I thought we’d get you in the mood for the weekend by leaving you with this fun video via Muni Diaries. Isn’t it sweet? From the YouTube description:

This is a collaboration between Neverstop and YAK FILMS to remix an old school black and white dance video from the Underground in London into a new TURF style video in the San Francisco BART and MUNI systems. Music remixed by Sammy Bananas of Fool’s Gold Records.

I’m off to enjoy the blazing sun and redwoods on the Russian River. Have a great weekend!

Crossing the Bay from SPUR on Vimeo.

SPUR has produced a new video that asks: How will 1.7 million more people cross the Bay? From the SPUR blog:

In the last century, visionary planners made major investments linking San Francisco and the East Bay. When the 20th century dawned, the only way to get from San Francisco to Oakland was by ferry. We built the Bay Bridge during the Great Depression and the BART tunnel in the early 1970s. It’s been nearly 40 years since then, and the Bay Area has grown by 2.7 million people. Yet we’ve added no new capacity. Even the new Bay Bridge, currently under construction, won’t help: It will be much more resilient to earthquakes, yet no bigger than the bridge it replaces.

SPUR’s first recommendation is to get more people on buses by building what would be a relatively cheap short-term solution: a contra-flow westbound bus lane on the Bay Bridge that would accommodate up to 10,000 new passengers an hour. Its second recommendation calls for incremental improvements to BART, including a better train control system along with trains that have more doors. The third is a long-term recommendation that would require big capital dollars: constructing a second transbay tube to boost BART’s capacity, and potentially accommodate high-speed rail.

The video is SPUR’s first entry into animation and video making. It’s a product of the organization’s 2009 project and report, “The Future of Downtown,” which focused on reducing job sprawl and strategies to expand job growth in San Francisco’s transit-rich downtown. It argued that downtown SF, namely SoMa, has “by far the greatest near-term potential to accommodate regional employment growth with a low carbon footprint.”

That means creating the right infrastructure for a mode shift that would get more Bay Area residents out of their cars, and commuting to work on transit. Of course, the big question is, how to you pay for this kind of new transportation infrastructure? SPUR says a future downtown with more jobs, especially “knowledge jobs,” would bring in more revenue streams for transit.

“We’re talking about facilitating the continued development of one of the most important economic nodes in the world, where future businesses are being created and where a lot of really important economic innovation is happening,” said SPUR Executive Director Gabriel Metcalf. “If you put it in that perspective, this is about wealth enabling infrastructure and there should be any number of ways into tapping into that wealth to pay for the infrastructure.”

Flickr photo: zigdon

BART staff has shot down a proposal from Director Robert Raburn to allow commuters to bring bicycles aboard the back cars of rush hour trains. In a memo [pdf] to the BART Board, Executive Planning and Budget Manager Carter Mau recommended maintaining the current policy, which prohibits bicycles aboard its most crowded trains during peak hours.

Raburn couldn’t be reached for comment but BART Director Tom Radulovich said the response from staff was frustrating. He said they’ve been “stonewalling” the issue for years.

“I think the BART staff need to be doing more to expand bike access to all trains at all times,” he said. The issue is not dead yet, however. Radulovich said the board could revive the proposal and call for a public hearing.

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) Executive Director Leah Shahum said “BART is forgoing a major source of new riders and new revenue” by “refusing to even consider easing the existing black-out period for bikes and allowing escalator access for bikes.”

“We urge BART to modernize their approach to bicycle access to support the growing number of people who bicycle in the Bay Area and depend on regional transit, from lawyers to waiters to architects to small business owners,” she said.

According to an article on BART’s website, “while BART ridership has grown about 15 percent [since 2002], the number of riders bicycling from home to BART rose almost 65 percent, from 2.5 percent of all passengers to 4.1 percent.”

But “BART has unfortunately been reducing the lengths of trains to attempt to cut costs without opening up access to cyclists on these trains (which could boost ridership and generate more revenue),” says the SFBC’s website.

Mau, who addressed the memo to BART Director Thomas Blalock, cited six reasons for the decision:

1) There will likely be insufficient capacity for bikes on the last car of trains during the peak period causing confusion, queuing on the crowded platform and spillover into adjacent cars.

2) It will be very challenging to enforce this policy. Once bicyclists are on the platform, if the last car is crowded they will likely board other cars (cars that may become more crowded as the train progresses).

3) This would permit bikes on crowded rush-hour platforms potentially leading to safety concerns and conflicts with other passengers.

4) Vertical circulation is already crowded in busy stations. Allowing more bicycles in the system during peak periods would further tax busy stairways and elevators.

5) Overall this would complicate the enforcement issue for the BART Police Department.

6) As ridership increases, trains will be getting more crowded and room for all passengers will be impacted. When new cars start deploying and potentially there may be more train capacity, we may have an opportunity to revisit this policy.

BART is in the process of updating its Bicycle Master Plan and surveyed riders earlier this month “to understand how and why people access BART today to be able to understand what encourages BART passengers who can bicycle to BART to do so, rather than drive to their station,” according to survey consultant Victoria Eisen.

But Shahum said the SFBC is “concerned that the current Bicycle Master Planning process omits the two most important issues: greater on-board access for bicycles and better station access.”

The next generation of BART cars could potentially provide better accommodations for bikes, but Radulovich says they’re “a decade away.”

In lieu of expanding bike access aboard trains, Mau’s memo recommended “clear communication regarding when bikes are and are not allowed on trains” and “continuing to improve bike parking at stations to give riders a safe, secure parking option.”

Mau pointed to recent parking additions at the Ashby and 19th Street stations as well as plans to add bike stations and lockers at Civic Center and MacArthur. BART also plans to add “up to 1,000 electronic lockers at 25 stations over the next few years,” according to the memo.

Radulovich said staff has been slow to act on bike parking expansion and pointed out that it won’t address the core issue for riders who need to use their bikes on both ends of a trip.

East Bay Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Renee Rivera called Mau’s citation of “safety concerns and conflicts with other passengers” on platforms at rush hour “a total non-issue.”

“The platforms have plenty of room for people to be there with their bikes,” said Rivera.

Restrictions at 12th and 19th Street stations in downtown Oakland, said Rivera, prevent riders with bikes from entering the stations during rush hour, even if they want to access trains that are unrestricted at that time.

“They are a real barrier to people and totally unnecessary,” she said.

On its website, the SFBC urges BART to make numerous access improvements to BART stations, “including wide fare gates that allow wheelchairs and bicycles through, stair channels to allow cyclists to wheel their bikes up and down stairs, and improved bike parking, such as racks inside the paid areas, on demand bike lockers, and bike stations.”

Radulovich said concerns about circulation in some BART stations like Embarcadero are legitimate, but that staff is falling back on the excuse after years of citing train capacity as the issue. BART has added some room for bikes over the years when it refurbishes cars.

“I just want to know, ‘what do you need to do to fix this?’” he said. “We need to get our act together on capacity.”

Cities like Portland, Oregon have found solutions to better accommodate bicycles on commuter trains. Portland’s MAX rail system provides hooks near doorways to allow passengers to hang their bikes, providing more bike capacity with less space.

Bikes hang on hooks on Portland's MAX rail system. Photo: TriMet

“I’d love to see BART consider on-car bike parking racks,” said Rivera. “That would solve the issues brought up in the memo around people being able to get on and off the cars during peak hours.”

The SFBC has also urged allocating dedicated space “for bikes so that they won’t interfere with other passengers and can be stowed safely for the duration of your trip.”

“It is very hard right now when trains are full to get bikes on and off because of the way the BART cars are configured with the seats right next to the doorway,” added Rivera.

But more crowded systems like the New York City subway, Radulovich pointed out, allow bikes aboard at all times and rely on “a common sense rule.”

“You don’t take your bike on if it’s too crowded,” he said. “Someone will yell at you. I think people in the Bay Area are both a little more polite and tend to be more rights-conscious.”

“That whole ‘common sense of how to share space’ thing, we’re not as good as New Yorkers are at it because we don’t live in crowded conditions.”

A family connects to BART from the 49 bus using the inviting new walkway. Photo: Aaron Bialick

BART riders will no longer be squeezed alongside Muni tracks to get into Balboa Park Station. A new walkway connecting travelers to Ocean Avenue on the north side was unveiled Friday as one project in a host of efforts aimed at improving access to the busiest BART and Muni transit hub outside of the city’s downtown area, though it may be just a baby step in the eyes of some advocates.

“For nearly four decades, we did not have a proper entrance to Ocean Avenue from the station for folks going to City College, or to the Ocean Avenue shopping district, or to Balboa Park,” said BART Director Tom Radulovich. “Now we have a fully-accessible, direct entrance, which is great. I’m happy it’s there.”

The walkway is a welcome improvement to commuters using the station to and from Ocean Avenue who previously had no choice but to squeeze through a narrow passage alongside trains or circumnavigate the station to get inside.

“When the trains are actually running and they go past you, it’s a little dangerous,” said Jocelyn, a BART rider who lives in the neighborhood. “Now it’s a lot easier and safer, I feel.”

Erika, Jocelyn’s friend, said she regularly uses the station to visit her from Berkeley. “I think it’s great if you come home late, because it’s all lit up,” said Erika. “I feel a little bit safer up here where people can see me.”

Balboa Park Station, looking south. The new walkway is on the right side. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Balboa Park Station serves at least 12,000 passengers per day as a key hub for BART trains as well as Muni’s J, K, and M Metro lines and seven other buses, all while doing duty as a major Muni maintenance facility.

The new walkway helps link cycling commuters to the bike lanes on Ocean Avenue, which have served as a more comfortable connection to City College of San Francisco and the Ingleside district since they went in late last year.

“This is definitely going to be a lot easier for me riding my bike to the station than having to go down that gravel path to the other side,” noted Jocelyn.

Although the improvement helps solve some issues for BART passengers connecting to the 49 bus or other destinations north of the station, Balboa Park’s original planning seems wrought with fundamental oversights in safety and access. Pushed right up against the 280 freeway, the pedestrian-heavy area is surrounded by dangerous roads swarmed with car traffic from four nearby ramps.

“Crossing Geneva, crossing San Jose, is a real challenge. You put your life in your hands,” said District 11 Supervisor John Avalos, who noted the particular difficulty for those with wheelchairs and strollers in the largely working-class neighborhood.

With significant changes, the station has the potential to be the center of a neighborhood transit village. However, some advocates and city officials say it has a long way to go.

“It’s an embarrassment,” said Avalos, who brought the issue of the poor state of the station to the forefront at a January Board of Supervisors meeting. “It’s an embarrassment for the entire city that this is something that the people who live in the backbone of San Francisco – the Excelsior, Visitacion Valley, [Ingleside, and Sunnyside] – have to put up with the most uncomfortable transit operation that we have.”

Dangerous traffic conditions on the streets surrounding the station, as well as heavy industrial uses, cut it off from the rest of the area, says Radulovich, creating a “hole in the donut” of otherwise rich neighborhoods.

This tight corridor was previously the only direct route into the station, and remains so for those boarding Muni trains. Photo: Aaron Bialick

“It’s a disaster on a number of levels,” he said. “We located this intermodal transit station in the middle of a freeway interchange and in the middle of a Muni maintenance facility. Hopefully the lesson we’ve learned is those are three uses that don’t go well together.”

Lessening the impacts of the freeway ramps is one of the key issues in improving the station, said Radulovich, ”but to solve the really big problems, we need to engage Caltrans and Muni, and that’s been really challenging.”

“Everyone’s crossing their fingers in different directions,” said Avalos, who highlighted that the SFMTA recognizes the station primarily as a maintenance facility, not a transit hub.

“They want to look at it as a place to store vehicles that they might need to store 15, 20 years from now,” he said. ”That makes it very difficult to deal with how buses and pedestrians are constrained to the actual use of Balboa Park Station.”

“That is not the way we need to be working collaboratively on land-use issues and transit-oriented development in San Francisco,” added Avalos.

The end of the walkway meets an intersection with a freeway onramp. The two nearest crosswalks are 1/3 of a mile from each other. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Dysfunction in agency priorities and coordination seems to be the biggest obstacle to implementing the The Balboa Park Area Plan, a vision developed by the SF Planning Department in collaboration with the local community. It calls for the Balboa Park Station to become the hub of a connected, lively transit village and was adopted by the Board of Supervisors in 2009.

The plan aspires to fill in the “donut” in the area by improving the quality of place around the station, illustrating ideas as bold as building a deck of buildings and public space over the freeway that would remove physical barriers and better connect the two sides it currently divides.

But for now, even simple pedestrian safety improvements remain difficult to implement. At the end of the new west side walkway, there isn’t a single crosswalk on Ocean Avenue, although Radulovich said the SFMTA has funding from the Safe Routes to Transit program to install them.

The next project lined up for the station is an east side walkway that would connect the Muni boarding area with the new one, which is only accessible by entering BART fare gates. Radulovich said construction on that is hoped to begin early next year.

Until then, Muni riders coming from the north side must still walk the gauntlet.

The end of the new walkway where it meets Ocean Avenue. Photo: Aaron Bialick

The new entrance into the station, which is accessible only by BART fare gates and for those needing to use the elevator upon request, said Radulovich. Photo: Aaron Bialick

This westbound Ocean Avenue bike lane helps connect people by bike up the hill to City College, but there is no convenient way to access it from the station. Photo: Aaron Bialick

The plan for a freeway deck over I-280. Image: SF Planning Department

Image: Make BART Trains Run 24 Hours Facebook page

Anyone who has tried to go out on Friday or Saturday night to a concert or a show across the Bay from where they live understands the challenge posed by BART’s relatively early closing hours. Some people try to find a couch to sleep on, some don’t go out as long as they’d like or find themselves rushing to get that 12:15 am train. Still others choose to drive, and if the late-night swerving traffic on the Bay Bridge is any measure, some of them are partially intoxicated.

On the other hand, BART runs trains as long or longer than many systems in the world, with the notable exception of New York City’s subways. The few hours each night that BART isn’t operational provide maintenance staff with invaluable time to do the necessary service on facilities to keep the agency’s excellent safety record in place. If there were fewer hours for fixing the system, the conventional wisdom goes, breakdowns and mechanical problems would compromise service and safety.

BART’s new board president Bob Franklin announced today that he would like to revisit that conventional wisdom and have a public discussion about whether the system could run later on weekends without hurting performance. Franklin, who was elected today to serve a one-year term as president of the board, enumerated his many priorities and said the agency hadn’t seriously examined its service hours policy since it started running 4 am trains following the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.

“I’m sure people are driving when they shouldn’t be because there isn’t a fast, reliable transit option open late,” Franklin told Streetsblog. He also noted that he gets questions from the public all the time, asking why trains can’t run longer hours. Franklin said the Facebook group “Make BART Trains Run 24 Hours” has over 22,000 fans, though he acknowledged it would be impossible to run trains around the clock and keep the system safe.

One solution, according to Franklin, would be to see if the agency could move the 4 am start time on weekdays to 5 am, applying the extra operating hour from that change to either or both nights on the weekend. He also wanted to see if the agency would consider not running certain late night trains to the terminus stations, if that would improve the feasibility of the concept.

“The only way we could potentially explore that is if we were to start later,” he said, though he admitted pushing the starting time back will impact a different set of riders in the morning.

According to Franklin, there are 2400 people getting on and off BART during 4-5 am hour on weekdays, many of them going from further flung stations to the Financial District to coincide with the opening of the New York stock market (compare that with 78,000 at the 7-8 am peak hour, he said)

“[Our opening hour is] an outlier of the transit industry,” he said.

BART hasn’t done a rigorous study on changing operating times in several decades, but they will convene a meeting of staff and board members to discuss the matter further, said BART spokesperson Linton Johnson.

Johnson reiterated Franklin’s assumption that the early morning riders were primarily financial sector workers, who he noted are some of BART’s most loyal riders.

“There’s no question there are lots of people who would love to see all-night BART, me included, but as somebody who works for the agency, I know why we don’t have it,” said Johnson. As for the shift in early morning trains, Johnson said, “It would jeopardize our bread and butter commuters. We have to get our commuters to work so that they can be at work when the New York Stock Exchange opens.”

Johnson also noted a list of other complications for changing the start and end times, including maintenance schedules, coordination with Muni to staff shared San Francisco stations for longer hours, changes to connecting bus service, union contracts and whether the late-night ridership numbers would compensate for the early morning loss.

Johnson also questioned the early morning numbers Franklin provided to Streetsblog, suggesting that they don’t capture all the people who benefit from the early service.

Both Franklin and Johnson agreed that much more data is needed and the planning meetings will help resolve some of the outstanding questions.

For Franklin, there is value just in the process of debating the merits of the schedule in a public format.

“I’d like to see if we can make some minor changes,” he said. “If we can, I think it will be a winner for BART. If we can’t, I think it will be an opportunity to explain to the public why not.”

Photo: Matthew Roth

In the spirit of the holidays, BART will be handing out 120,000 free tickets to commuters tomorrow morning from 6 am to 9 am, what BART calls “an early holiday gift.” Each ticket will be valid for one ride anywhere in the system during the next three weekends, December 4th, 5th, 11th, 12th, 18th and 19th. BART will give pairs of free tickets to 60,000 commuters at the Downtown Berkeley, 12th St./Oakland City Center, Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell and Civic Center stations, while supplies last.

According to BART spokesperson Linton Johnson, a lot of people forget that BART accesses several of the busiest shopping areas in the region, from downtown San Francisco to Oakland to Walnut Creek. What’s more, said Johnson, “our parking spaces tend to be mostly empty on weekends, and they’re free. People tend to fight for that parking spot during holiday shopping. We’re killing two birds with one stone.”

The promotion will cost BART roughly $386,400 in ticket value (assuming average ride cost of $3.22), but Johnson said the agency believed the increase in ridership from friends and family traveling with the beneficiaries of the promotion would more than make up the expense. “In the end, people don’t make just one shopping trip, if we can increase just a percent or two, then we’ve improved our overall picture,” he said.

The funding for the promotion is part of a board-approved rider development fund. After use, the tickets will be returned by the fare gates but will have no remaining value and may be discarded. Further, after using the free tickets, recipients who visit bart.gov/shop to fill out a survey (available by the first day of the promotion) will be entered to win a Clipper card loaded with $300 worth of value.

Photo: Jackelyn Ho/Muni Diaries

The BART Board of Directors had a heated discussion today about most things Clipper, from the large number of EZ Rider customers who have yet to transition to the universal smart card, to the ease with which customers can scam Clipper cards on BART and other operators.

Despite a more visible outreach and marketing campaign in the works, there are still 40,000 active EZ Rider accounts and 7,000 daily boardings with the card. Several board members feared a scenario where a flood of last minute Clipper adopters try to beat the deadline, overwhelming stations agents and customer service representatives with the burden of refunding so many EZ Rider accounts.

Adding to the challenge, BART currently has different cut-off dates for using EZ Rider for transit and parking. On December 8th, BART customers will be able to pay for parking with Clipper and on December 15th they will no longer be able to use the EZ Rider card, but there is no cut-off date yet for parking.

“It’s going to create a lot of confusion for passengers. I think there are going to be an enormous amount of questions,” said BART Board Vice President Bob Franklin, who explained that having numerous different deadlines for cutting off EZ Rider usage for transit but no deadline for parking would only increase confusion. Though he said some of the problem could be chalked up to procrastination on the part of customers, he argued BART and MTC could improve the outreach and be clearer with deadlines.

“I’m a big believer in this card, I want to honor our commitment to MTC,” he said. But, he argued, “There is going to be a crunch. That’s my concern, that we can’t deliver by December 15th.”

“I think it hurts the acceptance of the card,” he added.

Board President James Fang was more blunt with his criticism of the process, saying, “The bigger problem is that MTC is trying to dictate to us what we’re supposed to do.” Fang proposed establishing a committee of BART directors such as Franklin and Tom Radulovich to work with staff to improve communication of their concerns with MTC.

Radulovich and numerous other members also raised the issue of Clipper’s negative balance and the difficulty of adding fare to the cards at retail outlets. Though BART staff said most stations would begin to get new vending machines in March that allowed customers to add value to cards, currently the only way to do so is online, at Walgreens and some other vendors, or at the few San Francisco Muni Metro shared stations.

“Asking people to leave the station to recharge their card is dumb,” said Radulovich. “I don’t know who’s idea it was to roll out Clipper before we had a way to add value in stations. I can’t believe MTC and BART would want to put our customers through that.”

Radulovich argued that station agents would be the target of customer ire given the way the system currently functions and said it was particularly difficult for customers who didn’t have credit cards or customers of limited means who only operate with cash. He even raised the question whether the current system ran afoul of federal Title VI civil rights policies because of the difficulty low-income riders might have.

Director Joel Keller and Gail Murray raised concerns that Contra Costa County had too few retail outlets selling Clipper cards, a problem they said was exacerbated for seniors.

“It’s very difficult to find a Clipper Card location that is convenient. It’s very difficult for seniors to go get their card,” said Murray. “In Contra Costa, the only place I know of is County Connection. You can’t even get to County Connection on BART.”

As Streetsblog reported, MTC’s policy for anticipating the difficulty of adding fares is to program the cards to go negative, or assume debt of up to $10 during a single ride.

MTC spokesperson Randy Rentschler defended the policy, saying the most cost-effective way to handle the transition of the many transit agencies using Clipper was to go with a negative balance. According to MTC’s statistics, even with the widespread publicity of the issue in the media last week, single use of Clipper cards hadn’t grown significantly. While there was an uptick, the number is still far below a threshold they considered alarming, thought they are monitoring the issue every day.

“Can people scam the system because it’s not perfect, sure,” said Rentschler. “It’s better than not having it. We’re going through a transition and we’re not trying to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I think it’s overwhelmingly good.”

Rentschler told me MTC would take the concerns raised by BART directors seriously and would not dismiss anything they said, but he declined to comment directly on any of the BART directors’ complaints. He argued the Bay Area needed a single fare medium, but with the complexity of 26 Bay Area transit operators each with different policies and instruments, there would be no absolutely seamless way to roll out Clipper without upsetting some interests.

“Clipper is the electronic solution to what is fundamentally a political problem and that is that everybody wants to have local control of their transit system,” said Rentschler. “You can have fewer operators or you can have technology. We chose technology.”

“We want it to work for their customers, we want it to work with all customers.,” he added. “More than anything else, we think we’re going to have a good run with BART, but it’s not going to be perfect.”

Photos: Matthew Roth

AC Transit riders took solace in the news on Tuesday that the agency plans to restore service that was cut twice this year after a labor arbitrator settled a contract dispute. Transit advocates worry, however, about the agency’s long-term solvency and have called on elected officials to develop significant revenue measures for funding buses in the East Bay.

The arbitration panel in the AC Transit labor negotiation reached a decision on a contract between the transit district and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192, which represents 1,750 of its bus drivers and mechanics, saving the agency $38 million over three years. The binding decision calls for increased contributions from the members to their health and benefit plans, as well as work rule and holiday changes.

AC Transit had cut service in March by 7.8 percent, or $10.3 million in service hours and in October by 7.2 percent, or $11.4 million in service hours. Fare increases this year amounted to an increase of 25 cents per trip for local riders and $10 for the price of a monthly pass. Transbay riders have been paying an increase of 50 cents per trip and $16.50 for a monthly pass. Youth, senior and disabled riders saw a hike of 15 cents per local trip and 30 cents for Transbay trips.

Because of the arbitration decision, AC Transit also expects to halt an additional round of cuts approved to go into effect in December, including the elimination of weekend service on lines affecting nearly 25,000 riders, what transit advocates and church groups lamented as a “death spiral.”

“There are no winners or losers in this arbitration,” AC Transit Interim General Manager Mary King said in a statement. “Both AC Transit and the union focused on what is best for the riders and taxpayers of this district and what is in the long-term interest of maintaining public transit for the people we serve.”

Mashasin Abdul Salaam, left, of Genesis, looks on as a coalition member is interviewed by KRON.

Though transit advocates were pleased with the impact on service in the near term, they lamented the agency’s inability to improve service above restoring recent cuts and worried similar budget deficits would return imminently.

A coalition of community groups and church leaders rallied this week to kick off a campaign calling on elected officials throughout Alameda County to fight for increased operating funds for AC Transit with the same vigor they stumped for capital projects like the Oakland Airport Connector. Many of the groups in the coalition, like Urban Habitat, Public Advocates and Genesis, fought the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and BART over spending federal stimulus money on the OAC. They’ve created a pledge they hope to get Alameda County elected officials to sign, promising to do everything in their power to improve AC Transit’s financial situation.

“We don’t see [labor concessions] as a long-term sustainable solution to AC Transit’s funding problems,” said Bob Allen, transportation policy director for Urban Habitat. “It gets us out of the latest round of really serious cuts. It doesn’t get us off the trend that we have going forward, with MTC, the state and the federal government not providing adequate operations funding. This is a short term solution that is balanced on the backs of people who work, push the system forward, put service on the street.”

Allen said the MTC had funded “mega-projects” throughout the region to the detriment of keeping buses running. “We want to see the same kind of effort to get funding to put service on the street, to reach our climate change goals, to get kids to school and get people to work.”

At the rally, the coalition got commitments from Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, Alameda County Supervisors Keith Carson and Nate Miley, as well as Gayle McLaughlin, the newly elected Mayor of Richmond.

“We don’t need to keep widening our highways. We realize that only impacts public health with more pollution and only drags us further into the global warming crisis we’re in,” said McLaughlin, to loud applause.”We need it understood that mass transit is the wave of the future, is for the needs of our community and is something that is just. I love the words ‘transportation justice.’ Let’s keep pulling together for transportation justice.”

McLaughlin talked of her own city’s general plan, but said they couldn’t achieve the benefits of smart growth, emissions reductions and improved health without AC Transit.

“What good is it to have transit-oriented development if you don’t have the transit?” she asked.

Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin addresses the crowd on Tuesday.

Mashasin Abdul Salaam, co-chair of the Genesis Transportation Task Force, applauded the politicians who stepped up to sign the pledge, which reads simply, “I stand in solidarity with AC Transit’s ridership. I pledge to do anything within my power to fight continuing service cuts and fare increases. I will continually endeavor to restore AC Transit’s service to its pre-2010 levels and to fight against the gradual diversion of AC Transit’s resources.”

Salaam and the coalition called out the political leadership who were ardent supporters of the OAC, what Salaam called “the skytram,” saying they had not done enough to adequately fund AC Transit. The politicians included Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Oakland Councilmember Larry Reid, Alameda County Supervisor and MTC Chairman Scott Haggerty, Alameda County Transportation Commission Chair Mark Green, State Assemblyman Sandre Swanson, U.S. Representative Barbara Lee and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Urban Habitat’s Allen called it the “optics” of press events for new capital construction versus job preservation.

“I think a lot of people feel it doesn’t look as good to stand beside a bus driver in the morning and say this bus driver wasn’t cut. Preserving jobs is not looked at the same as ‘creating’ them,” said Allen.

“It’s a problem of how people operate politically, what things feed what constituencies and ultimately is there enough power in the communities that are affected that they’ll stand up,” said Allen. “I think political officials look at those capital projects as serving people who vote more. If they’re putting up a project that gets people to work but also attracts voters, maybe more middle class voters, more affluent voters, more white voters who tend to come out, that plays better to those people, in their minds.”

Image: BART

As part of the complicated funding swaps BART staff arranged with regional and state transportation planners to proceed with the Oakland Airport Connector following the loss of $70 million in federal stimulus dollars due to civil rights deficiencies, the transit operator was hoping to get a federal loan with a low interest rate and a favorable interest payment schedule.

Unfortunately for OAC proponents, as reported recently in Project Finance Magazine (subscription needed), the US DOT announced its Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loans for FY 2010-11 and the OAC was not among the projects selected. BART had applied for $105 million from the feds for the $484 million project.

Because BART has enough cash on hand to proceed with preparations for construction and actual groundbreaking in early 2011 (versus the ceremonial event held last month) and because TIFIA loans can be applied for continuously, the agency was not particularly concerned with the news.

“Quite frankly we don’t need the money right now,” said BART spokesperson Linton Johnson, who explained that in BART’s experience TIFIA loans are prioritized for projects that urgently need them. He also pointed to Federal Transit Administrator (FTA) Peter Rogoff’s assurances that BART would get a $25 million New Starts grant when the feds accept its revised civil rights compliance . “This shouldn’t be an indication that we’re not eligible for it or that something is wrong.”

Image: BART

OAC opponents offered a different analysis of the federal action and said this narrowed BART’s options for financing and ultimately would raise the debt obligation for the project by millions of dollars. Referring to BART’s own analysis, TransForm’s John Knox White indicated that if BART cannot secure a TIFIA loan, in the best case scenario with Build America Bonds they would have to subsidize the OAC with $46.3 million from the core system (versus $24 million) and would have to pay $115 million in debt financing (versus $106 million).

“The TIFIA decision is yet one more example of how BART’s likely financial scenario in its presentation was overly rosy,” said Knox White, who also noted the possibility that Build America Bonds will not be re-authorized and BART could have to go out and find loans with even worse interest and debt scenarios. “That’s tens of millions of dollars in debt the core system will have to cover.”

Because the BART board removed any preconditions that would have compelled staff to bring a revised funding plan before them should they not secure TIFIA, BABs or other funding (such as the Port of Oakland’s passenger surcharge approval from the Federal Aviation Administration), there will not likely be further debate about the financial scenario.

Johnson expressed optimism, saying he believed BART would be well-positioned for TIFIA loans in FY 2011. “There is a pool of money and it gets replenished. We’d love to have it in hand to make us feel good,” he said, but noted, “we’re not at the urgent stage yet.”

Image: BART

As transit operators across the Bay Area transition to the Clipper card, one of the bigger challenges each faces is communicating the timeline to their most loyal customers, those who buy high value and monthly passes.

The deadline to transition to Clipper for the  50,000 BART riders who have used EZ Rider cards for transit trips over the past few years has already been pushed back by more than two months, to mid-December, and now BART is concerned the 41,000 remaining EZ Rider account holders will experience an unpleasant surprise when the system is turned off next month.

“We are worried what the impact is going to be on our customers,” said BART spokesperson Linton Johnson. “We’ve tried and tried to gently encourage them to switch over to Clipper because the deadline is coming.”

Though originally slated for October 1st, the transition was delayed due to “concerns pertaining to Clipper system features and technical readiness,” according to a document [pdf] prepared by BART general manager Dorothy Dugger for the board of directors. Directors were expected to discuss the progress of the transition at a board meeting today, but that meeting was canceled due to a lack of quorum.

“Significant progress has been made on key issues pertaining to the EZ Rider/Clipper transition,” Dugger writes, noting that 9,000 EZ Rider customers have already canceled their accounts, presumably in the transition to Clipper. Though there are still 41,000 EZ Rider accounts open, that doesn’t mean all of those customers don’t also have a Clipper card.

“BART High Value Discount product auto load sign-ups have increased from 5,700 in June to 26,000 in September, an indicator that the Clipper High Value Discount product is gaining in acceptance as a substitute for EZ Rider,” writes Dugger. “Some of these 26,000 HVD auto load Clipper users may also still have an EZ Rider account open.”

Though it seems confusing, the rationale is that many EZ Rider account holders use the cards to pay for parking and for transit trips, according to Johnson. During the transition process, they haven’t been able to pay for parking with a Clipper card, a problem that is expected to be remedied by December 1st. Adding to the confusion, Johnson explained, even when Clipper is accepted for parking in December, BART will be required to maintain the EZ Rider website for customers to sign up for Clipper parking, as mandated by federal banking rules that distinguish paying for parking and transit trips, even on the same fare medium.

BART director Tom Radulovich said he has complained numerous times to BART and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), which administers Clipper, about the inconvenience of the transition to customers. “MTC is saying you have to carry two cards around, that’s insane,” said Radulovich.

The MTC defended the transition, saying there are challenges in uptake for any new technology. “BART has done an outstanding job of communicating with its EZ Rider customers,” said MTC spokesperson John Goodwin. “I think we’ll see a late move from EZ Rider to Clipper and it will go smoothly.”

Johnson said BART had done everything it could afford to do to alert EZ Rider customers, including sending numerous emails to them and announcing it in press releases, but he said BART was anticipating funding from the MTC for advertising that never materialized. Because BART’s own advertising is booked as much as twelve months out, said Johnson, the channels BART has for communicating to its riders have been limited. “We just don’t have the advertising dollars to get there.”

“Our biggest fear is when the drop-dead deadline comes, we’re going to have people very upset they were given no time and no warning,” he said. “The bottom line is it’s not going to reflect well on BART, MTC or Clipper.”

“We don’t like that, we want to get the word out,” he added.

Flickr photo: Thomas Hawk

When the San Francisco Giant’s won the World Series, fans took to the streets in uproarious celebration, though some got carried away in a boozy frenzy that led to burning mattresses, commandeering SFFD fire trucks and an ugly brawl at 22nd and Mission. Fortunately, when the city held the official parade and celebration on Wednesday, fans did something far more civil: they took public transportation to the Civic Center, in dramatic numbers.

BART announced that ridership was 522,200, obliterating the previous ridership record of 442,100 during the emergency closure of the Bay Bridge when an eyebar snapped unexpectedly last year.

“We are truly thankful for all the Bay Area residents who chose to ride BART to this historic event,”  BART Board President James Fang said in a statement. “I’m delighted that despite the huge crowds in the morning, we continued to shine in the area BART is best known for – and that’s being on-time.”

Despite the crush of riders in the morning before the parade, which required police to temporarily close stations near Civic Center to allow crowds to exit, on-time performance exceeded 90 percent.

“[Wednesday] was not only a testament to the hard work of our employees, it also highlights the importance of the investment taxpayers made in this system decades ago and the faith our riders have in us today and hopefully for years to come,” said Fang.

According to BART, the highest daily ridership on a sustained basis, without special circumstances or events, occurred in September 2008 when BART averaged about 380,000 customers per day. Since that time, ridership has dropped, which the agency attributed to the economic slump and the high unemployment that followed. In recent months, ridership numbers have rebounded and are now approaching 350,000 riders per average weekday. Despite the economic slump, BART says riders have set nearly all of the agency’s top ten ridership days in just the past two years.

Previous Ridership Records

• 442,100 – Oct. 29, 2009 – Emergency Bay Bridge closure
• 437,700 – Oct. 30, 2009 – Emergency Bay Bridge closure
• 437,200 – Oct. 28, 2009 – Emergency Bay Bridge closure
• 405,400 – Sept. 8, 2008 – Oakland Raiders, San Francisco Giants game
• 395,300 – Sept. 4, 2009  – Scheduled Bay Bridge closure; A’s game
• 394,400 – June 19, 2008 -  Spare The Air Day
• 393,200 – Nov. 2, 2009 – Bay Bridge reopened at 9 a.m. after closure
• 391,900 – April 9, 2008 – San Francisco Giants game; Olympic Torch run
• 390,600 – Sept. 25, 2008 – Oracle Open World; San Francisco Giants game
• 389,400 – Aug. 31, 2007 – Oakland A’s; Beyonce concert; Bay Bridge closure

Flickr photo: Thomas Hawk

Though the dust is far from settled in the elections from Tuesday, some results will have a noted impact on transit in the Bay Area and the state. We’ll have more coverage of the election results on smart growth in a future installment

San Francisco Proposition G

San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition G, stripping the City Charter of the clause guaranteeing Muni operators the second highest salary and benefits package of any transit operator in the nation. The final vote was 64 percent for, 36 percent against. The Transport Workers Union (TWU) 250-A, the union that represents Muni operators, will now have to negotiate wages and benefits with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) through collective bargaining, a maneuver Prop G supporters hoped would compel the union to ditch some of its work rules deemed to be inefficient and outdated.

While the SFMTA declined to discuss its bargaining strategies before it sits down with TWU to negotiate a new contract to replace the one that expires on June 30, 2011, SFMTA CEO Nat Ford released a statement about the results.

“Proposition G gives the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency more flexibility to improve the work we do for San Francisco residents, visitors and the business community,” said Ford. “It will allow us to be more creative in our efforts to improve service and expand our programs for our customers, while at the same time respecting the hard but vital work of our operators and the other employee units covered by the proposition. We look forward to working cooperatively with the unions.”

According to the SFMTA, negotiations with TWU will likely begin shortly in the hopes they are able to negotiate a new contract before next summer and avoid an impasse. Representatives for the TWU did not return repeated requests for comment.

BART Elections

At BART, 20-year incumbent James Fang easily beat back challenges from two insurgents and received 49 percent of the vote. Bert Hill and Brian Larkin finished behind with 26 percent and 25 percent of the vote, respectively. Fang told Streetsblog he won because the public in his district was impressed with BART’s 96 percent on-time performance and the many expansions he has helped shepherd during his tenure, including the San Francisco Airport and Oakland Airport connections, eBART and Warm Springs.

“I think the voters of San Francisco understand and appreciate the hard work that has made BART the number one transit agency in the Bay Area, if not the nation,” said Fang. He also said the vote contradicted the argument made by his opponents that he was too focused on extensions to the detriment of the core system. Noting BART’s $1.5 billion seismic retrofit and $3.5 billion car replacement programs, Fang said, “people who say we’re not spending on the core system are frankly wrong.”

In the next breath, he said one of the campaign discussions that resonated most powerfully with voters was the idea of resurrecting BART to the Beach, a subterranean extension from the Civic Center station to the Outer Richmond District under Geary Boulevard. Fang said BART had initially planned to build such an extension and had revisited the idea several times over the years, but had never delivered service to a large segment of taxpayers who had been paying BART sales tax for decades.

Fang said he was convening a committee of the board to push for the extension and said it would be a priority for him in the coming years. He argued the latent ridership for such an extension would easily make it worth the high price tag, which he estimated to be at least $8-10 billion.

“There’s an old saying at BART,” said Fang, “It’s quicker to get from Richmond City to downtown San Francisco than it is to get from the Richmond District to downtown San Francisco.”

In the other hotly contested BART election, long-time bicycle and transit advocate Robert Raburn upset incumbent Carole Ward Allen, receiving 46 percent of the vote. Ward Allen got 35 percent, followed by Monique Rivera, who received 17 percent.

Raburn said the result was a referendum on the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) and the role of the BART Police in the killing of Oscar Grant nearly two years ago on the Fruitvale Station platform. Both the OAC and the Oscar Grant shooting thrust Ward Allen into the spotlight, given her pivotal role in pushing for the connector and her role in reforming oversight of the BART Police.

Raburn said there wasn’t much hope of stopping the OAC now, but he hoped to prevent the agency from spending money on other projects he deemed “wasteful.”

“I’ve long wanted to see BART provide better service and instead I’ve watched them deteriorate to spend money they don’t have,” he said. “We can turn BART around by building passenger appeal, providing better service, restoring the jobs that were eliminated when they worked. Let’s stop balancing the budget on the backs of passengers.”

Among Raburn’s ideas for augmenting ridership were efforts to increase access to BART stations, notably by coordinating better with private shuttle services and funding BART shuttles around stations. In Alameda, where Raburn campaigned on a platform of better connections to the island with shuttles, he said BART could dramatically increase its ridership if they made it more convenient to get to the stations without having to drive.

He also stressed the need for better and safer pedestrian and bicycle connectivity to BART stations throughout the system, something he worked on as an advocate with the East Bay Bicycle Coalition.

On oversight of BART police, Raburn said he would pick up the work that Ward Allen started, of particular significance given the sentencing of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle on Friday and any civil unrest that might result.

San Francisco District 10 and BART

One of the more interesting election questions that remains is how the results of the supervisor race in San Francisco’s District 10 will impact the make-up of the BART board of directors. Currently, Lynette Sweet, who represents BART’s District 7, is trailing Tony Kelly by 119 votes. Because of the massive field of candidates in the district, Kelly only has 13 percent of the vote and Sweet 12 percent, with 50 percent needed to win. Because of the nature of San Francisco’s ranked choice voting, the outcome could take several weeks. As political consultant David Latterman said in The Bay Citizen today, “Ten is a clusterfuck.”

If Sweet were to win the election for supervisor, her seat would be filled by a person chosen by James Fang, who, as president of the board, has the power to appoint a replacement to an outgoing board director. Though little can be said about who Fang would select if the situation were to occur and how that would change the votes on the board, the politics of the selection process will likely be fascinating. At a minimum, if Sweet were to leave and with Ward Allen’s departure, the BART board theoretically could have only one woman and one minority representative, hardly reflective of the make-up of BART’s ridership.

Proposition 22

California voters across the state affirmed their commitment to isolate local funding for municipal services from the Legislature and the Governor during budget season by passing Proposition 22, which guarantees that local or regional sales tax revenues dedicated to police, fire, libraries, transit and other municipal services cannot be shifted to pay down deficits in the state’s general fund. If the proposition makes it through court challenges, it could restore nearly $2 billion dollars per year that lawmakers and Governor Schwarzenneger had diverted to the general fund the past few years.

Jeff Wagner, a representative from the California Transit Association, a lobbying group representing transit operators across the state and a significant supporter of Prop 22, said the results demonstrated the public’s resolve for preserving quality of life and mobility funding that make communities livable. On the transit side, Wagner said the vote should ensure that at least in FY 2011-12 transit operators would receive a share of the state diesel tax, which should top $400 million, coupled with restoration of the $1.4 billion yearly from the Transportation Development Act (TDA), a 1/4 cent county sales tax for transportation funds established in 1971.

“We’ve got constitutional protections that ensure that transit revenues are spent on transit going forward,” said Wagner. “The passage of this not only preserves the funding already on the books, but it reduces” the risk of transit funding raids.

“We definitely have some protections against the kinds of yearly shell games that have been going on with the budget and the diversions of transit funding,” he added.

Wagner said despite the positive news, the CTA was prepared to continue its fight to preserve transit funding and he wouldn’t rule out legislative maneuvering to change the funding schemes for transit, akin to the gas tax swap earlier this year. On the other hand, he was optimistic that the majority vote budget requirement in Proposition 25 would make it slightly easier to get more funding for transit.

“There is a sense of accountability by having majority budget vote,” he said. “Future budgets will probably be more reflective of the majority party and in some ways that is beneficial for transit. The fact of the matter is, most of the key legislators we’ve been dealing with on addressing the transit funding crisis have been Democrats.”

BART officials and Contra Costa County politicians break ground on the eBART extension. Photos: Matthew Roth

For BART, the past month marks the beginning of two very different extensions, though both have been controversial. After surmounting vigorous opposition to the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC), BART inaugurated the 3.2 mile, $484 million extension last week with great fanfare and a large crowd of construction workers and politicians proud to get the project underway.

Today’s groundbreaking for the 10-mile, $462 million eBART extension was a much smaller affair, though the speakers emphasized job creation nearly as heavily as they did during the OAC event.

“BART is very fortunate this month, we’ve celebrated two groundbreakings, this and the Oakland Airport Connector,” said BART board director Joel Keller, a champion of the eBART project. “I think the important thing to remember here today is, we are building a transportation extension, but we’re also stimulating the economy. When eBART is in operation, there will be 40-80 permanent jobs and during the construction phase there will be 600 construction jobs.”

The eBART project will extend from the current Pittsburg Bay Point terminus along the Highway 4 median to a new Hillcrest Avenue Station in Antioch. The extension is expected to carry as many people as an additional lane of traffic on Highway 4.

The eBART extension is funded mostly through bridge tolls and a Contra Costa sales tax measure and will accompany the widening of Highway 4 to six and eight lanes along the corridor from the existing four lanes. As Caltrans widens the highway, it will build infrastructure for BART’s trains in the median.

“For those who sit in traffic every day in this corridor, it’s clear that we need major improvements to address the growth in East Contra Costa County,” said Bijan Sartipi,  Caltrans’ Region 4 Director. “It will take a multi-modal approach, also being mindful of the environment and smaller carbon footprint.”

eBART route map. Image: BART

Ridership estimates are 10,100 per day in the horizon year and 260,000 pounds of CO2 are expected to be removed daily due to reduced traffic.

The extension uses Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) technology, linking up to standard BART at the Pittsburg Bay Point Station. According to BART, extending traditional BART would cost upwards of $1 billion dollars, though the agency and local officials haven’t ruled out the conversion from DMU to the traditional system if funds are available in the future.

More than a few of the politicians at the groundbreaking pointed to the DMU technology and the controversy around not extending traditional BART into a county that has been paying BART sales tax for decades.

Antioch Mayor Jim Davis recounted an experience when he was in 2nd grade seeing the original conceptual drawings for BART to East Contra Costa. “We expected a long time ago that we would get the real BART, but it has morphed into something different,” said Davis. “A lot of disdain, a lot of discourse, a lot of strife has been discussed over the years about this project. A few years after this is completed, when the trains are moving back and forth, the freeway’s widened, when 10,000 people are taken off the freeway everyday and traffic is moving, we’re all going to stop and say, ‘what was all that fuss about.’”

“The communities of Eastern Contra Costa County have grown much larger since BART was envisioned,” said Salvatore Evola, Mayor of Pittsburg. “Planning for and funding of the eBART extension has at times tested most of our patience, however, all of our citizens placed an extremely high value on public transit and we welcome with open arms a much needed expansion of BART to the community.”

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s regional transportation planning body, is paying for approximately 60 percent of the project, with $263 million in bridge tolls and $20 million from other sources. The remainder of the funding will come from Contra Costa sales tax revenue and Caltrans. Construction is expected to start late this year or early next year during the Highway 4 widening and BART expects to have the trains in operation by 2015.

BART Director Thomas Blalock, seated, and Representative John Garamendi at the lectern.

MTC’s Executive Director Steve Heminger lamented his agency couldn’t do more to stimulate construction jobs, given unemployment among construction workers and low bids generally. “We are getting great bids on these projects right now. I wish we had more money to invest right now,” said Heminger

Heminger also pointed to the need to make infrastructure funding a priority at the state and federal levels. “We need that new governor to place a priority on transportation investment in our state as well,” said Heminger.

US Representative John Garamendi, whose congressional district spans portions of the Bay Area and is the only Northern California member of the House Transportation Committee, cast a shadow on the possibilities of getting significant federal money for public transit if the Republicans regain the House and especially if they regain the Senate as well.

“The politics at this time are not very favorable to the whole effort of building our infrastructure. If we fail to build the infrastructure, our economy will slow down as we move slower and slower with congestion,” Garamendi told Streetsblog, warning of what it will mean if Republicans have more control of Congress. “We will not be able to pass a surface transportation act that supports public transportation. They won’t go that direction, they’ve been opposed to it for years and years. We need to be really aware of what this election means in terms of infrastructure. Republicans are not willing to fund it.”

Garamendi has sponsored a slate of bills he calls “Make it in America,” which would close tax loopholes and other incentives for shipping manufacturing jobs oversees. With these bills in place, he hopes to see more American manufacturing in California and the Bay Area. Pointing to the Siemens plant in Sacramento and a new Alstom plant on Mare Island, he said rail can be made locally if the incentives are right.

“We need to make sure this equipment is made here in America so we circulate our tax money in America and a lot of it be made locally. The game changer is the law, the law that Democrats put in place that said it must be built in America,” he said.

The officials who supported the Oakland Airport Connector, in some cases for decades. Photos: Matthew Roth

After decades of political wrangling, BART is on the verge of building the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC), a $484 million, 3.2 mile automated people mover that will connect the Coliseum BART Station with the Oakland international Airport. BART held a ceremonial groundbreaking yesterday with most of the significant East Bay political establishment, two weeks before the agency gives the Parsons/Flatiron/Doppelmayr team the order to proceed with design and construction.

“There’ve been many pitfalls throughout this process,” said U.S. Representative Barbara Lee, a champion of the OAC and part of the California delegation that helped get further assurances in the eleventh hour from Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff that the project was still going to get nearly $25 million in federal New Starts funding. “I just want you to know that countless Bay Area residents, all of you have come together to make sure this day happened.”

Lee led off a round of speeches that went for more than one hour, as each speaker thanked the others on the dais and congratulated everyone for their perseverance. A throng of workers representing the trade unions that hope to work on the project circled the large tent BART erected for the event, roaring with applause every time a speaker mentioned jobs and the project labor agreement with local hiring and zip-code priority guarantees.

The exact number of jobs the project will create has long been a controversy, one that project opponents highlighted to cast aspersions on BART. Even at the groundbreaking, the number was in flux, from several speakers that referenced the 2,500-5,000 direct and indirect jobs over the course of the four years of construction (numbers derived from state and federal jobs creation metrics), to the “several hundred direct jobs” referred to by Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums.

With the recession and unemployment weighing on everyone’s mind, Dellums argued the OAC was exactly the kind of project the public should be funding. “One can debate where and how one uses public money,” but one can’t debate that that public sector spending can have “an enormous impact on the economy,” he said.

A large crowd attended the ceremony, including many from the building trades hoping to build the project.

Dellums had made several entreaties on behalf of BART to the FTA and the California delegation when it seemed the OAC might not get the funding to proceed. “This project today is a shining and magnificent example that the expenditure of public [money] can generate employment, can generate opportunity, can generate business and can strike a mighty blow at the greening of our cities and the greening of our region,” he said. “I’m very proud to have played one minor role in making sure that this moment came forward.”

The OAC has been one of the most contentious BART extensions in the transit agency’s history. Particularly in the past two years, advocates and community groups have used the OAC backdrop as they challenged its funding strategy and the overall civil rights policies of the agency, challenges that led the FTA to declare BART deficient in several areas. Those deficiencies have since been addressed to the FTA’s satisfaction, though the resolution of the federal investigation into the agency has not been formally closed.

At the groundbreaking, project proponents were notably relieved, and somewhat bombastic, given that the long debate over the connector appears to be over. BART Board President James Fang milled about before the event started, talking with politicians and reporters. At one point, he mused, “Where’s TransForm now?”

Fang was referring to the most visible opponent of the OAC, a transit non-profit that challenged BART’s decision to build the people mover and tried unsuccessfully to get the BART Board to consider a bus rapid transit option or other, cheaper alternative. Standing on a curb, Fang exclaimed, “Bring it on!”

Asked to elaborate on the boast, Fang said simply that he wished TransForm were present to “see how happy people are for this project.”

BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger expressed relief that the OAC was nearly underway and defended the project against its detractors. “This was a real partnership effort, a coming together of community, of leaders, and the result is a project that will be an investment for generations to come, that will improve the quality of life, improve mobility and help our region continue to grow,” she said.

Dugger said the only thing the delay in the project over civil rights and funding had accomplished was to increase construction costs. “I think one of the sad realities is that these kinds of major infrastructure projects take a long time to get to the starting block. It’s a truth that goes along with any large project: delay is generally not helpful. Delay only adds cost to the taxpayer.”

BART had two cakes baked in celebration of the event.

Dugger was asked by the Contra Costa Times why the event was happening two weeks before the November elections, when the actual groundbreaking and construction of the project won’t begin until early next year. James Fang and Carole Ward Allen, the only two BART Board members present at the event, are both facing challengers in their re-election bids in November. “Typically we have a groundbreaking when we start a project and we are starting this project,” said Dugger, denying it was related to politics.

“I think this has been such a long process to get to go, such energy and involvement by so many people throughout the community that we didn’t want to delay a moment in celebrating the accomplishment,” added Dugger.

On November 1st, BART will give the Parsons/Flatiron/Doppelmayr team the notice to proceed, at which point they will have 30 days to deliver their plans for moving forward with construction, according to OAC project manager Tom Dunscombe. Utility relocation will begin shortly thereafter, with construction set to begin in early 2011.

Though BART has yet to secure the full funding for the project, it has enough cash on hand to proceed and Dugger expected to put together the remainder of the financing over the course of the next year or 18 months. BART has applied for a TIFIA loan in excess of $100 million, though it will proceed even if that loan is not awarded. Very few other loan funds have the rates TIFIA does, but Dugger said she was optimistic. She also indicated BART could look to apply for grants or loans from the proposed national infrastructure bank President Barack Obama discussed in a speech delivered over Labor Day.

“We’ll look for the most cost effective, most affordable, most flexible loan we can find,” she said.

Construction hard hats with the names of elected officials were placed on the ceremonial shovels.

Flickr photo: AgentAkit

As Bay Area transit agencies transition from paper passes to the Clipper smart card, operators like the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs Muni, are hoping their most loyal customers take the switch in stride. To this end, the SFMTA started selling its November Muni A Fast Passes and disability Regional Transit Connection (RTC) passes online this weekend, and the agency is working overtime with targeted outreach to familiarize the nearly 50,000 A Pass and RTC users how to load their re-usable Clipper cards before the November 1st deadline, when those paper passes will no longer be accepted for Muni service.

“We have more than 40,000 customers who use the “A” pass and more than 7,000 who use the RTC stickers, so it’s critical that they make this transition as early as possible,” SFMTA Executive Director Nat Ford said in a release.

Even before the mandatory switch for A Pass and RTC holders, Muni customers have increasingly adopted Clipper on their own accord. When MTC officially announced the transition from Translink to Clipper on June 16th, Muni realized only 20,000 average weekday boardings using the smart card. As of October 8th, Muni had 108,000 average weekday boardings, a five-fold increase and half of total Bay Area Clipper usage. Of the slightly more than 40,000 current A Pass users, roughly one third already use Clipper. RTC pass holders will automatically be given Clipper-compatible cards when they renew, either online or in person at vendors or SFMTA customer service centers.

The SFMTA began deploying customer service ambassadors in August along with the Clipper street teams that have been providing information and customer service since the end of 2008 in Muni Metro stations. According to the SFMTA, since December 2008, the Muni Clipper street teams have distributed more than 70,000 adult cards and accepted more than 20,000 seniors and youth applications [sample Clipper outreach schedule pdf here for this week]. The SFMTA also noted it has undertaken an aggressive internal campaign to inform SFMTA employees, especially frontline Muni personnel, of the Clipper transition and how to assist customers. This campaign includes an orientation and multiple update videos as well as in-person training, of note after Muni operators on cable cars had reportedly been unable to work hand-held Clipper card readers.

Clipper use across the Bay Area is on a steady rise, but because Muni carries so many passengers, the transition from older fare media to the reusable card will be the bellwether for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), which administers Clipper. MTC had come under fire for its early outreach in Chinese and concerns about staffing the Clipper customer service center with Cantonese speakers, but MTC spokesperson John Goodwin said they were working to resolve the concerns.

Goodwin pointed to the selection of the Chinese name for Clipper “Lu Lu Tong,” which essentially connotes “the go everywhere card” in translation, as an indication of MTC’s progress. Goodwin explained the name selection process, which involved a focus group of nearly 100 people across the Bay Area and in China, where they narrowed down approximately two dozen names to three finalists. BART Board President James Fang made the final decision, according to Goodwin, given his central role spearheading the translation process.

Overall, Goodwin said the MTC was pleased with the Clipper transition, noting across all agencies they are seeing an average increase of 10 percent each week. Acknowledging there have been “growing pains,” Goodwin called Clipper “a great success.”

Asked if he’s concerned with the looming deadlines at Muni and AC Transit for complete transition from paper passes (AC Transit Adult 10 ride and 31 day passes will no longer be sold in their old format after October 31 and no longer accepted after December 31st), Goodwin said, “I can’t characterize my feelings as being worried about it, but I recognize at the same time that a lot of people are resistant to change and accept it grudgingly,” he said.

Ultimately, Goodwin added, “they’ll be glad they did.”

Bay Area Clipper Card Stats

Average weekday Clipper boardings through October 8th:

• 215,124 – Total
• 2,124 – Caltrain
• 4,400 – Golden Gate Ferries
• 8,150 – Golden Gate Buses
• 32,550 – AC Transit
• 59,900 – BART
• 108,000 – Muni

Monthly “A” Fast Pass customers can get their Clipper cards from any Clipper retailer, by visiting clippercard.com or by calling 877.878.8883. Please tell us about you experience with Clipper in the comments.

A partial train wrap, known as a "Kong," could bring in additional revenue for BART. Image BART.

Unlike every other transit agency in the Bay Area, BART was able to stanch the economic bleeding over the past year and realize a modest operational surplus at the end of FY 2010 in June. The agency doesn’t have a warm and fuzzy feeling, however, and Board President James Fang has asked staff to present additional revenue generating measures at tomorrow’s board meeting.

Though Fang said BART’s fiscal stewardship over the past two years set an “example of how to run a transit system in a recession,” the agency had to anticipate the next economic turmoil with greater diversity of revenue sources. “We can’t rest on our laurels. Any way you can get more revenue into the system, that means you don’t have to lay off people,” he said.

Over the past month, BART staff looked into numerous best practices from transit operators around the world and narrowed the more realistic options to five [pdf]. Two of them would involve setting up video monitors in stations and train cars, though both have differing benefits and challenges. According to BART spokesperson Linton Johnson, Titan’s current contract for advertising in stations gives them the right to bid first on station monitors, which they are expected to exercise with a proposal.

Johnson was clear to highlight the monitors in station and cars, if they were voted on by the board, would be video only and primarily provide BART arrival and delay information, as well as some news, weather and advertising.The staff report notes the station monitor option has generated little interest beyond the Titan proposal, so should it not meet BART’s revenue needs, the option might not proceed due to lack of interest. Until the proposal from Titan comes through, BART had no estimate on how much revenue the station monitors could generate.

An example of a station monitor. Image: Titan

The challenge of installing monitors on train cars is two-fold, according to Johnson. First, the rail cars were not designed to accommodate monitors or the real-time networks that would be needed to provide relevant information. BART would have to consider how much it wants to spend outfitting the older cars with the monitors versus the revenue it would produce. Second, because the agency is in the beginning phase of car replacement, Johnson said it might be more cost-effective simply to design the monitors into the new cars. Regardless, he said, the agency wanted to get as much information to riders as possible in the near-term, given rider feedback on the issue.

“Riders have been crying out for information on the train that gives them the ability to know when they’ll arrive at the next station,” said Johnson, who joked that BART customers would appreciate having real-time traffic information on the trains so “you can laugh at people on the road as you’re passing them by.”

Image: BART.

The third option would involve partial or complete train advertising wraps. BART has experimented with wraps in the past, but Johnson said they were for Spare the Air Day and other non-revenue generating campaigns. Whether or not customers would stomach wraps for commercial advertisers and whether they would be on the entire fleet of cars or only portions of them are questions that will be discussed at the meeting.

The two options BART expects to generate the most controversy are billboards along BART right-of-way and station co-naming rights. BART’s tracks are proximate to freeways throughout the system, primarily in the East Bay and to the east of the Oakland and Berkeley hills, where the agency theoretically could install billboards. While there are several layers of regulatory hurdles to surmount, BART has already received an unsolicited proposal for electronic billboards. The proposal would be for 12 two-sided digital signs, with the contractor keeping 20 percent of ad revenues and BART earning $3.6 million annual revenue and an up-front payment of $15.6 million.

Station co-naming rights not only contradict the current BART policy on station naming, but would likely lead to various concerns, including public backlash and the ever changing corporate names (think Candlestick Park). Johnson said the current policy is to name stations with geographical indicators to help with wayfinding, particularly for tourists and visitors to the Bay Area. When asked how well he thought the “Al Davis Oakland Coliseum Station” would go over with BART riders, Johnson laughed but declined comment.

A photo sim of a video billboard. Image: BART

Considering the potential concerns BART riders might have with the various proposals, Fang said he wanted to strike a balance between having revenue to continue improving BART service and maintenance versus invasive advertising and controversy.

“Some people may have questions on the aesthetics and I’m very sensitive about that,” he said. “I asked staff for ideas, the first crack at those ideas are in the presentation.”

Photo: Matthew Roth

At a recent BART board meeting where directors discussed various options for spending or saving an operating budget surplus, Director Tom Radulovich suggested the board consider the ramifications of instituting an unlimited ride monthly pass, which had been previously discussed but never seriously pursued. The issue came up most recently in 2005 and 2006 when BART’s board of directors requested the agency look into the costs and benefits of monthly passes. The staff report [pdf, detailed pdf] recommended not moving to a monthly pass and the board declined to act.

Radulovich wasn’t satisfied with the findings then and he currently laments what he characterized as staff’s intractability on the issue.

“There’s a conservatism in the BART finance group, they’re just very attached to the current fare structure,” said Radulovich, who noted similar conclusions were drawn when considering a Daly City Fast Pass option. Radulovich pointed to the Muni/BART Fast Pass arrangement that has been in place since 1983 as evidence that monthly passes shouldn’t be discounted outright within BART’s fare policy.

BART spokesperson Linton Johnson said BART is reluctant to significantly alter its fare structure because it is working well right now. He said the current fares are a large reason why BART realizes 55 percent farebox recovery (e.g. how much of the cost of a trip is paid for by the fare), nearly double the next best Bay Area agency (Caltrain). He also noted the agency had a multi-million dollar budget surplus in a year when most transit operators cut service and laid off workers, in no small part because it charges a distance-based fare.

“We’re hesitant because we’re so reliant on sales tax and ridership,” said Johnson. According to Johnson, 90 percent of all revenue comes from the farebox and the district sales tax assessed in BART counties. “We’re hesitant to tinker with things that are working right now.”

Johnson pointed to the findings of the 2005 presentation, where BART staff determined offering a monthly pass would only bump ridership by 1 percent, while costing the agency a $2.7 to $5.9 million one-time investment to convert the existing BART fare revenue cards to monthly passes and $5.4 million annually in lost revenue. At the time of the study, 120,000 regular riders accounted for 65 percent of BART’s farebox revenue, while 1.4 million annual leisure or non-frequent riders accounted for the remainder. In conclusion, staff suggested when BART converted over to Clipper, the agency could realize gains and offer rewards to regular riders in numerous ways without converting completely to a monthly pass.

Regular riders account for the vast majority of fare revenue on BART. This chart represents conditions in 2005, courtesy BART.

Radulovich said now that BART is ramping up Clipper usage, the one-time BART ticket transition expense is moot and the issue should be revisited. He also claimed that if staff studied a monthly pass option with a consideration of how many part-time or occasional riders would become regular riders, the cost-benefit equation would change.

“There was very little or no assumption made for elasticity, that we’d get new riders as a result of having a monthly pass,” he argued. “If you put a monthly pass in people’s hands and they change their travel patterns to ride more, then you’ve vastly increased your ridership by offering a little discount on every trip they take.”

Radulovich noted with some frustration that BART has a monthly pass to park at BART-run facilities and he asked why, if such a policy worked for parking, it wouldn’t work for the actual transit trip.

“Their logic on the parking spaces is hey, if you buy a monthly pass for parking, you’ll ride BART more often. Why that thinking doesn’t apply to the ride on the train itself is a puzzlement to me,” he said.

Johnson said a trial would be difficult because it would have to be systemwide and there was no guarantee that ridership would spike. Once it was in place, if it became popular with riders, going back to the distance-based individual ticket format would be difficult.

“Your hope is it’s wildly successful and it makes you more money or you break even,” said Johnson. “If it doesn’t work and you try to take it back, there’s hell to pay.”

Though Radulovich brought the issue up at the August board meeting, if he wants staff to do another study, according to Johnson, he will need to get the issue agendized,. The easiest route is through Board President James Fang, who can simply put the issue on the agenda and ask staff to study it. Another option is to get three board members to agree to put the issue on the agenda.

Fang told Streetsblog he was always interested in options to give back to regular riders. “It’s something we can take a look at. I think it’s worth taking a look at,” he said, but noted he “would like to do more study of it before I put it on the agenda.”

For his part, Radulovich said he would “just keep pounding on it. You just have to ask ten times and you’ll get a discussion on it.”

Bert Hill, challenger for BART District 8. Photo: Michael Mustachi

In BART District 8, comprising northern, western and southern sections of San Francisco, Board President James Fang faces his most significant challenge from Bert Hill, a former Bechtel administrator who currently runs his own company, Bicycle Commuter Services, and chairs the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Bicycle Advisory Committee. Fang was first elected in 1990 and is now serving his third term as president.

Hill said Fang and BART had put too much focus on extensions to the farther flung communities in the Bay Area, draining operational capacity on the core system.

“We need to grow up, not out. The bedroom communities are no longer supportable. We really need to focus on the growth that is occurring in the inner Bay Area. We need to be beefing up the inner BART, not the outer BART at this point,” said Hill.

He said BART’s primary focus from a real estate development capacity needs to shift from parking garages to transit villages, that he would push to expedite the plans currently being studied for numerous development opportunities.

According to Hill, his other priorities would include advocating for better bicycle facilities on BART trains, such as the possibility of a bike car, and BART bike sharing to reduce the need to drive to stations. He said he would work closer with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, to improve transfers and connectivity to the western neighborhoods in San Francisco

Fang defended his record at BART as his greatest asset and said the biggest issue of the campaign is job creation, which he argued BART does with extensions, managing finances to preserve operational positions, and delivering Bay Area transit riders to their destinations with superior on-time performance.

“The number one issue that every public official should be doing is jobs. How are you helping people create jobs?” said Fang. “The bottom line is are people working?”

Fang said under his management and with his participation, BART has leveraged over $1 billion in grants and loans for extensions, such as Warm Springs and San Francisco Airport. He also pointed to the labor negotiations that averted a strike last year and the current budgetary surplus, which he said “shows good management of money in an atmosphere where public agencies are losing money.”

“We’ve made the tough decisions, they’ve not been popular,” he added.

Hill’s campaign is primarily self-funded with a $25,000 personal loan from his retirement fund and $1500 to date in donations. His target budget is $50,000. He has three staff working for him and a solid web presence, though he admitted he’s not getting as many donations online as he’d hoped.

As a consistent supporter of the San Francisco Democratic Party, he is taking advantage of his connections to get support from the political circuit. Among his endorsements, he has the Democratic County Central Committee, the Green Party, Sierra Club, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, District 7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, District 9 Supervisor David Campos, numerous democratic clubs, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1555, which represents BART operators and station agents, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3993, which represents BART’s administrative staff. BART’s third union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021, has yet to endorse.

A Possible Referendum on the Oakland Airport Connector

In BART District 4, representing parts of downtown Oakland and Alameda, former East Bay Bicycle Coalition director Robert Raburn is mounting a significant challenge to incumbent Carole Ward Allen, who was first elected to the BART Board in 1998 and has served as its president.

Ward Allen has been a central figure in several high-profile BART dramas, including the aftermath of the Oscar Grant shooting at the hands of BART officer Johannes Mehserle and the long battle over funding the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC), a nearly $500 million elevated tram between the airport and BART’s Coliseum Station.

Ward Allen played a significant role in pushing the state to grant BART the authority to set up an eleven-member civilian oversight panel. Though much of the BART board supported AB 1586, there was considerable controversy over how much power the oversight panel would have in police discipline, including a condemnation by Assmemblymember Tom Ammiano for not going far enough in giving the public accountability for BART police actions.

Ward Allen defended the work she’s done on civilian review of the BART police, her role in selecting the new Police Chief Kenton Rainey and civil rights compliance.

“I’ve been tried, I’ve been tested. I’ve worked very hard to get those things done,” she said. In addition to those issues, she pointed to the OAC as a project that would create employment opportunities for minority- and women-owned businesses.

Robert Raburn, challenger for BART District 4

“Jobs, jobs, jobs, that is really the big cry from my community,” she said.

Asked whether incumbency would help her, Ward Allen said, “I don’t ever take anything for granted. You can be the incumbent, but that can have its pluses and minuses.”

Though Raburn noted the police oversight controversy and said it would likely play into the public’s opinion of Ward Allen’s work, he focused most of his criticism on her championing of the OAC. Raburn keyed in on BART’s initial failure to analyze federal civil rights impacts of the tram and said the agency still doesn’t understand it’s need to be inclusive of public sentiment.

“The BART board is out of step with the community they were elected to serve and with the federal government,” said Raburn. “You can’t continue to go into debt to build gold plated extensions.”

Raburn noted that in spite of its extensions, overall system ridership has decreased. “Spending on mega projects has not resulted in increased ridership,” he said. “BART projections for their extensions have always fallen far short of their expectations.”

Raburn said his campaign had currently raised $45,000 and had a target of raising $120,000. He has picked up endorsements from the Sierra Club, the California Bicycle Coalition, ATU Local 1555, AFSCME Local 3993 and the City of Alameda Democratic Club, among others. SEIU Local 1021 has endorsed Ward Allen, as have Oakland City Councilmember Larry Reid and Assemblymember Sandre Swanson, among others.

In addition to opposing some BART extensions, Raburn said improving core system operations, maintenance, cleanliness, and connectivity to BART stations would be primary considerations if he were elected. Long an advocate for bicycle access to BART while at EBBC, Raburn also helped develop the framework for Safe Routes to Transit, now a nationally recognized approach to development and transportation to build near transit and provide safe, multi-modal connectivity to nearby communities. Calling Fruitvale a good start, Raburn said he envisioned far more dynamic and integrated communities around BART’s stations.

The Lake Merritt station, said Raburn, was a perfect example of the agency’s failure to maximize the potential of its facilities. At EBBC, Raburn worked with a coalition of groups to promote Oakland’s Lake Merritt master plan, where the city removed “the World’s Shortest Freeway” on 12th Street at the southern end of Lake Merritt, replacing it with paths to connect the residents around Lake Merritt with the Lake Merritt BART station.

“I want to carry that momentum right to the fare gates,” he said, noting the under-developed property around the Oakland Museum, Laney Community College (where Ward Allen is an adjunct professor), and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission offices. “I can envision buying more than a hot dog and a doughnut around that station within the next five years.

The final piece of what Raburn called “BART 2.0″ was support for re-purposing the NUMMI plant in Fremont to build train cars for high-speed rail and BART. Raburn said Representative John Garamendi’s trio of Make it in America bills could help boost domestic rail production and the NUMMI factory would be the ideal regional facility for building the next generation of BART rail cars, among other applications.

Raburn said the new Warm Springs station will be near the NUMMI facility and current Fremont trains have significant capacity in the morning peak. “We can have workers taking BART to build BART,” he said.

Changing the Culture on the BART Board?

Predicting elections on a down-ballot race will not be easy, said current BART Vice President and District 3 Director Bob Franklin, who thinks success in the race will depend on voters’ experience riding BART more than the nuances of expansion projects.

Franklin would know about insurgent campaigns, given his successful bid to unseat Roy Nakadegawa in 2004.

Nakadegawa was a well-respected board director who didn’t take the challenge seriously until late in the campaign, according to BART spokesperson Linton Johnson, who described him as a “smart guy, a wonderful guy.”

“He really reshaped BART, the MTC and regional planning,” added Johnson, saying Nakadegawa and current District 9 Director Tom Radulovich had been significant players in challenging older paradigms in the agency.

“He didn’t campaign because he didn’t think he needed to,” said Johnson.

Franklin said because the BART elections are rarely understood well by voters, his strategy was to be at as many public events as possible, from sporting events to farmers markets to the mundane hours spent at busy intersections. “I don’t think people know all the issues,” said Franklin. “Only seven percent of people in the Bay Area ride BART.”

According to Franklin, he spent $80,000 of his own money and $125,000 in total, but it was his ubiquity in the public eye that won the race. He said he received scores of emails and letters after the campaign from voters who said they had no idea who he was, but they saw him everywhere and figured if he was that tenacious in the campaign, he would make a dedicated board director.

He also said incumbency in a race like this wasn’t as significant as in other races, though he noted the challenge by Hill and Raburn had motivated Fang and Ward Allen to get out ahead of the election and mount serious efforts to stave off the challengers.

Johnson listed several other races where long-standing board members had underestimated their challengers, but wouldn’t wager on the vulnerabilities of the current incumbents.

“I certainly hope that whoever wins the seat is going to be the best for the agency and our customers,” said Johnson.

Director Radulovich, who has often been the solitary dissenting vote on BART extensions and a constant gadfly warning of debt spending and core capacity degradation, said he welcomed the challenges by Hill and Raburn.

“I think having some of the incumbents lose this time would change the culture of BART,” he said, noting a change in direction now would send an even more serious message to the five incumbents, himself included, in 2012.

When asked whether victories by Hill and Raburn would change the votes on extensions or whether it would merely be six-to- three, Radulovich believed it would be significant.

“I think it changes the board hugely. I think there are other directors who will start tipping toward the issues. They log roll each other, reinforce each other’s worst aspects, which is this kind of boondoggling in their various districts,” he said.

“It would finally tip it toward a BART that’s concerned about maintaining what we have, rather than these sort of adventures in the suburbs.”

BART needed to send strong signals to the contracting team of Parsons/Flatiron that the agency intended to move forward with the construction bid, which is set to expire on September 21st, one year after it was initially awarded. BART has been scrambling to fill a funding gap created when the Federal Transit Administration denied the agency $70 million in federal stimulus funds because it hadn’t done a proper civil rights review.

In a previous motion from the July BART board meeting, Vice President Bob Franklin placed a provision on the contract that required staff to return for permission to proceed if various funding streams didn’t come through as expected, including $25 million in federal New Starts money, a $20 million state funding swap from two highway projects and $39 million from the Port of Oakland, which is seeking permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to increase the Oakland Airport passenger surcharge.

At today’s meeting, the board voted 7-1 to amend the previous motion and give Dugger permission to proceed with the contract regardless of when the $25 million New Starts money or the $20 million state swap come through, thereby assuring the contractors won’t walk away from their bid.

Franklin and other board members who were concerned that the FTA hadn’t indicated its position on the New Starts money felt vindicated after BART received a letter from FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff yesterday confirming FTA would grant the money when BART fully remedied its civil rights deficiencies.

“With that hail mary caught by Administrator Rogoff, my funding concerns were resolved,” said Franklin.

Board President James Fang confirmed that several elected officials had been lobbying US DOT Secretary Ray LaHood on BART’s behalf, noting with pride that Senator Diane Feinstein and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had been instrumental in moving the OAC forward.

“When no one really would help us, they stepped up to keep this project alive,” said Fang, who added, “Let the dirt fly!”

Director Tom Radulovich, the lone dissenting vote on the board, initially declined to comment and seemed resigned to watch a project he had repeatedly voted against move forward. In the general public comment period of the meeting, however, he reconsidered and criticized the board for approving a project that could add more than $100 million to BART’s debt load.

“A huge component of this is debt funding and that directly competes with BART’s other capital funding needs,” said Radulovich, who noted the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the regional planning body, had identified over $7 billion in unfunded capital needs. “It is distressing to see all of these funds being diverted from those needs.”

Project opponents, rather than belabor the same critiques of the project they had leveled over the previous year and half, struck a somewhat conciliatory tone and asked the board to work with them as diligently as they had with the OAC on core capacity funding, improving maintenance of facilities and retaining BART jobs.

“As we’re seeing continued cuts in the other areas, I hope we can work in areas we agree on,” said Bob Allen of Urban Habitat, one of the non-profits that brought the original civil rights complaint to the FTA.

“There have been a lot of promises on jobs, we will hold everyone accountable,” he added, referring to BART’s estimates the OAC will provide 2,500 to 5,000 direct, indirect and induced jobs. Urban Habitat has repeatedly pointed to the 689 direct jobs over four years of construction BART estimated it will create and said the other numbers are inflated. BART has defended its numbers, saying they are based on well-established national transit construction estimates.

Countering criticism that Urban Habitat only advocates for bus riders on Muni and AC Transit, Allen said he supports other BART capital projects, particularly those that improve core capacity. Allen vowed Urban Habitat will continue to “fight just as hard for BART [as Muni and AC Transit] and we will continue to do so.”

BART staff had been scrambling to replace the $70 million denied to the agency for failure to adequately analyze the federal Title VI civil rights impacts of the OAC. Without the $25 million, BART would have had to proceed by borrowing more and increasing its already significant debt load on the airport connector.

In the letter [pdf], Rogoff reaffirmed to BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger that the FTA had set aside $24.9 million and would “process a grant after determining that BART has adequately addressed all of the Title VI deficiencies for the OAC Project. The grant will include conditions that allow BART to draw down the funds upon BART’s demonstration of completion of the Title VI Corrective Action Plan that was approved by the FTA on April 16, 2010.”

BART called a special meeting of its Board of Directors for today to address the looming contractual deadline with the Parsons/Flatiron team, who won’t delay the bid beyond September 21st, two days before the next regularly scheduled board meeting.

Board action is required before proceeding because Vice President Bob Franklin in July added conditions to a motion to proceed that required any change in funding to come back before the board of directors. Specifically, Franklin was concerned about the $25 million in New Starts money, $39 million from an airport passenger surcharge to be levied by the Port of Oakland, which runs the Oakland International Airport, and a $20 million state funding swap still to be authorized by the California Transportation Commission. The CTC has agendized the swap and plans to vote on the matter at its September 22nd meeting, the day after the Parsons/Flatiron deadline.

Franklin told Streetsblog, given the lopsided votes in favor of the project in the past, he believed the directors would vote to move forward with the project despite the funding gaps today. He said he would act to put in as many safeguards as possible and noted that if directors voted to proceed and the contractors started hiring, it will be that much more expensive to terminate the contract in the future should BART not secure federal loans or should the Port money not come through.

“I will see what I can do. I obviously don’t want to put the public money at risk. I will see if we can somehow add more protections,” he said.

Funding scenarios with federal loans, from the BART board presentation for today's meeting.

Rumors had been circulating late Wednesday among project supporters and opponents that members of California’s congressional delegation, notably Senator Dianne Feinstein, had urged US DOT Secretary Ray LaHood to encourage the FTA to show support for the project to keep it moving forward along the established timeline.

BART spokesperson Linton Johnson responded to the rumors by saying, “the highest levels of government have been involved making sure there are jobs being created for the high unemployment rate in Oakland. That’s one of the certain initial benefits of the project.”

When asked whether Senator Feinstein had pressured LaHood, Johnson only acknowledged that both senators and representatives had been in contact with the US DOT expressing their support for the project.

At the meeting today, directors will be asked to support a motion [pdf] granting Dugger the authority to move forward “immediately in anticipation of pending commitment of $25 million in Federal New Starts funds by the Federal Transit Administration and favorable action by the California Transportation Commission for $20 million in State Funding.”

Project opponents argued the action to proceed with the OAC contradicted the spirit of President Barak Obama’s pledge on Labor Day to reform “the haphazard and patchwork way we fund and maintain our infrastructure to focus less on wasteful earmarks and outdated formulas, and more on competition and innovation that gives us the best bang for the buck.”

“This project is just an absolute dog,” said John Knox White of the transit advocacy non-profit TransForm, an opponent of the OAC.  “Here we are a week and a half out [from Obama's speech] with a wasteful earmark on one of the least smart projects probably in the nation.”

TransForm and other OAC opponents have advocated for a more affordable bus rapid transit project to connect the airport with BART. Knox White argued that BART and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the region’s transportation planning body, were doing everything they could to move a long-standing project off a to-do list despite the increased cost and reduced ridership projections versus the OAC project approved by voters nearly a decade ago.

“I really just don’t understand how that is responsible regional transportation planning,” he said.