Archive for the ‘Golden Gate Transit’ Category
Shifting Funds, Shifty Priorities
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.
Transit Ridership Increases in 2008
Transit ridership has reached a 52-year high, reports APTA, with 10.7 billion transit trips taken in the year 2008. This represent a 4% increase over 2007, and vehicle miles traveled decreased 3.6% nationwide during the same period of time; it also represents a 38% increase since 1995, a rate that outpaces growth in both population and VMT. APTA’s data indicates that light rail systems enjoyed the largest ridership jump (8.3% increase), followed by paratransit (5.9% increase), commuter rail (4.7% increase), buses (3.9% increase), and heavy rail subways (3.5% increase). Although the Overhead Wire cautions us with a reality check, it is so encouraging to see that interest in transit nationwide survived both job losses and the decline in gas prices from a high near $5/gallon earlier in 2008.
With the notable exceptions of VTA’s light rail system and San Francisco Muni generally (both of whose ridership growth per mode fell behind the national average), ridership increases for major Bay Area transit operators not only reflect, but in most instances actually outpace, the national trend. Our commuter rail operators (ACE, Caltrain, and Capitol Corridor) significantly outpaced the national average, as did bus ridership for AC Transit and VTA:
| Operator | % Change (2007 to 2008) |
Unlinked Trips (2008) |
| AC Transit | 5.68% | 71,663,200 |
| ACE | 14.66% | 865,700 |
| BART | 4.20% | 117,171,200 |
| Caltrain | 12.53% | 12,803,100 |
| Capitol Corridor | 16.13% | 1,730,800 |
| Golden Gate | Total: 2.73% Bus: 3.84% Ferry: -1.47% |
Total: 9,613,500 Bus: 7,515,000 Ferry: 1,985,900 |
| SamTrans | 3.43% | 14,974,700 |
| SF Municipal Railway | Total: 2.55% Bus: 0.91% Trolley Bus: 2.56% Muni Metro (LRT): 5.90% Cable Car: 1.53% |
Total: 221,213,200 Bus: 91,138,600 Trolley Bus: 73,351,200 Muni Metro (LRT): 48,889,600 Cable Car: 7,833,800 |
| Santa Clara VTA | Total: 5.43% Bus: 5.72% Light Rail: 4.81% |
Total: 46,643,200 Bus: 34,774,600 Light Rail: 10,797,600 |
APTA’s statistics also noted that some of the largest jumps in bus ridership occurred in cities with population under 100,000 (9.3% increase for smaller communities, compared to a 3.9% average increase across all bus operators). This trend was also reflected in the Bay Area. Some of our smaller bus-only transit operators enjoyed comparable increases in ridership, e.g. Fairfield-Suisin Transit (9.73% increase), Tri Delta (9.91% increase), and Rio Vista Delta Breeze, whose 3,400 daily bus riders in 2007 jumped to 8,400 in 2008. WHEELS ridership increased just 5.35%.
A SMART Pipe Dream
Please click here to read the previous post, which adds a bit of context and motivation for this post.
Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) will likely be going up for the ballot again this November. Most recently, in the November 2006 election, the Measure R quarter-cent sales tax for SMART failed — falling just short of the required 2/3 of votes in both counties, despite cleaning up with 70% of the votes in Sonoma, a county whose rapid growth calls out for a rail line to channel sustainable development patterns. The plan for SMART is to operate DMUs (possibly light DMUs, use of which would require approval from the FRA) along the old Northwestern Pacific Railroad right of way, a roughly 70-mile, generally single-tracked route with passing sidings, running from Cloverdale in northern Sonoma County to Larkspur in Marin County, serving North Bay downtowns, including Santa Rosa and San Rafael, and within shuttle access of other employment centers. The plan also includes a pathway for cyclists and pedestrians along the right of way. The southern terminus is a quarter-mile from the Larkspur ferry terminal, where riders can transfer from the train to a ferry for San Francisco via a connection that is not nearly as seamless as it should be for a regional connection point. Naysayers — headed by Mike Arnold and his gang, the Marin Citizens for “Effective Transportation” — emphasize that the route is predicted to capture just 5,300 daily riders and hence is not cost-effective as measured on a per passenger basis. (Of course, the original ridership forecasts date from when gasoline cost half what it does now. And prices were still substantially lower than they are now even when the updated forecasts were released, thus not weighing the potentially powerful persuasive effect of $7 per gallon gas.) In the interest of keeping this post to a reasonable length, we will postpone more detail about the actual SMART proposal and its opposing forces for another day, taking it here as a given that the project should be built. This post is meant to be about brainstorming and fun pipe dreams, not politics.
