As seen on on NBC Bay Area
2018
Save Muni calls on SF Board of Supervisors to hold the SFMTA to Account
May 4, 2018
Mayor Farrell and Supervisors,
Save Muni urges the Board of Supervisors to take the unprecedented step of rejecting the MTA’s 2019-2020 budget and returning it to the MTA for adjustment.
We believe that staffing and budget increases for this one department are not warranted given the limits placed on other city department… Continue reading
Improving AC Transit’s Overall Bus Operation
Improving AC Transit’s Overall Bus Operation: Since 2000 AC Transit’s ridership has declined substantially and remains under 200,000 riders a day (about a fourth of Muni’s ridership) when it should be attracting at least 325,000 riders a day. Is this possible? Yes, but it will take some changes at AC. Some of the routes are fine; others are unnecessarily meandering and hard to use. AC’s maps are notoriously hard to read and AC’s PR program leaves a lot to be desired. For one thing, instead of focusing on how its buses are fueled, AC Transit should be helping its riders and would-be riders to use its system efficiently and it should be singing the praises of its “Next Bus” ap, which is making bus travel much easier and more convenient. See BATWG’s Proposed Improvements for AC Transit.
Bay Area Traffic Gridlock is Third Worst in the Nation
Bay Area traffic gridlock is the third worst in the Nation, topped only by Los Angeles and Honolulu. Was this dismal situation inevitable?
No….it resulted from decades of bad local and regional transportation decisions. Can things improve? We think so, but it will take time and a whole new way of addressing regional transportation problems. Read BATWG’s 10 important steps that should be taken to clean up the mess.
Bay Area Public Transit Systems
To encourage more transit use the non-automotive alternative must be fast, comfortable and efficient. For this to happen the agencies listed below must coordinate their services for the benefit of Bay Area transit users. Sometimes one hears from local officials that getting the agencies to work together is impossible. BATWG rejects this defeatist idea. Regionally coordinated transit services have been achieved elsewhere and can be done here as well.
Bay Area Express Lanes – a Step Backward
We are told that Express Lanes will let us neatly bypass congestion. It you think that sounds too good to be true, you’d be right. HOT lanes (now euphemistically called “Express Lanes”) sound good. But here’s the rest of the story: The Interstate Highway System was launched by President Eisenhower in 1956. For a while the emphasis on auto travel worked, but it wasn’t long before the freeway backups and the urban traffic impacts began to cause problems. By the early 1960’s some city dwellers, San Franciscans for instance, were strongly resisting attempts to jam brutal elevated freeways through their sensitive urban districts. By the early 1970’s it was widely recognized that expanded freeways always brought more traffic that eventually caused harried freeway users to end up with the same freeway backup misery as before and the traffic congestion in the cities at the ends of the freeways to be even worse than before. Continue reading
Bay Area Transportation Working Group 