There are too many agencies, each one too myopic and embroiled in local politics to make good decisions - successful large projects seem to be more an accident than anything else.
This is a nice article on what a "utopian" transit strategy might look like:
Some decent urban planning would help as well. For one thing, SF's public transit is poor, it has too many cars, and its bike infrastructure is poor. It should take 15 minutes to get from the Sunset to SoMA by subway, but it takes an hour by antiquated streetcar. And if you try to bike it, you're constantly stopping at lights and sharing streets with cars, instead of on a proper bikeway. Compare Copenhagen for an example of how to do it better.
Also, some more integrated policies would help; the ridiculous fragmentation of municipal governments and transit districts doesn't improve the situation. Why are BART, Muni, Caltrain, AC Transit, and the VTA run in such an uncoordinated manner? Why doesn't BART go down the peninsula? Why are there miles of light rail in the middle of nowhere in Santa Clara County, but not in more dense areas? Why is there no higher-density housing near the Caltrain stations in places like Palo Alto?
The problem isn't transit as much as layout. Build your cities relatively sanely instead of doing whatever the fuck LA does, and most transportation options end up reasonable. Build it as a sprawling, poorly-utilized asphalt stain on the landscape, and your hands are pretty tied.
SF is a pretty mismanaged city in general, but it's telling that complaints about transport are (IME) far less strident than complaints about everything else. There's a floor on how bad your transport experience can be based on the layout of the city: if there as gridlock on every street in San Francisco and all the subways were flooded, I could still easily walk to the equivalent of many, many square miles of a place like LA.
Intuitively and practically, I agree that public transport is worse on in the Bay Area than it is along the Northeast Corridor, but qualifying and quantifying how it's actually different is a challenge. For one, the Bay Area's primary transit backbones are BART and Caltrain [1]; there is a missing link between East Bay and San Jose; there's not enough Transbay options; Oakland is the true hub of the system but not the primary activity center.
Also, most of the activity nodes of the Bay Area are actually close to transit, which paradoxically hurts the efficiently of the system. Traditionally, you'd want each station to be its own hub from a larger catchment area that you'd serve with, say, buses or other transit. But in the Bay Area, because of the Bay and mountains hemming in the built-up areas, every interesting node is already on the One True Circum-Bay String of Pearls, and have minimal catchment areas beyond them.
This also means there is no express option to get from one end to the other, without having to traverse through all intermediate points first, regardless whether that's accomplished with an 'express service' that skips stops, or a transversal direct line.
There is a map in the San Jose Diridon Caltrain station, placed right next to the door across from the ramps. After some searching I found someone who took a photo of it here:
It is a very interesting map because it contains the lines of most of the transit authorities in the Bay Area(apparently not all because transit.511.org has more). There are so many that they have to reuse similar colors for a few of them. There are agencies that you probably have never heard of on that map.
That is a scary thing and indicates the true scale of the transit problem - so many overlapping interests, no central authority. And looking at the transit agencies alone doesn't even give us perspective on how many other bureaucracies are getting in the way.
Really interesting article. I don't live in the Bay Area but I would seriously consider moving there if I knew, for example, that the transit plan mentioned in the article were being adopted:
People, people, the solution to this is a public transit system that is better integrated, efficient, cleaner, and offers 24/7 service. Which will not happen in the Bay Area because of NIMBYism.
Bay area has plenty of density. What it lacks is the ability to get enough momentum that transit works. If we waved a magic wand and suddenly there was a great system (trains, buses...) running around routes that are not hard to design they could have in total lower costs for most people who no longer need to pay for a car.
Even if you waved that magic wand, beware that it will take two years to even have more than a trivial increase in ridership - trivial - not enough to make it wroth the investment. In 20 years you will see a difference, but who can wait 20 years? And this is a full system up and running at once - in the real world things go incrementally which means it is years before the system can even take you enough of the places you want to go fast enough that you would consider selling the car.
Which is why transport is hard to add. It takes upfront investment and then years of hoping people change their living style.
Though I will point out that if California had any notion of cost control they could have their current high speed rail idea actually running the full route. I'm not sure where the problem is but I know by best in world standards they are spending something like 4x as much as it costs. This only makes it harder for any system to get started and self-reinforces the idea that the bay area doesn't have enough density.
When was any transit in California ever utopian? There’s an entirely consistent position that holds urbanism to be a good thing, but views California’s government-run systems as incapable of achieving a functioning system.
You need a certain population density to make mass transit really work (think NYC subways). Having a bay in the middle of the Bay Area makes the math not work. That, and cities' unwillingness to grow.
No way the thing that works literally in every other country on Earth will work (or is possible) in the Bay Area.
No, we should fill the Bay, build more single-family units, and hope that whatever reasons we have for not having functional transit magically won't apply in the newly-minted suburb.
It certainly doesn't help that our only subway covers 1/6th of the city. It seems like most other major cities are constantly investing in transportation infrastructure, and in SF the only large project I can think of is the new Transbay Terminal (which will probably make traffic congestion even worse).
Why does it feel like SF is so tragically mismanaged as a city? Is there something about the location that makes city planning more difficult, or is it just bad governance?
Bay Area mass transit is far from fucked. There's a lot of infrastructure there that, with minor upgrades, could massively improve the situation. Take BART, for example. Not enough trains. Upgrade the system to support more trains and then BUY MORE TRAINS. Suddenly living in Daly City and commuting to SF is feasible.
Anyone interested in this topic should check out the book "Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco". It's a great look at the history of San Francisco's transit network and the political battles that continue to shape it (usually for the worse).
And that's just the situation in SF itself. Consider yourself lucky that BART is even an option. Try going from somewhere not-SF to somewhere else not-SF. Chances are, public transit is not even available, let alone a realistic option. The Bay Area public transit system is a disgrace and a joke. Multiple transit agencies that apparently don't know about each other. Unsynchronized, disconnected, few good ways to transfer from one to the other, and schedules that don't make sense.
Your theory is sound except for one little problem: the Bay Area's transportation system is fucked. FUCKED. Completely, utterly, irredeemably fucked. BART is a joke, MUNI is like a fevered bad dream, Caltrain woefully inadequate.
I find public transportation in the bay area to quite literally be an intractable problem. I've lived here for 31 years and there's been zero, and I mean zero real progress. BART received a warm springs extension and a couple (non-connected) airport trams. The highways are largely unchanged (excluding highway 237, maybe)
NIMBYs in Palo Alto, Atherton, Menlo Park, etc will block any true expansion or creation of public transit on the peninsula.
Reminder: we don't have electrified Caltrain because of Atherton.
Hence, I've made a decision - move elsewhere. Literally anywhere else has better public transportation. NYC/Chicago/Los Angeles/Portland/Seattle/Austin/Miami
I wish it would change, but your best bet is to simply move closer to work here, if that means leaving your single family home in Fremont to a townhome in Sunnyvale.
Another example: There's already rail infrastructure in place parallel to the Dumbarton bridge from Fremont to East Palo Alto / Palo Alto.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_the_San_Franc...
There are too many agencies, each one too myopic and embroiled in local politics to make good decisions - successful large projects seem to be more an accident than anything else.
This is a nice article on what a "utopian" transit strategy might look like:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2012/03/fantasy-tran...
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