Island, western Delta; courtesy of Sac Bee. |
The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta (referred to here as simply “the Delta”) is, in a nutshell, California’s most important water resource. The Delta occupies a 1,150-square mile area located just to the east of the San Francisco Bay Area and west of the Central Valley, at the confluence of the south-flowing Sacramento River and the north-flowing San Joaquin River, which then flow to Suisin Bay, Carquinez Strait, San Pablo Bay, and thence to San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Altogether, these assorted bodies of water comprise the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary, the West Coast’s largest estuary, with a watershed that encompasses about 40-45% of California’s land area. The ecosystem of the Delta is home to some 750 species of plants, fish, and other wildlife. The Delta is also the hub of California’s water infrastructure: about 22-25 million Californians and 4.5 million square miles of farmland rely on diversions from the Delta for water, supporting the agricultural and urban areas that provide for the state’s well-being and fuel its economy.
The Bay-Delta Estuary: From Crisis to Sustainability
 |
| Mandeville Island, Quimby Island, and Piper Slough (central Delta); courtesy of EDF. |
We’re going to go out on a limb here: Transbay Blog is, after all, about city and transit planning, not water planning. But this website is also dedicated to, perhaps above all, how to accommodate responsible and well-planned growth — and impacts on water resources are a central part of that conversation. Discussion about infrastructure, land use, and the environment are also regularly featured here, and at the intersection of those three themes (and many other themes still) lies a topic of utmost importance to the future of California: the longstanding and continually unfolding crisis at the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. In spite of recent efforts to get a better handle on how best to address the crisis, the problems facing the Delta remain formidable, and the tension is only heightened while we wait for the region’s next major earthquake.
What follows is series of posts on the crisis facing the Bay-Delta Estuary. The posts will appear over the course of the next couple of weeks (and will be interrupted, as necessary, with postings on other topics). No single article could completely capture the complexity of this region, but hopefully this series will lend some interest and perspective on the needs, and the obstacles to addressing those needs; the history, politics, and players; as well as an update on recent efforts to tackle the diverse set of challenges posed by this ticking time bomb that lies just to the east of the Bay Area. The posts will be:
- An Introduction
- Levees, Climate Change, and Water Quality
- Shaking Things Up
- A Threatened Ecosystem
- Governance
- The Peripheral Canal
- Toward A Sustainable Delta Vision
This post here will serve as a table of contents, and hyperlinks will be added once new content is posted. Alternatively, you can also find the posts listed on the Water Resources page. I sincerely hope that readers will enjoy this series of posts. Even though the subject is not strictly about city planning in the sense usually discussed here, the issue is nonetheless one of grave concern for cities up and down California.
Transit Ridership Increases in 2008
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:
| Operator | % Change (2007 to 2008) |
Unlinked Trips (2008) |
| AC Transit | 5.68% | 71,663,200 |
| ACE | 14.66% | 865,700 |
| BART | 4.20% | 117,171,200 |
| Caltrain | 12.53% | 12,803,100 |
| Capitol Corridor | 16.13% | 1,730,800 |
| Golden Gate | Total: 2.73% Bus: 3.84% Ferry: -1.47% |
Total: 9,613,500 Bus: 7,515,000 Ferry: 1,985,900 |
| SamTrans | 3.43% | 14,974,700 |
| SF Municipal Railway | Total: 2.55% Bus: 0.91% Trolley Bus: 2.56% Muni Metro (LRT): 5.90% Cable Car: 1.53% |
Total: 221,213,200 Bus: 91,138,600 Trolley Bus: 73,351,200 Muni Metro (LRT): 48,889,600 Cable Car: 7,833,800 |
| Santa Clara VTA | Total: 5.43% Bus: 5.72% Light Rail: 4.81% |
Total: 46,643,200 Bus: 34,774,600 Light Rail: 10,797,600 |
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%.
Update: Bay Area STA Funds for 2008-09
Last week, we discussed how the finalized state budget decimated State Transit Assistance Funds (STA) funds, and what the result would be for Bay Area transit operators in terms of lost operating revenue. That previous post contained the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s figures on how the remaining STA funds would be distributed between Bay Area transit agencies. However, last Friday, I phoned the Metropolitan Transportation Commission offices to point out that their STA fund distributions contradicted the actual text of the budget legislation. The budget included funding for the first two quarters of FY2008-09, while MTC’s numbers only accounted for the first quarter of funds — which was inaccurate in light of the fact that the Governor decided not to kill the second quarter of STA funds with a line-item veto. In other words, this fiscal year, California’s transit agencies will receive $153 million (from an originally planned $306 million) of STA funds, not just the $76 million that MTC had planned on. Shortly after I called them, I noticed that their analysis of the state budget was taken down off the web. But now, the updated figures are available, and we find that these are the funding allocations for transit agencies in FY2008-09. As before, the right column of the table represents the lost amount that agencies would have received had the state budget retained the full $306 million of STA money:
Budget Deal Is Not A Deal For Transit
UPDATE (23 February 2009): For updated figures on transit funding loss for FY2008-09, read this post.
The big piece of news in California is the long-overdue compromise in the state legislature over how to close the General Fund shortfall, which amounts to $42 billion through June 2010. The budget consists of $15 billion cuts to spending, $12.8 billion in temporary tax increases, and $11.4 billion in borrowing; the Governor may also make $600 million of additional cuts in line-item vetoes. The vote on a budget deal stalled for days, with just a single Republican vote shy of the 2/3 required for passage. Finally, after more than 45 hours, in what is supposedly the longest Senate floor session in the state’s history, Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) supplied the needed vote by extracting substantial concessions. One concession was the elimination of the additional 12 cents to the gas tax; another was the approval of voter measures. If passed, one measure would prohibit legislative pay increases during deficits; another measure would establish an open primary system, in which the top two vote-getters in the primary election would advance to the general election regardless of party.
As we discussed last week, this budget compromise eliminates State Transit Assistance (STA) funds, which transit agencies throughout California rely on for operations money. Here is the breakdown for major Bay Area transit agencies, as detailed by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The right column represents the loss for 2008-09; that is, the difference between the remaining $76.1 million STA allocation (which basically represents the first quarter) and the amount that agencies would have received had the budget retained the full $306 million of STA money:
Squeezing the Sponge Dry
In the last two budget cycles, California’s leaders elected to redirect some $3 billion away from transit agencies. But a proposed budget deal would now finish off the job and take the rest of what little remains: $230 million of State Transit Assistance funds due from the 2008-09 September budget, and the full $306 million from the 2009-10 budget. The proposed STA elimination would deprive agencies of critical operating funds, trigger service cuts and fare hikes, and result in a loss of jobs. The state budget does not have an easy fix, particularly while the two-thirds budget vote requirement remains in effect, and it is too soon yet to know if this proposed arrangement will stick. Sometimes it seems that each new week brings a new budget deal to be hatched, and the fate of this particular deal may not be decided on until later today or this weekend. But given the trend, the utter demise of state transit funding appears to be the unfortunate, yet inevitable, conclusion; if not now, then just around the corner. We have spoken before of the mismatch in California, in which our elected officials are more than happy to heap praise in broad strokes upon the environmental credentials of AB 32, SB 375, and high-speed rail, all while signing off on the one-way drain of transit funds that are then used to haphazardly plug the leaky state budget. This time, every last drop would be squeezed out, even if the funds to be removed are quite literally a few drops in the proverbial bucket. Our politicians are happy to call attention to their support of a forward-looking vision, though what once seemed visionary now looks increasingly to be merely necessary damage control. But actually protecting transit service, the foundation that underlies that vision? That is another matter altogether.
