Transbay Blog

When Octavia Boulevard opened in 2005, it became an urbanist case study, joining The Embarcadero as another shining example of how removing key segments of freeway can breathe new life into once-blighted urban neighborhoods. Empty lots along Octavia are still undeveloped, so Hayes Valley is a work in progress; and the intersection of Market & Octavia, where the freeway touches down to the street, created a dangerous situation in which motorists executing an impermissible right turn onto the freeway collided with bicyclists. Octavia is heavily traveled by motorists, but it still remains a vast improvement over the northern segment of the Central Freeway that once cast shadows over Hayes Valley. South of Market neighborhoods, in contrast, have not had the opportunity to enjoy a similar renaissance. The urban fabric of those neighborhoods remain sliced in half by the southern segment of the reconstructed Central Freeway — even while South of Market bears the burden of hosting still other freeways and many unsafe traffic sewers.  The remaining freeway, combined with 13th/Division Street directly below the freeway (pictured above), cuts a wide swath of automobile capacity into the heart of San Francisco, thus preventing the affected neighborhoods from flourishing in the way that neighborhoods north of Market have. One day, it would be gratifying to see the rest of the Central Freeway removed. And if it were removed, what might San Francisco look like then? What follows here is certainly not a proposal, but simply a depiction of one potential vision for the Central Freeway corridor — a long-term vision, which aims not just to reclaim, but to transform, neighborhoods now cast in shadow. The goal is to not simply remove the freeway structure and replace it with a boulevard, but to set the bar high with a joint transit and land use vision.

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First, A Few Numbers (and Acronyms)

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.

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Although we have yet to see a fully reconciled stimulus bill to come from Congress and President Obama, agencies across the nation are eagerly putting together their wish lists for how to spend their portion of the $800 billion-plus stimulus pie. Here in the Bay Area, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has released a draft (PDF) explaining how it plans to allocate stimulus fund to transportation projects throughout the region.

Just how much money could the Bay Area get? It will not be exactly clear until the stimulus legislation is officially passed, but according to MTC’s current estimates, we could see $320-$500 million in FTA funds (sections 5307 and 5309), $140-$200 million Surface Transportation Program/FHWA funds, and $23 million (out of California’s $125 million total) for STP transportation enhancements. Moreover, California as a whole may receive $1.7-$2 billion in further FHWA funds, a chunk of which Caltrans and the California Transportation Commission would surely direct towards the Bay Area. Still further opportunities for funding might exist through other programs that have been weighed in the stimulus discussion, including the Senate’s $5.5 billion of competitive grants to be awarded at USDOT discretion, and the $2 billion allocation for designated high-speed rail corridors.

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Courtesy of the Guardian.

Two weeks ago, legislature Democrats approved a plan to address California’s budget woes through June 2010, accounting for $18 billion of the anticipated $41.6 billion shortfall. The plan included $7.3 billion of cuts and and $9.3 billion of general fund revenue — but $5.7 billion of that would be sourced from tax increases, so naturally, Governor Schwarzenegger announced his intention to block it, asserting that it would “punish” Californians. This came on the heels of another announcement from the Pooled Money Investment Board, stating that the state’s budget crisis required halting any lending to some 2,000 infrastructure projects statewide totalling to $16.2 billion. The budget legislation passed by Democrats included an exemption for eight specific transportation projects from the full demands of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), but it still required that Caltrans complete some environmental analysis. The Governor, however, refused to approve the legislation unless it was amended to include a significant relaxation of CEQA. CEQA requires state and local agencies in California to undergo thorough review of the environmental impacts their projects will cause, and to analyze alternatives to those projects. Arnold calls for some transportation projects, including freeway widening, to be exempt from these requirements. One particular point of contention is the widening of Highway 50 in Sacramento with carpool lanes between Watt Ave. and Sunrise Blvd., which did not appear on the legislature’s list of eight exempt projects. The Governor wants to bypass further review of this project; but this would fly in the face of a court ruling from this past summer, in which Judge Timothy Frawley found Caltrans’ environmental review of the widening to be inadequate and required Caltrans to carry out additional analysis. The underlying goal of the Governor’s demands is economic stimulus: if projects can skip through environmental review, they could be declared “shovel-ready” immediately, and thus would be eligible for federal stimulus money.

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Remember this past summer, when we ruminated about the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s ongoing update to the Regional Transportation Plan (Transportation 2035)? Remember when we were peeved by MTC’s unwillingness to heed the sage advice of the Advisory Council, the body that encouraged MTC to reevaluate $191 billion worth of “committed” projects, including several billion dollars worth of freeway widening whose construction would be directly detrimental to achieving MTC’s supposed goals of planning for a more livable, transit-oriented Bay Area? Remember when we were frustrated by MTC’s insistence at overlooking the fact that widening freeways — even to create brand-new High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes — nonetheless creates wider freeways and induces demand, thus only promoting more automobile use in the long run? And because of this tendency to fund projects that promote automobile use, remember that we were highly skeptical of MTC’s stated commitment to uphold AB 32’s greenhouse gas emission mandates, dismissing said commitment as merely lip service?

Guess what? Attorney General Jerry Brown agrees.

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The Congress for the New Urbanism has issued a list of the top ten freeways in the United States whose demolition, as CNU has aptly phrased it, would “stimulate valuable revitalization by replacing aging urban highways with boulevards.” These are the freeways on the list:

1. Alaskan Way Viaduct, Seattle, WA
2. Sheridan Expressway, Bronx, NY
3. The Skyway and Route 5, Buffalo, NY
4. Route 34, New Haven, CT
5. Claiborne Expressway, New Orleans, LA
6. Interstate 81, Syracuse, NY
7. Interstate 64, Louisville, KY
8. Route 29, Trenton, NJ
9. Gardiner Expressway, Toronto, ON
10. 11th Street Bridges and the Southeast Freeway, Washington D.C.

Embarcadero Freeway. Credits: Telstar Logistics (top), Wayfaring (bottom).

Since San Francisco’s infamous Freeway Revolt, the Bay Area has enjoyed first-hand examples of successfully reborn neighborhoods that bloomed on the land once occupied by freeways, but then returned to human access. Given the successful revitalization of San Francisco’s Embarcardero — the addition of spacious pedestrian plazas; the adaptive reuse of the Ferry Building; and historic streetcar service so well-used that it is apparently “too popular for its own good” — it is easy to forget that before the 1989 earthquake, there was a functioning double-decker Embarcadero Freeway that viciously sliced the waterfront off from the rest of the city. Meanwhile, empty fenced lots that still remain on and near the redesigned Octavia Boulevard in Hayes Valley retain an eerie deadness that feels decidedly out of place, when set off against the density that characterizes the rest of the neighborhood. Those empty lots serve as a keen reminder of the Central Freeway that once stood there. But one day, they, too, will be filled with new homes, in accordance with the zoning controls adopted in the Market-Octavia Plan that was approved this past spring. And yet, for these successes, we might have done even better. It would be a bit much to hope for the removal of Interstates 580 and 880 in Oakland, but what if they had never been constructed? Instead of thousands of drivers using freeways to speed past largely neglected neighborhoods in East Oakland, what if those thousands of people rode trains through subway tunnels aligned under East 14th Street and MacArthur Boulevard, with a neighborhood station serving each of the commercial districts that are strung along those two thoroughfares? It is a fun thought experiment to consider what the Bay Area’s urban landscape would look like had our transportation network developed to look more like that of Europe, and less like California.

None of the top ten freeways in the CNU list are in the Bay Area, or even California. If the choice was yours to make, which freeways would you demolish (either in California or elsewhere)?

We have discussed here before, or at least introduced, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Transportation 2035 Plan, which is the latest update to the Regional Transportation Plan. The RTP provides a strategy for how to use the $223 billion of transportation funding that MTC expects will become available to the Bay Area over the next 25 years. Of that money, $191 billion is “committed,” leaving $32 billion of discretionary funding. The vast majority of this money (in the 80-90% range, depending on how the discretionary money is allocated) is earmarked for maintaining current road and transit infrastructure, and in fact, the bulk of the system expansion funds (about 80%) are to be applied to transit, not to roads. But not even all of the transit expansion projects are maximally intelligent, and there are still a lot of roadway expansion projects. I have already expressed dissatisfaction with MTC’s insistence at allocating funds for freeway expansion and then protecting them into perpetuity by sticking them into the “committed” status lockbox. But the last time we picked up this story, the Advisory Council offered several suggestions, one of which was to re-evaluate even the “committed” projects in light of AB 32, the bill which requires that California greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by the year 2020.

Unsurprisingly, MTC chose to ignore this suggestion by the time of last week’s July 23 meeting. The Chron duly reported on the Commission’s approval to move forward with a regional network of High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes, which I plan to discuss more in a future post. But the Chron neglected to point out the other part of the story — namely, that the financially constrained portion of the Transportation 2035 Plan was also approved, and, pursuant to Resolution 3869, the Plan and four alternatives will move onto the EIR phase that will occupy the next several months. MTC is required by law to undergo environmental review of both the Plan and a range of feasible alternatives that could mitigate environmental impacts of the Plan. With the exception of the required “No Project” alternative, all other alternatives offer different perspectives on how to spend the $32 billion of discretionary funds, but they maintain the same base of “committed” projects — and it is here that the freeway expansion monies lie. Many of the freeway expansion projects are relatively small, and others still are planned as part of the HOT lane network, where they are at least partially justifiable. But not all the money is earmarked for HOT lanes, and the total still amounts to some $6 billion to be spent on expanding the reach of Bay Area pavement.

But times change. Global warming is not only an environmental issue — it is increasingly a legal issue, as well, and a valid ground on which to challenge the adequacy of a governmental agency’s efforts at environmental review. Governing bodies can no longer sweep this issue under the rug. Even the current U.S. Supreme Court, in last year’s landmark case Massachusetts v. EPA, managed to recognize the importance of legal recourse as a means of addressing the climate change crisis. Meanwhile, also just last year, here in California, current Attorney General and former California Governor & Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown filed a challenge under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) against Inland Empire San Bernardino County’s updated General Plan, asserting that it did not adequately address greenhouse gas emissions in light of the County’s projected growth — although the plan did discuss measures to reduce emissions and traffic. The case settled quickly, but it sent a clear signal to California governments and agencies that they may not ignore greenhouse gas emissions when studying the environmental impacts that result from new projects and plans. Both this and AB 32 are more recent developments that MTC did not have to contend with the last time it prepared an update to the RTP.

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Suppose you expect to have a generous chunk of cash at your disposal — to the tune of over 200 billion dollars — and suppose that you rule over a congestion-prone corner of the world where over 80% of trips are made in an automobile, and where transportation is responsible for a full 50% of greenhouse gas emissions, during a time in which people are flocking to mass transit in light of ever-rising gasoline prices. Wouldn’t you want to spend a very substantial chunk of that money on projects that would increase the capacity of your local transportation network in a sustainable way, while encouraging people to leave their cars at home and hop on a bus or train instead? And wouldn’t you want to fund projects to help move your corner of the world in the direction of reducing emissions levels — rather than fund projects that would only encourage yet more driving, congestion, and pollution? Not if you’re the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, apparently.

It is well-documented that widening a roadway only serves to induce higher demand for that roadway. Any perceived congestion relief is only temporary, as it adds an incentive for drivers to jump in their cars and solo-commute in lieu of carpooling, biking, or finding a transit route to work. The more pronounced long-term effect of widened freeways is that they encourage more of the same suburban/exurban development and sprawled land use that caused the traffic congestion in the first place. And once the widened freeway has filled up again with cars, drivers will clamor for a still wider freeway. Claiming that we can build our way out of congestion with yet more pavement is a false promise.

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The Transbay Terminal, dark and uninviting though it may be, is downtown San Francisco’s hub for regional bus lines that connect the city to the counties lying east, south, and north. Many Muni buses also terminate at Transbay, and the terminal is just a short walk from a slew of other bus and train lines running on and under Market Street. As such, you might expect to see many clearly labeled maps of the various services located in or near the terminal, kept meticulously up-to-date, so that riders can make smooth transfers and make their way to their destinations as efficiently as possible.

But hey, this is the Bay Area. Since when has transit here worked the way it should?

Instead of meticulously updated maps, one instead finds a time capsule of sorts, a treasure trove of outdated maps — some rather obscenely so — chronicling a mini-history of service to the Transbay Terminal. The geek in me loves this sort of thing, so here you are reading a post about it. As usual, full-sized versions of all these maps are hosted on my Flickr account, so please click through any image you’d like to see in close-up detail.

One map posted in the Transbay Terminal (pictured at right) shows the entire Bay Area region, clearly displaying our decentralized patchwork quilt of transit agencies. Unfortunately, the design is hideous, and the map doesn’t make particularly clear how one might transfer from system to system, or what the level of coordination is between transfers. In short, the map simultaneously contains too much information and not enough information. It is also shows BART’s terminus on the Peninsula to be Colma, thus not conveying the quite important piece of information that since 2003, BART has terminated at Millbrae, not Colma, and also provides direct service to San Francisco International Airport.

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