Prior to the construction in the 1930s of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, Bay Area citizens crossed the Bay by using the once-thriving ferry service. The completion of those bridges and the rising popularity of the automobile greatly affected how people moved throughout the region. Since then, ferry service has been profoundly reduced, now serving a fraction of the riders it once did, generally tourists and a small share of transbay commuters. But as we know, the next big earthquake is not a matter of if, but when; and when it does hit, any damage sustained by BART and the bridges may require that we go back to the basics, by moving people via ferries. The Water Transit Authority (WTA) was established in 1999 to plan an eventual expansion of Bay Area ferry service and terminals, and WTA finally produced a plan in 2003. Then, in October 2007, the Governor signed SB 976 into law, which established the Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA), a new agency that would absorb the WTA. The goal of the legislation was to create an agency that would manage and expand Bay Area ferry service in a way that would make ferries a central component of the region’s response to earthquakes and other emergencies. SB 976 required that WETA adopt a transition plan by January 1, 2009, and an emergency management plan by July 1, 2009. Local concerns about the ferry takeover prompted SB 1093, which took effect in September 2008; that latter bill extended the adoption date for the transition plan to July 1, 2009, and assured Alameda and Vallejo that the transition would be informed by a public process. WETA has since produced the two required draft plans, and the agency now seeks public comment on those plans before adopting final versions.

The Transition Plan will facilitate WETA’s transition from an agency that plans to one that actually operates. The three East Bay ferry services — Alameda/Oakland, Alameda Harbor Bay, and Vallejo Baylink — are now owned and managed by the Cities of Alameda and Vallejo, but when the transition plan is implemented, WETA would own, consolidate, and operate these services; no change to current service levels is anticipated. As set forth in SB 976, North Bay ferries will continue to be operated by the Golden Gate District, not WETA. WETA will also develop a five-year financial plan. This includes an operating budget that will account for five ferry routes — those three existing services, as well as two new services (Oakland-South San Francisco and Berkeley/Albany-San Francisco) that are planned to debut in the next few years. It also includes a capital budget, which allocates money to the maintenance of vessels and terminals, in addition to the four vessels and two terminals that will be required for the new routes debuting in 2011-12.

The Emergency Water Transportation System Management Plan is what accounts for the “E” in WETA; the provision of emergency ferry service is a critical component of the agency’s mission. WETA will be more than a mere ferry operator. In the event of an earthquake or other emergency, WETA will activate its own Emergency Operations Center in response to that emergency; this will in turn mobilize all of the Bay Area’s maritime transportation services, and it will allow WETA to coordinate the response to and recovery from an emergency, as well as the restoration of normal operations.  It will implement the approach of California’s Standardized Emergency Management System (SEMS) and the National Incident Management System (NIMS); these methods provide a framework for handling emergencies, by dictating the pattern and flow of communication between all agencies that are involved. WETA will carry out its own emergency planning, and it will coordinate with other similar planning throughout the region.

WETA’s future plans are centered on two primary goals: reducing emissions and expanding geographic coverage. Both goals are mandated by SB 976; but the latter goal, which will add regular ferry service to Bay Area cities that do not currently receive it, is particularly central to WETA’s role as a coordinator of emergency response and recovery. In December 2008, WETA launched the Gemini, a 25-knot vessel that has capacity for 149 passengers and 34 bicycles; this marked the beginning of plans for an expanded fleet of ferries that are 85% cleaner than EPA’s emission standards. There are also several proposed ferry routes that were featured in the WTA’s 2003 Plan; these would augment existing ferry service. The additional services include a direct route between Oakland and South San Francisco (utilizing a new terminal at Oyster Point), which will not serve San Francisco — as well as six other routes that would link San Francisco to Treasure Island, Richmond, Berkeley/Albany, Hercules, Antioch/Martinez, and Redwood City. If additional land in Alameda (e.g. Point Alameda) is developed, such a development would also be a natural location for a ferry terminal. The Oakland-South City service is currently projected to debut in 2011, with Berkeley-SF service following in 2012.

WETA seeks public comment on these two draft plans. To contribute your thoughts, use this contact form (through May 18, 2009), send an email to contactus@watertransit.org, or you can attend one of the three public hearings scheduled for next week:

• San Francisco (April 15, 2009 at 12:00 pm): BCDC, 50 California Street, Suite 2600
• Vallejo (April 15, 2009 at 6:30 pm): Vallejo City Hall, 555 Santa Clara Street
• Alameda (April 16, 2009 at 7:30 pm): Alameda City Hall, 2263 Santa Clara Avenue

Regular readers may recall our previous discussion of Transportation 2035, the latest update to MTC’s ongoing efforts on the Regional Transportation Plan. Earlier this year, we wrote a special feature that describes the multifaceted plan, fleshing out how MTC has proposed to allocate $226 billion of local, state, and federal transportation funding that was expected to become available to the Bay Area over the next quarter century. However, changes in the economy and funding climate have necessitated that MTC revise a few aspects of the RTP. The State of California yanked away STA money that funds transit operations; in the Bay Area, this means that local transit operators will lose access to over $55 million that they were relying upon for the remainder of this fiscal year, and no STA funding at all will be provided in upcoming years. Assuming that the state reinstates STA funding in five years, the Bay Area will have lost $1.2 billion of STA and spillover funds in the interim; MTC also projected a $4.5 billion loss in TDA revenue over the 25-year RTP timeline. Another change is VTA’s recent announcement that it can only afford to build the BART extension to San Jose as far as Berryessa Station, postponing the construction of the downtown subway alignment. This, in turn, is connected to the issue of declining transportation sales tax revenue; this is potentially problematic throughout the region, not just in Santa Clara County, although it is not yet clear just how problematic. Considering the new forecasts for transit revenue, the region’s transit operation shortfall will increase from $3.2 to $8.5 billion. This includes a $283 million shortfall for AC Transit, a $442 million shortfall for Golden Gate Transit, a $1.6 billion shortfall for SamTrans, a $1.9 billion shortfall for Muni, and a whopping $3.2 billion shortfall for VTA, which is the worst operation shortfall in the region. Meanwhile, the transit capital shortfall will increase from $16.1 to $17.1 billion. It also takes into consideration that the cost of the BART extension to San Jose has increased from $6.1 billion to $7.6 billion (year of expenditure). Overall, the $226 billion plan has been reduced in size to a $218 billion plan. The plan adds $1.3 billion of revenue: about $280 million in connection with AC Transit’s Measure VV parcel tax, and $1 billion of VTA joint development revenue. It also anticipates $3 billion of funds for high-speed rail, with half coming from Proposition 1A, and the other half coming from the federal stimulus package’s $8 billion allocation to high-speed rail.

Update: For more details about the MTC meeting at which these numbers were revealed, please also see SF Streetsblog’s great write-up.

When Is Transit Service Redundant?

The numbers are grim, and they confirm that properly funding transit in the Bay Area will be a serious issue in the future, as operators struggle to produce a balanced budget each year. But looking beyond the latest set of numbers, the revised RTP does not constitute a substantial change in methodology. It does include a few new recommendations, but we believe that these recommendations — like many aspects of the RTP itself — fall short. In light of the regional shortfalls, MTC says we must investigate “transit sustainability,” carrying the implication that transit service must be cut until it attains a level that is “sustainable.” MTC suggests that such trimming is most natural in places that already enjoy “redundant” transit service. The Bay Area’s approach to transit operation and management has resulted in certain service inefficiencies on the regional level, in that each operator resembles an independent kingdom that cooperates only occasionally and reluctantly with neighboring kingdoms. Some areas receive too little service, while other areas receive more robust service than is arguably necessary. Sometimes, transit services do not quite connect; other times, they awkwardly overlap. At first blush, the idea of regarding the Bay Area’s many transit agencies as components of a larger network, in order to promote efficiency throughout the region, has underlying merit — particularly if it addresses uncoordinated fare policies. Then again, if MTC is so interested in investing money efficiently, then how are we to explain the agency’s longstanding commitment to projects like BART to San Jose and the Oakland Airport Connector? And if MTC is so interested in avoiding redundancy, perhaps it could also have guided us toward a superior regional vision in the first place, instead of scrambling to correct mistakes after the fact when the redundant infrastructure has already been built.

MTC has provided little in the way of precise detail about its regional study — but it did suggest a few initial examples of “redundant” inefficient transit service that it intends to scrutinize. The corridors that the agency has chosen as exemplars of “redundant” service are themselves a cause for concern, in that they either overlook or misunderstand the different roles fulfilled by various transit services. For example, MTC suggests that the Peninsula currently enjoys “redundant” service because SamTrans, Caltrain, and BART all operate in this area. BART and Caltrain between Millbrae and San Francisco do not serve identical corridors, but if you were going to make a redundancy argument on the Peninsula, that would be the place to start. But the purpose and reach of SamTrans bus service should not be perceived as being redundant to BART and Caltrain, which both function as commuter rail on the Peninsula. Even long-distance bus routes that parallel the rail corridors and feed into rail stations carry short haul trips that give those routes a fundamentally different purpose and ridership than the rail corridor they ostensibly duplicate.

MTC also considered the Bay Bridge/Transbay corridor, pointing out that BART, AC Transit’s Transbay buses, and ferries all provide redundant service between San Francisco and the inner East Bay. The Transbay corridor is the highest demand transit corridor in the Bay Area, capturing transit share that well exceeds the regional average. This is not surprising, in light of short headways, and the fact that BART’s Transbay Tube is one of very few places in the Bay Area where a transit trip is legitimately faster than its equivalent trip by automobile. The high demand means that “redundant” service is actually advantageous. We should remark that BART and the Transbay buses are not precisely duplicative, because AC Transit serves many East Bay neighborhoods that are distant from any BART station, thus allowing residents of those neighborhoods to travel to and from San Francisco via transit without driving and without suffering the time and fare penalty associated with transferring to BART. To the extent that BART and AC Transit actually do provide duplicate service in the literal Bay Bridge corridor, the duplicate service is an advantage. AC Transit provides additional seats that supplement BART’s strained capacity at peak commute hours, and many riders actually prefer the bus over BART for its comfort and wireless Internet connection. The services are complementary, rather than competitive. Particularly because the design of the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge precludes reintroducing surface rail on the bridge itself, the portfolio of Transbay bus service is one that we would ideally grow, or at least maintain at its current levels — not cut, based on a cursory perception that the service it provides is redundant to BART.

The BART to San Jose Fund

In this sense, MTC’s standard methodology, which prioritizes big-ticket suburban BART extensions above more cost-effective solutions, has not changed. MTC posits that the Bay Area must trim “redundant” transit service. This almost certainly refers to bus routes, which are crucial lifelines for the the transit-dependent — rather than, for instance, underutilized midday BART runs to Pittsburg/Bay Point and Millbrae. One of the great ironies of MTC’s redundancy analysis is that the revised RTP is in part geared toward providing additional funding for BART to San Jose — a project that itself involves constructing grade-separated BART infrastructure that directly duplicates miles of existing standard gauge track through Fremont, Milpitas, and San Jose. Santa Clara County projects a $2 billion shortfall in 2000 Measure A funds. How should this shortfall be filled? The proposal is to use $2 billion of revenue gathered from MTC’s planned network of High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes (click here and scroll down to read more about the HOT network). This is a problematic suggestion on its face, because it is unclear that the HOT lanes will even generate the revenue that MTC has alleged.

Furthermore, applying HOT revenue to fill the Measure A shortfall would constitute a rather startling reversal of policy. MTC itself has articulated an equitable principle that should guide funding choices for HOT revenue: the money that comes from toll lanes in a given corridor should be applied toward transit and other related improvements within that same corridor. For instance, HOT revenues could potentially fund better transit or bicycle/street improvements parallel to the freeway corridor from which those revenues were collected. It could also fill the transit operating shortfalls, which MTC has suggested could be reduced by cutting redundant service. However, many of the HOT lanes planned for Santa Clara County are not in the corridor of the proposed BART extension — for example, the lanes on Highways 85, 87, and 101 (south of Interstate 280 and Downtown San Jose). So there is a danger that HOT lane tolls collected on freeways that are distant from the BART alignment will nonetheless be appropriated in order to deliver the $2 billion necessary to fill the Measure A shortfall, which VTA has devoted primarily to BART. It is not enough, then, that VTA plans to either downscale or indefinitely delay on its promises to construct a full portfolio of transit improvements, all in the name of bringing BART to the South Bay. Now, even HOT revenues — which could nicely supplement efforts to remake the greater Valley into a more transit-oriented place, by investing in local transit and streetscape improvements — have now instead been proposed to shore up Measure A and the BART extension.

MTC has given the public a two-week window in which to comment on its proposed revisions to the Transportation 2035 plan. Comments will be received until 4:00 pm on Thursday, April 8, 2009. You can send a comment via mail to 101 Eighth Street, Oakland, CA 94607, Attn: Public Information; via E-mail to info@mtc.ca.gov; or via fax to 510.817.5848, Attn: Public Information.

Posted in AC Transit, BART, BART to San Jose, Caltrain, Ferries, Freeways, Golden Gate Transit, High-Speed Rail, MTC, Muni / SFMTA, Peninsula, Regional Rail, Regional Transportation Plan, SamTrans, South Bay, Transit Funding, VTA ]]> http://transbayblog.com/2009/03/26/shifting-funds-shifty-priorities/feed/ 8 transbay http://transbayblog.com/2008/01/23/a-ferry-for-oyster-point/ http://transbayblog.com/2008/01/23/a-ferry-for-oyster-point/#comments Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:56:31 +0000 Eric http://transbayblog.com/2008/01/23/a-ferry-for-oyster-point/ Continue reading »]]> The San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transit Authority dreams of a bright day in the future when many points all around the Bay will be accessible via an expanded ferry network that would carry many more passengers, make more effective connections to buses and rail, and generally be regarded as a serious alternative to land transportation. Among its several proposed additional routes is a direct link between the East Bay and Oyster Point in South San Francisco. Two weeks ago, the South San Francisco City Council unanimously approved the construction of a landmark ferry terminal at Oyster Point, which would be served by ferries running to and from Oakland’s Jack London Square, possibly as early as next year. This ferry ride would not only be more relaxing and scenic than taking BART or driving, it could also be faster than either of those alternatives, at least before you factor in a bus ride to or from the terminal. One note: although this Examiner article reports a 25-minute trip, the EIR estimated about 35 minutes from Oyster Point to Jack London Square, with trips several minutes shorter to either Harbor Bay or Alameda Point. Those travel times seem to be based on three different East Bay terminals rather than multiple stops; I do not know the source of the 10-minute discrepancy, but the 35-minute trip to Jack London Square seems more likely, to allow for passage through the Oakland Estuary.

The Oyster Point location is of course nowhere near BART’s hillside Peninsula route, but it also misses Caltrain’s South San Francisco station, which is located just south of where Oyster Point Boulevard crosses over the tracks. Walking near “scenic” Highway 101 is unpleasant in any event, so SamTrans feeder buses and company shuttles will be necessary to facilitate connections to local destinations. The ferry route is estimated to have just 700 daily riders (increasing to about 1000 by the year 2025), most of which would be employees commuting from the East Bay to the growing concentration of biotech offices located in South San Francisco. Genentech, for instance, estimates that about 10% of its workforce lives within ten miles of Jack London Square and will include the new ferry service in its incentive plan that provides employees with $4 a day to use on alternative transportation.

The Oyster Point terminal was designed by ROMA Design, the group who was behind Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade and who previously worked on redoing the public space that connects the Ferry Building to downtown in the wake of the Embarcadero Freeway’s destruction. The design for the ferry terminal includes a glass-covered pier to protect passengers from the wind:

In addition to the $12 million required for two new vessels, construction of the terminal will run up $29 million; the WTA expects to fill an outstanding $5 million funding gap by the summer. Funding sources include Regional Measure 2 (which allocates capital funds for the new ferries and $3 million annually for operations) and Measure A, San Mateo County’s sales tax extension, which would be applied generally to San Mateo County ferry service, including the new South San Francisco service.

In terms of mobility improvement, the new ferry route and terminal constitute a mild proposal, and with a mere 700 daily riders estimated, this project won’t win any awards for cost-effectiveness. More generally, though: as much as we might relish the romantic vision of an expanded ferry network crisscrossing the Bay at all points, the lack of dense uses at most Bay Area waterfronts (downtown San Francisco is the exception, not the rule) makes it difficult to seamlessly integrate ferries into the network of land transit. Radically rethinking waterfronts around the region may provide a long-term method of systematically increasing ferry ridership, but that can be a difficult proposition for environmental reasons. In the meantime, we would have to rely on inelegant solutions like bus bridges. This is not to say that we should not investigate service expansion, only that we should temper our goals and spending so that they align with realistic expectations about the transportation role that ferries will play in the future.