Corridors like Telegraph Avenue, which are well-served by transit and have plenty of room for urban infill, will be targeted for growth. Image: Flickr account.

SB 375 now calls for a blend of the RHNA with the Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS):

It is the intent of the Legislature that housing planning be coordinated and integrated with the regional transportation plan. To achieve this goal, the allocation plan shall allocate housing units within the region consistent with the development pattern included in the sustainable communities strategy.

The final allocation plan shall ensure that the total regional housing need, by income category … is maintained, and that each jurisdiction in the region receive an allocation of units for low- and very low income households.

The resolution approving the final housing need allocation plan shall demonstrate that the plan is consistent with the sustainable communities strategy in the regional transportation plan.

(Government Code, §§ 65584.04(i)(1), 65584.04(i)(2), 65584.04(i)(3).)

SB 375 leaves open the question of exactly how the two ought to be blended.  But if you acknowledge that growth should be targeted in transit-oriented locations rather than simply allowed to sprout at random, then it is almost a direct corollary that an “unfair share” distribution of housing will result.  Perhaps because it is still early in the process, ABAG and MTC thus far have not emphasized the fair share distinction.  It was not surprising, then, to find some initial pushback in a report prepared by Berkeley city staff.  This piece in the Berkeley Patch, written by Livable Berkeley, summarizes the conclusions of the staff report as follows:

City staff’s “educated guess” is that the level of growth posited in the scenario exceeds what can be feasibly accommodated in Berkeley.  Staff is also concerned that other communities are not being asked to do as much as Berkeley.

Staff’s remarks were offered in response to the Initial Vision Scenario, which included a preliminary estimate of the new housing Berkeley should plan to accommodate: 15,730 additional units under ABAG’s aggressive growth projections, concentrated in the downtown and along more robust transit corridors like San Pablo, University, and Telegraph Avenues.  Interestingly, even though staff offers its “educated guess” that this level of growth cannot be feasibly accommodated, the report admits that “staff has not generally quantified the capacity of these areas to accommodate new units” and that “staff has not begun to test the feasibility of the numbers generated for the [Initial Vision Scenario].”  (PDF of staff report)

In short, Berkeley city staff has offered an “educated guess” that is ostensibly based on little education.  Which would make it … just a plain old guess?  The report proposes that the guess is based on the City’s Housing Element work, but that is an iterative process, and it does not terminate just because a city claims it has no more space after completing the last iteration.

The staff report illustrates the tension between SB 375 and fair share.  Hypothetically, if all cities were served by transit equally well, it would be reasonable to expect each city to absorb its fair share of housing need in the traditional sense.  In reality, though, transit service is not provided uniformly throughout the region, and a principal objective of the SCS is to bring transit networks and housing distributions into alignment.  This means that a city like Berkeley — which is home to the University, a major trip generator, and is served by three BART stations, the Capitol Corridor, and major bus transit corridors — is a natural place for growth.  Clayton (to pick one example), which was assigned just 124 new households, is not.

That disparity may seem “unfair” to some, but the Initial Vision Scenario arguably does not go far enough.  If one goal of the SCS is to increase the share of the Bay Area’s population living in places that resemble Berkeley, the Initial Vision Scenario does not accomplish that goal with respect to Berkeley itself — because the growth it describes in Berkeley closely mirrors the regional trend and is actually slower than Alameda County as a whole.  Indeed, in 2010, 1.728 percent of Bay Area households called Berkeley home; in 2035, if the Initial Vision Scenario’s allocation were to become reality, that share would barely increase to 1.732 percent.  In contrast, the allocations for other East Bay cities like Oakland, Emeryville, Fremont, Livermore, Dublin, and Pleasanton pick up the slack with growth that outpaces both Alameda County and the region as a whole.  Notably, the Initial Vision Scenario does not take into account unmet demand for more housing in walkable, centrally-located neighborhoods like those in Berkeley.

To the extent there is a break from fair share as it has traditionally been implemented, the concerns of the Berkeley staff report will resonate with other cities in California, and it will be interesting to see how fair share is ultimately folded into the SB 375 framework.

The actual balance sheet is worse, of course, as the $484 million figure does not include operating costs.  Despite charging $6 fares to pay off a $100 million federal loan, an additional subsidy — on the order of $9.85 per ride, compared to $1.95 for a bus rapid transit project — would be required given current passenger traffic levels at the airport.  In short, public dollars are being “invested” in a way that pointlessly maximizes future costs. The fact that $95 million has already been consumed, while certainly interesting given how little there is to show for it, is immaterial when evaluating whether that additional ongoing cost is a worthwhile one to bear.  (Comments)

SFpark meter in Hayes Valley, San Francisco. Image: courtesy of SFMTA.

Although programs like SFpark demonstrate progress and provide valuable case studies, opportunities abound to improve parking management in both major cities and suburbs throughout the United States.  But parking is also a touchy and controversial topic; proposals to increase parking fees are generally not greeted warmly and can be vociferously protested.

Learning from Mistakes

One barrier to implementing effective parking policy is the context in which government officials propose changes to parking fees.  Particularly during the recession, municipalities have been strapped for cash and seek to increase parking fees as a means of generating revenue to help balance the budget.  The result is that the sound policy reasons to raise the price of parking become drowned out by loud opposition from members of the public, who claim to be victims of an unfair budget that is balanced on the backs of citizens.  Cities that wait until a budget crisis knocks at their door to increase the price of parking are not doing themselves a favor because the underlying motivation for the adjustment will be transparent.  Moreover, the substance of the changes that are proposed may also reveal that underlying motivation, in that they involve simplistic blanket fee hikes — rather than a truly dynamic, market-based approach where the price of a particular parking spot changes with demand.  In short, it becomes all too clear that the purpose of the higher parking fees is not to enact sound policy, but to generate revenue.  When a city tries to do the right thing for the “wrong” reason — to the extent that increasing parking fees to avoid cutting municipal services can be deemed “wrong” — it makes it all the more difficult to try it again later for the right reason.

The marquee of the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, which proudly displays progressive political messages, adopted a conservative stance on parking in 2009 -- an all-too-common knee-jerk reaction among many merchants. Image: courtesy of Fragmentary Evidence.

Another barrier to implementing effective parking policy is the perception that higher parking fees diminish a city’s competitiveness, as compared to nearby cities, by making it more difficult for merchants to attract customers.  This point emerged during the backlash in 2009, when the Oakland City Council considered higher fees and extended meter hours as one measure to address the city’s budget deficit.  The underlying assumption here is that the cost of parking is a significant, perhaps even the predominant, factor at play when someone is deciding where to eat dinner, see a movie, or go shopping.  And while this concern was perhaps an especially sensitive point in Oakland because of retail leakage, it overlooks several more important considerations, including: (1) that most people probably won’t travel long distances just to find cheaper parking, particularly when paying more for gas eliminates any potential savings; (2) that the increase in parking price is often minimal compared to the cost of a meal or movie; (3) that many customers seek a unique merchant, neighborhood, or experience that cannot be replicated elsewhere; and (4) that increasing the cost of parking does not necessarily make the city or neighborhood a less compelling destination, but rather, provides an incentive for customers to use transit to travel to neighborhoods they would otherwise access by car.

There are many reasons to question the assertion that higher parking fees make a city less competitive.  But whether or not this is true in fact, the mere existence of this perception suggests that rational parking reform will be an uphill battle — one in which common arguments opposing higher fees will be aired again and again, in city after city.  It is this situation that helps frame the role that regional governments can play in the conversation about parking.

A Role for Regional Participation

Involving regional entities in parking management may, at first glance, seem like a strange idea.  Traditionally, parking management has been left to cities.  Cities control how streets are used within their respective jurisdictions, and they retain the power to charge (or not) for public parking.  In California, regional entities like metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) cannot simply swoop in and force a city to change its parking policies.

And yet the above discussion suggests that a regional directive on parking could be beneficial.  An MPO can provide valuable direction by identifying best practices, assembling useful case studies, and establishing a policy framework that explains and justifies the benefits of parking demand management.  This readily available resource would provide cities with a more constructive way to frame the public discussion about parking, while educating citizens that parking reform has benefits beyond providing the city with more revenue.  Establishing a regional consensus on parking demand management could also help eliminate the popular perception that increasing the price of parking makes a city a less desirable place to do business when compared to nearby cities that retain low parking fees.  Geographically proximate cities, perhaps with the assistance of the MPO, could cooperate in developing harmonious parking policies.

MPOs can provide grants to cities that demonstrate interest in implementing smart parking demand management strategies, and in this respect, there is a useful precedent.  The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) in the Bay Area has been able to take advantage of its control over funding to leverage improvements in land use — particularly in terms of planning transit-oriented development within walking distance of stations planned along new transit extensions.  Land use, like parking, is firmly within the dominion of local control.  And yet regional influence over land use is possible, despite the fact that MPOs like MTC have no statutory authority to make land use approval decisions.

A similar approach could be taken for parking reform, in which a regional policy directive both guides local planning efforts and provides the funding incentive needed to get the job done.  MTC has taken tentative initial steps to investigate what role regional governments should play in the parking arena, and in the future, I hope to discuss in more detail ways to improve regional oversight of parking.

Senate Bill 375 provides metropolitan regions in California with a compelling reason to do so now.  Parking — whether it is abundant or scarce, cheap or expensive — has tremendous influence on shaping travel choices.  Parking demand management could be an effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, both by (1) encouraging drivers to switch to transit, particularly for peak hour trips, and (2) reducing the emissions associated with drivers circling city blocks on the hunt for parking.  Rational parking policies, when combined with smart land use decisions, are a powerful tool for reducing vehicle miles traveled, and, in turn, for achieving SB 375′s regional emissions reductions targets.  One of the core lessons we take away from the Initial Vision Scenario prepared by MTC and ABAG for the Bay Area is that compact growth alone is not sufficient.  The Sustainable Communities Strategy will need to incorporate additional techniques in order to achieve the target.  A strong regional consensus on parking policy, coupled with robust implementation at the local level, could be just such a technique.

On February 19, 2011, BART officially opened the 44th station in its system: The West Dublin/Pleasanton station, a $106 million project that bridges the long 10-mile gap between the Dublin/Pleasanton terminus and Castro Valley.  Like Dublin/Pleasanton, its sibling station 1.5 miles to the east, West Dublin/Pleasanton was built in the median of Interstate 580.  Pedestrian bridges connect the station to parking garages on each side of the freeway, and they can also function as a new path providing pedestrian access between Dublin and Pleasanton over the freeway.  The new station was included in the original EIR for the Dublin/Pleasanton extension, certified by the BART Board of Directors in 1990.  The station was postponed, however, and the extension opened in 1997 without it.  An agreement was later negotiated to finance the station with a mixture of public and private funds.  Construction of the station finally commenced in 2006, but the planned opening date was delayed a year when it was determined that the pedestrian bridge welds were unsafe.

BART’s press release and some news reports describe West Dublin/Pleasanton as the first “infill” station since Embarcadero opened in 1976 — in the sense that the station was built along existing track, rather than by the usual procedure of extending track and creating a new terminus.  While it does fit the technical definition, filling in a gap between two existing stations on a fully operational line, use of the term “infill” is slightly misleading here — not just because the station had already been conceived and developed as part of the original extension, but also because the word creates certain expectations in terms of station area planning.

I have long been a supporter of constructing infill BART stations, at least in those promising locations where there could be substantial benefit to doing so.  Despite the long distances that separate adjacent BART stations, there are relatively few such locations, in part because of technical feasibility and the fact that much of the track outside of downtown stations follows path-of-least-resistance rights of way that maintain a measure of distance from the neighborhoods they serve.  When infill station treatment is warranted, the benefits principally take the form of reinvigorating a neighborhood on or near the line while improving access for current and future transit-dependent residents — even if that means slightly increasing the commute time of a rider who boards the train at an outer ring suburb.  A quality infill station site presents the opportunity to transform a neighborhood into a regional destination by improving urban design, increasing density, and making transit the most natural and desirable way to access the neighborhood for residents and visitors alike.

As much as I would like to praise BART for recognizing the wisdom of pursuing infill stations over far-flung extensions, the West Dublin/Pleasanton station cannot truly be cited as a welcome first example in that vein, even if the BART press release has portrayed it that way.  That West Dublin/Pleasanton can even be termed “infill” at all is mere chronological happenstance, and is not reflective of an encouraging shift in BART’s approach to capital projects.  The station is the late arrival of an older concept that does not closely fit the infill station model described above.  Perhaps more importantly, the station falls flat in its execution, which I had the opportunity to explore first-hand when journeying to the station site on this cold, rainy weekend with intrepid urban explorer SF Cityscape.

Dublin/Pleasanton station, origins by mode in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. Modes: walk (purple), bicycle (green), transit (blue), solo drive/carpool (red), dropoff (orange). Map courtesy of BART.

Dublin/Pleasanton station, origins by mode in San Joaquin County. Map courtesy of BART.

We should recognize first that although the new station has been praised as a catalyst for smart growth, its principal purpose is not to create a new livable community where residents can walk to the station, but rather to augment parking supply for commuters that drive to the station.  The Dublin/Pleasanton terminus sits at the eastern edge of the region and therefore has a large catchment area that includes not just Dublin and Pleasanton, but also Livermore, Tracy, and southern Contra Costa County (see maps above and to the right).  This helps to make Dublin/Pleasanton the busiest suburban station, as well as the busiest terminal station, in the BART system.  But approximately 70 percent of riders who access the station from home arrive in a vehicle hunting for a parking spot, and the station’s roughly 2,800 parking spaces can fill up quickly in the morning.

Enter the West Dublin/Pleasanton station, which adds 1,190 new parking spaces in two garages to supplement that existing supply, with 722 spaces on the Dublin side and 468 spaces on the Pleasanton side.  Because the two stations are only about 1.5 miles apart, they can function as a single unit with increased parking capacity.  They could even have similar catchment areas as existing riders redistribute their travel patterns, although more Contra Costa commuters will be attracted to the new station because of its proximity to Interstate 680.

Courtesy of Ampelon.

The fact that parking is the priority at West Dublin/Pleasanton is evident from the design of the station area.  The land available for transit-oriented development (TOD) would be limited, even in the best-case scenario, by existing nearby uses and the station’s location in the median of Interstate 580.  What has been built, however, is not even the best-case scenario, because parcels immediately adjacent to the station have been devoted to the two parking garages.  Moreover, the garage is placed at a distance from the station, creating awkward angular leftover parcels that are not ideally suited for more productive use, wasting the most valuable land that is closest to the station.  The garages anchor the walkways, but it is unfortunate to see that this overall method of design persists when best practices call for office and retail uses to be closest to the station, residential units beyond that, and parking at the periphery of the walkable radius.

Other than the parking garages, land adjacent to the station remains empty for the time being:

There will be some TOD built on these parcels, including 210 residential units in Dublin, 350 residential units in Pleasanton, and additional hotel, office, and retail space that is planned.  But the garage placement precludes maximization of high density uses on parcels closest to the station.  In truth, this is a mild amount of development for a rapid transit station, and it falls well short of what would be built if this station were part of a newly constructed extension.

Given the station’s constraints, the connections provided to local bus service are not that bad.  A comfortable shelter served by LAVTA’s recently launched Tri-Valley Rapid bus service, located on the Pleasanton side, is reasonably accessible from the station, although one must walk past or through the parking garage to reach the stop.  On the Dublin side, a line of shelters was installed along the edge of the parking garage within a reasonable walk, although the number of shelters overstates the level of transit service provided; currently only one bus stops there.

As SF Cityscape (an ever observant and insightful commenter on wayfinding) pointed out on our excursion, there are opportunities for the new station’s signage to convey information more simply and intuitively — which became comically clear when one of the few people we encountered inquired how one might get to the station from the far side of a parking garage.  But a particularly egregious design error on the Pleasanton side was the lack of a crosswalk linking the station and the Rapid bus stop to Stoneridge Shopping Center.  Given that the shopping center is one of few walkable destinations from this station, this is a natural location to provide a crosswalk to facilitate pedestrian passage.  Instead, pedestrians sprinted frantically across a five-lane arterial to access transit from the shopping center.

Bottom Line: To the extent that it encourages commuters who now drive to ride BART instead, West Dublin/Pleasanton will be a positive development.  The station has been characterized in fashionable terms as an innovative infill station spurring smart growth — which it will, to a certain extent.  But this project is at heart the postponed arrival of an older concept that does not epitomize good urban design.  Expectations that this station will prove to be a model of 21st century transit-oriented development should be tempered accordingly.

Let them have parking lots while waiting for high rises?

This week, the Oakland Planning Commission will consider a peculiar concoction brewed up by Planning Department staff called temporary conditional use permits (TCUPs).  As explained by the staff report (41 MB PDF), the purpose of the proposed TCUP program is to help property owners maintain the economic viability of their vacant parcels, by allowing them to host temporary uses on their land to weather the economic downturn.  The report compiles an inventive list of various types of uses — including “edible gardens” and “crop and animal raising” — that could theoretically be installed on vacant lots with the help of a TCUP.  But it buries the lede: The true purpose of the TCUPs is to ease approval of surface parking lots, particularly in Oakland’s central business district (CBD), where the zoning prohibits surface parking.

You might expect planners to grasp a few basic truths about surface parking.  You might expect them to recognize that curb cuts dangerously intrude on the sidewalk’s protective right of way for pedestrians; that surface parking is hostile to the urban fabric; that it makes no sense to encourage people to drive to a transit-rich downtown by providing excessive parking; and that surface parking lots waste space and are unattractive dead zones that are deleterious to the health and vibrancy of the surrounding area.  In short, you would expect planners to acknowledge that surface parking is one of the worst uses imaginable in the CBD, which should by all rights be a city’s most attractive and thriving neighborhood.  I have quoted Ms. Jacobs before, but some things bear repeating: “… parking lots … are powerful and insistent instruments of city destruction.”

Applicable zoning in the CBD permits parking structures, but quite rightly forbids surface lots.  Instead of simply following this principle, staff proposes TCUPs as the mechanism of choice to circumvent zoning restrictions.  And this is no brief detour: Although billed as temporary, the TCUP program is expected to last five to six years — including an 18-month period for reviewing applications, a three-year permit, and a potential one-year extension of the permit.

Courtesy of A Better Oakland.

It is reasonable that a property owner might want to extract some measure of productivity from a vacant parcel until it becomes feasible to develop it.  But if there’s one thing downtown Oakland does not need, it’s more surface parking.  There is already plenty of parking distributed throughout the CBD, taking the form of both parking structures and surface lots (1.5 MB PDF).  Ironically, the staff report in one breath identifies blight reduction and the promotion of economic development as the principal objectives of the TCUP program, and in the next breath admits that parking would be the principal use for TCUPs.  And yet, as documented in graphic and excruciating detail on A Better Oakland, the City’s actual track record for enforcing permit conditions on surface lots lies somewhere between haphazard and nonexistent — a situation unlikely to improve if there is a crop of new permits to monitor.  Far from “reducing blight” and “promoting economic development,” more surface parking would devalue the CBD, increase blight, and hinder development of the downtown.  An aura of disinvestment would pervade the area, undermining the progress that has been made since the restored Fox Theater opened for business two years ago.

Regrettably, the staff report declines to offer any comprehensive analysis on this issue, and in fact deliberately understates its importance.  In response to a comment, which expressed the concern that “[s]urface parking is ugly and causes hazards for pedestrians and bicyclists,” the staff report explains that “auto fee parking is already permitted or conditionally permitted,” and that all parking, even structures with above-grade parking levels, require access and egress points for vehicles.  Although the zoning conditionally permits “auto fee parking,” it does not permit surface parking because the condition for approval is that the parking spots be housed in a structure.  The zoning purposely distinguishes between parking structures and surface lots, but the staff report conflates them.  While it’s true that both require curb cuts that interrupt the sidewalk, it is disingenuous to imply that the driveway issue could be the only salient distinction worth addressing.

As it stands, the TCUP program contradicts the CBD zoning, and the staff report’s attempt to reconcile the two therefore fails — as does its attempt to reconcile TCUPs with the General Plan.  Staff opines that TCUPs “would not conflict with any goals or objectives of the General Plan” because the temporary uses being approved would generally be permitted anyway.  But once again, by discussing the TCUP program in the abstract and avoiding mention of its true purpose — the approval of otherwise-forbidden surface parking — the staff report misses the point.  Surface parking is explicitly incompatible with the General Plan.  For example, Policy T3.8 of the Land Use and Transportation Element provides that downtown parking should be “screened from public view” because of the negative impact that surface parking has on pedestrian safety and the vitality of the downtown.

Finally, the proposed procedure for reviewing TCUPs is problematic.  The report proposes that TCUPs be classified as “major” and “minor,” like other conditional use permits.  To its credit, the report does not try to pass off all TCUPs as “minor.”  But in the context of off-street surface parking, only major TCUPs — for lots with 50 or more parking spaces — would be subject to a public hearing.  Lots with fewer than 50 spaces would require no hearing and would escape public notice.  Short of filing an appeal with the Planning Commission, citizens would be denied the opportunity to voice their opinions on an historically controversial issue affecting Oakland’s most prominent neighborhood.

In short, there is little to recommend here.  Unfortunately, I may not be able to attend the commission meeting, but would appreciate it if readers could either comment at the meeting at 6:00 p.m. on February 16, or email all the commissioners, encouraging them to reject this misguided TCUP program: dboxer@gmail.com, VienV.Truong@gmail.com, Blake.Huntsman@seiu1021.org, sgalvez@phi.org, michael.colbruno@gmail.com, mzmdesignworks@gmail.com, VinceGibbs.opc@gmail.com.

Compelling candidates challenge incumbent BART directors in District 8 (San Francisco, left) and District 4 (Oakland/Alameda, right).

If there is a silver lining to be found in the protracted Oakland Airport Connector debate and other BART drama that has ensued over the past couple of years, it’s that BART’s Board of Directors and the agency generally have been subject to an extra measure of public scrutiny.  There’s a related silver lining: candidates emerging to challenge lackluster incumbent directors.  And not just any challengers, but serious, compelling challengers that deserve our attention.  This election, we’re talking about District 8 (the north and west side of  San Francisco) and District 4 (Oakland, east of Broadway, and Alameda).

Vigorous but misguided advocacy of the senseless Oakland Airport Connector, coupled with an insensitive brushing aside of well-reasoned opposition expressed by members of the public, is reason enough to unseat current District 4 director Carole Ward Allen.  Do we even need a clearer example showing her faulty grasp of riders’ true priorities? Insert a too little, too late approach to police reform, and one cannot help but draw the conclusion that Oakland and Alameda deserve better.

 Meanwhile, current District 8 director James Fang is a lonely Republican in San Francisco who has presided for far too long over a district that is gerrymandered if there ever was one (see above map).  He has pursued an approach that values flash over substance (cell phone fare payment), not to mention flash over basic common sense  (the infamous fare rollback, overwhelmingly disdained by rider surveys).  Okay, so he did recently express his support for a BART line to serve the Richmond District — that’s at least something we can agree would be a good thing.  But then again, given that he apparently sees BART as primarily a supplier of construction jobs (rather than, you know, a transit operator), Fang is happy to build BART anywhere and everywhere, indiscriminately.  So he was bound to come around to his own district sooner or later, and what better time to do so than during election season?

If the BART Board’s suburban tilt isn’t enough to contend with, what’s unforgivable is that even its urban directors (save one) aren’t true urbanists.  Like Carole Ward Allen and James Fang, they willingly sign off on ever more distant extensions that not only drain dollars and strain the system, but also lead to the deterioration of their own constituents’ experiences riding the train.

Bert Hill (left) and Robert Raburn (right). Images courtesy of their respective campaign websites.

Enter Bert Hill and Robert Raburn.  Personally, I am thrilled that both these candidates have stepped up to the plate to challenge the old guard.  I won’t repeat all their background information in this post, as you can read about it here and here.  Both bring years of valuable transportation advocacy experience, as well as relevant professional and academic expertise.  Bert Hill’s platform discusses local connectivity to BART stations; he also emphasizes that funds should be prioritized for maintaining existing track and stations and accommodating future capacity needs, rather than building unsustainable extensions to the hinterlands.  Meanwhile, Raburn vehemently criticizes the Oakland Airport Connector, which lies in his home district, and correctly reminds us that in relentlessly pursuing the OAC, the BART Board unnecessarily exposes the agency and its riders to the risks and consequences of taking out a federal TIFIA loan to finance the project.  I could not agree more on these points, and I believe both Hill and Raburn will bring perspectives that are underrepresented and sorely needed on the Board.

This is not to say there isn’t necessarily room for growth and improvement.  For example, at a candidate forum, Raburn was so insistent on the need to focus on maintaining the core system (instead of pursuing expensive capital projects) that his gut reaction to the idea of building infill stations was “Oh my gosh: another construction project.”  I cannot agree with the implication of that remark – that infill stations and suburban extensions belong to the same generic category of undesirable capital projects, and that infill stations “won’t pencil out.”  Rather, a few well-chosen urban infill stations are the exact type of capital project that likely will pencil out, by increasing ridership at a fraction of the cost of a new extension, while creating comfortably transit-dependent neighborhoods with denser land uses.  But despite that slip-up (in what was otherwise a series of solid, well-presented viewpoints), I didn’t get the sense that an insurmountable ideological barrier was reached.  Rather, the reaction seemed more like a vehicle for Raburn to contrast his own world view with that of the current Board, which has moved the OAC and other extensions forward in spite of deferred maintenance needs.  Perhaps more importantly, though, I sensed in him an intellectual curiosity and genuine interest in transportation issues, as well as a willingness to engage with details and facts.  Ever try to reason with Carole Ward Allen about the facts on the Oakland Airport Connector?

The bottom line is that both Bert Hill and Robert Raburn agree that it’s irresponsible to extend track into far-flung corners of the region when major investments are required to shore up the core system and accommodate future capacity needs.  Both candidates understand that BART’s role in the region is not to provide an endless stream of construction jobs and groundbreaking and ribbon-cutting ceremonies, but to operate an efficient, clean, functional system that fortifies our urban environment, ties together our region as the backbone of a multimodal network, and ultimately improves our quality of life. 

In short, both Hill and Raburn simply get it on so many issues.  Either one, and preferably both, would be a breath of fresh air on the Board.  With the Board’s current membership, Tom Radulovich too often speaks as the sole voice of reason drowned out by a chorus.  A Radulovich-Hill-Raburn trifecta would be a positive development, bringing to bear a team that could exert more influence on Board votes.

I am unfortunately not eligible to vote in either of these races, but I would strongly recommend that readers who live in BART districts 4 and 8 skip past the incumbents on their ballot, and instead cast a vote this time for Robert Raburn in District 4, and Bert Hill in District 8.  This November both sides of the Bay can stand together and vote for change at BART.  As BART continues to evolve beyond a commuter rail service into an urban metro, the composition of the Board should reflect the evolving nature of the system.  We stand to benefit from the expertise and passion that these candidates offer.

Interstate 680 in Fremont. Courtesy of Caltrans.

The Bay Area’s first high-occupancy toll (HOT) lane, or “express lane,” opens today on southbound Interstate 680 over the Sunol Grade, between Highways 84 and 237 — a 14-mile stretch of freeway that includes 11 miles in Alameda County and 3 miles in Santa Clara County.  Carpools and high-occupancy vehicles on this segment of freeway are now joined by single-occupancy vehicles, who are charged a toll via FasTrak transponders for the privilege of driving in a lane that moves faster than the surrounding freeway.  Tolls will be charged only on weekdays between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m.  The price, which is adjusted dynamically in order to maintain a free-flowing lane, will range from a minimum of 30 cents in light traffic to a potential toll of 4-6 dollars in heavy traffic.

Courtesy of ACCMA/ACTC.

This stretch of freeway has been striped to separate the HOT lane from the general purpose lanes.  There are three specific points at which motorists can enter or exit the HOT lane.  Entry points are placed just south of Highway 84, Mission Boulevard, and Auto Mall Parkway.  Exit points are placed just south of Auto Mall Parkway (for drivers exiting at Jacklin Road or points north), south of Jacklin Road (for drivers exiting at Highway 237), and south of Highway 237, where the HOT lane ends.

So how about that toll revenue?  In order to defend the worth of HOT lanes against those who protest induced demand, it’s argued that the HOT lane segments built in a particular corridor will generate a new pot of funding to improve transit in that corridor.  That may need to be seen to be believed — but, depending on how much profit remains after covering operations and maintenance costs, revenue from the I-680 southbound lane could be used to construct a northbound or other facility in the corridor.

The new lane is only the first step toward building the regional HOT lane network planned for the Bay Area.  It’s not yet clear what the full extent of that network will be; once envisioned as consisting of about 800 lane miles, difficulties facing implementation may require that the plan be downsized.  In any case, the I-680 HOT lane will be joined next year by another facility in the Tri-Valley, located between Hacienda Road and Greenville Road on eastbound Interstate 580.

This morning, the BART Board of Directors unanimously supported Alternative 2B as the preferred alignment and certified the the Program EIR.  Although BART to Livermore has been discussed as a possibility for decades, today’s vote puts the project closer than ever to being a reality.  Still, a great deal of difficult work remains, not the least of which is funding.

Alternative 2B is an 11.3-mile extension, projected to attract (for whatever the number is worth) 31,900 riders.  Not surprisingly, then, it is also identified as the “environmentally superior” alternative in terms of air quality and reducing vehicle miles traveled, particularly in the congested Interstate 580 corridor.  It includes two stations: one in downtown Livermore, and another at Vasco Road.  Here is a map of the alignment (click here for a larger PDF):

BART to Livermore, Alternative 2B. Courtesy of BART.

Under Alternative 2B, tracks would be extended east of BART’s current Dublin/Pleasanton terminus along the median of Interstate 580, and then would go into a trench at the Isabel interchange.  There would be a cut-and-cover subway under Portola Avenue and Junction Avenue, with a new subway station in downtown Livermore, as in Alternative 3.  East of downtown, the tracks would resurface and basically follow the Alternative 2A alignment parallel to the Union Pacific right-of-way, heading toward a surface Vasco Road station to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  Both the downtown and Vasco Road stations connect to existing ACE stations, and could facilitate an intermodal transfer with upgraded intercity rail in the Altamont corridor.  A yard and shop would also be constructed east of Vasco Road.

This alignment is notable for breaking the historic pattern of confining the BART right-of-way to freeway medians.  Although Alternative 2B does include several miles of running in the freeway median, the decision to turn the tracks south of the freeway towards downtown demonstrates an evolving understanding of the role BART could and should play in the region.  Rather than simply choosing the path of least resistance along the freeway to shorten suburban commutes, Alternative 2B strives to extract more long-term value from an expensive project.  Alternative 2B could more satisfactorily accommodate transit-oriented development — including the 11,550 housing units that would have to be planned near extension station areas — without disturbing Livermore’s urban growth boundary.  Station sitings near downtown and the laboratory are perhaps the most natural choices, in that they give riders easy access to local destinations and convenient transfer points to intercity rail.

Of course, none of that comes cheaply, and Alternative 2B would be the most expensive of the bunch.  Preliminary estimates peg the cost at $3.83 billion.  It is a hefty chunk of change to extend heavy rail to a suburb with less than 100,000 people — although the Altamont connection would also put Central Valley riders within one transfer of many Bay Area destinations.  It will take a lot of time and effort to secure the diverse portfolio of funding needed to construct the extension.  $95 million is available to preserve right-of-way in this corridor, but many other sources will also have to be considered — including federal New Starts, potential revenue from high-occupancy toll lanes on Interstate 580, and future re-authorization of Alameda County’s Measure B sales tax.

In a key decision on April 20, the Oakland City Council unanimously approved Oakland’s segment of the LPA, which comprises the great majority of the full BRT route.  Oakland’s LPA includes dedicated median transitways on Telegraph Avenue (south of the Berkeley city limit to 20th Street) and on East 14th Street (south of 14th Avenue to the San Leandro city limit), with some shared and mixed flow lanes in Eastlake and along Broadway in downtown Oakland.

On May 17, the San Leandro City Council also approved its own segment of the project LPA.  The San Leandro LPA  proceeds south of the Oakland city limit, featuring dedicated lanes and station platforms in the median of East 14th Street as far south as Sunnyside Drive, where it transitions to mixed curbside operation for the southernmost segment of the route, then terminating at San Leandro BART station.

Berkeley, naturally, went its own direction.  On April 29, the Berkeley City Council fell short of endorsing the build alternative in Berkeley.  With Councilmember Max Anderson absent from that meeting, the resolution failed as 4 pro-BRT votes were matched by 2 votes against the project and 2 abstentions.  Berkeley’s rejection of full-build was accompanied by adoption of a diluted LPA, which discards the dedicated transit lanes and replaces them with mixed curbside operation and potential queue jump lanes.  The lack of dedicated lanes, when taken in combination with other proposed non-BRT changes (mainly converting one-way streets near the University campus to two-way operation), could transform the Berkeley portion of the route into a slow, unreliable northern appendage — hampering reliability on the rest of the line, despite dedicated facilities in Oakland and San Leandro.

This split of support among the three cities — exacerbated by the revelation that AC Transit might eliminate 1R rapid bus service north of downtown Oakland to close its current budget deficit — created fresh concern about what the next step should be for BRT.  Despite staff including 1R truncation as one potential measure to address the budget, AC Transit prefers to preserve the full 1R route.  Still: would Berkeley’s refusal to accept dedicated lanes accordingly deprive Temescal and North Oakland of the transit, pedestrian, and bicycle improvements that would accompany the full-build BRT?  Would AC Transit instead reduce the scope of the BRT project by cutting it off at MacArthur BART, or even downtown Oakland?

There has been an encouraging and re-energizing development this week.  Berkeley Councilmember Anderson, who was not present at the April 29 meeting, has indicated that he would support full BRT.  Councilmember Arreguín, who abstained on April 29, has also indicated that he would support full BRT.  If so, the 4-4 vote on April 29 would become a 6-3 vote endorsing BRT.  The agenda has not yet been set as of the time of this writing, but the current plan is for Berkeley to revisit BRT at its June 22 meeting.

The AC Transit Board of Directors intended to adopt an LPA for the whole project on June 9, incorporating the local preferences of the three cities.  However, the Board continued the item and delayed its decision on BRT until June 23, just one day after the Berkeley meeting.  This will give the Berkeley City Council an opportunity to reverse its prior decision.  The way forward is not crystal clear if that vote gets delayed, or if Berkeley insists on substantial changes, but the process should be straightforward if Berkeley promptly approves the build alternative on June 22.

BRT will be a stronger, more reliable, and more heavily patronized project if it includes dedicated transit facilities in all three cities.  The Berkeley Councilmembers are encouraged to join their colleagues in Oakland and San Leandro by approving the build alternative.

But AC Transit had originally planned to execute a 15% system-wide service cut.  In a revision to its original service adjustment plan, AC Transit temporarily “restored” many of those proposed cuts while undergoing negotiations concerning funding for the BRT project.  So the District must now go back to the chopping block to eliminate 182,000 platform hours of service each year, in order to save about $11.5 million.  If these reductions are implemented as planned, the resulting level of service would be the lowest that AC Transit has provided in a generation.  Indeed, the proposals that are now on the table are all too reminiscent of the significant service cuts that AC Transit made in the 1990s.

Having already taken advantage of many key opportunities to realize savings through means of increasing efficiency, AC Transit is now placed in the difficult position of making more undesirable cuts to lifeline service.  AC Transit planning staff is currently considering three strategies moving forward:

• Reduce weekend service. This proposal seeks to preserve weekday service at the expense of the least utilized weekend service.  Under this proposal, only the most popular routes would operate on weekends.  The routes that would continue to operate on weekends are: 1, 18, 20, 22, 40, 51A, 51B, 57, 60, 72, 72M, 73, 88, 97, 99, 210, and 217.  Other routes would operate only on weekdays.
• Reduce All-Nighter Service. AC Transit already offers skeletal owl service (lines 800, 801, 802, 805, 840, and 851) along its most productive corridors.  This strategy could do one of two things: (i) eliminate all but routes 800 and 801, which mirror corresponding BART corridors and receive funding through Regional Measure 2; or (ii) preserve existing All-Nighter routes, but reduce service on other routes after 10:00 p.m.
• System-wide reduction. This proposal would proportionately reduce both weekday and weekend service throughout the system by about 8%.

AC Transit will not make all these reductions, nor will it necessarily adopt one strategy to the exclusion of the others.  Rather, service planners have indicated that there is considerable flexibility in selecting the specific proposals that move forward in this process, as long as the necessary savings are realized.  Strategic, fine-grained analysis informed by public commentary and real data will be necessary to make the right combination of changes that minimize hardship to riders.

Nonetheless, depending on the proposals that are ultimately adopted, the service changes will make life more difficult for those who depend on transit, particularly those who rely on off-peak and owl service to get to work.  It will be all the more difficult to live in the East Bay without a car.

The proposed reductions to weekend service (strategy #1) and night-time service (strategy #2) hit especially hard.  Minor lines might be considerably less productive than trunk routes, but they are lifelines for those that they serve.  They are important to the success of an urban transit system because they fill out the grid and connect to trunk routes. At the same time, though, it also makes sense to isolate trunk routes from serious cuts, in order to diminish the overall impact and ensure that robust services remain successful.  It’s a delicate balancing act.  Still, given that completely depriving swathes of the inner East Bay of all-night transit service — including important corridors like Broadway, San Pablo Avenue, and MacArthur — is so serious a proposition, it may make sense to instead spread the pain, by judiciously reducing other off-peak service to a level commensurate with demonstrated demand.

The system-wide proportionate reductions (strategy #3) generally either reduce frequency, or narrow the time span of operation of various lines.  A few lines would run on weekdays only, and a handful could be eliminated altogether, including new service that was introduced in the package of March 2010 changes.  There would, however, only be minor changes to Transbay service, since the Transbay lines already suffered an almost 17% cut in the last round.

Given that so many routes have already been redrawn recently, not many map changes are proposed.  The most significant restructuring of routes could occur in Oakland, in part by splitting service on the planned BRT corridor (Telegraph/East 14th Street).  One proposal realigns line 40 service back to Telegraph Avenue and isolates the 1/1R to its most productive segment (East 14th Street, between downtown Oakland and San Leandro).  The 1R would retreat to San Leandro BART, thus abandoning the southernmost segment of the route; only the 1 would run all the way to Bayfair.  Another proposal discontinues parallel service south of 73rd Avenue.  A new line 90 would operate between Eastmont and San Leandro BART via Bancroft, but the southern termini of both the 40 and the NL would retreat to Eastmont.

It bears repeating that AC Transit will not be making all of the above changes.  But the agency must now determine which changes will have the least adverse impact to riders, while still making the necessary reduction of 182,000 platform hours.  Regular riders are strongly encouraged to stay on top of this process and offer commentary, so that AC Transit is armed with the information it needs to make wise changes.  The schedule for putting these changes into effect will be relatively fast-paced.  A public hearing will be held in just one month, on May 26, and the service changes are planned to go into effect on August 22, 2010.