Transbay Blog

Courtesy of Transport for London.

C.W. Nevius from the Chron is on a roll, but if he doesn’t catch himself soon, he might just roll right off a pier and into the Bay. This past summer, in his piece on the F-Market & Wharves historic streetcar line, Nevius explains that the “cardinal sin” of public transportation is that it becomes “too popular.” That may be a pretty nice problem to have, but wait: now, we learn in Nevius’s latest stab at transportation “journalism” that it’s actually transit — and not, say, people driving — that generates traffic. But let’s back up for a moment. The SF County Transportation Authority recently released the results from its study on implementing congestion pricing in San Francisco. There is no doubt that the Bay Area region has a severe congestion problem, earning the dubious honor of being the second most congested region in the nation, after Los Angeles; and some of the most heavily trafficked Bay Area freeways are those that connect downtown San Francisco to the East Bay and the Peninsula. According to the SFCTA study, there are some 4.6 million daily trips to, from, or within San Francisco, and at peak times, only 40% of those trips are made on transit. By the year 2030, there were will be about 382,000 new daily trips in the already-congested downtown area, and several downtown-adjacent neighborhoods are planned to grow taller and denser in the next couple of decades, including Rincon Hill, Transbay, Mission Bay, and the Van Ness corridor. Left to its own devices, traffic congestion will worsen in time; it is a difficult problem that requires a multipronged solution. One obvious component to that solution, as Nevius rather brusqely points outs in his column, is to provide better transit that lures drivers away from their vehicles. But cities throughout the world, including London, Rome, and Stockholm, have experimented with another technique: congestion charges, designed to give drivers incentive to leave their cars at home when traveling to crowded downtown districts.

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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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A few weeks ago, I wrote a general, introductory sort of post about the possibility of implementing a congestion pricing scheme in San Francisco, similar to the one which has been proposed in other cities around the country, and which already has been quite successful in London over the past four years. Congestion pricing could charge a fee for drivers entering the central city (on top of any currently existing bridge tolls), and the money obtained through the fee would be turned over to the SFMTA to improve transit. The U.S. Department of Transportation has already secured for the Bay Area about $158.7 million, most of which would be used for congestion mitigation improvements in San Francisco — notably, adding a congestion fee to Doyle Drive that would vary with demand, and bringing Doyle Drive into conformance with earthquake safety standards.

This is only the beginning, though — Doyle Drive is only one roadway, after all — and the SFCTA is currently studying how a congestion pricing zone might work here: different scenarios, but also the transit, traffic, parking, and economic impacts. As part of the study process, the TA is hosting a series of public outreach workshops, including one this Wednesday. Here is the information on the meeting:

Congestion Pricing Community Workshop
October 17, 2007 (5:30 pm to 8:00 pm)
Milton Marks Conference Center
455 Golden Gate Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94102

Anyone who is interested in learning more about potential congestion pricing scenarios in San Francisco is encouraged to attend the meeting.

Awhile back, Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, who is also chair of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, proposed to adopt in San Francisco some variant of a congestion pricing plan that was implemented in London in 2003; namely, a plan to charge drivers additional tolls for entering congested downtown streets. In London, the tolls apply for drivers entering the rather well-defined area known as Central London. In San Francisco, the toll streets (or borders of a potential congestion pricing zone) are still being studied, but The Embarcadero and Van Ness Avenue are obvious choices. Both streets are not only chronically congested (the latter actually being U.S. Route 101, and a key regional highway link), but they also both form clear demarcation lines. Other streets being discussed include Broadway and Harrison, but first in line is the congestion associated with the Doyle Drive approach to the Golden Gate Bridge, a project which was awarded federal money to the tune of $158 million.

Congestion pricing is a topic I was meaning to bring up sooner or later, and I figured I might as well start now, since the local newspapers look like they are finally giving it some coverage. Right now, the city is still studying the possibility of implementing congestion pricing, but no well-detailed plan exists yet — so there isn’t a whole lot to say on this issue right now, except that I would most definitely support a congestion pricing project in San Francisco, for several reasons.

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