Making San Francisco More Accessible by Amtrak

I'm not sure what annoys me more, that BART doesn't go to Emeryville or that Amtrak doesn't stop at a BART station closer to San Francisco. In reading a Contra Costa Times article, the main person in the story commutes via Amtrak from Martinez. Martinez downtown is very isolated from other transit options in the region including BART, yet it is the county seat with all the government office buildings and courts where people have to go for jury duty. It's also a nice transit oriented downtown when it comes to its proximity to Amtrak. This is good for a San Francisco connection, but not Contra Costa County (That's a whole other discussion).

However Amtrak makes you get off at Richmond if you want to BART into the city. There is also a bus from the Emeryville Station but that isn't so direct and could be eliminated with better service. What would be nice to see is a direct link from Amtrak to the West Oakland Station or BART extension to Emeryville. Emeryville is emerging as a dense city willing to go up because it has no other choice. It also attracts lots of retail and major employers because of its inexpensive tax burden compared to Oakland or Berkeley. This is a no brainer connection that would increase BART's reach while also increasing Amtrak's reach. You can see the current transfer and how indirect it is removed Emeryville is below.


I think a more comprehensive metro system would be better to connect all the places but the MTC and others haven't been talking a lot about real core capacity increases like they should. The easiest would be to build a small loop track for Amtrak next to the West Oakland BART station. There's room and you could even use the aerial rights to pay for the small improvement and transfer station. This would pay off huge. West Oakland is the best connected station in the East Bay with more trains coming through than any other station. With the Amtrak Connection, you could get from Sacramento directly downtown without much waiting, considering the 2 minute headways into San Francisco at West Oakland in the mornings. Also, its a faster way to Oakland than from the Richmond Transfer, which is good if you're going to Berkeley. This would be a very cost effective option in my opinion to make Amtrak more attractive and might even create the need for even better service.

Battlefield Nimbyism

The MOM line has met its match, a revolutionary (not civil as previously entered) war battlefield that already has tracks running through it...

Hiawatha as Pork?

Again, the process doesn't always fund necessity so people have to go around the system...

Major Paper Backs Rail in Hawaii

The Honolulu Advertiser says voters in the city should go for rail. They also call out the opposition for being misleading. What a concept.

No Transfer

The highway trust fund is out of money. But they aren't going to take from the mass transit account, just borrow from the general fund. Hmm the general fund never pays for highways. Wait a minute...

Ma Peters derided earmarks as the reason for the shortfall. I think earmarks have gotten a bad name in the transportation world and is a catch phrase used by all for waste. However, its hard to complain about earmarks when they are actually being used to circumvent awful policy, such as the one discussed below where highways get 80% funding and transit projects less than 60% funding.
Yeah there are some bad earmarks, but I bet she would lump in bad transit earmarks with ones that are made because of her awful New Starts policy.

Related Comedy

From Seinfeld.

George: I'm, uh, I'm an architect.

Vanessa: Really. What do you design?

George: Uh, railroads, uh...

Vanessa: I thought engineers do that.

George: They can...

Why LA Won't Get 80% Federal Funding on the Gold Line

Contrary to popular hopeful sentiments from local officials we discussed the other day, getting 80% just isn't possible for the Gold Line. After being challenged over on Bottleneck blog by Damien Goodmon (Fix Expo) on my assertion that today federal projects have to have 50% local funding to get funded, maybe 60% if you have a good ridership project that can cover your ratings, I found a GAO report that stated what I remember hearing was true.

Last year, in response to language contained in appropriations committee reports, FTA instituted a policy favoring projects that seek a federal New Starts share of no more than 60 percent of the total project cost—even though the law allows projects to seek up to 80 percent—in its recommendation for FFGAs. According to FTA officials, this policy allows more projects to receive funding and ensures that local governments play a major role in funding such projects. FTA describes the 60 percent policy as a general preference; however, FTA’s fiscal year 2005 New Starts report suggests that this policy is absolute in that projects proposing more than a 60 percent federal New Starts share will not be recommended for an FFGA.

They will not fund anything over 60%. That is unless you make a deal like Salt Lake City where they will pay 80% for one project but it will equal 20% for all projects. Hopefully this helps folks realize that while highways still get 80% and bankrupting their funding account, the mass transit account has only been allowing 50% or less matches over the last 4 years. It's actually been lower in certain instances with Dulles asking for 30%. Why the feds are able to kill that project when they aren't even close to the majority financial stake is beyond me.

China Numbers Update

This isn't minor planning:

According to statistics, China plans to build 65 urban rail lines with a total length of 1,700 km through pouring a huge sum of CNY600 billion into UMT construction through 2015, In light with its near term UMT development layout. In the past several years, the three Chinese metropolises of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou all have advanced in a rate of building 30 to 50 km annually.

50km (31 miles) annually?? Per city?? Imagine if we built 50km of subways annually here. Obviously they have some issues with environment and antiquities but this type of investment and movement is surely amazing to the United States which takes ten years to build a line.

Rising Property Values

The issue of rising property values is a blessing and a curse at the same time around new transit lines. On one hand, rising property values show improvement and that the line is making the area more desirable. On the other hand, rising property values show improvement and make an area so desirable that current residents get pushed out.

But it can help both if planned appropriately. If you know what happened in previous situations, you can plan for accommodating all parties. The value captured due to the infrastructure investment could pay for the transit, or even new affordable housing offsets. This is the possibility in Calgary, where property values rose 628%. That is double what housing prices rose in general. Amazing.

H/T to PC

An Investment

Annually the New Starts program funds about $1.7 billion in ongoing projects around the country. Chump change. Check out Public Transit in Ottawa. They are discussing a $4 billion dollar investment in the city. $425 billion is the adjusted cost of the federal highway system. Certainly would be higher today because land costs much more. However look at the investment in Toronto, Canada.

Toronto is planning a $55 billion dollar transit investment. Our cities are hardly discussing a few billion per region in transit over the next 20 years, yet Toronto is planning a steady $2.2 billion a year for 25 years. Some of it is quite controversial such as an east west subway line, but its interesting that they are talking about a multi-year investment for a single city that is larger than the federal share of funds for all cities in the United States.