1. Oakland’s Main Line: Depressing the 1.3 mile section of Main Line between Lindon and Fallon Streets would yield a variety of benefits, including more expeditious freight rail and passenger travel through downtown Oakland, reduced conflicts between traffic and trains and better access to the Estuary.
2018
Bay Area Rail – High Priority Programs
1. BART: In 2017 the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, sometimes called “the transportation work horse of the Region”, averaged 429,000 riders a weekday. BART operates on its own exclusive right-of-way and is usually quite reliable. However, until recently BART often seemed more focused on politically-inspired extensions than in attending to its core system. Here are some needed improvements
RAB and DTX: A Letter to the S.F. Board of Supervisors
The below letter, which was hand-delivered to the SF Board of Supervisors on September 4, 2018, outlines the damage to San Francisco that would be caused by relocating Caltrain’s 4th and King rail yard to some distant location and/or by delaying the extension of Caltrain into the new SF Terminal. Please feel free to contact any of us if there are questions or a need for discussion.
Dear Supervisors,
It is our understanding that the S.F. Board of Supervisors will shortly be called upon to approve the Department of City Planning’s Rail Alignment Benefit (RAB) Report. As you evaluate it, please consider the following:
The RAB planners have been planning the full build-out of Mission Bay for over four years. They have used up their $1.7 million budget and are now looking for add-on work. Most of the RAB proposals, first revealed by the Chronicle’s Matier and Ross on May 18, 2015 and first publicly presented by RAB on February 23, 2016, have since been quietly dropped. Two remain:
Muni Meltdown 2018 – Planning for Failure
With excerpts from Joe Eskenazi’s August 7, 2018 Article in Mission Local
“Muni (i.e. the SFMTA) is finding creative new ways to blow up the system. Documents obtained by Mission Local reveal that shunting buses off their runs to serve as shuttles during the Twin Peaks tunnel closure has resulted in service cuts of up to 33 percent on San Francisco’s most crowded lines. In the age of social media, riding on public transit isn’t what brings us together anymore in San Francisco. Rather, it’s complaining about riding on public transit that unites us.”
RM3 Aproved…..the Aftermath
RM3 was accepted by the voters of the Bay Area on June 5, 2018. This has created a gigantic $4.45 billion slush fund for regional planners to dispense. Considering that the “Yes on RM3” side outspent the “No” side by least 250 to 1 and yet won by a scant 53.9%, the “Yes” side has little to cheer about. Especially since the votes for successive regional transportation funding measures have been dropping.
As might be expected, non-bridge users voted mostly for RM3 and frequent bridge users voted mostly against it. All else aside, RM3 was patently unfair in terms of who pays and who gets the proceeds of the bridge toll increases.
Last Year’s SB1 Gas Tax Increase: Yes or No
SB1:
SB1 was enacted by the State of California on April 28, 2017. Per
SB1, beginning on November 1, 2017 Californians started paying an
additional twelve cents a gallon for gasoline and an additional twenty cents
a gallon for diesel fuel. SB1 also provides that beginning on July 1, 2020
these taxes will rise with inflation.
Where will the SB1 money go? According to an April 28, 2017 article in
the Sacramento Bee, 70% of the funds raised by SB1 will go to the
Roadway Maintenance and Rehabilitation Program, State highways and
local streets and roads, with the remainder divided up among public transit,
goods movement, traffic-reduction measures, bicycle/ pedestrian
improvements and miscellaneous administrative and other uses.
Bay Area Transportation Working Group 