Streetsblog San Francisco

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.”

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The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency continues to work with Mayor Gavin Newsom and Board of Supervisors President David Chiu to identify strategies for restoring the remaining 40 percent of service that was cut in May, part of a political negotiation that is expected to cost the agency $20 million.

Though only one piece of the larger service restoration puzzle, through service enhancements and efficiencies, the agency hopes to improve operational efficiency with possible pilots for bus-stop optimization, all-door boarding, Mission Street limited service and N-Judah supplemental bus service, among others.

At a bi-monthly SFMTA Board of Policy and Governance Committee meeting yesterday, several directors discussed options for restoring some of the remaining service [pdf], guided by enhancements and efficiencies that in some cases resulted from data derived from the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP)

As reported on Streetsblog, one of the service enhancement options is bus stop consolidation on five pilot bus routes, the 9-San Bruno, 14-Mission, 28-19th Avenue, 30-Stockton and 71-Haight. In the proposal, 104 stops would be removed, 13 would be added and 28 would be optimized (moved near side to far side). The SFMTA expects to save an average of 34 daily service hours at a cost of $160/hour over 307 days, or $1.7 million per year.

Another option the committee is considering is an all-door boarding pilot program on several routes with articulated buses, such as the 8X/AX/BX, 14/14L, 38/38L, and the 49 Van Ness. The pilot would only be on articulated buses, which SFMTA Transit Director John Haley explained were considered because the buses are bigger and fare inspectors would be used more efficiently. Under this scenario, the savings from reduced bus boarding times is $.7 million per year, but an increased cost of $1.6 million due to an increase of 16 fare inspectors.

Board directors were generally supportive of the progress the committee is making, but Daniel Murphy of the SFMTA Citizens Advisory Committee, expressed concern about implementing all-door boarding merely as a pilot on some buses and not across the system.

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An SFMTA task force charged with figuring out how to fully restore last May’s Muni service cuts is narrowing its list of actions and strategies to reduce travel time on the system, and bus stop consolidation, or “optimization,” is likely to be adopted as a recommendation. As Streetsblog has reported, stop optimization could greatly improve service, a move long pushed by transit advocates and SFMTA staff as one of the quickest and cheapest ways to speed Muni.

“All the feedback we get, and it’s been consistent over the years, is people are frustrated with the amount of time they spend on a vehicle, it just takes too long, and a big contributor to that is the number of stops,” said SFMTA Transit Director John Haley, who chairs the operations subcommittee of the Muni Service Restoration Task Force.

Haley acknowledged the political challenges of bus stop consolidation (because “every bus stop has a constituency”) but said “you have to put your toe in the water and take a step forward.” Haley doubts it can be implemented system-wide to start, but the task force is reviewing a list of “best prospects,” or high-volume lines where it’s needed most.

“I think it’s very realistic in certain areas,” said SFMTA Director Cameron Beach, who used the 30-Stockton line as an example of a line where bus stops have been eliminated (between Sutter and Market), with resulting service enhancement. “I think it’s incumbent upon the staff and the board to look at ways of improving the system and speeding it up.”

A recent Muni rider survey is also helping to give the issue momentum. Out of 573 riders surveyed in August and September, 61 percent said they would consider walking a longer distance to their stop if they knew it would reduce their overall travel time.

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One of the central criticisms of Muni's objective to consolidate bus stops is that it hasn't conducted thorough demographic analysis of the people who use each stop, particularly seniors and the disabled. Rather than rely solely on the distance between stops and the incline of the streets, say critics, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) should make nuanced decisions about each stop based on the amenities near the stops and the people who use them.

But one community group isn't waiting on the SFMTA to do the legwork.

Staff at the Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC) and approximately twenty students with clipboards and measuring tape analyzed 34 bus stops in Chinatown, an initiative the group hopes will be a model adopted by other neighborhood groups and the SFMTA itself. The students who conducted the surveys are part of CCDC's Youth for SROs Leadership Empowerment program, most of them children of recent immigrants to the United States.

"We're trying to offer a community perspective of how people use a bus stop," said CCDC's Deland Chan, who coordinated the surveys with Judy Kuang. "We're trying to capture exactly the value of a bus stop, not in terms of the spacing, but in terms of its importance to community uses, in terms of who uses a bus stop and what the people think they would like to improve with the transit system they encounter on a daily basis."

As part of the rationale for the survey, CCDC said bus stop spacing should be part of the larger goal of facilitating transit as an attractive alternative to driving, integrating design features that improve public health and safety, and ensuring that existing transit services complement and encourage travel by foot.

"Because the MTA do not include the demographic and the land use data, we are collecting all the data," said Bill Yu, a high school senior. Yu said that without looking at neighborhood amenities, a bus stop placement policy would fall short of community needs. "I think this is really helpful for the community, especially the Chinatown neighborhoods. The people who live here need bus stops because they need to take the bus to buy food and other stuff for their basic needs."

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A common complaint among Muni riders is that the bus simply stops too often. It turns out they may be on to something: according to transit experts and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which operates Muni, consolidating some bus stops is one of the cheapest and quickest ways to speed up Muni.

That's the subject of this film, the second in a series on making Muni faster and more reliable. It was shot and edited by Streetfilms' John Hamilton.

Muni's stops are actually much closer than its own standards advise. Only 17 percent of Muni's bus stops fall within the recommended range of 800-1,000 feet (closer on steep hills); 70 percent are closer than that. As SFMTA staff has pointed out in the past, nationwide research shows most people are willing to walk a quarter-mile to the nearest bus stop.

The SFMTA's first attempt to consolidate stops -- a pilot project on the 38-Geary in the Tenderloin -- turned out poorly for the agency. Residents got the Board of Supervisors to block the proposal, pointing out that it appeared to speed up service for wealthier commuters from the Richmond by forcing Tenderloin residents to walk farther. Now, the SFMTA hopes it can dispel that impression by proposing a comprehensive consolidation plan, at least on the city's busiest routes.

In the film, we hear from the person responsible for developing that plan, Julie Kirschbaum, project manager for the SFMTA's Transit Effectiveness Project, Livable City's Tom Radulovich, San Francisco Transit Riders Union organizer Dave Snyder, and Senior Action Network's Pi Ra.

Consolidating Muni stops that are too close to meet the MTA's own spacing standards could speed up travel times for riders and save the cash-strapped agency millions of dollars annually. But in a twisted development that typifies the MTA's current budget crisis, the agency says its staff is too busy cutting service to finish a proposal that could lessen those service cuts.

Back in June, Streetsblog reported that Muni could begin consolidating bus stops by February 2010 if all went according to schedule. Needless to say, all has not gone according to schedule. MTA Staff, led by service planning and Transit Effective Project manager Julie Kirschbaum, was scheduled to deliver detailed spacing plans to the agency's Board of Directors in October, with public hearings to follow in November and December.

Instead, Kirschbaum was busy finalizing a proposal for sweeping service changes during that time, which she delivered in early November. Arguably, it was a worthy use of the agency's time and resources, even aside from the pressure to balance its budget. Portions of the TEP were implemented without a major fight, and overall service hours remained virtually even while a small savings was squeezed out of efficiencies in operator schedules.

Before Kirschbaum could catch her breath on the "good cuts," however, the MTA was scrambling to fix another budget gap, this time requiring a round of "bad cuts" that would chop Muni service by a full ten percent.

Those plans were out the door and in public view by last month, followed by a public outcry so spirited that it just may give rise to a proper Muni riders union. The MTA Board will vote on the proposal later this month. Though initially pegged as a $28 million cut in service, recent union negotiations could lessen the blow. Either way, Kirschbaum is tied up with a task far from the lofty goals she was was hired to implement with the TEP, and the MTA is preparing to cut service in a way that has no discernible upside to riders.

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With support for bus stop consolidation building, local leaders are starting to weigh in on political strategies for implementing a new stop spacing policy.

For Pi Ra of the Senior Action Network, the best political strategy is to start with a good policy, before recommendations to eliminate specific stops are out. The MTA has been working on a revised stop spacing policy, but Ra said the draft revised policy isn't adequate.

"So far, it's based solely about if it's flat or not flat, what degree of slope it is, and if it's a transfer or not," said Ra. "But they haven't really put in consideration the demographics of who uses that particular bus stop, and if it's a destination or not. So they should...do all their research and then come up with a criteria to judge whether or not that bus stop should be there."

Ra said he "does think we have too many bus stops, especially in areas where it's really flat," but he thinks the MTA needs to start with a solid policy before it makes specific proposals. "Do you want to go through this again every time you're going to eliminate a bus stop? It'd be best to come up with a criteria that everybody accepts, or closely accepts, so when you decide to eliminate a bus stop, you say, 'here's the criteria, it fits that criteria,' and since this is what we accepted, then you won't have such a big fight over it each time. And they seem like they still haven't learned that particular lesson."

In a presentation on stop spacing in June, the MTA recommended that the revised stop spacing policy should give consideration to "destinations such as schools, hospitals, and other community facilities," though it didn't mention senior centers or similar demographic considerations specifically. The MTA has resisted doing broad demographic surveys, but Ra said taking important institutions into consideration "will be fine," instead of trying to survey demographics at every stop.

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Does the 14-Mission really need to stop at every block on Mission Street? Does the 21-Hayes? Consolidating bus stops could speed transit vehicles and reduce dwell time, saving service hours that could be used to increase frequencies and add hours of operation. Yet the MTA has avoided the topic for years, not even mentioning stop consolidation as a cost savings measure to mitigate the service cuts and fare increases just approved to bridge part of the agency's $129 million deficit.

The reason for this reluctance, according to several people within the agency who I spoke with, is that the planners were afraid that the controversy around stop consolidation would jeopardize other equally or more important reforms they were promoting. MTA planners are still stung by the defeat of their modest proposal to consolidate stops on the 38-Geary in the Tenderloin. Tenderloin residents got the Board of Supervisors to reject that proposal by pointing out that only the Tenderloin was targeted, giving the appearance that stop consolidation was more about helping the more well-to-do residents of the Richmond zoom through the Tenderloin more quickly than it was a transit efficiency measure that could benefit everyone.

Times have changed, apparently, with stop consolidation finally making it to the top of TEP Program Manager Julie Kirschbaum's "to do list." What's different?

From a political perspective, the supervisors no longer have any authority over stop location. From a policy perspective, by proposing systemwide consolidation (at least on the 15 busiest routes), the MTA is not vulnerable to charges it is pitting one neighborhood against another. And most importantly, the benefits of stop consolidation are beginning to appear greater than the political cost of taking away some bus stops.

Kirschbaum has consistently claimed that stop consolidation was not "the most important" efficiency measure the system could make, but she has recently conceded that of all the possible reforms, it's in the "top eight to ten."

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The MTA this afternoon released analysis of bus stop spacing showing what anyone who has been on Muni knows: there are way too many stops too close together (PDF). Overall nearly 70 percent of the 4,000 bus and rail stops in the city don't adhere to the MTA's own distance policy, and its clear to the operator that consolidation of stops would speed service and cut costs dramatically.  Furthermore, staff suggests the board might want to consider an increase to the distance between spaces as a matter of policy.

"I'm glad they've done the research. It's an option we've wanted the MTA to explore," said Livable City Executive Director Tom Radulovich. "There's a tradeoff, every stop has a constituency.  The other thing that unfortunately has happened is that keeping every stop has been mythologized as a social justice movement.  We've heard that seniors don't care about speed, poor people don't care about speed, they care about stop spacing. Some analysis that I've seen from the TEP shows the opposite to be the case, some seniors care very much about travel times."

Radulovich added: "There needs to be rigor to it so that it's not political and not arbitrary."

MTA staff noted that nationwide research indicates most people are willing to walk a quarter-mile (1320 ft) to access local transit, though they note that spacing distance should be reduced on steep grades. Further consideration would be given to important transfer points and destinations such as schools, hospitals, and other community facilities. Staff also suggested that approximately 20 percent of delay on the 15 most-used routes is dwell time, due in large part to the density of stops, though it should be noted that the MTA could introduce faster payment options, bus bulb-outs, separated lanes, etc to reduce dwell times.

In their presentation, MTA staff highlighted the 9-San Bruno, a route that has 126 total stops, 70 of which are too close. If 9 inbound and 11 outbound stops were eliminated, MTA estimates it would achieve a 7 minute (5 percent) running times savings and an annual cost savings of $200,000 in operator costs alone.

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As the MTA Board considers solutions to reduce its enormous $129 million deficit, bus stop consolidation should be at the top of its agenda.  Bus stop removal is one of the easiest engineering solutions to speed up service, but the political fallout could be significant without a groundswell of organizing and support from those who would benefit from service improvements. 

The MTA's current bus stop spacing policy is the following:

1. Passenger stop spacing should be approximately 800-1,000 feet on motorcoach and trolleycoach routes except where there are steep grades, and 1,000-1,200 feet between stops on LRV surface lines.

2. On streets with grades of over 10 percent, stops should be spaced 500-600 feet apart. On streets with grades of over 15 percent, such as on Castro between 22nd Street and 24th Street, stops may be spaced as close as 300-400 feet.  There are no special grade guidelines for surface rail (Muni Metro and Historic Streetcar) because the technology limits operation well under 10 percent inclines.

Bus stop spacing is usually balanced by density, topography and the guidelines you see above. Said Aimee Gauthier at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, based in New York:

Ideally, bus stops are determined not by distance (like every block) but by actual passenger volumes. In general, bus stops should be spaced so that they are a reasonable walk between stops (that differs according to who you are talking to and the context [uses, activities around there], but usually it is a within a 10 – 15 minute walk). 

Many stops in San Francisco, however, do not fit the above criteria, including instances of single blocks with multiple stops.  If Muni eliminated stops now, or at least began an experiment, trying out one line, it could save them precious running time costs and improve service and reliability.

Muni actually revises bus stop spacing [PDF] more frequently than one might think, though in a recent interview, MTA Executive Director Nat Ford told Streetsblog San Francisco they aren't planning to release system wide bus stop consolidation recommendations until after the budget process is over.

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