(Just shocking to see Garamendi use the Bay Area as the example here. Worth a read tho. – promoted by Julia Rosen)
California’s San Francisco Bay Area, a beacon for the world’s most ambitious and entrepreneurial, is in some ways a victim of its own success. Decades of regional growth have created a highway and public transportation infrastructure incapable of meeting the demands of commuters.
As a Contra Costa Times editorial recently explained:
“The worsening traffic congestion in the Bay Area is having an increasingly negative impact on the quality of life in the region. The millions of people who commute to work daily lose valuable time, waste gasoline and add to air pollution. Businesses suffer and new enterprises are discouraged from locating in the area, harming the Bay Area economy.”
The average Bay Area driver spends 39 hours each year stuck in traffic on a regional freeway. Average time spent idling in traffic will rise to 72 hours per year by 2035 if present trends continue. For a host of reasons – including the needless pollution, wasted fuel, and loss of time at work or with family – minimizing congestion should be a priority for regional leaders. And when possible, enticing commuters into a carpooling arrangement or public transportation should be encouraged.
Fortunately, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the regional transportation authority, with input from Bay Area leaders and activists, has crafted an ambitious regional transit plan: Transportation 2035.
There’s more over the flip…
One important component of the plan is the development of a network of high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes in the Bay Area, allowing carpool lanes to turn a profit by permitting single-and-double-occupancy commuters the ability to use the underutilized lanes for a variable fee dependent on traffic at the moment.
Presently, a hodgepodge of carpool lanes appear and disappear throughout the Bay Area’s highway grid, forcing carpool drivers to merge into often heavily congested stretches, particularly near intersections. Under the Transportation 2035 plan, 500 miles of carpool lanes would be converted to HOT lanes, while 300 additional miles of HOT lanes would be constructed over the next 25 years. This would help create a smoother commute for carpoolers and newly minted HOT drivers, encouraging elevated carpool usage and reducing congestion in normal lanes. For example, HOT lanes in San Diego increased carpool usage by 53 percent, while HOT lanes in Minneapolis reduced the number of drivers reporting congestion delays by 20 percent.
By generating revenues from willing HOT drivers, the region will have a somewhat reliable source of revenue to work on other transit projects. Some local transportation officials have urged setting aside specific revenues for public transit, and that is a concept worth exploring, but regardless of the exact funding distribution, the region’s transportation infrastructure will clearly be strengthened by granting regional control over these HOT revenues.
While some have raised concerns that HOT lanes give wealthy commuters special access – and this is a criticism I take very seriously – I would argue that broad access and equity in services are best achieved with a package of transportation solutions that includes the expansion of longer distance rapid transit bus service throughout key corridors in East Bay and South Bay counties. The most effective and profitable rapid transit routes reaching more inland regions of the Bay Area will have to be implemented along the proposed HOT lane network to provide a reliable enough commute to convince riders to leave their cars at home. There is nothing rapid about gridlock.
Rapid transit buses, which along city streets allow bus commuters to avoid most traffic lights, have been shown to be popular and effective in the Bay Area and should be considered a low-cost solution in areas where a more speedy public transit commute is desired but rail is impractical. A study of a busy seven-city 14-mile Bay Area route by the Federal Transit Administration determined that the rapid transit line reduced end-to-end travel time by an average of 12 minutes, leading to a 21 percent reduction in time previously spent on local service non-rapid bus lines. Ridership across all areas of the corridor increased by 8.5 percent as a result of the rapid transit line, and most significantly, around 19 percent of rapid transit riders previously used a car for their commute along the corridor, a reduction of around 1,100 auto trips per day.
No matter how strained our purse strings, a continued state and federal investment is crucial to shift our society toward a more public transit-friendly future. Perhaps ironically, the HOTtest way to encourage an increase in bus ridership may depend on making it easier to drive to work.
Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi chairs the Commission for Economic Development and is a former Deputy Interior Secretary.
But I think the emphasis on BRT is misplaced. The Overhead Wire has done some good work on explaining why, for example, Geary BRT is an inferior use of money to a streetcar or light rail. Buses attract fewer riders than light rail (partly because they hold fewer passengers, partly because the public sees buses as impermanent and less efficient), have higher long-term operating costs, and are less effective at changing transportation and development patterns.
Light rail sometimes has higher up-front costs, but is a better investment over the long-term and does more to seed urban density and get people out of their cars.
HOT lanes are a good first step, but what I’d like to see you embrace is a regional gas tax to help fund local operating expenses and seed development of new transit infrastructure. The Bay Area would likely approve such a tax, and wouldn’t have to depend on Republican votes from places like Bakersfield and Orange County in the process.
… is to dedicate the HOT lanes to carpools and buses only. As a matter of basic right and wrong, people should not be able to buy their way out of problems, whether it be HOT lanes or gated “communities” where those able to pay the going rate can partially secede from local government and local problems. HOT lanes are another example of the partial privatization of a public good.
Also, as a matter of common sense, public transit should not be dependent upon auto tolls for revenue when the goal is to get people out of their cars and onto public transit.
One of the problems in the Bay Area is the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). It acts as a gatekeeper of money but does not operate any transit systems. A look at the 19 commissioners of the MTC and what each represents is revealing, particularly for those of us in Solano County. Of the 19, only one is from Solano. He is James P. Spering, a pro-development Republican county supervisor. He represents District 3, a predominately Democratic region made up of large chunks of Democratic Fairfield and Suisun City. (Another example of why non-partisan elections are bad.) Bus service is Fairfield and Suisun City — a contract operation — is atrocious, the details of which belong in a diary of their own, but one example should suffice: the first Fairfield city bus gets to the local AmTrak station about 90 minutes after the first train leaves. The rest of Solano County has zero representation on the MTC. Furthermore, most of the commissioners represent cities, counties, and other governmental agencies. No one directly represents the people as far as I can tell.
Part of the problem is that many local transit systems are run by city governments. The better ones, such as AC Transit, are their own public entities with boards of directors elected by the people. (Yes, I know AC Transit has money problems but HOT lanes have nothing to do with their operating expenses.)
As one who remembers life in the Bay Area before the MTC was created, I assure you the MTC hasn’t been much help. The Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) and AmTrack already provide a regional rail network around which all local public transit operators — independent of city and county politics — can build a route structure as the good ones do. We need more and better public transit but the MTC is not capable of offering that. Only dedicated organizations — such as AC Transit — that own and operate their own rolling stock, employ their operators and mechanics, and set their levels of service can. That is the direction we need to go, not HOT lanes.
Did Garamendi switch parties?
The state is facing draconian cuts to every transit system because of state funding cutbacks and sales tax shortfalls, and Garamendi is parroting Reason Institute talking points?
Toll lanes are an incredibly inefficient way of providing transportation, and can’t even cover the cost of construction and operation, much less generating revenue that would support other transit.
Look at the results of the toll road experiment in Orange County and you’ll see what a failure this concept has been.
Nevertheless, the free lunch piratization crowd keeps pushing these concepts, and fools like Schwarzenegger trumpet their message.
Et tu, John?
Thanks for putting this up there, John, especially the focus on rapid busses. As a longtime resident of Contra Costa, I’ve always been frustrated by the lack of decent express bus service, particularly on the 680 corridor where express busses on HOT lanes could really improve the lives of folks in CD-10 who commute to Silicon Valley.
As to the other comments, there are definately problems with toll lanes in many cases but what is being proposed is based on some of the very successful models (such as Seattle and Minneapolis), not privatization like the toll roads (not HOT lanes) in Orange County. This would actually be a huge boost to transportation in the 10th congressional district and the Bay Area, as a whole.
Keep fighting for us, John, hopefully soon in Washington!