Archive for the ‘Regional Rail’ Category
Peninsula Investments
It’s funny how things sometimes turn out. In terms of funding, BART has long been the Bay Area’s favorite son. Year after year, BART is allocated a major piece of the region’s transit funding pie, a piece that is disproportionately large for the number of people it moves. Meanwhile: slow, antiquated, dirty, screechy Caltrain has played the ugly duckling. Chronically underfunded, Caltrain has only gotten to pick at the leftovers passed onto it from its three component counties. In the early days, BART was originally planned to take over the Southern Pacific right-of-way, operating service as far south as Arastradero Road in Palo Alto, even in the system’s then-planned initial phase — and then eventually to San Jose, extending south on both sides of the Bay from Fremont and Palo Alto. In 1961, San Mateo County, which was already served by Southern Pacific trains, withdrew from the BART district. This decision resulted in at least a temporary moratorium on BART’s southward expansion on the Peninsula — though, as we know, planned southward expansion on the east side of the Bay remains alive and well. Caltrain has been the proverbial thorn in the side of those who dream of unifying Bay Area regional rail under the BART brand, even though electrifying and upgrading Caltrain could provide comparable service for a fraction of the cost.
But like the Ugly Duckling, this story also looks like it will have a happy ending. For high-speed rail will soon sweep into the region, transforming and re-energizing interest in the ex-SP corridor. BART’s gauge, unlike Caltrain’s, is incompatible with high-speed rail; so, when all is said and done, BART’s once-futuristic technology will be exposed as the dinosaur, while the ugly duckling Caltrain will at last transform into the swan.
BACEI Releases Workplan
The Bay Area Council Economic Institute (BACEI), in response to a request from the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, has released its Bay Area Economic Recovery Workplan. This is essentially a compendium of regional priorities and projects (submitted by MTC and local governments) that strategizes potential targets for ARRA stimulus money. The proposals fall into several categories — transportation, housing, water, energy/climate, workforce, business, and science/innovation — generally emphasizing projects of regional or multi-jurisdictional significance that will update the Bay Area’s infrastructure to promote future economic prosperity and sustainability. Some $31 billion of stimulus funds will be allocated to California, of which some of these Bay Area projects will certainly receive a share. California is also positioning itself to receive up to $20 billion more, factoring in awards coming in through discretionary grant programs.
BART 2008 Surveys Tell the Story of Bay Area Regional Growth
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| BART survey data (2008). Top: rider home locations; bottom: rider employment locations. Courtesy of BART. |
BART has released its 2008 Station Profile Study, updating its last study from 1998. The data, which is collected from rider surveys, is BART’s version of the census. It reveals the demographic profile of BART riders, and it provides valuable information on how riders use the BART system: where they are coming from, where they are going, how they travel from their home a nearby station, and how they travel to their destination after riding BART. The data, which is available both system-wide and for each individual station, confirms what we know anecdotally about the role of urban vs. suburban stations: 81% of riders at 16th/Mission walked to BART, while merely 3% walked to Orinda; 72% of riders drive to North Concord/Martinez, but a miniscule 1% drive to Powell. I plan to do some number-crunching on the data in the future; but for now, I wanted to share some interesting results and initial impressions. In addition to clarifying how BART riders currently make use of the system, the survey data reveals how the Bay Area could better take advantage of this critical regional asset than we do today. The lesson we learn from the data is the lesson that we already knew: we need to do a better job of linking transit and land use, particularly along BART’s heavy rail metro lines. This is something that we are always talking about, and the BART surveys do suggest that the region is moving in the right direction in terms of promoting transit-oriented development. Bicycle trips from home to station bumped up from 3% to 4%, while transit trips declined from 23% to 15%. Nearly half (49%) of riders access stations by car (34% solo, 10% dropoff, 5% carpool), the same as in 1998. However, more people are now walking to BART stations from their home than they were a decade ago: 31% in 2008, compared to 26% in 1998. More people are also walking from BART to work or other destination: 74% in 2008, compared to 67% in 1998. Furthermore, at 6 major CBD stations (12th St, 19th St, Lake Merritt, Berkeley, Montgomery, Powell) and 5 other mostly urban stations (Ashby, North Berkeley, El Cerrito Plaza, Colma, and Balboa Park), home origin points increased by 10% or more, while car and transit origins decreased. More home-based pedestrian trips at downtown stations reflect a trend toward urban/downtown infill housing, epitomized by Jerry Brown’s 10K housing initiative in Downtown Oakland and San Francisco’s Rincon Hill plan.
April 2009 BART Budget and Project Updates
UPDATE (24 April 2009): At its April 23 meeting, the BART board decided to postpone approval of the Oakland Airport Connector, but nonetheless approved the transfer of $50 million of seismic retrofit funding and $70 million of ARRA stimulus funding to the project. Meanwhile, the FEIR for eBART was approved 8-1, with Tom Radulovich dissenting. More details on those projects below.
My apologies for the slow posting schedule lately. I will be very busy in upcoming weeks, so posting will be on the slow side by necessity, and may have to go on hiatus. I have not yet forgotten about the promised posts on the Delta; but for now, here is a post on tomorrow’s BART board agenda.
BART’s $54 million FY10 budget deficit — which it is projected will enlarge to a $249 million deficit over the next four years — has already gotten quite a bit of publicity. To close that deficit, BART is considering several measures, including additional parking fees at East Bay stations, and a 10% fare hike starting July 1, 2009. BART may also reduce evening and weekend headways from 15 minutes back to 20 minutes, restoring the pre-2008 timetable; also under consideration is a reduction of service to the Peninsula stations from two lines to only one. Even if these changes were implemented, there would still remain a $23 million deficit for this fiscal year. To deal with that remaining $23 million gap, some combination of additional fare hikes are possible, including: a $2 increase to the SFO station fare, a 25-cent increase to the minimum fare, a 10-cent increase for transbay trips, or increasing the proposed 10% fare hike to 15%. Further service reductions are also a possibility, although raising fares would bring in considerably more revenue than the amount of money that would be saved by cutting service. Midday service between South Hayward and Fremont may be reduced from two lines to one line, and direct service between Richmond/Fremont and San Francisco may also be eliminated during midday hours.
Commission Unveils Regional Plan for Transit
This morning, at a press conference held at the Lake Merritt BART station in Oakland, officials from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission revealed a regional transit plan for the Bay Area. Just days after announcing revisions to Transportation 2035, the current regional plan for the nine Bay Area counties, the Commission announced that it will now discard certain features of that plan. Planners now offer a replacement plan that will put the Bay Area on a different path, including transit infrastructure that will serve the region for decades to come. What was it that prompted MTC to develop a new plan?
“We realized the error of our ways,” admitted Steve Heminger, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.* “The climate change crisis demands that we take a truly new direction. If the Bay Area is to preserve its natural beauty and curb worsening air quality, it must grow in a way that reduces dependence on the personal automobile. Likewise, maintaining our position as a competitive region at the forefront of the state and the nation means getting more people off congested freeways and onto transit, in order to recoup millions of hours of productivity lost each year to traffic congestion. To get people out of their cars, we will need to invest in high-quality, cost-effective transit throughout the region. But the best strategy is to maximize space for new jobs in existing urban centers, rather than in far-flung office parks. So, in particular, we must dramatically improve and expand transit options in the dense urban core, which our former RTP largely neglected. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission is proud to unveil a new plan that corrects this deficiency in a bold and revolutionary way.”*
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.
Preliminary Injunction Against Warm Springs Denied
This morning, Judge Frank Roesch (of Alameda County Superior Court) heard arguments in the Lewis v. Metropolitan Transportation Commission case we discussed two weeks ago. The petitioners (former BART directors Lewis and Nakadegawa, and TRANSDEF) sought a preliminary injunction of MTC’s and ACTIA’s total allocation of about $315 million to the BART extension to Warm Springs, seeking to have those discretionary actions reversed as an illegal expenditure of public funds. However, Judge Roesch denied the preliminary injunction and took the case under submission, so none of the funding for BART to Warm Springs has been disturbed. In order to grant a preliminary injunction, Judge Roesch considered the irreparable harm that would be incurred by both parties by granting or not granting the injunction — and he appeared to be sympathetic to MTC’s and ACTIA’s arguments that the irreparable harm to them (by delaying and increasing the cost of the project) exceeded, or at least balanced, the irreparable harm to petitioners by proceeding with the project. Although BART was not listed as a party to the lawsuit, BART was also present and defended the project as being an important source of construction jobs. That said, if money is improperly allocated to a project, declaring the status of that project as shovel-ready is rather beside the point.
Lawsuit Challenges the Warm Springs Funding Swap
BART announced in February 2009 that it was moving forward on a $225 million contract to construct the subway portion of its planned extension to Warm Springs, which will tunnel under Central Park in Fremont. The 5.4-mile extension south of the existing Fremont terminal station will be the first stage of BART to Silicon Valley. Furthermore, VTA has announced that notwithstanding the passage of 2008 Measure B in Santa Clara County, BART to Silicon Valley will still be built in phases — and that the agency only intends to apply for federal New Starts funding to build BART as far as Berryessa Station. This proposed first phase would include only two of the six proposed stations and would completely postpone the expensive subway tunnel under Downtown San Jose. In the meantime, though, an additional wrinkle has developed. As we have mentioned before, in order to complete the funding portfolio for Warm Springs, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission diverted $91 million of Regional Measure 2 funds to Warm Springs, away from Dumbarton Rail, on the ground that the Warm Springs project was ready to go, but that Dumbarton was not yet ready. This decision has resulted in Dumbarton Rail being postponed indefinitely. Furthermore, the Alameda County Transportation Improvement Authority approved an over $220 million contribution to Warm Springs. These two contributions, combined, sum up to about one-third of the total project cost for Warm Springs. A lawsuit has now been filed against MTC and ACTIA, protesting the legality of both MTC’s swap of funds and ACTIA’s contribution to the Warm Springs extension. The challenge was filed by former BART Directors Sherman Lewis and Roy Nakadegawa, along with TRANSDEF. (TRANSDEF is a local transportation, environmental, and smart growth advocacy group that has quarreled with MTC over updates to the Regional Transportation Plan. TRANSDEF has also in the past year filed a lawsuit against the California High-Speed Rail Authority concerning the Altamont-Pacheco route alignment dispute, and again for recount of votes on 2008 Measure B, the sales tax for BART to Silicon Valley.)
November 2008 Election: Yes on Measure Q (Sonoma & Marin Counties)
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| Courtesy of SMARTTrain2008.org. |
In 2006, voters in Marin and Sonoma Counties very narrowly turned down a 1/4-percent sales tax whose proceeds would fund Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART), the project that would rehabilitate the 70-mile right of way (formerly of Northwestern Pacific) between Cloverdale in northern Sonoma County and Larkspur in Marin County. This year, that project is once again on the ballot in the form of Measure Q, again as a 1/4-percent sales tax requiring 2/3 approval for passage. SMART would operate DMUs (essentially, light diesel commuter rail) every 30 minutes at peak, with limited weekday and weekend service, comparable to the Sprinter in Oceanside-Escondido. The project also includes a pathway for cyclists and pedestrians along the right of way. The train would not connect directly to San Francisco, a fact that has prompted opponents to dub it the “train to nowhere.” But this claim is really without basis considering North Bay commute patterns: in 2000, a little over 75% of Sonoma County home-based work trips remained in the county; for Marin, a smaller percentage but still over half of home-based work trips remained inside the county. More trips still were carried out between the two counties, but still without a bay crossing. San Francisco is not presently the predominant travel market, and it won’t be in the future either, as this trend is expected to solidify and strengthen as new jobs are added to the North Bay. Even though most SMART riders will not be riding the train to Larkspur to transfer to a San Francisco-bound ferry, we still might wish that the Larkspur station had been brought all the way to the ferry terminal, and not a shuttle ride or ten-minute walk away. Nonetheless, we’re excited by the possibility of trains returning to grace the North Bay’s landscape of town centers and verdure pastures. Just like downtowns emerged on the Peninsula along the Southern Pacific right-of-way between San Francisco and San Jose, so, too, towns in the North Bay were developed along the Northwestern Pacific right-of-way. In that sense, SMART, just as Caltrain currently does on the Peninsula, would provide convenient service to North Bay downtowns. SMART is a worthy project, and North Bay voters are encouraged to vote Yes on Measure Q for SMART.
Celebrating a Milestone and Biding Time
Hey, Caltrain: nice work. This past fiscal year, the underappreciated regional rail corridor linking Santa Clara, San Mateo, and San Francisco Counties has enjoyed the highest annual ridership in its history (now 145 years and counting): close to 12 million riders, or an average of almost 38,000 each weekday. The average weekday ridership in May 2008? 41,892 riders. In June 2008? 44,079 riders. It may not seem like much compared to the ridership of Muni, BART, or AC Transit, but exceeding the 40,000 mark is a notable milestone for Caltrain, which even during the dot-com boom enjoyed an average maximum of about 35,000 daily weekday riders. Ridership declined after the bust, once again dropping below 30,000 — but since 2004, when Caltrain completed the Caltrain Express (CTX) project and introduced Baby Bullet rush hour express trains that travel between San Francisco and San Jose in just under an hour, ridership has increased 48%. We should celebrate this milestone, but to be fair, this success must be qualified. Caltrain’s diesel operation is subject to the whims of rising fuel prices, and fare hikes are once again on the table, to go into effect January 2009. One proposal would raise only the base fare, by 25 cents. The other proposal would raise the base fare by 25 cents in addition to raising the fare for additional zones by 25 cents. Meanwhile, the surge in ridership since 2004 makes it clear that unmet demand exists for rapid, high quality rail service on this corridor. Augmenting the fleet is more of a short-term fix to accommodate increased demand, biding time until the complete array of funds necessary for Caltrain electrification become available.
Electrification, and grade separations, station improvements, and upgrades constructed in connection with high-speed rail, could transform Caltrain into a much more robust, higher capacity system — and would pave the way for a northward subway extension in San Francisco from the current terminus at 4th and Townsend Streets to the Transbay Transit Center. Besides reducing pollution, electrification of Caltrain will shorten travel times by permitting trains to brake into and accelerate out of stations more quickly (of particular relevance for Caltrain, where stations are often rather closely spaced). Service would be quieter and much more frequent: electrified Caltrain service could operate every 15 minutes or better. For 2020 electrified service, 132 weekday trains were studied (compared to the 98 weekday trains in 2008), but still more could be added to achieve five-minute headways at peak. Midday and weekend trains notwithstanding, Caltrain is still at heart a commuter rail line. But with shorter headways, San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties would enjoy service levels closer to that of BART — plus the express service that BART’s limited track cannot accommodate. Revenue service with electric Caltrain could start in 2014. At what cost? The most recent estimate to rehabilitate the 52-mile route between San Francisco (the current terminus, not Transbay) and San Jose is $626 million, which includes the overhead catenary and ten power substations distributed throughout the route, but not the rolling stock. That’s about $12 million per mile; even adding in the rolling stock, the cost is a fraction of the $170 million per mile cost for the 2003 BART extension to Millbrae and SFO.
