Streetsblog San Francisco

The long-sought addition of bicycle and pedestrian access across the length of the San Francisco Bay Bridge is one step closer to fruition. Last night, engineers presented the first design proposals for a pathway for bicyclists, pedestrians and maintenance crews to the west span, but they say the funding and technical challenges that lie ahead mean the project is still in its infancy.

Images: MTC

For more than 15 years, bicycle advocates in San Francisco and the East Bay have pushed for a west span path to connect bike commuters to the east span path expected to open between Oakland to Yerba Buena Island by 2014.

“We’re very encouraged that Caltrans and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) have come up with a design that works for the west span and the touchdown on either end,” said Dave Campbell, the program director for the East Bay Bicycle Coalition.

“This new study not only affirms the feasibility and benefits of the pathway, it also puts this important project in line for funding,” said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum. “Now, the city and the region are showing their commitment to connect not only the East Bay and San Francisco, but also San Francisco’s own neighborhoods, which is critical as Treasure Island is developed. This is an exciting step for a much-needed bridge between communities.”

The project would still take up to ten years to plan and construct once the estimated $500 to $550 million in funding is secured, said John Goodwin, spokesperson for the MTC, which manages regional transportation funding. Last night’s presentation of the project study report, funded by toll revenue, was just one step in developing the project initiation document, expected to be completed next summer, which will allow agencies to begin the funding search. After that, roughly five years of planning and five years of construction lie ahead.

The study report “shows that the project is possible, but not that it’s affordable,” said Goodwin.

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Supervisor Scott Wiener. Photo: Dennis Hearne Photography

For the last 16 years, Jon Rubin has served as the Mayor’s appointee on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s regional transportation planning and funding body, originally appointed by Frank Jordan in 1995. Last week, Rubin was forced to resign and turn over the seat to Supervisor Scott Wiener, whose four-year term begins May 1.

While it’s true the Mayor was looking to strike a compromise because the Board of Supervisors was deadlocked over its appointment between Wiener and Supervisor David Campos, as reported by the Chronicle, sources told Streetsblog that a behind-the-scenes effort has been underway for some time to get Rubin replaced. Some advocates and City Hall insiders who didn’t want to be identified said they were disappointed with Rubin’s record on the commission, and felt he hasn’t been aggressive enough on San Francisco’s behalf.

Rubin, the president and CEO of the Peninsula Coalition, did not respond to requests from Streetsblog for an interview.

In a letter [pdf] to the MTC dated April 13, Mayor Ed Lee said he was appointing Wiener for “his special familiarity with the problems and issues in the field of transportation.” Wiener currently sits on the plans and programs committee of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority Board, and is a regular Muni rider. As we’ve written, he holds great promise on sustainable transportation issues, and hired transit advocate Gillian Gillett as one of his staffers.

Wiener told Streetsblog that he wants to make sure San Francisco “is getting the funding and priority we deserve for transit projects that don’t just benefit the city, but the entire region, whether it’s Transbay, or Caltrain, which we depend on.”

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Image: OneBayArea

Local governments in the Bay Area have begun a coordinated regional effort to shift toward more sustainable urban planning mandated by the state’s landmark anti-sprawl bill, SB 375, which set ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and called for better integration of land use and transportation planning.

Last week, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) released its Initial Vision Scenario, which lays out preliminary strategies to accommodate population growth in the region over the next 25 years while achieving a 15 percent GHG reduction.

“The Initial Vision Scenario is a tool to advance dialogue among the Bay Area’s regional agencies,” said Ezra Rapport, executive director of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). “Through this collaborative planning effort to strengthen the character and qualities of our neighborhoods and communities, we can tackle the region’s population growth with a mix of housing, while preserving open spaces, protecting our economy, and getting residents where they need to go.”

The overview marks the first stepping stone in developing a Sustainable Communities Strategy, also known as Plan Bay Area, aimed at mitigating the impacts of a potential regional increase of 2 million residents. By directing new housing and job development into walkable, transit-accessible areas, the Initial Vision Scenario projects 97 percent of development could be absorbed within the current urban footprint but would still fall 3 percent short of the mandated 15 percent target.

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Flickr photo: Lucius Kwok

Communities from San Francisco to San Jose may be saved from much of the expected crippling Caltrain service cuts. A new Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) plan being developed could make up much of the agency’s budget deficit for the next two years, said MTC Public Information Officer John Goodwin.

A large chunk of the coming fiscal year’s $30 million budget deficit could be balanced using short-term funding sources like fare and parking fee increases, employee contributions, diverted capital funds, and collected money owed by other transit agencies, MTC Executive Director Steve Heminger told members at Wednesday’s Planning and Allocations Committee meeting. That could allow Caltrain to lessen the impacts of its expected budget cuts which would slash all but rush-hour train service and shut down up to seven stations.

“It’s late in the game, but the game isn’t over,” said Goodwin. Riders will still likely see “a reduction of service of some sort, but much less draconian than the proposal that has been the subject of public hearings in recent weeks,” he said. Approval of heavy cuts by the Caltrain Board next month seemed imminent without an alternative plan, but just what service would be retained by the new proposals is yet to be determined.

New hope for staving off the funding crisis means the Caltrain Board of Directors may postpone their vote until May. Goodwin said service reductions would still help make up about $10 million in the plan along with fare and parking fee increases as well as efficiency savings from an expiring contract with Amtrak. Capital funds reserved for system projects, including those for electrification and $5.5 million for the Dumbarton Rail project, are also being eyed for operational savings.

A fix for this fiscal year would allow time for the MTC, SFMTA, Valley Transit Authority (VTA), and SamTrans to broker a two-year plan to pursue long-term funding sources to fix the agency’s structurally unstable budget. Payments made to SamTrans on loans to the VTA and SFMTA, amounting to $8.9 million according to the Examiner, could be a part of that.

The agencies would also have time to pursue more permanent measures urged by riders, city officials, and other Bay Area organizations such as a regional gas tax, which could be seen on the November 2012 ballot.

Colin Miller of Urban Habitat holds up gravestones in memory of bus lines that have been cut. Photo: Reginald James

Editor’s note: This story is being re-published from Race, Poverty and the Environment, a magazine produced by the social and environmental justice non-profit, Urban Habitat.

Fifty-five years to the month after the start of the Montgomery bus boycott, people of color can sit wherever they want on the bus—when and if one arrives. Bus operators all over the country are slashing routes in response to deepening deficits. This loss of service denies people who depend on transit their civil rights in deep, daily, grinding, unmistakable ways.

Bus riders in Oakland and throughout western Alameda and Contra Costa Counties have lost nearly 15 percent of their AC Transit routes in 2010. Deeper cuts were forestalled by the drivers’ union, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 192, which refused to agree to a new contract unless the agency postponed further service reductions for at least three months. Now it looks like those cuts will be back on the table in January, and riders and drivers plan to protest at tomorrow’s AC Transit meeting.

“We are the heart throb of this city,” AC Transit driver Lorenzo Jacobs said, speaking at a May 2010 public hearing against the cuts. “When you start cutting service, you’re cutting opportunities out there for people who are doing whatever they’re doing in their lives. When you cut lines, you’re affecting people’s lives, their everyday lives,” he said.

The service cuts directly impact Oakland youth, who need AC Transit to get to school because the district doesn’t run yellow school buses; they hurt seniors and people with disabilities who can’t drive, and low-income families who can’t afford cars. Lack of mobility cuts off opportunities for work and education, enforces inequality and persistent segregation. African-Americans and Latinos are far less likely than whites to own cars. Nationally, around 62 percent of city bus riders are African American and Latino. Nearly 80 percent of AC Transit riders are people of color.

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Photo: Myleen Hollero/Orange Photography

You’d think the Tea Party had descended on San Mateo County, what with the piqued rhetoric in the media over San Francisco’s congestion pricing study. I don’t like to invoke Sarah Palin’s jargon, but I keep coming back to her horrible phrase “lamestream media” when I see yet another story that paints San Francisco transportation planners as greedy car-hating vampires and gets the facts on the pricing study so terribly wrong.

Take John Horgan, a columnist for the San Mateo County Times, who calls San Francisco the Boondoggle by the Bay and the Duchy of Dysfunction, while lamenting that the poor “plebians” on the other side of the city’s “moat-like pay gate” should boycott San Francisco businesses and frequent those in San Mateo if the pick-pocket plan ever passes..

Running with a similar trope, Mike Sugarman of CBS 5 calls the proposal a “border war,” while erroneously painting a scenario where he drives across the charging zone line, forgets something back in Daly City and ends up paying $12 for crossing the line four times (in each of the four pricing zones being studied, a daily charge to a driver would be capped at $6). Sugarman then sticks his microphone in the face of a bunch of drivers and asks them if they would pay for something they currently get for free. Hmm, can you kids guess what the answer is going to be?

You have to wade through 2:20 of bad reporting to get to the first two factual items in Sugarman’s piece, when he says San Francisco is only studying congestion pricing and it wouldn’t go into effect before 2015 at the earliest.

Ken Garcia at the San Francisco Examiner takes the crusade on factual reporting even further, misrepresenting almost everything about the congestion pricing study, conflating the various options for congestion zones into one big tax-happy, driver hating city of lunatics. And on a stylistic quibble, I don’t think Garcia could have stuffed any more puns into his day-after Thanksgiving report (see Jon Stewart’s recent bit on media abuse of puns), from trotting turkeys to gravy to squash and communal platters. If the Examiner had editors, they could have trimmed several hundred words worth of fat from that holiday bird and left us merely with specious claims about money grubbing supervisors “taxing” the “privilege” and “pleasure” of driving.

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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.

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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.”

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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.”

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Photo: Matthew Roth

Of all the ways you can use your Clipper smart card for payment on transit agencies throughout the Bay Area, you probably didn’t realize you could use it like a credit card, spending up to $10 more than the value on the card. And you probably didn’t realize it’s set up with the perverse economic incentive to game the system, whereby you can scam distance-based fare operators like BART out of most of the cost of your trip.

Or maybe you did and you hoped to fly under the radar?

Here’s how the scam works, and mind you it is especially effective on BART, where you don’t have fare inspectors or conductors to check your Clipper card and catch you. At any retailer or vending machine that sells Clipper, load the minimum $2 dollars on a new Clipper card. Buy a bunch of them this way, if you like. Pay cash and do it at a Muni Metro vending machine in downtown San Francisco if you really don’t want to be traceable. Then ride BART where ever you desire and you will never have to pay more than $2.

Let’s take Civic Center to the San Francisco Airport, a trip I made over the weekend to see if the scam worked as a Streetsblog tipster had suggested. I bought two $2 cards at the vending machine, paying $4 in cash. When I tagged into the system at the fare gate, the card had a $2 value. I rode to SFO, a trip that should have cost me $8.10. When I tagged out at the International Terminal fare gates, instead of an “Insufficient Fare” warning, which I would have seen had I been using a $2 traditional BART fare card, my Clipper card subtracted $6.10, leaving me with a balance of $3.90 of someone else’s money.

After completing my return trip to Civic Center with my other $2 Clipper card, I ended up with $16.20 worth of BART rides for $4. If I had entered BART at one of the terminus stations, like Pittsburgh Bay Point, and traveled to SFO round-trip, I could have gamed BART for $21.80.

Because the cards still register the negative balance, and I would have to pay that down before I could add a positive balance to the card upon re-loading it, the smart thing to do would be to throw away the cards. At a cost of $2 per card to manufacture, I’m essentially paying for the privilege of adding two pretty blue cards to the landfill.

What a steal!

Of course, someone has to pay for the scam and that would be the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the regional transportation planning body that administers Clipper (though in the end it’s the taxpayer who foots their bill). MTC settles its Clipper debts every day with the transit agencies participating in the program, so BART would have been repaid the cost of my trips from regional funds allocated to the Clipper roll-out.

MTC spokesperson John Goodwin acknowledged that Clipper cards can “go negative,” which he said the MTC programmed into the card to help customers get out of a transit system where there aren’t fare machines or customer service personnel to help them add value to their cards.

“It’s a built-in convenience to the system, based on the goodwill that people will re-load their card,” said Goodwin.

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