That Giant Sucking Sound from San Jose

admin 2024, Regional and Local Governments, Roadways and Traffic

Unfortunately, large and exotic-sounding transportation projects tend to get far more than their share of attention. As a result, large amounts of tax money are often squandered on huge projects instead of being used to advance smaller and more deserving projects.

Take the current situation in San Jose for instance. BATWG recently sent two letters to the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s (VTA’s) new BART Phase II Steering Committee encouraging it to consider all aspects of the BART Phase II program and indicating a number of important questions of long standing in need of straight answers. Here’s an update:

The last official cost of the VTA’s original twin bore tunneling option was $4.69 billion, as set forth in the DEIS released in March of 2017. Since the FEIS was released in 2018, the VTA’s cost of first the 43-foot single bore option and then the 54-foot single bore option has gone from $6.9 billion to $9.1 billion to the current $12.2 billion, an amount that is almost certain to continue to rise.

If, as some believe, the twin bore tunnel option were to come in at $3 to $5 billion less than the five-story high single bore tunnel option, it would necessitate a careful and objective re-evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of both options Unfortunately, in its habitually insular fashion, the VTA has never seen fit to release a definitive capital and operating cost breakdown of the two options. So at this point, no one knows for sure which option would be less troublesome. Current issues:

  1. A bonafide cost comparison of the two, together with an updated evaluation of the pros and cons of each, particularly regarding subgrade and other financial risks, is therefore warranted at this time.

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Tweaking Vision Zero

admin 2024, Regional and Local Governments

On December 19, 2023 the SF Chronicle, in an article by Nora Mishanec, shined the spotlight on the failings of SF’s City Government’s much ballyhooed Vision Zero program.

The program was instituted in 2013 with the objective of reducing the traffic fatalities in San Francisco to zero “within a decade”. Well, here we are 10 years later, and the traffic fatality rate remains pretty much as it did before the program was initiated.

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Level Boarding for Caltrain? Or Stairs Forever?

admin 2024, Rail and Bus Systems

Is Caltrain poised to make another big mistake?

Level boarding station platforms speeds things up. BART has level boarding so its riders can enter and leave the trains faster and more safely than if they had to use stairs. This makes it possible for much shorter dwell times at stations and therefore significant time savings for everyone.

Caltrain’s 192 new Stadler electrified cars are equipped to facilitate level boarding. So, when Caltrain’s 2023 and 2024 budgets included allocations directed to getting the level boarding platforms built, people rejoiced, because it was assumed that meant eventual level boarding for everyone. But apparently not. The current plan seems to be that there will be level boarding at only one door per train, to improve wheelchair access. Good handicapped access is fine, but what about everyone else? Instead of action it appears that the Caltrain staff is currently sitting on its collective hands while its spokespeople make excuses. One hears:

“You can’t go to level boarding without shutting down existing train service”. False. Temporary curb-height stations located just south or just north of the construction site would continue to keep the trains running while the new high-level stations were being built.

“There’s not enough money”. There never is, unless an effort is made to find it. The State and federal governments both helped pay to give the Stadler cars the capability of operating with either curb height platforms or level boarding platforms. Chances are they’d look favorably on a request to put this expensive added on-car feature to good use.

Caltrain ridership is now roughly one third of what it was pre-COVID. So, while the trains are shorter, now is the time move ahead with a level boarding construction program. Deferring action would only compound the problem.

Why do Big Public Projects Cost So Much, Take So Long and Yield So Little?

admin 2024, Rail and Bus Systems, Regional and Local Governments

A Compendium of Trouble Spots

When it comes to developing major infrastructure projects, the performance of the Large Bay Area Transportation Agencies has been lackluster at best. It’s easy to write this off as inexperience, too many cooks in the broth, unwillingness to admit error, or plain incompetence. And those factors are unfortunately often present. But that’s not the whole story.

Here are a few of the largely ignored trouble spots:

Outreach: It is necessary to give people an opportunity to respond to proposed public actions. That’s what outreach used to mean. But in recent years it’s become much more than just giving interested parties an opportunity to weigh in. Instead, a great deal of effort (sometimes costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees) is often put into asking everyone in sight what he or she wants by way of new transit. Does someone who hasn’t ridden a bus for 30 years have a good answer to such a question? Does someone worried about his job or sick child or looking forward to next Thursday’s bocce ball match? Probably not, but if the question is asked, people will try to answer it in some fashion. What is the value of this kind of off-the-top “input”? Answer: minimal.

Instead of beating the bushes to elicit as much abstract comment as possible, a better approach would be to first develop concepts sufficient to give people something to respond to, and then reach out broadly to let those who are interested have an opportunity to speak or write their opinions. This kind of outreach would improve its quality and usefulness and likely cost much less.

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AC Transit:  Nowhere to Go but Up – Report Number Two

admin 2024, Rail and Bus Systems

In 2022, AC Transit carried a total of 91,565 weekday riders, down from 175,575 weekday riders in 2013. AC Transit operates 131 bus lines. As indicated in the table below, AC’s top 20 lines carried a total of 75,620 riders a weekday. That means that the remaining 111 lines averaged only 144 riders a weekday. This dismal number explains why one constantly sees virtually empty 40 foot and even 80-foot long AC Transit buses lumbering through the streets of the East Bay.

In an effort to address this problem, AC Transit is currently planning a set of route changes scheduled to be implemented next August. Since those managing the rerouting program are too busy to talk to us, here are several BATWG observations, some of which have been made before.

  • Table 1: Top 20 lines with highest daily ridership

    As indicated in the Table, Routes 1T, 51B, 40 and 51A are all carrying a respectable 5,000 riders a day or more. What is it about those five lines that makes them do so much better than the rest of the system? What sets them apart? Those engaged in planning the new route changes should take a very close look at these routes and determine what makes them standouts.

  • Surveying and encouraging input from only today’s riders greatly reduces AC Transit’s ability to attract new riders.
  • AC has always had a tendency to route its buses directly to every potential destination along the way. To achieve this purpose many of the routes have ended up zig zagged. No doubt, those bound for the intended enroute destinations are delighted. However, the zig zagging also strongly detours anyone who wants to get anywhere else with reasonable dispatch. Zig zagging, including the zig zagging that tends to take place in and around “transit centers”, does not help ridership. Buses do not zig zag well.
  • People must be able to find both the routes and their bus stops. Across the Bay, SF Muni has many problems. But its routes are easy to find and easy to understand. Many of AC’s routes are not easy to find and therefore not so easy to use. There are many ways, some requiring intensive discussions with various local jurisdictions, that could improve the situation. Returning some one-way streets to two-way streets should not be ruled out. In the heady days of the past when it was thought that automobiles made every other form of surface travel obsolete, many cities including Oakland turned many two-way streets into one-way streets with nary a thought given to how the changes would impact the affected bus lines. It’s not too late to correct the mistakes of the past.

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BART’s Link 21 Project: Update 

admin 2024, Rail and Bus Systems

Absent State and federal temporary bailouts, which are scheduled to run out in 2026, BART is currently operating at a deficit of $300 million a year, in large part because its ridership has dropped by 60%. Yet BART’s $850 million Link 21 design is still chugging along as if the monumental travel changes brought on by the pandemic are irrelevant.

In fact, despite the huge drop in BART’s transbay ridership, the Link 21 focus to date has been on planning a second transbay rail tube between Oakland and San Francisco. As last count, at least $115 million had been spent to that end, with little of substance to show for the continuing stream of BART payments being made to its five Link 21 prime consultants. Nothing that is, unless one counts the multitudinous meetings asking people what they want, the excruciatingly long and endlessly repeated reports about process, the series of “high level” presentations to the BART Board singing the praises of the project and rosy-sounding PR releases.

Despite all this, and despite our efforts, BART has unaccountably failed to answer the most fundamental question of all; namely, does it any longer make sense to spend $45 billion or more on a second subaqueous rail connection between Oakland and San Francisco?

Despite the lack of discernible product and the unanswered questions, Link 21 continues to inch ahead.  If for reasons so far unstated, the project can nevertheless be justified, one can only hope that henceforth there will be a better nexus between the taxpayer dollars spent and useful product than has occurred during the first four years of the project.