The Mountains Win Again

AYFKM!!!! 4,350 riders for $552 million dollars! What kind of insanity is going on over at BART. Geez you could have built 18 miles of streetcar. 3 miles to the airport and 15 miles in Oakland between all the BART stations there.

The suburbs won again. This does not bode well for real BART extensions (not just overpriced people movers) that would, you know, run in places where there are LOTS of people. (Ahem, Geary). I wonder if a majority on that board will ever get it. It's not likely.

Who Rides BART?

Update: More from Pedestrianist and Transbay Blog.

Lots of different people! The next question is how do they get to and from BART, and the answer is interesting. BART recently released a that releases data about who uses the system. I picked out some of what I feel is interesting data from the report:

1. The Majority of trips (88%) during peak hours were for work related trips. They break them out for mid day which is more even for other types of trips but certain stations have certain trip patterns such as shopping at Powell or medical at Rockridge and MacArthur.

2. 68% of BART riders have a car available to them and 21% of riders have parking available to them for free at their destination. However 42% of the folks who travel on BART only in the East Bay have access to free parking.

3. 58% of riders have been doing so for over a year.

4. What I found the most interesting, BART which was designed for the Automobile gets a large amount of car trips from home as the origin. Some places have less such as 18th Street which gets 81% of passengers from walking. 12% of people at Ashby bike to the station(Berkeley is full of more bikers to BART in general).

The reason the origin is interesting is the reason why the destination is interesting as well. The design of the system tells how it is being used. While designed for cars from the burbs, the areas that are urban get more walking trips. And the destinations are walking destinations too meaning that the more places we can connect with BART, the more people will take the line if close to employment. Also, if you have more urban stations, people use them for short trips.

5. BART Customers follow the makeup of the region in terms of income and ethnicity.

So there is much more information in there, but these were what I found most interesting. I think really it teaches us that we need to be intelligent in how we design systems. If we put more stations near destinations, more people will use the system.

Cost Crash?

I wonder how many costs such as Fastracks in Denver are wildly overestimated in this current fiscal environment. The estimates of late from BART are encouraging even if their line is a skeptical investment.

...here's the latest. BART estimated it would cost nearly $250 million to begin construction this summer on the Fremont-to-Warm Springs extension. The low bid came in at $137 million, or 45 percent below the projected cost. The Bay Area Rapid Transit District still has to evaluate this bid before awarding a contract, so it's not a done deal. But the five next lowest bids are within $7 million of the low offer.

For more commentary on cost overruns, check out Orphan Road.

Increasing Capacity Without a New Tube

I thought this was an interesting post from a recently opened local blog Switching Modes. It also could fit well with Transbay's recent post on how to fix the central freeway by making a BART connection in the inner Mission neighborhoods. I still think we need another transbay tube but not just for BART but for standard guage trains and high speed rail to Oakland. That would allow trains like the Capital Corridor a direct shot into San Francisco.

Future Housing Near Transit Hit Hard

While we've seen housing that exists near transit hold its value and become a hot commodity during the downturn, we also see the flipside, new housing near transit is not getting built because of the lack of demand for housing, people just don't have money. This is true in Seattle and in the East Bay where big plans exist for transit villages around Link and BART. In Seattle:

For-profit developers proposed more than 1,500 condos and apartments within a 10-minute walk of a station. Now, with the trains to carry their first paying passengers in three months, most of those deals are on hold. Project after project has been delayed or derailed, victimized by tight credit and related economic woes.

In the Bay Area on the Freemont line the plans are getting hit the same way:

All along the East Bay’s Interstate 880 corridor, from Oakland to Fremont, cities are putting plans for hundreds of units of market-rate housing on ice. The projects can’t go forward until the credit crisis thaws, allowing developers to obtain loans that they typically used to build.

I wonder how much more could be built though if they didn't have to worry so much about parking, the bane of every TOD's existence.

In Fremont, for example, where the city wants to build 300 condominiums near its BART station, plans originally called for the housing to sit atop a subterranean parking garage. To avoid the added cost of building an underground parking lot, the developers turned to a new scheme that calls for the multi-story housing to wrap around an elevated parking structure.

The Dallas donut (an apartment building wrapped around an internal parking structure) is usually what the market will bear after (edit: was until) transit, if only it were easier.

Calculating Social Justice

I love how the blogosphere works. Someone posts on an older story and makes it relevant again and it screams across the blogs like a meteor. Today STB posted on an older Intermodality post that got to Ryan which I imagine is where it got picked up by Markos of teh big Orange.

Kos' post also brought me to this post at A Future Oakland that put forward some fun stats that drive me crazy every time the social justice folks bring them up, which they do often. The issue I have is with the use of the National Transit database to compare subsidy across different mode types for the sole purpose of saying that one mode is better for poor or minority folks than others. Why they always want to pick this fight is beyond me and its a symptom of thier not being able to connect the different types of modes and thier function to regional job opportunty expansion for lower income job seekers. Check out this chart from Public Advocates dot org, a law firm devoted to social justice.

You can see that the chart doesn't discuss income levels but rather race, I imagine as a proxy for income levels? I'm also not sure what they mean by subsidy but I'm guessing its Capital funding+operating per rider? And as an issue, these lines all perform different services at different distances which affects the costs. No mention that BART and Caltrain riders pay higher fares than AC Transit riders. No mention that per passenger mile (a standard measure across modes), Caltrain and BART are far more efficient than AC Transit. There are a couple of reasons for this and AC's would be better compared to itself if it didn't include the less productive routes or $40 a trip paratransit but those are necessary services.

I want to believe in the social justice movement but they shoot themselves in the foot with dumb charts like this that don't tell me anything except that they don't understand transit operations or regional connectivity to jobs for lower income workers. If I were arguing on the social justice angle, I would start by saying that funding for road expansions is being wasted on suburbs that are leaching tax base and making people spend more of thier hard earned money on transportation. We also shouldn't be saying that AC is more efficient because thats false based on per passenger mile comparison and its operating type. Comparing AC to Caltrain per rider based on 20 mile trip versus a mile or two mile trip is rediculous and doesn't get us anywhere. Based on the 2007 NTD here are the comparisons for operating costs:

Caltrain is 27 cents per passenger mile.
BART is 34 cents per passenger mile
AC is $1.32 per passenger mile.

If we're going to look at capital and operating per passenger mile, it comes out to this in 2007:

BART: 50.9 cents per passenger mile
Caltrain: 60.3 cents per passenger mile
AC Tranist: $1.57 per passenger mile

Versus a Per Trip operations calculation:

AC Transit is $4.02
BART is $4.21
Caltrain is $7.28

What the argument should be is that expansion funding should stop going to stuff like ebart and expansion freeways and should start going to core expansion of AC Transit, Muni, BART, Caltrain Metro East etc. Put the transit where the riders are and it will be helpful for everyone to connect with job opportunities.

This culture war against rail that takes people to job centers in places like Concord and Walnut Creek needs to stop. Would it be more efficient to run buses? No. First that means more cars on the freeway because less people would be taking transit. It also means that more of downtown Oakland and San Franciso would be parking lots inducing less walking trips overall. But if we didn't look at regional transit systems, we would be allowing the bay area fiefdoms of transit to limit the job opportunities for low income workers. In Portland, the Max lines actually allow workers to reach a greater number of opportunities. This 2006 paper on economic development for the FTA by Strategic Economics shows an interesting chart below. But basically regional connectivity provides more opportunities for jobs that make it possible for upward mobility.

A preliminary analysis of transit ridership by industry and occupation in Portland, Oregon indicates that fixed guideway transit connects to more diverse employment opportunities than local bus. An Entropy Index was used to measure the diversity of incomes for occupations in industries with the highest percentage of transit ridership in the region. Entropy index scores are stated as a decimal and the lower the number, the more concentrated the occupational and income mix within that industry.

As Table 1 shows, industries with high percentages of bus ridership also tend to have low Entropy Index scores for an overall average of 0.54. For the most part, these were industries with a high percentage of low wage jobs. However, industries where workers use fixed guideway transit and/or bus and fixed guideway transit to get to work had a much greater diversity income diversity with an average index score of 0.89. This analysis demonstrates that fixed-guideway transit provides connectivity to jobs with different income opportunities, and possibly greater opportunities for advancement, while bus provides the best connectivity for workers in predominantly low-income industries with little opportunity for advancement.

If anything, the issue of expansion should point to the fact that suburban jurisdictions have too much power in how transportation funds are allocated. If it were equitable towards the core, services such as AC Transit would get more funding for more service, but it wouldn't make them more efficient in moving people. They are still a bus company.

This should tell you that MTC is shafting Oakland and San Francisco by not spending more on more efficient rail and metro type service for trunk lines that would serve hundreds of thousands of people. Compare the expansion of BART to San Jose versus a Geary Subway. A Geary Subway would cost around $3 billion and carry 100,000 riders easy the first day. The BART to San Jose line will not get anywhere close to that ridership number and cost a lot more money. These are the decisions that are being made based on regional politics rather than real expansion needs. The up front costs are more but the efficiency of operations leads to less cuts and better travel times for all riders in the core and connections beyond.

Just because people are poor or of a different race doesn't mean they deserve inferior or just one type of service. A network of service that serves different travel sheds is the best way to get people to thier jobs and open up the region for opportunity for all. The fight against the modes that take people further needs to be better thought out as a regional strategy for improving core service rather than pitting modes against each other, especially operations as efficient as BART or Caltrain. It's not very productive and the way the social justice movement is going now can only fail if they are going to bring data such as the chart above to the game.

Flame on...

Oh for the Love of...

You can't make this up:

It would mean that the Millbrae-to-San Francisco route would have three separate electrified options for riders. Isn't that more than a bit redundant? Rail planners don't seem to be bothered one whit by the concept at this point. They are forging ahead.

How many roads go to San Francisco?

H/T BATN

On the Hiawatha Today

So if you follow my twitter account you'd have seen my tweet noting that I was on the Hiawatha Light Rail line in Minneapolis. What you didn't see is what I was thinking on my way to downtown Minneapolis. It was strange now that I think back on it. A colleague and I were on the train and just chatting away with our bags in our laps but I didn't feel like it was out of the ordinary. I felt perhaps like some do when they dream in a foreign language after learning it for a long time. I've learned to take transit and expect it to be there yet this isn't a serious option in many of our regions and cities and that makes me a bit sad.

It should always be so easy to just hop on the train. In the last few weeks I've been able to not drive a car since I left Chicago. I took the Orange line to the airport, flew to San Francisco, took BART home. Today I walked down to BART, flew to Minneapolis and rode light rail to downtown. It's second nature now I guess, looking for the easy accessible transit. During those rides I was able to chill and not worry about whether I was going to be late. I was able to check email or listen to a podcast. I didn't need to worry about parking my car. I just needed to be. Is that so hard to understand for folks so opposed?

Friday Night Allergy Links

Ughh I've never had allergies before, but perhaps something crazy in the air has got me going. Anyways, short links list...but I had to post something while I'm just laying here on the couch.

BART Board will decide how to raise parking fees. I have another idea for them to think about, how about banning people that clip their nails on BART. Yeah you guy sitting across from me the other day.
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Salt Lake City is employing some interesting construction methods for the West Valley LRT. They are using foam blocks as the subsurface for an embankment.

Photo from KSL.
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The GAO has released a report on HSR. I expect Robert and crew to get to the details. Thanks to the anon poster who linked in the comments.
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Don't rely too much on modeling. Sky is blue today.
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BART Monthly Pass

I'm torn on this idea for BART. This would allow people who have monthly passes to just hop on BART instead of having to pay each time which could increase ridership and make transit more attractive. At the same time BART is mostly a commuter line, I feel like a monthly pass would subsidize living past Pleasanton (in the central valley) if you work in San Francisco which I believe is the wrong signal to send. What do you all think?

Subway to SoMa

We've been telling you for years! My favorite comment:

And after we ritually sacrifice whoever decided to dig up the Muni B Geary line back in the 50's.

Connecting the Dots

Looks like BART to San Jose has hit another snag because of the economy. The ~20 mile extension from the Fremont station all the way to the San Jose airport via downtown has been delayed for a number of years because of funding issues. Last fall the county passed an 1/8th cent sales tax to fix some of this but according to one analysis it won't be enough. I'm not sure if this is really true because the projections show flat sales tax revenues until 2036, which seems to me to be seriously wrong.

Board members used words like "shocked" and "astonished" at the report by consultant Bob Peskin, who analyzed sales tax projections through 2036. Once inflation is factored out, his sales tax projections are essentially a flat line.

But if true, this comes at the same time as a SPUR report that states suburban job growth imperils emissions reductions due to increased driving. As a practical goal, the region should focus growth in the more urban downtowns and urban areas that aren't office parks.

The city, and other urban areas better served by mass transit than suburban business parks, must adjust policies to attract a greater share of office development and employers, concludes "Recentering Work: The Future of Transit-Oriented Jobs in Downtown San Francisco," released by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association.

So while the BART extension to downtown San Jose might seem like a good idea, its important to note that the round about way in which BART reaches downtown doesn't connect the areas which hold most of Silicon Valley's jobs but rather takes the path of least resistance (ie: existing ROW).

This is a big problem. The line which was conceived many years ago is a continuation of BART and regional authorities poor planning for rapid transit integration with land use. While it might have been state of the art as an idea decades ago, we've learned so much since then about TOD and how connecting destinations strengthens them. No longer will the suburban to urban model work with parking lots catering to the automobile. We need a better analysis of what to do but unfortunately it seems like nothing will stop this move from going through.

The map below shows job density in the valley (From LEHD 2004). Areas with the darkest green are over 20 jobs per acre. But the new BART line (dark blue) touches only the clusters downtown and extension of the VTA light rail line (light purple) go nowhere near the jobs that would attract transit riders.

The VTA Light Rail line hits a lot of the dense job clusters but underperforms because it is seen as slower. I don't know how many people who live in San Francisco have told me that the killer for thier connection to a job in San Jose is the slow round about light rail. This will be the same excuse for BART to light rail on the other side of the Valley.



When we look into these long term Bay Area projects, we need to push planners to think about where people work and where they want to go. It's really important to think about these long term strategies to connect people with jobs and connect jobs to each other. If we're going to be dependent on a knowledge economy here in the bay area, allowing people easy access through transit to amenities and each other is the best way to facilitate energy and emissions reductions. Even if TOD springs up along the new BART line, it won't be as good as connecting the existing clusters of dense jobs with tons of redevelopable parking spaces (see above photo) that might not be needed with rapid transit easily accessible.

Midweek High Speed Rail Links

My feed reader is getting bombarded with high speed rail articles. It's crazy how much attention something gets when leadership in this country gets behind it. In addition, things are heating up in California and the nuts on the Peninsula are trying to weasel out. Some of the anon comments on Robert's HSR blog are quite hilarious. I'm paraphrasing but when you say "Rich people live here and will sue so move the alignment to where the poor people are" it's time to rethink your priorities.
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An article in the San Jose Mercury News discusses the possibility of trenching. This is a better option than ending the line at San Jose and running Rapid Rail (which I assume is BART or electrified Caltrain) up the peninsula.
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One of China's High Speed Rail lines is going to start construction soon. Ahead again.

Groundwork started Thursday on a high-speed passenger rail line that will link Shanghai with Hangzhou in east China with trains that can run up to 350 km per hour.

And if only the United States worked like this...

Rail capacity in the Yangtze River Delta region has reached saturation point, said Yu. He said that during peak travel seasons, cargo transport was often suspended to make way for passenger trains.

Firefox warned me about the site so probably not a good idea to click...but if you must.
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It looks like Richard Branson wants to wring more money out of the trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles. He has me sold on Virgin America. Robert says he'd rather an agency cover it so we can pump profits back into expansion.
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Newsflash. People who are bashing high speed rail as a Disneyland Ride are out of touch with America. It would also do them some good to get out of thier congressional district, state, or Washington DC once in a while to that crazy socialist Europe part of the world. I mean, Bulgaria will have HSR soon! BULGARIA!!!

An Urban A's Stadium

Since their Fremont plan crashed and burned and neighbors close to the future Warm Springs BART station have shut down the second option the A's are now going to have to look elsewhere for a stadium. They might even start looking in San Jose for a place. Not that I don't like San Jose, but Oakland is a much better place for a baseball team and they have so much history here, I'd like to make another suggestion. What about an Urban Stadium in downtown Oakland?

Other Urban Stadiums around the country are a success and most of them have really good transit access. A few examples are in Colorado, Boston, and Chicago. The Rockies Play at Coors Field - Access at Left to Union Station which will be the major hub of the Fastracks commuter and light rail network.

Fenway in Boston - Access to the Green Line


Wrigley in Chicago - Access to the Red Line


For an example, look what San Francisco has been able to do in SoMa with AT&T park. There's even an urban Safeway as seen in the picture below.


So why not accomplish two things in Oakland, extend good transit up Broadway and have a built in audience for restaurants and retail in a refurbished Auto Row until it takes off on its own. This would help stem the extreme retail leakage to Emeryville and San Francisco that Oakland suffers from. Having this anchor ramp up redevelopment of auto row and the hospital district would go a long way. I had a little fun with this and photoshopped in a stadium just south of 26th and north of 24th just west of Broadway where there is an empty auto dealership.


Another need is extending transit. It's easily walkable(.3 miles) from the site to the 19th street BART station/AC Transit 2oth street transit center but it would be nice to either have a subway extension to Kaiser or at least a streetcar line. Such a streetcar line has been proposed in other places such as at SF Cityscape.

Obviously the stadium would be a tough sell because there would be so many landowners but its a fun excersise. I would go to tons more games if it were located here which is close to my work downtown. Is anyone in A's land interested in an Urban Stadium? Thoughts from locals?

Lazy Saturday Links

Looks like BART will get some WiFi after all.
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Where will the next commuter line be?

Fred Hansen: “This is the first state’s first commuter rail project. I don’t think it’ll be it’s last.”

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54% of Cincinnati jobs (City of, not region) are in the core. That is some pretty good job density, excellent for transit.
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In DC, 43% of folks in the core walk or take transit. Would biking get them over 50%? In transit zones in DC, in and outside of the core, the number of people who walk bike or take transit was 42% in 2000.
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Personally I think asking bikers to pay a user fee on roads that are generally paid for out of local sales, income, and property taxes is silly. A lot of the times bikes aren't even allowed on freeways which are paid for with gas taxes that people think pays for streets, but doesn't. This is the same as asking urban dwellers who do own a car but don't use freeways or state highways to subsidize the folks who do even more. Sure they get indirect goods movement benefits but they could also pay indirectly for that with a little higher price at the store, much like people pay for free parking at grocery stores through more expensive goods.
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The Aces train we talked about last week is on the go.
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Mad press for Streetsblog. An article in Planetizen about discusses how they are trying to change the urban discussion. And the founder Mark Gorton got some good press in Wired. For those annoyed with Muni, Gorton is looking for the solution!

Portland, Oregon has already used his open-source software to plan its bus routes. San Francisco, whose MUNI bus system is a frequent target of criticism, could be next to get the treatment. Gorton says he's in talks with the city to supply transit routing software for MUNI that will do a much better job of keeping track of where people are going and figuring out how best to get them there. San Francisco "overpaid greatly" for a badly-supported proprietary closed-source system that barely works, according to Gorton, putting the city under the thumb of a private company that provides sub-par support.

"They're frustrated and thinking about replacing it completely, and see the value of open-source because then they won't have any of these support problems," he said. "And they won't be constantly at the mercy of the private companies that have these little mini-monopolies."

Good luck with that. We hope it works out.

MTC Meeting Tonight

It might still be possible to get more money to bikes and transit projects from MTC. Check out Transbay Blog's post about tomorrow's meeting. If you go, tell them to shove the road money.

My annoyance goes far. They have done no modeling to see what would happen with Oakland or San Francisco core BART expansions in terms of land use and green house gas changes. There's no real true modeling as the Streetsblog post mentions to real bike infrastructure and improvements to Muni and other agency bus movement would go a long way as well. Curbing cars with congestion pricing downtown would be good, but only if they improve transit capacity and speeds into downtown and the areas within the cordon. As I always say, it shouldn't take me an hour to go three miles on the bus. That should be the goal, better transit service, not better car service during peak hours.

Sports Stadiums Seeking Transit Stops

If the A's stadium is located near the Warm Springs station it will be much better than if it were in the wasteland 2 miles away. (I would prefer it be in downtown Oakland on the current Auto Row) I have never been to an A's game without taking BART and I can't imagine getting to the game any other way. The freeway is always jacked. But I think they might have been waiting for funding, and it seems to soon be assured.

On the other side of the country, the Tampa Rays are looking to locate near a rail station. This is in a place that hasn't even started the most serious movements toward rail lines. But its nice to see the team looking ahead.

Walk & Train

Ryan says:

It's easier to support a carbon tax if you have a grocery store within walking distance and can take the train to work.

Absolutely. I would likely be skeptical if I were living in Austin still and knew that I had to drive to get most places. Now that BART and the Grocery store are a half mile in each direction, I don't worry about it anymore. I fill up my car maybe once every month and a half, sometimes even longer. Think about if everyone was able to move from once a week to once every two months. More money for local business, more money for alternative energy and more money for housing near transit. Winners all around.

Post Christmas Day Linkage

I limited my internet access over the past few days in Bakersfield (would have been nice to take HSR down there) and am now catching up completely with my reader. Posting will be light over the next week as I just kind of zone out for a bit. One thing I miss about college is that month long sleep break we got around Christmas time. I'm gonna take some time with sparse posting. In any event, here is some linky goodness.
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The Tram that serves OHSU in Portland did an amazing job keeping people working there linked to the city during the snow storm.

The tram, which extends from a streetcar stop in South Waterfront up to OHSU, helped the hospital keep running through the worst of the snow. With buses unable to make the trip up to Marquam Hill, OHSU kept the tram running until midnight so that patients and staff could get up to the hospital and back down the hill again.

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Light Rail is now open in Phoenix!
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California HSR could get $20B from the stimulus. That would be a great contribution to the future of California, just like the aqueduct was many years previous. Personally, I'd like to see us hire Dutch engineers for New Orleans and California's Levee problems. I know its off topic, but its something that needs serious attention too and will benefit for many years to come.
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More on the big push from Congressman Oberstar.

Oberstar said, "We're going to rewrite the whole book on this thing." The stimulus package is the prologue to a broader effort to show that mass transit is not just a good idea; it's a vehicle America can ride into the future.

This makes me think there needs to be a name for our movement. Something simple. The Big Push? Any suggestions?
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This seems a bit much to me. $668 million for a crossover track between Walnut Creek and Concord on BART?? Isn't there a better use for that money? Anyone know anything about this?
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And finally, Dan shows us how to man up in the snow.

"A" Smart Switch

About a year ago when I heard that the A's were thinking about moving down to Hayward and far away from the BART station I thought they were crazy. Like location efficient housing where transportation was more expensive, they were just making their lives harder and profits smaller by deciding to locate so far away from the station. In fact they would have had to spend money on buses to bring people from the other side of the freeway to the stadium, or make their fans pay yet another fee to avoid the traffic.

Yet today they got a little smarter. I said a little because they were just talking about it instead of just doing it. Perhaps they were waiting for BART to San Jose to pass but this would really be a win win for everyone except of course the namesake of Oakland who loses the A's. As reported by SF Chron:

Here's a possible game changer - the Oakland A's will sit down this week with BART officials to discuss moving the team's proposed Fremont ballpark to within walking distance of the planned Warm Springs BART station.
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Even Fremont Mayor and ballpark booster Bob Wasserman says he and his City Council colleagues "definitely" have to look at the idea, now that the tanking economy has forced the A's to put the rest of their "ballpark village" plan for 3,000 apartment and townhouses on ice.

Personally I think they should build the stadium on Broadway in Oakland along Auto Row. That whole area is just an explosion of redevelopment waiting to happen. Too many cars and too many parking lots on prime real estate. Anyone have money they can lend my development firm that doesn't exist yet???