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.”

Should immigration agents use buses and trains as a place to catch undocumented immigrants? Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

Immigration agents have been boarding Greyhound buses to nab undocumented immigrants, according to a story in Sunday’s Miami Herald. Anecdotal evidence from immigration attorneys and detainees shows that public transportation is becoming a favorite place for agents to hunt down immigrants:

“I am definitely seeing a large number of people stopped by Greyhound,” said attorney Sara Van Hofwegen… On one recent visit to the BTC in Southwest Broward, Van Hofwegen spoke to 12 detainees. Five of the 12 were apprehended on a Greyhound.

“I’d say Greyhound cases make up about 20 percent of our clients now,’’ said Juliet Williams, an assistant with the law offices of Kantaras & Andreopoulos, with offices in Central Florida. “That is much more than we’ve usually seen.”

She estimates the firm has seen an increase in Greyhound apprehensions of about 25 percent in the past two years.

There is no longer a single state in the union that will issue a drivers license without asking any questions. But has the crackdown over the past few years stopped people from driving? Of course not. It just means that many are driving without accountability, and without paying.

But even if they do stop driving, no matter: ICE will just catch them on buses and trains.

Aside from the fact that deportation scares like this can leave millions of scared people stranded at home without a safe means of transportation, the crackdown could hurt the rest of us, too. It threatens to raise the security environment on buses and trains to the level at airports. It may be less of a convenience issue, since you still don’t have to take off your shoes and arrive an hour early to take a bus — but it still brings the state security apparatus onto our means of getting around.

What do you think? Is it appropriate for immigration agents to be patrolling public transportation asking for papers?

Different vehicles shape a different streetscape in Peru.

Our daily urban lives shape our imaginations in so many ways. Few things box us in like our everyday transit options, and the patterns of traffic that shape our sense of public space. These patterns themselves are historical of course. A quick look back at the famous Market Street film shot a few days before the 1906 earthquake shows how chaotic and unpredictable the flow of traffic was when San Francisco’s main artery hadn’t yet been paved and standardized. Similarly, leaving the U.S. and visiting other countries provides a fantastic opportunity to experience other assumptions and possibilities for urban space, and surprisingly perhaps, a different range of vehicles.

In Peru for a couple of weeks I first had to adjust to a major cultural difference–unlike California, pedestrians don’t have any legal rights, let alone cultural preference. When you start to cross the street at a corner in a Peruvian city, you better be ready to run. Because the cars are not going to wait for you, in fact they tend to speed up when they see someone trying to use the road space ahead of them. I noticed the same thing on highways too, a consistent refusal to yield to entering traffic, a universal assumption of individual ownership of the right of way. Here’s a video below the break we shot standing on a traffic island in Peru’s second largest city while waiting for the traffic to clear so we could cross the street.

We entered Peru on a bus from Ecuador, crossing the Macará river.

Crossing the river, that's our bus.

We rode from Cuenca, Ecuador to Chiclayo, Peru, which took about 22 hours.

Bus travel was a big part of our journey in Peru, though we took a plane from Chiclayo on the north coast all the way to Cusco in the southern Andes. The beginning of our time in the country finished our descent from the Ecuadorian Andes to the stark desert of northern Peru. Our international bus arrived in the Peruvian city of Piura, which I hadn’t heard of before, but it’s a good-sized city of a half million or so, sitting amidst a heavily irrigated desert of citrus farms and more. The most surprising discovery as we rode in on the dusty streets was to see countless moto-taxis and freight tricycles. They outnumbered autos, filling the streets with the canopied three-wheelers.

This was our first view of vehicular traffic in Piura, Peru.

Motorcycles dominated, both individually and as motors for rickshaws.

We changed to another four-hour bus ride from Piura to Chiclayo where we grabbed a plane after a few hours of sleep in a hotel, having been on buses for about 22 hours. Once we made it to Cuzco we delighted in the ancient capital of the Incas. The incredible stone-masonry of the Inca culture is incomparable, and what a fun surprise to find one of the original streets of their capital still functioning. It’s called Antisuyo and the massive granite blocks, so perfectly fit to each other, have survived centuries of earthquakes that crumbled lesser structures. The narrow, pedestrian friendly streets on the slopes of Cuzco are a walker’s paradise.

Here I am standing on Cuzco's Antisuyo, an original street from the time of the Inca Empire. The anti-seismic granite construction is visible in the amazing stonework here and in many places throughout former Inca territories.

From Cuzco we went on one of the world’s famous “walks” on the Inca Trail. Four days, three mountain passes (the highest being 14,000 feet!), and a great deal of it on the thousands of original steps that make up the well-trodden Inca Trail. We learned a bit about the Inca Empire along our journey, and knew that their road system equalled the Romans in terms of engineering, management of water and drainage, and perhaps even sheer extent. Inca Trails extended from the capital in Cuzco all the way to Colombia in the north, Chile in the south, and encompassed a population of millions.

Here I am slowly making my way to a 14,000 foot pass.

It's hard to describe the historic resonance of hiking a road built centuries earlier and used heavily during an entirely different culture and time in history.

After an amazing four days that got us to Machu Picchu we caught a bus from Cuzco to Arequipa, but our “bed bus” was a broken down second-tier bus rather than the luxury ride we thought we were buying. The views of snow-capped mountains and endless green valleys in the Altiplano were stunning, and after about 8 hours we arrived in the high plains town of Juliaca. This town depended even more on pedicabs and freight bikes than we’d seen in the north.

The altiplano as seen from our bus out of Cuzco on the way southwest to Juliaca.

The relatively comfortable bus terminal in Juliaca, Peru.

Street scene in Juliaca, Peru.

There's something so charming about pedicabs!

Great to look out the bus window and see more pedicabs and freight trikes than cars and trucks.

We had a dramatic late dusk ride along the sides of a huge lake called Lagunillas, as rain and thunder engulfed us on the way to Arequipa. The city’s night lights sprawled before us as we descended to it from the mountains. When we woke the next morning we realized we were still quite high (over a mile high) and in a surprisingly arid environment. Walking into downtown we found ourselves on Calle Bolivar, a pleasant pedestrian-centered avenue, which was a hint of something a little different in Peru’s second largest city.

Calle Bolivar-Sucre in Arequipa, Peru, a street recently reclaimed for pedestrians.

Here in the historic center of Arequipa (two huge volcanoes are obscured behind the cathedral by dense clouds) the traffic chokes the surrounding streets.

The historic city center’s streets were jammed with taxis and combis, which we soon realized was normal in Peru’s cities. Crossing the street was a continuous challenge but we started to get a handle on moving through the city (that video above captures the drama). We also found another street, Calle Mercaderos, which was closed to traffic and functioned like a long linear mall. In streets like this we see a different use of public space than we get normally in the U.S. Like the best European city centers, Peru too has taken important streets and dedicated them to pedestrians and public sauntering (and shopping of course).

Calle Mercaderes in Arequipa, a classic pedestrian zone mostly dedicated to shopping and people watching.

Finally we made our way to Lima, the country’s capital. Traffic is insane in Lima, but the city won us over for lots of reasons. For one thing we stayed just off Avenida Arequipa, which happens to have a lovely center median that has a bike way or “ciclovia” running down the middle. We were staying with a friend and had fun learning to navigate Lima by way of the ubiquitous “combis,” which come in all shapes and sizes and colors. The sing-song announcements of destination that the combi fare-takers used to help passengers decide which one to take was one of the pleasures of the ride. But the congested traffic, the bizarre competition between different combis to race ahead to get passengers at the next stop, and the generally aggressive driving by all vehicles presented an streetscape that was unmistakeably hostile to pedestrians.

This is the ciclovia on Avenida Arequipa in Lima, Peru, just outside the apartment we stayed in.

This is a pretty average scene of multiple competing combi lines jammed into traffic, each trying to get to the curb to get more passengers into its seats.

We found the combis pretty comfortable, always clean, and easy to navigate once you figured out where you were going. They only cost about 30 cents a ride too!

Lima is modernizing of course. They’ve put in a freeway that is locally known as “the Ditch,” but down the middle of it is one of several Bus Rapid Transit lines called the Metropolitana. Here’s a couple of shots of another Metropolitana line along one of the regular broad avenues in Lima.

The Metropolitana in Lima looks a lot like the Macrobus in Guadalajara, or BRTs in almost any city.

This is a shot back towards the arriving Metropolitana (at far right), while we sit in gridlock.

We were hapy to connect with local cycling activists, who hosted me giving a Talk on cycling and Critical Mass history. Cicloaxion got a boost from the World Naked Bike Ride a few years back, and now there are several different cycling advocacy groups in town.

Octavio, Edu, and Manu took us on a great ride around the historic center, teaching us how to navigate the insanity of Lima's traffic, and treating us to a great meal in Lima's Chinatown.

And ciclovias exist on a number of streets, along with barely used bicycle parking facilities.

Here's an underutilized Ciclovia in downtown Lima, used here as a parking spot for a couple of freight bikers.

Never did see any bikes parked here... Why do bike racks so often get put in places where they aren't used?

There are a lot of freight bikes rolling around Lima too.

There were lots of these guys rolling around downtown Lima.

Less than a month ago, Lima joined the growing world movement towards Sunday Streets with what they have dubbed “Ciclodia.” Thousands of Lima cyclists and joggers get out on Sunday morning to enjoy a six-kilometer stretch closed to all traffic on Avenida Arequipa. It was great to wake up on Sunday morning to the silence, after having been wakened each of our previous days by the roar of combis and their horns jockeying for position on the same street. So Lima, and Peru more generally, present a panoply of street uses, and a veritable menagerie of vehicles! Nothing jogs or imaginations or our fantasies like immersion in other cultures and other possibilities.

The crowds are emerging for Ciclodia in Lima, Peru, Sunday, March 20, 2011.

Street closed for Cycling Day, Lima Peru.

Lima is evolving and it was exciting to see the burgeoning cycling culture there too.

Chris Carlsson will be giving one of his four-hour bicycle history tours on local transit history, this Sunday, April 3, from 12-4 pm. Meet at CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission at 9th at noon, bring water and snacks. (A $15-50 sliding scale donation is requested to benefit Shaping San Francisco.)

Photo: GOOD

While many Americans may not think riding a bus is the sexiest form of transportation, the reality is that a majority of public transit trips in the U.S. are taken by bus. The numbers are even higher in the Bay Area. Every one of the hundreds of thousands of passengers who boarded a bus in the last year has a story to tell and there are probably lots of Streetsblog readers who would love to share a tale about their favorite line. So why not nominate it as the best bus route in America?

Transportation Alternatives, New York City’s advocacy group for bicycling, walking and public transit, has joined with GOOD Magazine for a contest asking public transit riders to email in their photos and brief captions making a case for why their bus ride is the better one. From GOOD’s website:

Bicycles can be chic, subways artful, but buses? Buses are not exactly the golden child of transportation. They’re more like the red-headed step child: Deep down you know they mean well but they’re just a little harder to love.

Yet public buses are an essential form of transit in cities across the country, and they account for a big chunk of the nearly 10.2 billion trips Americans took on public transportation in 2009. We think it’s time to give a little love to one of the least celebrated modes of transit. To that end, we’ve teamed up with Transportation Alternatives and an impressive group of bus-loving jurors to see and hear why your bus route is the best in America.

What is it about your bus route that you love? Is your bus driver brilliant? Is the view from your window breathtaking? Do your fellow riders characters belong in a Hemingway novel?

The judges include Earl Blumenauer, Enrique Peñalosa and TA Executive Director Paul Steely White. I’m honored to also be a judge. You only have until next Wednesday, November 10th, to submit your entry. You can email them to busroutes@goodinc.com or tweet the entry to @GOOD and use the hashtag #bestbusride. Good luck!

Image: Cincinnati Enquirer

Also on the list is Boston's regional bike-share network, slated to receive $3 million to help build more than 500 public bicycle stations. The bike-share project made the cut because of its potential to expand the reach and accessibility of the bus and rail system. Boston's bike-share launch recently got pushed back to 2011, but at that scale, it would be, by far, the largest system in the country.

Here's a sample of the major projects that got a boost:

• Cincinnati will receive $25 million to help build a six-mile streetcar route, with an eye toward spurring mixed-use development downtown. The city planning commission recently took the enlightened step of reducing parking requirements along the future streetcar route.
  
• Chicago received support for a pair of rapid bus projects: $11 million for the Jeffery BRT corridor, which will improve service to major job center on a route with poor access to trains, and $25 million for a two-mile, east-west bus priority street serving several routes downtown.
  
• New York City's 34th Street busway got an $18 million grant. Streetsblog NYC readers have been following this project for a couple of years. NYCDOT recently announced its intention to make 34th Street the first physically separated busway in the city.
  
• One of the surprise winners was Fort Worth, which received about $25 million for a 2.5-mile one-way streetcar loop, intended to serve as the hub in a future network. Streetsblog Network member Fort Worthology called the grant "incredible and extremely positive news" for the larger streetcar project.
  

You can see the complete list of projects here.

The funds are being distributed through two competitive grant programs that LaHood unveiled last December. The "Urban Circulator" and "Bus and Bus Livability" programs are tied to the Obama administration's multi-agency livability initiative. The funding streams are separate from DOT's larger competitive grant program, known as TIGER.

In an announcement this morning, LaHood indirectly tied the transit grants to the ongoing catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. "This investment by the Obama Administration in our nation's communities will create jobs, boost economic development and recovery, and further reduce our dependence on oil," he said in a statement. Note: He said "oil," plain and simple. Not "foreign oil."

Advocates for reforming national transportation policy applauded the grant program, noting that demand for funding far outstripped supply. "As the grants show, communities across the country are clamoring to use transportation investments to boost their economy while making their communities better places to live and work," said James Corless, director of Transportation for America. "FTA did a great job in rounding up this money to put wheels on President Obama's livability initiative, but we think that more communities should be able to benefit from these sorts of programs. DOT needs to have more money for smart, accountable, competitive programs like this in the future."

A private firm recently signed a deal with New Orleans officials to help run the city's streetcars, seen above. (Photo: NYT)

Few definitive answers to those questions were on offer today at a transit panel sponsored by the Mobility Choice coalition, which allies members of conservative-leaning think tanks with a handful of environmental advocates and urbanists -- but the discussion yielded some provocative evidence of the fault lines between public and private operators.

Principally sponsored by the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS), the group describes itself as adopting "a fiscally responsible, free market oriented approach to expanding competition among transportation modes for the purpose of reducing oil's strategic value."

American Bus Association (ABA) Chairman James Jalbert, whose group represents private bus and motorcoach companies, lamented that the U.S. DOT's implementation of its $10.5 billion high-speed rail program -- which is expected to receive billions more in federal funding in the coming years -- did not envision a role for private-sector firms that already provide inter-city service.

"A good-quality system that could be included in a rail project is now going to be run over by that rail project," said Jalbert, also the president New Hampshire-based bus company C&J. "We want to be part of the solution, but we need to be invited to the party."

Integrating private bus operators into proposed passenger rail projects has to start at the state level, where officials make the call on whether and how to pursue federal bullet-train money, Jalbert added. He described a potentially successful partnership between public inter-city rail and private bus companies as a shared scheduling system, where passengers could purchase tickets for rail during peak hours but an equivalent bus journey during off-peak times, when operating a motorcoach could be more efficient.

Tom JeBran, ABA vice chairman and president of Trans-Bridge Lines in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, went further than his private-sector cohort in suggesting that public transit agencies receive an unfair advantage, thanks to their operating subsidies and exemption from the federal gas tax.

"The only way I'd support" raising fuel taxes and adding new interstate tolls to pay for nationwide transport improvements, JeBran said, would be if both private and public transit operators got an exemption from those new charges.

Robert Padgette of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the transit industry's leading D.C. trade group, fired back at JeBran's depiction of government subsidies that go only to public operators. The U.S. DOT's Section 5311 grants, Padgette noted, do make taxpayer funds available to smaller, private inter-city bus companies.

Tammy's 33-Stanyan bus yesterday. Photos: Greg/Muni Diaries.

Greg tells the story of his commute and Tammy's infectious smile, which had spread to most on her bus:

It’s like a Fourth of July party inside Tammy’s bus. There are red white and blue streamers, balloons, coils that say “happy,” banners and party lanterns hanging from the railings. Large handwritten posters adorn the windows thanking her riders...

As I sit in the bus watching new passengers board, I witness a Muni miracle: a sea of frowns turn into big grins as people enter and see what awaits them. I overhear nearly every newcomer commenting on the scene to either Tammy or their fellow straphangers. “How cool is this,” they ponder aloud. “Is this for Mother’s day?” “Is someone retiring?” “I can’t believe I got candy.”

Pretty much everyone who boarded asked Tammy a quick question about the decorations. “I just want to show appreciation for my passengers,” was her standard response. Those who pressed further often heard “If not for the passengers, drivers and managers have no job.”

Unfortunately for those who ride the 33, Tammy's last day driving the route is today. Fortunately for those who ride the 24-Divisadero, Tammy's going to be one of your newest operators in the coming week. Thanks Muni Diaries for the charming story and thanks Tammy for giving us all something good to write about Muni!

Pretty hard not to smile with her.

Sheila Dixon, outgoing Baltimore mayor, with a new city bus. (Photo: Baltimore Skyline)

The city's new free bus line, dubbed the Charm City Circulator, started rolling through downtown yesterday after some delays, with plans to add two new lines as soon as this spring.

Baltimore, often viewed as the front lines in U.S. cities' battle with blight, chose to fund its bus with a move that would raise hackles in some of its Eastern seaboard neighbors: an increase in the parking tax.

Could Baltimore's bus rollout, coupled with the change of administration, boost the city's chances of winning federal aid for its proposed Red Line light rail project? Time will tell.

The MTA has released DriveCam video of a crash involving a 19-Polk bus and a pickup truck on De Haro and 18th Streets in Potrero Hill early yesterday morning that left seven people injured. The press release from spokesperson Judson True said "the video appears to show that the Muni bus rolled through its STOP sign on De Haro Street and the truck ran its STOP sign."

We've had difficulty downloading the Mac-unfriendly file that shows the crash from several different camera angles but our friends at the SF Appeal have it.

The video shows that the operator was going about 8 miles an hour -- the average speed for a Muni bus -- when the crash happened, which True describes as rolling. The operator has been placed on non-driving status pending the outcome of a police investigation. More coverage at SF Gate.

Walker begins his post by quoting from a story in Canada's National Post headlined "Save the Environment: Don't Take Transit." The article posits that because many buses run empty for much of the day, they are environmentally inferior to private automobiles. Anti-transit stalwarts Wendell Cox and Randal O'Toole are cited in support of this argument. (Ignored is the research that shows how dramatically even a 10 percent increase in US transit ridership could reduce CO2 emissions.)

Human Transit's Walker says that transit advocates can't afford to ignore this line of thinking, infuriating though that may be, and he offers his rebuttal. It's worth reading in full, but here's a sample:

Photo: lantzilla via Flickr

In almost 20 years as a transit planning consultant, I've looked closely the operations of at least 100 bus and bus+rail systems on three continents, and I have never encountered one whose supreme and overriding goal was to maximize its ridership.  All transit agencies would like more people to ride, but they are required to run many, many empty buses for reasons unrelated to ridership or environmental goals. To describe the resulting empty buses as a failure of transit, as Cox does, is simply a false description of transit's real objectives.…

[I]n the real world, transit agencies have to balance contradictory demands to (a) maximize ridership and (b) provide a little bit of service everywhere regardless of ridership, both to meet demands for "equity" and to serve the needs of transit-dependent persons.

One analysis that I've done for several transit agencies is to sort the services according to whether they serve a "ridership" related purpose or a "coverage" related purpose.  Ridership services are justified by how many people ride them.  Coverage services are justified by how badly people need them, or because certain suburbs feel they deserve them, but not based on how many people ride.  I encourage transit agencies to identify which are which.  Once a transit agency can identify which of its services are trying to maximize ridership, you can fairly judge how well those services are doing in meeting that objective, including all the environmental benefits that follow.  Until then, the Cox argument is smoke and mirrors.

Photo: Travis Jensen SF

Tourism is the largest industry in San Francisco, and Local 2 is the largest union, with 9,000 members in the City. Tourism may be a weird industry in many ways, but it does have some environmental advantages. Hotels are clustered in transit-rich areas of the City, and they can’t be outsourced to the suburbs. Tourists gain appreciation during their visits for walkability and bikeability. The long lines for the cable car—a form of public transportation—and packs of cyclists with their Blazing Saddles handlebar bags going over the Golden Gate Bridge show the potential for tourists to take this experience of San Francisco back home. Their stay could plant seeds of awareness of livability issues elsewhere in the country.

Tourism is also the rare industry that provides entry-level jobs for people without higher education who may have difficulty with English. The union brings together workers who are otherwise isolated in their individual rooms or floors to clean and offers protection against arbitrary treatment and injury.

The communities that make up the bulk of Local 2 workers—Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Latino, and African American—are underrepresented in transportation groups, even though they are probably the largest users of transit with the lowest likelihood of car ownership. They are natural allies, who go back to their neighborhoods like Excelsior, Chinatown, and Ingleside, where transportation issues are bubbling.

If these workers see transportation advocates on their picket lines, they could be more open to hearing what we say about bike lanes or public plazas or Safe Routes to Schools. During my own work with CC Puede, I’ve run into more neighbors than I can remember who have said, “You look familiar. Oh yeah, I saw you at that hearing testifying in support of the day laborers.” That neighbor is then much more receptive to learning about proposed changes to traffic lanes on Cesar Chavez Street. This kind of mutual interest avoids being opportunistic or manipulative when we embrace another cause simply because it’s the right thing to do, but the fact that we then benefit down the road is one more good reason to reach out in the first place.

In 2004, during the two-month hotel lockout and strike, Critical Mass rode right up the driveway of the Hyatt Embarcadero. Picketers were ecstatic, hotel guests dropped their jaws in disbelief, and management turned purple, as hundreds of cyclists, cheering and ringing their bells, crammed into the dropoff area, snarling the check-in process bigtime. It was a great moment, but then it passed. We need to do more.

The issue of labor, like the issue of transportation, is one that connects with all other issues: housing, healthcare, education, race, etc. It’s time to broaden our perspective and explore how making these connections can deepen our movement. In the early 20th century, the Pullman porters played a crucial role in the birth of the Civil Rights movement. Working in the rare job open to African Americans, the porters traveled throughout the country, bringing back newspapers from the north to spread ideas to the south.

Race and labor intersected with the Pullman porters. We have the opportunity to make transportation and labor intersect by reaching out and supporting the workers of Local 2. What I find inspiring about Local 2 is that it gives unsung workers power and a voice. We enrich ourselves by joining them in respectful solidarity.

Transportation advocates can take immediate steps:

• Get your buns down to the picket line. It’s amazing how wearing it can be to walk around in a little circle, but if that 45-year-old mother of three can do it all day, you spandex greyhounds should be able to put in a few hours. Wear your helmet and be visible.
• Spread the word. Many people work in associations or corporations that hold meetings in these hotels. Explain what the negotiations are about and try to get your group to avoid any hotel on a boycott list.
• Speak up in your own advocacy organization and ask the group to take a position, making the environmental connections of supporting a transit-dependent workforce.
• Do the usual stuff we always do for transportation issues: Write letters to the editor, hound the politicians, etc. You know the drill.
  

Fran Taylor is a founding member of CC Puede, a community organization in the Mission.

Our latest call for photos was inspired by the picture at right,
taking by Streetsblog New York’s own Ben Fried. It’s an all too
familiar scene — transit riders crammed together, waiting for a bus
(or train) that doesn’t come when it’s supposed to (if you
missed the story that went with the picture, it’s here).

Crowding is just one indignity transit users have to face. Others include
inadequate bus shelters, nonexistent or vandalized seating, blocked
entrances — you know the stuff.

Send us your pictures of
crummy transit service and infrastructure where you live and we’ll put
together a new slide show. You can e-mail JPEGs to me at sarah [at]
streetsblog [dot] org, or tag them with "streetsblog" and "transitfail"
in Flickr. Get your submissions in by next Thursday.

Our past slide shows have been on bike traffic, space hogs and work bikes. Check them out if you haven’t already.

A map of the companies involved in the supply chain for U.S. transit buses. (Image: EDF)

When Vice President Joe Biden visited
Minnesota’s New Flyer bus company to tout the economic stimulus law’s
$8.4 billion investment in transit, hopes were high for a boom in
cleaner-burning vehicle production — which made for some bad press when the nationwide transit funding crunch forced New Flyer to lay off 13 percent of its workers.

But
the recession hasn’t dampened the economic potential of hybrid bus
production, as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) laid out today in a
new report [PDF]
on the industry. In fact, EDF found, transit bus companies share enough
skills and regional foothold with the auto industry — the map of bus
makers pictured above could be mistaken for a map of automakers — to
pave the way for fuel-efficiency advances that would ultimately benefit
all vehicles.

After noting that 32 percent of American transit buses do not rely on gas or diesel to run, today’s report continues:

The
bus industry serves as an important entry point for advanced vehicle
technologies, especially in new vehicles that require refueling
infrastructure and other major changes. For instance, since transit
agencies have a well-defined base of centrally managed fleets, they are
ideal for testing and proving plug-in hybrid and all-electric buses —
thus leading the way for the passenger car industry.

While U.S. bus companies are well-positioned proving grounds for
cleaner-burning vehicles, their export potential remains low, according
to the EDF report. That’s largely because the largest market for
transit buses is China, where demand is expected to grow by 12 percent
annually over the next decade — double the projected growth rate in
North America — and where production standards are markedly lower.

"Emerging
countries’ lower technology levels and standards appear to prevent them
from competing in industrial country bus markets, while industrial
countries’ higher production costs and standards appear to prevent them
from competing in emerging country markets," EDF concluded.

Even so, there is a limited opening for bus supply companies to prosper on a global level. About 12,000 of Indianapolis-based Allison Transmission’s 14,000 sales have come in China, and Firestone, which produces bus suspensions, has operations in China and India.

Yet
it’s the domestic employment and growth potential of bus makers that is
the ultimate subject of EDF’s report, which notes that such potential
"is heavily dependent on the availability of public funding for bus
transit." And at a time when labor unions are pushing the job-creating power
of federal funding for operating costs, EDF’s findings represent the
other side of the coin — the role transit money plays in sustaining
manufacturing jobs many miles away from the cities where local networks
operate.

Stephen O'Brien has been coaxing an oasis out of a most unlikely environment for a long time: the small green patches at either end of the ground level Mission Street frontage of the Transbay Terminal. He started back in 1958, when the old Key System train tracks that used to bring East Bay electric streetcars to the Transbay Terminal were being torn out. The Transbay Terminal in those days was a crucial commuter hub, bringing passengers from all over the East Bay. If you've ever ridden the F bus from Berkeley to San Francisco, you've ridden on the descendant of the same-lettered streetcar that once transported you from downtown Berkeley to downtown San Francisco just a minute longer than BART does today!

O'Brien is having his last day working his gardens at the Transbay Terminal today. His company's contract with Caltrans has ended, and he has been transferred to the State Building or the PUC building grounds. He's almost 80 years old and if he doesn't like his new posting, he'll probably retire soon. It'll be hard to match the half century he's spent cultivating the quiet, almost invisible oases at the Transbay Terminal. I heard about O'Brien from my friend Susanne Zago:

"Every morning I step out of the Transbay Terminal, one of the ugliest places I've ever been, and I notice this small green space as I leave. Sometimes it was completely trashed, but the next day I'd look in and it would be restored to its pristine condition. I looked at the trees, surprisingly mature, wondering what was planned for them as they build the new Transbay Center. I started asking around, and no one knew. One day I met this man who was in the space and it turned out to be Stephen."

July 20, 1953, Key System train awaits on platform in Transbay Terminal. (Photo courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library.)

Passengers boarding Key System train, June 8, 1948.

A natural oasis at 1st and Mission.

Beneath this 45-year-old pine lies a hidden patch of nature, nurtured for a half century by Stephen O'Brien.

A garden flourishes in a forgotten corner.

Stephen O'Brien knows what's going to happen. His 52 years of nurturing these garden spots will be bulldozed with the rest of the old 1939 Terminal, making way for the new tallest building in San Francisco and a multi-billion dollar transit center. The project has been gestating for years. I once had an office at 37 Clementina, which is only about a block away, and I remember the original plan in the late 1980s to bring Caltrain into the city center at 1st and Mission in order to connect to BART and MUNI, establishing a true regional transit hub. The Caltrain extension was deep-sixed by transit planners. Years went by, during which BART was extended to the airport and MUNI extended its N-Judah by building waterfront tracks around to 4th and Townsend (massively subsidizing the Giants' "privately financed" stadium). Now they've resuscitated the Caltrain extension, in order to bring High-Speed Rail into the center of downtown. The profligate waste of resources is breathtaking. But as long as engineering firms and contractors and building trades workers are all keeping busy, it's good for the economy right?

Anyway, as we go through our daily lives it's easy to not see the little patches of nature struggling to gain a foothold in the aptly named concrete jungle. I spoke to O'Brien on Wednesday and learned a bit about his long service at this deeply layered historical site. He told me when he showed up in 1958 there were just brown patches where today there is dense foliage and tall trees. I went to look for old photos at the Main Library's online collection, and as you can see from these pictures, the spots that Stephen has been maintaining have always been "green," albeit nothing like what he's helped them become.

In this December 27, 1939 photo taken in the first year of the Transbay Terminal's operation, you can see the two garden spots laid out from the beginning. (Photo courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library.)

By August 10, 1964, Stephen O'Brien had been watering and attending this garden for almost six years. (Photo courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library.)

October 8, 2009, just months before demolition.

O'Brien has an interesting history himself. He's got an Irish name but on his mother's side of the family, he has an English grandfather and a German grandmother. His English grandfather once owned a dairy ranch on the western slopes of Mt. Tamalpais before selling it off for $500! O'Brien grew up in Tomales Bay, and as a young man he jumped at the chance to purchase a lot in the newly subdivided Inverness back in the 1940s: $25 down and $25 a month until he'd paid off the $1,000 price. Today his lot is the only one left in Inverness that hasn't had a house built on it.

He told me about the barber who used to have his business inside the Terminal. After helping him sink his plumbing O'Brien got free haircuts for a long time. There used to be three different restaurants inside too, including the James Gray Company restaurant, and shoeshine and shoe repair were also thriving businesses there. Continental Trailways bus service once used the station in competition with Greyhound, just as other train lines once ran across the Bay Bridge along with the Key System, until the Bay Bridge was converted to motorized vehicles only.

O'Brien was in the basement a few years ago and saw that the vast underground space was still as good as new. Nevertheless, it's all coming down soon. He noted that the rebuilding of the Fremont Street ramps from the Bay Bridge had probably saved his gardens for an extra seven or eight years. The gnarly pine tree closest to First Street was saved from a nearby State Building, when O'Brien transplanted it from a discarded planter. It's grown to be 20 feet tall and while it's oddly shaped there's no denying that is seems to be thriving with its roots in the ground! The twin pines at either end of the Terminal were planted more than 45 years ago and though they've grown rather tall, they're dwarfed by the skyscrapers that have continued the southward march from downtown. O'Brien told me about the various birds, LBB's, gulls, hawks, and pigeons that have made this mini-habitat a resting spot. Varieties of butterflies have found a home here too.

The eastern end of the Terminal plaza.

The Millennium tower dwarfing the 45-year-old pine tree at Fremont and Mission.

To the west, this ungainly monster dominates a hearty pine tree that was saved from a discarded planter by Stephen O'Brien.

Who remembers that the highrise in the photo above was built on the site of the old arcade known as "Fun Terminal"? The same "Fun Terminal" that gave its name to the seminal album by local rockers The Mutants back in the early 1980s?...

Fun Terminal! Right across 1st Street from O'Brien's Garden back in the 1970s-80s.

Stephen was philosophical about losing his half-century's work. It makes him sad, of course. O'Brien's gardens have survived in surprised juxtaposition to the changing neighborhood that surround them. Easy to overlook, his gardens are larger examples of the persistence of nature even in a highly built environment. For those of us who haven't noticed the garden spots as we've scurried by, preoccupied with the day's work or the domestic dramas ahead, their imminent disappearance (they will no longer be maintained, but should stand for a few months more at least) might serve as a cautionary note. Shouldn't we stop and smell the flowers? And shouldn't we honor the essential work of the invisible toilers in our midst, people like Stephen O'Brien who has selflessly and without ulterior motive kept these little patches of urban greenery flourishing for decades? Stop by today and say thanks to Stephen O'Brien!

In 1953, pigeons had the roost of the lawn... (Photo courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library)

Going, going, ...

November 1965 view looking southeast over the Transbay Terminal. (Photo courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library.)

Terminal History

San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal was built in 1939 at 1st and Mission Streets as a California Toll Bridge Authority facility in order to facilitate commuter rail travel across the lower portion of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.  It was paid for by Bay Bridge tolls, which were then 50 cents per automobile.  At the time, the lower deck of the Bay Bridge was not only used for automobile travel, but also hosted two rail tracks on the south side. The rail portion was run principally through the Key System.

The Terminal was designed to handle as many as 35 million people annually with a peak 20-minute rate of 17,000 commuters that were transported in 10-car trains at headways of 63.5 seconds. In its heyday at the end of World War II, the terminal’s rail system was transporting 26 million passengers annually. After the war ended and gas rationing was eliminated, the Terminal’s use began to steadily decline to a rate of four to five million people traveling by rail per year. In 1958, the lower deck of the Bay Bridge was converted to automobile traffic only, the Key System was dismantled, and by 1959, the inter-modal Transbay Terminal was converted into a bus-only facility, which it currently is today.  (from the Transbay Center website)

Though the site reminds you that it's still in beta and needs your feedback to make it better, they've done a great job linking you to beautiful hikes and day trips without the need to sit in bridge traffic. By partnering with 511.org, the site uses up-to-the-minute transit information to make your trip planning as convenient as possible. Please check it out and let the site managers know if there are bugs to work out or content they are missing.

Also, if you're headed out this weekend for a hike, why don't you see how well the route planner works and let us know the results.

Data SF App Showcase

Not to be outdone in the cool use of data department, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced a new facet of the city's Data SF website, this one showcasing the various applications that have been created for computers and mobile devices using city data sources.

"We are trying to turn San Francisco’s government into an organizing platform for civic engagement by giving our residents the tools to build the kind of government that works for them," said Mayor Newsom. "This is just the beginning. We hope creative developers will build countless more apps never dreamed of in City Hall."

In addition to faves like Routesy, the app showcase has several applications that map crime data and one that tracks cabs.  Pretty good use of city data so far, though we're still anxious to see a cool application expanding on the city's bicycle map, perhaps featuring user feedback on routes, major potholes, etc. Does that already exist, Streetsbloggers?

Oaklan Airport BART Station rendering. Image: BART

Transit advocates and community groups have filed a complaint (PDF) with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), charging that BART has not complied with federal civil rights obligations in its planning of the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC). The move by Public Advocates Inc. on behalf of TransForm, Urban Habitat and Genesis, comes after concerns over the controversial project fell on deaf ears at both BART and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 

In its current form, the 3.2-mile OAC is projected to cost between $522 million and $552 million, with a six-dollar one-way fare, and no stops between its start point at the Oakland Coliseum BART station and its terminus at Oakland International Airport. 

Since BART will be using federal dollars to pay for the project, including stimulus funds, it is required to comply with the FTA's civil rights regulations. The complaint argues that BART has not properly considered the financial impact the project will have on low-income residents near the proposed airport train, and has not adequately reviewed alternatives, including a proposal by TransForm to run a bus rapid transit line through the corridor instead, at a capital cost of $45-60 million, with a low fare or no fare and one intermediate stop.

The complaint also contends that since BART first evaluated the OAC in 2002, the project's details have changed dramatically. The original proposal, as evaluated at that time, included multiple intermediate stops, a much lower fare, and a higher price tag. As part of this review, a "Quality Bus" was evaluated as an alternative project, but was disregarded partially because of travel time concerns. Since then, significant road improvement projects at the airport have reduced the projected travel time for buses, but BART has not completed an updated review. The bus option was also evaluated without intermediate stops, diminishing projections for increased ridership.

Richard Marcantonio, a managing attorney at Public Advocates, said the six-dollar one-way fare, a 100 percent increase from the current three-dollar AirBART bus fare, would make it much harder for low-income airport employees to use the OAC.

A second major issue, he said, is "the fact that the project that was originally brought to the Alameda County voters [in 2000] not only had a much, much smaller price tag [of about $130 million,] but also included intermediate stops so that this project was not just going to benefit people who were going to get on airplanes, but would also benefit people who could get to jobs."

"As part of the re-scoping of the project in order to meet all of the problems it's facing, because of all the financial challenges, they've eliminated those stops. So they never actually did an analysis that compared the current project that they're looking at with any range of feasible alternatives like the one Transform is proposing."

A BART spokesperson said the agency had not yet thoroughly reviewed the complaint and had no comment at present.

The complaint cites an email from BART staff demonstrating that the TransForm proposal was never seriously evaluated. The complaint said the email, dated May 8, 2009, from OAC project manager Thomas Dunscombe, "urged four separate BART consultants to provide any information 'to put holes in' and 'discredit this 'paper',' stating that 'another delay from the [BART] Board and we are practically dead.'" The email was obtained by TransForm from BART through California's Public Records Act.

Over the protests of TransForm and other community organizations, the MTC approved the allocation of $140 million to the OAC in July, including $70 million in federal stimulus funds, after BART presented a funding plan that included pursuing a Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loan for up to $150 million. Transit advocates have charged that this will strap BART with too much additional debt at a time when it's struggling to maintain its current operations. Advocates for AC Transit riders have also expressed frustration that flexible components of the funding aren't being used to maintain existing service, which is being dramatically cut due to budget shortfalls.

Marcantonio was hopeful that the Obama Administration's recent call for a renewed focus on civil rights law enforcement in federal agencies will bode well for the complaint. "One of the points that was made is that they have urged all of the federal agencies to get back in the business of enforcing Title VI," said Marcantonio. "That's in fact exactly the enforcement power we're invoking with this complaint."

The FTA will complete an investigation within 180 days if it accepts the complaint, and could withhold ARRA funds and the TIFIA loan if it decides BART has not adequately reviewed alternatives to the project, and its impacts on neighboring low-income communities. In that scenario, BART could be forced to complete an updated review, and fully consider alternatives.

Fairgoers
in Minnesota depart a private charter bus that benefited from federal
rules barring competition with public transit agencies. (Photo: Star-Trib)

The rule, finalized last year, has forced Washington D.C.’s Metrobus to stop providing free buses to Redskins football games and blocked Indianapolis’ transit agency from offering lower-cost service to the town’s famed Indy 500 car race.

This
year, it’s Minnesota State Fair attendees who are contending with
privatized bus service that left them waiting for hours and caused
"ugly scenes," as the local Star-Tribune reports today.

The rule was intended to shield "private charter operators from unfair competition by
federally subsidized public transit agencies," as the Bush administration wrote in its initial regulatory justification. 

As
a result, public transit agencies were barred from offering bus
services to special events if a private company was able to do the job
instead. The rule prompted outcries from the American Public Transportation Association, but it has yet to be overturned by the Obama administration.

In
a June letter to senior members of the House transportation committee,
19 lawmakers — three of them Republican — asked for the rule to be
reversed in the next long-term federal infrastructure bill. From the
letter, spearheaded by Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and David Dreier (R-CA):

By
making public transit agencies ineligible to provide what has always
been considered public transit service, this ill-advised [Federal
Transit Administration] rulemaking contradicts federal goals to
encourage public transportation to alleviate traffic congestion and
improve air quality nationwide.

Charter bus service is reserved and exclusive service to
events, many of which are traditionally open only to a select group.
Service open to any member of the public to board and ride, without
advance reservation, to a public event has always been considered
public service and that definition should be restored.

That long-term infrastructure bill is likely to be delayed for at least a year at the request
of the White House, however. The question is whether the FTA is willing
to undo the pro-privatization rule on its own before the bill is taken
up.

(thanks to commenter Brad on the Transport Politic for the link)

SamTrans - the buses and paratransit vehicles that run the length of El Camino Real between Palo Alto and Daly City, traverse the Santa Cruz mountains, and service San Francisco's financial district - is preparing to raise fares and reduce service on some bus lines and eliminate other lines in order to close a $28.4 million budget gap.

SamTrans serves more than 15 million riders annually through its 339 regular buses and its Redi-Wheels and RediCoast (Paratransit) vehicles. Its fixed-route bus system currently consists of 54 routes.

The financial crisis forced SamTrans Deputy CEO Chuck Harvey to present several options to close the gap at a San Mateo County Transit District Board of Directors meeting August 12 and arrive at a preliminary operating budget of $136.5 million for the 2010 fiscal year.

Harvey presented options for achieving 7.5 percent, 10 percent, and 15 percent savings. "To get to 15 percent savings, it's wholesale amputation," he said.

To achieve 15 percent savings Harvey proposed: reducing service on up to 22 lines and eliminating 17 lines; increasing adult, youth, and discounted fares by 25 cents or more; and eliminating the 15 percent discount on the SamTrans pass with the purchase of a Muni sticker.

"It is indeed a cruel twist of fate that brings us here today," said Board of Directors Chairwoman Zoe Kersteen-Tucker. "More than ever, we need to reduce our dependence on cars, yet we are facing a significant crushing deficit, and we cannot look to the state to help us out at least for the next four years."

Citizens argued for the retention of affordable fares and the routes they depend on. Laura Loringer, a disabled bus rider, testified on behalf of herself and other disabled riders, urging SamTrans not to raise fares for the disabled. "Some of us are on fixed incomes," she said.

"What is Schwarzenegger doing to us?" asked William Farrell, another disabled rider. "We need these buses. For the love of God, make the right choices."

The current cost of a discounted monthly pass is $22. The proposed cost is $32.

The transit agency's budget problem has also been compounded by the loss of $39.2 million from the State Transit Assistance fund, which was gutted by Governor Schwarzenegger and the Legislature.

Other members of the public testified on behalf of public school students and community college students who depend on the buses to get their schools or out of concern for the environment.

"The express bus service is one of the most effective methods for improving air quality," testified Amir Fanai, a San Mateo County resident. For four years, Fanai has been taking the NX express bus from Redwood Shores to his job with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in San Francisco, but the NX is now on the chopping block. "By eliminating the NX, many fellow passengers would have to drive," he said.

Fanai has also written to President Barack Obama asking that stimulus money be released for the operational costs of transit agencies.

According to Randy Rentschler, spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area has received a total of about $500 million in transportation stimulus dollars, $340 million of which has gone to transit. According to SamTrans Public Information Officer Christine Dunn, SamTrans received $7.8 million. Three million of that has been set aside for new buses, $4 million for maintenance, and $788,000 for paratransit buses - and none of those monies have been directly put into operations.

Michael Dolder, interim city manager for Half Moon Bay, questioned whether or not the agency had complied with the California Environmental Quality Act and the MTC Regional Transportation Plan 2035. Dolder was particularly concerned about proposals to eliminate the 17 line which runs between Montara State Beach and Santa Cruz, and is one of only two lines to serve the coast side of San Mateo County south of Pacifica.

"After a thorough review," he wrote in a letter to the Board of Directors, "staff has concluded that the document does not provide sufficient factual and scientific data to support the decision to adopt a negative declaration for this project."

However, BART Board Director and Livably City Executive Director Tom Radulovich said CEQA "is a strange document" and "not a very good planning tool if you're trying to plan for sustainability."

CEQA, he noted, is weak in terms of the evaluation of carbon dioxide emissions, and performance for transit riders, and it permits exemptions for transit agencies that declare fiscal emergencies such as the San Mateo County Transit District and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (Muni).

The public can submit comments to the SamTrans Board of Directors until September 2 at changes@samtrans.com.

Flickr photo: schlick33

Despite gridlock expected on the roads as hundreds of thousands of BART riders move to other transit operators or their cars, Caltrans doesn't plan to alter its traffic management across the Bay Bridge.

"At this point we're going to operate within our standard traffic management. We're going to adjust metering lights as is necessary," said Caltrans District 4 spokesperson Lauren Wonder. She noted that Caltrans engineers would be out monitoring traffic throughout the day starting on Monday and for the duration of the strike in order to gauge the traffic impacts as they arise. "We are looking at possibly changing hours on HOV lanes, but if you make it too restrictive, you might alienate a portion of the community and make those other mixed flow lanes even more crowded."

While she didn't rule out the possibility of converting a mixed-flow lane into a transit-only lane if deemed appropriate by Caltrans engineers, that option is not expected, said Wonder, in part because AC Transit and other transit operators are running at near-capacity conditions and don't have that many more buses to put into service.

"You have to look at the big picture and if a transit-only lane would result in more overall traffic," she said.

AC Transit spokesperson Clarence Johnson said his agency expects to beef up its service and put every available bus and driver to work, particularly along BART corridors and the Transbay route, to "help commuters cope with the paralyzing impact of the walkout." The agency has worked with Caltrans, the City of Oakland, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) to temporarily convert the West Grand Avenue on-ramp to the Bay Bridge into HOV and bus-only, thus facilitating buses on their entry to the bridge past the horrendous back-up expected at the toll plazas.

MTC spokesperson John Goodwin echoed Wonder's concern that converting a whole lane across the Bay Bridge to transit-only might not have the desired effect of expediting travel given the dearth of buses to use it. Goodwin also said there was no way they would convert a vehicle lane to a bicycle lane, suggesting instead that cyclists use the various ferry services to get across the bay. All ferries can be found at 511.org, though Goodwin noted that East Bay Ferries and Baylink Ferries had already committed to adding service during the strike.

Goodwin and Wonder both encouraged riders to make use of formal and casual carpooling options, which can be found at 511's rideshare page, as well as Park and Ride and BART parking lots, which will be open and free in various locations and will be served by AC Transit.

When asked if a mandatory carpool option would be considered, as was done in New York City after the September 11th attacks, Wonder said no option was off the table, but she highly doubted any such action would be taken. "I don't think that a mandatory carpool has ever happened before, even with Loma Prieta."

In San Francisco, where traffic will be untenable if BART riders choose to drive in large numbers, there are no plans to create additional temporary transit-only lanes.

"We're going to be working closely with our PCOs and the traffic deployment to keep crucial transit corridors open," said MTA spokesperson Judson True. "For us, it's all hands on deck and we're going to do the best we can given the challenging situation."

BART Director Tom Radulovich said he had heard some talk of BART running shuttles through the Transbay Tube with managers at the helm, but that there were no concrete plans. He said he had also heard BART could consider paying for private bus companies to transport customers across the Bay Bridge. BART spokesperson Linton Johnson had not responded to our requests for clarification by the time of this writing.

Radulovich stressed that San Francisco's downtown will be a mess if agencies don't coordinate to manage the streets intelligently. "The worst outcome would be everyone drives and clogs downtown streets, then the limited transit that is running won't be able to move.  Unless there's proactive management of our streets and the Bay Bridge, that's exactly what's going to happen."

MTC's Goodwin said his agency has been working for months planning for a strike, which could have come when BART's contracts expired at the end of June. "I wish there was more that could be done, but in light of the budget squeeze, there's only so much. In the past, we might have been able to make up the difference for the transit operators with the State Transit Assistance Fund, but that was slashed in the last state budget negotiations."

"This is going to be an inconvenience for a lot of people, but it's not going to be a catastrophe," he added. "People in the Bay Area have proved over and over again, from the fire on the [MacArthur Maze] exchange in 2007 to the Loma Prieta earthquake, they are resilient. My advice is: plan ahead, pack your patience, you're going to get where you're going."

The lights on Market are timed so that Muni's buses and streetcars stop at red lights, load and unload passengers, and move on when the light turns green. But when cars stop in front of them on a red light, buses can't pull up to the island, and must wait until the light turns green to pull into the transit island. By the time they've finished loading and unloading passengers, the light is red again.

Such violations are rampant in San Francisco, based on interviews with Muni bus and streetcar operators, who insisted on anonymity, and observations by Streetsblog San Francisco.

Driving in a transit-only lane is an offense subject to a $60 fine, according to the city's traffic code. But ask a Muni driver whether they ever see cars in the city's 17 miles of transit-only lanes, and you'll likely hear an unequivocal response: "Oh yeah, all the time." That, more or less, is what nearly every Muni driver surveyed for this story said when asked whether private automobiles get in their way on stretches of streets like Market and Mission that have transit-only lanes. "That's the norm," said one operator.

Cars are in the transit-only lanes on "every run," said another Muni operator, who drives the 71-Haight and uses the transit-only lanes on Market Street. "People want to go on time. How we going to be on time? How can you be on time when all these people are in the bus lane?"

Many of the drivers attributed the rampant violations to a lack of enforcement. "There's no police around. They're supposed to be taking care of that, especially the motorcycle police," said one bus operator.

The San Francisco Police Department's Traffic Company and Muni Response Team are in fact responsible for enforcing transit-only lane violations by moving vehicles.

A bus trails a driver on Mission Street who has ignored the transit-only sign.

Muni operators we spoke to are split on whether they've ever actually seen a motorist ticketed or warned for driving in transit-only lanes. Many F-line historic streetcar operators said they had witnessed occasional stings on Market Street. Nearly all Market Street and Mission Street bus drivers said they had not witnessed officers giving tickets for such violations.

The SFPD does conduct "focused enforcement" operations "several times per year," in areas that receive the most complaints, said Sgt. Wilfred Williams, a police department spokesperson.

Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, said Muni is dependent on the SFPD to enforce cars driving in the transit-only lanes. "Those are moving violations, and we don't know how big a priority the police make of enforcing those lanes."

The Municipal Transportation Agency, Muni's parent agency, is not authorized to ticket moving vehicles, but it has taken steps to crack down on vehicles parked in transit-only lanes. In January 2008, it began a pilot program that allows Muni to place forward-facing cameras on the fronts of its buses to detect parking violations in transit-only lanes, and issue $250 parking citations based on video evidence.

"The authority of the pilot is granted only until January 1, 2012 and requires that the City and County of San Francisco present an evaluation to the transportation committees of the Legislature on or before March 1, 2011," MTA spokesperson Judson True explained in an email to Streetsblog. As of June, 636 citations had been issued.

The MTA could not provide statistics on transit-only lane enforcement or violations, but former SPUR transportation director Dave Snyder said it isn't hard to see there's a problem. "Just based on what I see out there, I think it matters a lot on the street, like enforcing transit lanes on Market Street, where you can sit there and watch buses not get a chance to pull into the bus stop because there's cars illegally in the transit lane. That's obviously a problem."

In 2004, as part of its Market Street Action Plan, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA) recommended the bus-mounted camera pilot program, which is now underway, as well as transferring responsibility for transit-lane moving violation enforcement directly to the MTA by February 2006. That would require legislative action, and has yet to happen.

The good news for enforcement is that, as Streetsblog reported recently, the MTA and the SFPD recently came to an agreement giving the MTA more control over the SFPD's Traffic Company, meaning the MTA could prioritize transit lane enforcement, though it still cannot enforce moving violations directly.

Will transit-only lane enforcement become a genuine priority for the SFPD's Traffic Company? Flickr photo: Thomas Hawk

Tony Parra, the SFPD Deputy Chief and director of Security and Enforcement for the MTA, said he's given instructions to the SFPD's Traffic Company to regularly enforce transit-only lanes. "I have given direction to [Traffic Company Commanding Officer] Captain Gregory Corrales, that our officers, throughout their daily patrol and when traveling to their assignments, are to keep the transit-only lanes open for Muni, and to enforce it as often as possible."

"What I'm trying to achieve here is regular maintenance. So not just the focused, or a canvassing of certain areas one time a year. I would like this year-round type of coverage. This should be a regular portion of the traffic enforcement's duties, and not just some type of enforcement blitz, and then we lax up on it in between."

Parra said he hopes to improve the Traffic Company's record-keeping on transit-only lane enforcement. "I oversee the Traffic Company as of July 1st this year, so we're just starting this, and their statistical personnel are looking at some of the specific requests I've made and I'm waiting to do some comparisons, 30, 60, 90 day comparisons, prior to my taking over the unit."

Though transit-only lane violations clearly remain widespread, Parra said he's received some positive feedback. "I have heard some compliments from some of the bus operators that they have noticed a difference."

As a model for enforcement, San Francisco might look to the East Bay. The Alameda County Sheriff's AC Transit division has gotten attention lately for aggressively enforcing no parking rules along AC Transit routes, and issued over $2 million in tickets last year.

For now, bus drivers are not optimistic that cars will be consistently kept out of the transit-only lanes any time soon. Asked whether more consistent enforcement might keep the transit lanes clear, a 14-Mission driver on his break near the Ferry Building laughed and patted the reporter on the shoulder. "That will be the day," he said.

Yesterday: San Francisco's transit-only lane network is an incomplete vision.