STAFF REPORT
TRANSPORTATION
AND THE
SAN FRANCISCO BAY
December 22, 2005
SAN FRANCISCO BAY CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION
50 California Street, Suite 2600
San Francisco, CA 94111
Information: ( 415) 352- 3600
Fax: ( 415) 352- 3606
Web site: http:// www. bcdc. ca. gov
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CONTENTS
ADOPTED BAY PLAN TRANSPORTATION FINDINGS AND POLICIES........................................ 1
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................... 5
CHAPTER 1. TRANSPORTATION CONDITIONS IN THE BAY AREA........................................ 11
Transportation Pressures on the Bay ................................................................... 12
Transportation Planning in The Bay Area .......................................................... 13
Transportation Trends............................................................................................ 15
The Bay Area Commute......................................................................................... 17
CHAPTER 2. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRANSPORTATION AND LAND USE..................... 23
Transit- Oriented Development............................................................................. 23
CHAPTER 3. WALKING AND CYCLING ........................................................................................ 27
Walking and Cycling for Transportation Purposes .......................................... 27
Bay Area Regional Systems and Trends ............................................................. 29
CHAPTER 4. BRIDGES AND ROADWAYS.................................................................................... 37
Building of the Bridges........................................................................................... 37
Existing Conditions................................................................................................. 38
Express Buses, Carpooling, High- Occupancy Vehicle ( HOV) Lanes ............ 40
High- Occupancy Toll ( HOT) Lanes ..................................................................... 43
Bridges and Roadways in BCDC’s Jurisdiction................................................. 47
The Impacts of Bridges and Roadways on Bay Resources .............................. 48
Pile Driving Impacts ............................................................................................... 48
Eelgrass Beds............................................................................................................ 50
Navigational Impacts.............................................................................................. 50
Air Quality and Water Quality Impacts.............................................................. 50
Local Impacts and Environmental Justice .......................................................... 52
Alternative Fuels ..................................................................................................... 53
CHAPTER 5. RAIL ............................................................................................................................ 55
Amtrak Capitol Corridor ....................................................................................... 55
Caltrain and Dumbarton Rail Bridge................................................................... 56
Altamont Commuter Express ............................................................................... 59
Sonoma- Marin Rail Transit Proposal................................................................... 59
California High Speed Rail.................................................................................... 60
Cargo Rail ................................................................................................................. 60
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit System .................................................. 60
Light Rail................................................................................................................... 61
Rail Projects in BCDC’s Jurisdiction .................................................................... 62
CHPATER 6. FERRY SERVICE....................................................................................................... 63
Existing Ferry System ............................................................................................. 64
The Water Transit Authority Implementation and Operations Plan............. 65
Ferry Service Opportunities and Potential Impacts.......................................... 66
Community Impacts ............................................................................................... 68
Ferry Terminals in Bay Plan Priority Use Areas................................................ 68
Wake Wash, Navigational Safety and Impacts to Recreational
and Ecological Resources.................................................................................. 68
Ferry Service in BCDC’s Jurisdiction................................................................... 70
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CHAPTER 7. GOODS MOVEMENT.................................................................................................. 71
Bay Area Trends ...................................................................................................... 71
Community and Land Use Compatibility .......................................................... 72
Goods Movement Alternatives............................................................................. 73
Goods Movement Planning................................................................................... 74
Goods Movement Projects in BCDC’s Jurisdiction........................................... 74
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FIGURES
Figure 1– Ferry Routes: Existing, Proposed and Future Study ................................................. 19
Figure 2– Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Proposed Regional
Bikeway System .......................................................................................................... 33
Figure 3– Association of Bay Area Governments’s Existing and Proposed San Francisco
Bay Trail Project ....................................................................................................... 35
Figure 4– Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Proposed High
Occupancy Vehicle/ Toll Lanes................................................................................ 45
Figure 5– Bay Area Rail Lines: Existing and Proposed............................................................... 57
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1
Adopted Bay Plan Transportation Findings and Policies
On October 20, 2005, the Commission adopted the following findings and policies,
amending the Bay Plan transportation findings and policies. This information in this report,
Transportation and the San Francisco Bay, serves as the basis for the adopted findings and policies.
Transportation
Findings and Policies Concerning Transportation On and Around the Bay
Findings
a. The reliable and efficient movement of people and goods around the Bay Area is
essential for the region’s economic health and quality of life.
b. The Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration set
federal priorities for planning and funding transportation projects. The California
Transportation Commission sets the state’s transportation priorities and the California
Department of Transportation is responsible for planning, operating and maintaining
the state’s highways. Regional transportation planning for the Bay is coordinated by
the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and county congestion management
agencies prepare transportation plans that establish funding and project priorities at
the local level. A number of agencies plan and implement transportation projects and
services, including rail, bus and ferry transit.
c. In recent years, improvements to the Bay Area’s transportation network have
increased regional travel options available to residents traveling around and across the
Bay. For example, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District provides transbay
service that connects the East Bay with San Francisco and the Peninsula. Ferry service
connects San Francisco with communities in the North and East Bay, and frequent rail
service links San Jose with San Francisco and connects the Bay Area with Sacramento
and the San Joaquin Valley. In addition, high- occupancy vehicle lanes for use by buses
and carpools are common on the region’s highways. However, the predominant form
of travel in the Bay Area continues to be the single- occupant vehicle.
d. Primary reliance on the single- occupant vehicle for transportation in the Bay Area
means further pressures to use the Bay as a route for future roadways and bridges.
Therefore, a primary goal of transportation planning, from the point of view of
preserving and properly using the Bay, should be a substantial reduction in
dependence on the single- occupant vehicle. While single- occupant vehicles will still be
needed and used for many types of travel, the goal should be the improvement and
expansion of systems of transportation that can carry large volumes of people and
goods without damaging the environment of the Bay Area, including increased air and
water pollution and shoreline space devoted to roadways and parking.
e. While the McAteer- Petris Act identifies bridges as water- oriented uses, roads are not
water- oriented uses because roads do not need to be located in the water to function
properly and do not take advantage of some unique feature of water.
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f. Pressure to fill the Bay for surface transportation projects can be reduced by:
improving the efficiency and increasing the capacity of existing transportation
facilities and services, increasing access to public transit, providing safe and
convenient public pathways for non- motorized forms of travel ( e. g., bicycles,
pedestrian), and by accommodating more of the region’s growth in denser, mixed- use
neighborhoods around transit stations and terminals.
g. The efficient and prompt movement of cargo to and from Bay Area airports and
seaports is critical to the health of the state and regional economy. The Bay is a
potentially important resource for moving cargo within the region by barge or ferry.
h. The Bay represents an important resource for ferry transportation. Locating ferry
terminals near centers of employment, commerce and housing or in areas with
connections to other forms of transit can improve regional mobility and increase access
to the Bay. Because ferry routes can cross shipping lanes, water recreation areas and
areas used by water birds and marine mammals, care in the planning and siting of
ferry routes and terminals must be taken to ensure safe navigation and the protection
of Bay fish and wildlife resources and their habitats.
i. A continuous network of paths and trails linking shoreline communities and crossing
the Bay’s bridges is a vital component in a regional transportation system and
provides travel alternatives to the automobile.
j. Roadways, rail lines and other transportation facilities can provide views and vistas of
the Bay; however, if not properly designed and constructed, these facilities can form
barriers that separate communities from the Bay and block public access to the
shoreline.
k. Transportation projects have the potential to degrade air quality, increase noise,
impact mobility, eliminate open space and impede the public’s access to the Bay. These
impacts have often been disproportionately distributed in the Bay Area, commonly
having greater impacts on low- income and minority communities. These
disproportionate impacts have resulted in these communities having fewer
opportunities for shoreline public access and views to the Bay, fewer shoreline
recreational opportunities and fewer natural habitats.
l. Transportation projects located in the Bay or along its shoreline have the potential to
result in shoreline erosion from ferry wakes, increased pollution from runoff, and
harm to marine mammals and fish from pile- driving for bridges and piers and to
subtidal habitats from increased turbidity.
Policies
1. Because of the continuing vulnerability of the Bay to filling for transportation projects,
the Commission should continue to take an active role in Bay Area regional
transportation and related land use planning affecting the Bay, particularly to
encourage alternative methods of transportation and land use planning efforts that
support transit and that do not require fill. The Metropolitan Transportation
Commission, the California Department of Transportation, the California
Transportation Commission, the Federal Highway Administration, county congestion
management agencies and other public and private transportation authorities should
avoid planning or funding roads that would require fill in the Bay and certain
waterways.
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2. If any additional bridge is proposed across the Bay, adequate research and testing
should determine whether a feasible alternative route, transportation mode or
operational improvement could overcome the particular congestion problem without
placing an additional route in the Bay and, if not, whether a tunnel beneath the Bay is
a feasible alternative.
3. If a route must be located across the Bay or a certain waterway, the following
provisions should apply:
a. The crossing should be placed on a bridge or in a tunnel, not on solid fill.
b. Bridges should provide adequate clearance for vessels that normally navigate the
waterway beneath the bridge.
c. Toll plazas, service yards, or similar facilities should not be located on new fill and
should be located far enough from the Bay shoreline to provide adequate space for
maximum feasible public access along the shoreline.
d. To reduce the need for future Bay crossings, any new Bay crossing should be
designed to move the largest number of travelers possible by employing
technology and operations that increase the efficiency and capacity of the
infrastructure, accommodating non- motorized transportation and, where feasible,
providing public transit facilities.
4. Transportation projects on the Bay shoreline and bridges over the Bay or certain
waterways should include pedestrian and bicycle paths that will either be a part of the
Bay Trail or connect the Bay Trail with other regional and community trails.
Transportation projects should be designed to maintain and enhance visual and
physical access to the Bay and along the Bay shoreline.
5. Ferry terminals should be sited at locations that are near navigable channels, would
not rapidly fill with sediment and would not significantly impact tidal marshes, tidal
flats or other valuable wildlife habitat. Wherever possible, terminals should be located
near higher density, mixed- use development served by public transit. Terminal
parking facilities should be set back from the shoreline to allow for public access and
enjoyment of the Bay.
Fills in Accord with the Bay Plan
b. The filling is in accord with Bay Plan policies as to purposes for which some fill may
be needed if there is no other alternative ( i. e., airports and utility routes); or
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CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The Bay, which historically separated and continues to separate residents and businesses
from the places that they want and need to go, has often been viewed as an obstacle to mobility
around the region. Prior to the early 1950s, before the majority of the bridges were in place and
the widespread use of the automobile was a fact of life, people moved across the Bay by ferry
boat. Ferry boats carried 50 to 60 million persons annually and 250,000 people moved through
the San Francisco ferry building each day. The Key System, an interurban rail system that
operated in the East Bay connected riders to a ferry for their trip to San Francisco. The Key
System later extended across the Bay Bridge, with two tracks of rail right- of- way on the lower
deck of the bridge. The trains used only one- fifth of the bridge area, but the Key System carried
approximately two- thirds of the people using the bridge. As the suburbs grew and automobile
use increased, the Bay began to fill with bridges and the shoreline with roadways. The first
bridge placed in the Bay, the Dumbarton Bridge, was constructed in 1927 and the most recent
bridge built to span the Bay, the Benicia- Martinez Bridge, was constructed in 1962. As the state
focused planning and funding on bridge and roadway projects, the public transit system that
once knitted the region together was all but eliminated: the Key System was removed from the
Bay Bridge, the operation of ferry routes in the bridge corridors was made illegal by state law.
In the mid- 1960s, the region’s roadways and bridges became significantly congested. As the
number of people and jobs grew in the region and more women joined the workforce, the
region’s infrastructure was being asked to move increasing numbers of goods and people
without the aid of public transit systems. The pressure to fill the Bay with more bridges and
roadways became significant. Proposals to alleviate the congestion of transbay crossings and
shoreline roadways included a bridge south of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the widening of
Interstate 80 and Highway 101, the addition of a second deck to the Golden Gate Bridge and a
tunnel beneath the Bay for a new rapid rail system. The fight to protect the Bay was greatly
stimulated by proposals for transportation infrastructure in or bordering the Bay. In recognition
of the threat, the San Francisco Bay Plan ( Bay Plan) included findings and policies specific to
transportation planning and the adverse impacts to the Bay that could result from the emphasis
the region had placed on automobile.
Although the construction of the bridges and the interstates, highways and roadways was
critical to the growth of the region and its economy, this construction resulted in elimination of
Bay habitats, degradation of water quality, created many barriers between the region and the
Bay and resulted in more pressure to fill the Bay. Roadways and railroad tracks created a
permanent barrier between the ecological communities in the uplands and those ecological
communities along the Bay shoreline. Transportation infrastructure along the Bay shoreline also
directly eliminated many of the upland habitats that once had a critical relationship to the Bay,
supplying it sediment, providing a filter to remove pollutants before they reached the Bay and
providing habitat for species that relied on both the Bay and its uplands for survival.
Many of the region’s most significant transportation corridors are either over the Bay or
along the Bay’s shoreline, including major interstates, highways, bridges, frontage roads,
railroad tracks, rail lines and ferry terminals. Although many types of development have
impacts on the Bay and its shoreline, the scale, reach and nature of transportation infrastructure
make it unique from other types of Bay fill and development in the shoreline. Transportation
infrastructure often provides little or no opportunity for access through or across it. With
railroad tracks and roadways, it is not possible for the purposes of both safety and function to
place an accessway through a project for the movement of people or other species. In most
cases, the only viable access options to cross these corridors are bridges over the infrastructure
or tunnels underneath it. Transportation infrastructure is often large in scale, so the adverse
impacts are over larger areas and are often more visible than other types of projects. The toll
plazas, support structures and entrances to bridges are large structures that can restrict public
access to the Bay and eliminate or degrade ecological resources at the site.
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Transportation infrastructure also has impacts on the development and movement of the
entire region. The construction of a new rail or ferry transit station or the addition of lanes on an
interstate can result in additional growth in the area surrounding the new infrastructure.
Appropriate growth presents the opportunity for higher density, mixed use development that
accommodates pedestrian and bicycle movement and supports a new transit station.
Inappropriate growth can result in isolation from the existing urban fabric of the area, an
increase in dependency upon the single- occupancy vehicle, and adversely impact sensitive
ecological areas.
The work of BCDC, the Association of Bay Area Government’s Bay Trail Project and other
regional and local agencies has attempted to address adverse impacts to public access by
significantly increasing the amount of access to the Bay and along its shoreline, overcoming a
number of obstacles presented by transportation facilities in the process and giving people the
option to walk and bicycle rather than drive their car to and along the shoreline. Examples of
such projects include the pedestrian and bicycle pathways that were required for the Zampa
Bridge and the east span of the Bay Bridge, as well as the public access requirements for the
Interstate 80 high- occupancy vehicle lane. These new public access areas are opening up areas
of the Bay shoreline to the public and surrounding communities that have been cut off from the
Bay for years, increasing recreational opportunities and alternatives for mobility. The increase
in ferry service around the Bay can increase public access both to and on the Bay by providing
people with a safe and easy way to travel to the new terminals, enabling them to leave their cars
at home.
The pressure to fill the Bay and its shoreline for transportation projects has changed since
BCDC was created by the legislature in 1965, but remains, as does the need for residents and
commerce to cross the Bay and traverse its shoreline. Since the Bay Plan policies were first
adopted by the Commission in 1968, there have been a number of changes in Bay Area
transportation options, infrastructure and in public opinion on transportation issues. Soon after
BCDC was created, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District ( BART) was established
and now moves significant numbers of people by rail across the Bay within the Bay Bridge
corridor. More recently, the San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit Authority ( WTA) was
created by the legislature to develop and implement a plan to increase commuter ferry service
around the Bay Area. A number of other ferry transit providers, such as the Golden Gate Bridge
and Transportation District and Blue and Gold Fleet have been operating successful ferry
service around the Bay Area, including a route that links the City of Vallejo and the City of San
Francisco, saving commuters approximately 25 minutes over those who drive the route. The
Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority, using the Union Pacific Railroad tracks that cross the
Bay east of the Benicia- Martinez Bridge, has been steadily increasing train service between
Sacramento and San Jose. Other rail service has been established or is being planned and
operated by joint powers authorities, including the Altamont Commuter Express ( ACE) trains
that link the San Joaquin County with the East and South Bay and the Caltrain service from the
South Bay and the Peninsula to San Francisco. The California High Speed Rail Authority was
established in 1996 to plan, design, construct and operate a high speed rail system for the State
of California. BART is planning a number of expansions in the East and South Bay. In an effort
to create a more coordinated and connected regional transit system, in 2001 the Transbay Joint
Powers Authority was created to develop a new inter- modal transit center in San Francisco, at
the site of the existing Transbay Terminal. This work will include an extension of Caltrain
service to the new transit center, which is planned to have stations for AC Transit, Greyhound,
MUNI, BART, SamTrans, Golden Gate Transit, Caltrain, para- transit services, Caltrain and the
proposed California High Speed Rail service. The Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit District
( SMART) was established by the legislature in 2003 to plan and implement new rail service in
Sonoma and Marin Counties, while in the South Bay there is a proposal to re- establish rail
service across the Bay on a rehabilitated Dumbarton rail bridge. AC Transit is working on a
project that would provide Contra Costa and Alameda Counties with Bus Rapid Transit ( BRT),
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which has been successfully established along San Pablo Avenue, and serving seven cities
across two counties.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission ( MTC) and the California Department of
Transportation ( Caltrans) have been improving efficiencies and increasing capacity on existing
infrastructure with metering lights, the FastTrak electronic toll payment program, improved toll
booth operations, the addition of high- occupancy vehicle ( HOV) lanes and other operational
improvements. The Port of Oakland has improved the movement of cargo in and out of the Port
facility with the Joint Intermodal Terminal project, which allows the Port to move more cargo
by rail, reducing the number of trucks that must travel along the region’s bridges and
roadways.
As the number of transportation options increases in the Bay Area, the opinions of the
residents and businesses are also shifting regarding transportation. Although congestion
remains the most significant concern for people in the Bay Area, as shown year after year and in
poll after poll, people increasingly support different ways to address this congestion. The once
popular, “ build more roadways, add more lanes” solution fails to receive the support it once
did. Seeing the expense, community and ecological impacts and the inability of new lanes to
significantly reduce congestion, the region’s residents have shown more support in recent polls
for projects that increase the efficiency of existing infrastructure, link transportation and land
use decisions, and increase public transit options.
Transportation policy makers and planners are attempting to balance regional air quality
requirements with necessary transportation improvements, to improve mobility on constrained
budgets, and to reduce the ecological and community impacts of transportation projects. In
order to achieve these objectives policy makers and planners have increasingly moved away
from adding new roadway lanes to serve the single- occupancy vehicle and towards increasing
and improving public transit, linking transportation and land use decisions, and increasing the
efficiency of existing infrastructure. MTC has adopted the Transportation and Land Use
Initiative that prioritizes funding for new transit stations on the presence of, or plan for, transit
supportive land uses within one half mile of the new stations. The joint powers authority that is
developing the SMART project for Sonoma and Marin Counties is incorporating ways to attract
and develop transit supportive land uses around new stations and decrease the number of
people that must drive to and park at the new stations. BART is looking at ways to develop
transit supportive land uses around existing and proposed stations and has already completed
such projects at the Fruitvale and Pleasant Hill stations. The WTA is considering the concept of
the Water Transit- Oriented Development for appropriate locations around existing and
proposed ferry terminals. In San Francisco, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority and the San
Francisco Redevelopment Agency are working together to ensure that the area around the
proposed Transbay Terminal project includes high- density housing and results in a
neighborhood that is pedestrian- friendly and provides new residents with easy access to a
number of transit options that serve not only the city of San Francisco, but regional destinations
such as the San Francisco International Airport.
All of this is good for the Bay and its residents and businesses: transportation and land use
projects that add to the region’s transportation options and mobility by increasing access to
public transit and improving the capacity and efficiency of existing infrastructure will improve
the movement of all the region’s people and the transport of goods and services around and
over the Bay with the minimum amount of fill necessary and little impact to public access to the
Bay.
But regardless of how efficient the Bay Area is with its existing transportation infrastructure
and public transit and land use decisions, there will still be pressure to fill the Bay for
transportation projects and to locate transportation projects along its shoreline. Projections for
transbay travel, which accounts for approximately four percent of the region’s travel, show that
it will outpace other types of travel around the region, increasing 40 percent by 2025. Therefore,
it is important that BCDC has policies that will allow for the development of needed
infrastructure while preserving the Bay and its resources and ensuring that access to the Bay is
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not blocked by transportation projects. An update to the existing transportation findings and
policies is needed to address the current Bay Area transportation issues, the types of projects
that are most likely to be proposed within BCDC’s jurisdiction and the impacts to the Bay and
its resources that could result from these projects.
While the intent of the proposed findings and policies regarding roadways and bridges
remains the same as that in the existing findings and policies, the language is updated and the
proposed policies also identify the impacts that transportation projects can have on the Bay.
While still supportive of increased ferry service on the Bay, the proposed findings and policies
identify the importance of location and design to avoid significant wake, dredging, wetland,
recreation, public access and other adverse impacts to Bay resources. The impacts that
transportation projects have on public access are identified, as is the importance of non-motorized
transportation as a transportation option and an alternative way to travel to public
transit. For the purposes of this report and the accompanying staff recommendation, the term
“ public access” is defined by the San Francisco Bay Plan ( Bay Plan) Public Access Finding c
which states, in part, “ Public access required by the Commission is an integral component of
development and usually consists of pedestrian and other non- motorized access to and along
the shoreline of San Francisco Bay. It may include certain improvements, such as paving,
landscaping, and street furniture; and it may allow for additional uses, such as bicycling,
fishing, picnicking, nature education, etc. Visual access to the Bay is a critical part of public
access.” The public access section of the Bay Plan also includes a policy regarding roadways
near the edge of the water and transportation access to the Bay. This policy states, “ Roads near
the edge of the water should be designed as scenic parkways for slow- moving, principally
recreational traffic. The roadway and right- of- way design should maintain and enhance visual
access for the traveler, discourage through traffic, and provide for safe, separated, and
improved physical access to and along the shore. Public transit use and connections to the
shoreline should be encouraged where appropriate.” The proposed amendment to the
transportation section of the Bay Plan is meant to compliment and not be redundant with the
public access section of the Bay Plan. In order to avoid redundancy and to respect the original
intent of the transportation findings and policies, the proposed amendment does not include the
concept of transportation access to the Bay, but rather continues to focus on reducing fill in the
Bay associated with transportation projects and to minimizing the potential impacts associated
with transportation projects within BCDC’s jurisdiction.
The primary focus of the proposed transportation findings and policies remains the same as
the focus of the existing findings and policies: to reduce the pressure to either fill the Bay or
locate roadways and bridges within its shoreline. The purpose of the update is to anticipate the
types of projects that are likely to be proposed within the Commission’s jurisdiction over the
next 10 to 20 years and to ensure that those projects will be developed in a way that reduces
impacts to Bay resources and enhances public access to the Bay. The types of projects that could
possibly be proposed within the Commission’s jurisdiction in the next 10 to 20 years are
discussed in more detail in the following report and may include HOV/ High- Occupancy Toll
( HOT) lanes, improvements to existing rail infrastructure, work on State Route 37, new ferry
terminals and routes, the continued seismic strengthening on existing elevated roadways and
bridges, capacity and safety improvements to interchanges, the High Speed Rail project, new
rail terminals and improvements to cargo movement in and out of the Port of Oakland that
could include cargo ferries or new rail service.
The proposed update to the transportation findings and policies continues to acknowledge
the importance of BCDC’s participation in Bay Area regional transportation and land use
planning affecting the Bay, particularly to encourage alternative methods of transportation to be
used within the Bay Area that do not require Bay fill. The Commission has a voting member on
MTC and BCDC staff has served on technical and planning advisory committees for a number
of regional transportation and land use policy projects, including MTC’s 2000 Bay Crossings
Study, the WTA’s Implementation and Operations Plan, the Smart Growth Initiative and MTC’s
Transportation and Land Use Task Force. Continued participation in these regional
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transportation and land use planning efforts will enable BCDC to ensure that these regional
planning efforts move forward in a way that balances the transportation demands in the region
with the Bay’s resources and public access.
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CHAPTER 1
TRANSPORTATION CONDITIONS IN THE BAY AREA
Surface transportation in the Bay Area relies on a complex network of roadways, bridges,
conventional, rapid and light rail lines, bus lines, ferry routes, truck routes, high- occupancy
vehicle lanes, and non- motorized transportation such as pedestrian paths and bicycle lanes to
move people and goods within and through the region as efficiently as possible. The system is
planned, designed and managed by a number of local, regional, state and federal agencies.
These surface transportation networks affect both the quality of life in a region and the health of
the region’s economy. Congestion results in people sitting in traffic instead of spending time
with family, working and recreating. Goods sit on the freeway rather than reaching their
destination, resulting in increased costs to the consumer and additional time for everything that
is produced in, or just traveling through, the region.
The Bay Area Council reported in 1997 that declining mobility costs the Bay Area
approximately $ 3.5 billion annually in lost productivity and wasted resources. A typical
workday in 1998 cost commuters 112,000 vehicle hours in lost working time, estimated to be
worth approximately $ 1,250,000 to the region 1 . Congestion and its social and economic costs is
projected to increase over the next 20 years. When polled, Bay Area residents have repeatedly
identified transportation as the single most important issue facing the region. In polls of
residents taken in 1987, 1999, 2001 and 2004 transportation was identified as the number one
concern facing the Bay Area. 2 In the United States, there has been a 236 percent increase in time
spent in traffic since 1987. In the year 1980, 64 percent of all commute trips were made alone in
an automobile. Today’s percentage of people commuting alone is between 80 and 90 percent. 3
People are not only driving for commute purposes, they are also taking their cars for most of
their other trips.
Transportation planners, the public and policy makers have been debating the best way to
address congestion in urban areas for over 40 years. Many once felt that the solution was simply
to widen roadways and build new ones. When people propose adding lanes to solve congestion
they make two potentially unproven assumptions. First, that congestion can be solved in an
urban region, and second, that current transportation infrastructure in the corridor is being
used as efficiently as possible and that there are no alternatives for increasing the capacity of the
infrastructure in that corridor. As to the issue of congestion in general, as Anthony Downs
described in his article Why Traffic Congestion is Here to Stay… and Will Get Worse, “[ R] ising traffic
congestion is an inescapable condition in all large and growing metropolitan areas across the
world.” Downs describes the reasons for this congestion in the United States as, “[ i] n the United
States, the vast majority of people wanting to move during rush hours use private vehicles, for
two reasons. One is that most Americans reside in low- density settlements that public transit
cannot serve effectively. Second, for most people private vehicles are more comfortable, faster,
more private, more convenient in trip timing, and more flexible than public transit.” Downs
goes on to suggest that most of the options available to a region, such as peak- hour toll charges,
greatly expanded roadway capacity and greatly expanded public transit capacity, are either
politically infeasible or physically or financially impossible. He recommends that regions “ live
with congestion” and finds that congestion is a result of a strong economy and an essential
mechanism for coping with excess demand for road space. As the congestion on the roadways
reaches a point at which some of the primary benefits of the private vehicle– the flexibility,
1 Bay Area Council. 1998. Water Transit Initiative: Facts and Figures.
2 Bay Area Council. 1987- 2004 Polls.
3 Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of the American Community. Simon
and Schuster
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speed and comfort– are diminished or disappear, people will began to shift to other modes of
transportation. However, this is only an option for those people that live in communities that
can be served by public transit.
The Bay Area provides a ready example of Downs’ theory by looking at the impacts that the
recent economic shifts have had on the region’s transportation systems. When the economy was
strong and growing in the late 1990s, the bridges and roadways were at capacity for longer peak
periods and public transit ridership was also high as the region attempted to move more people
and goods. As congestion on the roadways and bridges became intolerable to a certain number
of people, people who had the option to alter their transportation patterns and modes shifted to
other transportation modes, ceased traveling certain corridors at peak periods or participated in
carpools. Congestion on the roadways and public transit ridership decreased when the
economy began to contract and the region began to lose jobs.
So, it is possible that the question should not be how to solve congestion, but how to
improve mobility and to increase the transportation options available in the region. Improving
mobility addresses the second assumption about increasing roadway capacity— is the existing
infrastructure in the corridor being used as efficiently as possible and what are the alternatives
for increasing the capacity within each corridor? The Metropolitan Transportation
Commission’s ( MTC) 2000 Bay Crossings Study attempted to answer this question for the central
Bay crossings. The study was initiated during the period of economic growth and analyzed a
variety of solutions to congestion, including HOV lanes, express buses, a new bridge, the
expansion of existing bridges, a new tunnel under the Bay for the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid
Transit ( BART) system, increased density around transit stations and urban centers and
technical and operation improvements to the existing surface transportation infrastructure.
Transportation Pressures on the Bay. When the Bay Plan was adopted in 1968, the pressure
to place fill in the Bay for new roads and bridges was considerable. During the 1950s, most of
the Bay Area’s public transit had been reduced and eliminated and as the region grew. This
combination of factors meant growth in the number of automobiles traveling across the Bay and
pressure to build more roadway infrastructure to accommodate these automobiles. The location
and type of development in the Bay Area also increased the reliance on the single- occupant
vehicle, as much of the new development in the region was outside of the existing cities and
consisted of low- density housing and single- purpose land uses. In response to this pressure, the
Bay Plan included findings and policies on transportation. The transportation policies have not
been comprehensively updated since they were developed in 1968. However, there have been
two focused amendments. The first was the addition of a finding in 1989 which stated that
roads are not water- oriented uses. The second amendment was the 2001 addition of another
finding, this time identifying that there are a large number of ferries on the Bay and the
potential for these ferries to have impacts on Bay resources.
Over the past 37 years, there have been a number of changes with respect to the Bay Area’s
surface transportation network which should be acknowledged in the Bay Plan. BART has been
constructed and in use for many years; a plan has been approved for expanding ferry service in
the Bay; many of the bridges across the Bay have been seismically retrofitted, replaced or
expanded; and transportation planners and the population of the Bay Area no longer favor
building more roadways for single- occupant vehicles as a way to solve the region’s congestion
problems. New proposals include linking transportation and land use decisions; developing a
system of high- occupancy vehicle lanes for use by buses, carpools and possibly single drivers
willing to pay a toll; increasing connections between transit services; increasing transit options
through the expansion of ferry service, express buses and additional rail service; and employing
the existing transportation infrastructure more efficiently by using new technologies and system
management tools.
In spite of all of these changes, transportation projects continue to have the potential to
significantly impact Bay resources. Transportation pressures on the Bay and the congestion
associated with transbay travel continue to be of significant regional concern. During the course
of its Bay Crossings Study conducted in 2000, MTC projected that transbay travel would increase
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40 percent by the year 2025 and that transbay travel would outpace the average regional rate of
growth in travel. BCDC recognized the potential for transportation projects to impact the Bay
when it adopted a set of transportation objectives in 2002. These objectives were designed for
staff to use when working with MTC on updates to its Regional Transportation Plan ( RTP) and
included language to discourage fill in the Bay, its tidal marshes, tidal flats, salt ponds,
managed wetlands and the ecological transition zone for new transportation improvements and
encouraged roads and transportation improvements to be designed in a way that avoided
impacts to the public’s visual and physical access to the Bay.
The Bay presents a significant obstacle to transportation in the Bay Area. The Bay is a
regional environmental, recreational and economic asset and filling the Bay for transportation
projects is currently not seen as a regionally acceptable solution to solving the Bay Area’s
congestion problems. However, the Bay does separate people from jobs, families and recreation.
As has been noted, transbay crossings contribute to a number of the most congested sites in the
Bay Area. Many transbay crossings are congested during commute hours and on evenings and
weekends. The difficulty is finding ways to keep people and goods moving in the region, while
protecting the Bay’s resources. Due to financial constraints, environmental and social impacts
and transportation demand, it would be impossible to build enough bridges and roadways to
significantly reduce transbay congestion. Additionally, roadway expansions and new roadway
development is a very expensive tool to address congestion. Roadway and bridge projects often
take many years to plan, permit and build and require a significant amount of future
transportation funding for maintenance. Likely, the best options for increasing mobility in the
transbay crossings is to increase the capacity of transbay corridors by providing public transit
alternatives, developing a network of high- occupancy vehicle ( HOV) lanes and improving the
efficiency of the existing infrastructure in the corridors. Another important component to
improving mobility in the Bay Area is to recognize the importance that land use decisions have
on congestion and mobility in the region. If the region continues to develop low- density
communities served by wide arterials and large amounts of parking, it will be difficult for
people in the region to use alternative modes of transportation and they will continue to drive
alone. Without land use decisions that support public transit, walking and cycling, people will
have little choice but to drive alone and increases in public transit will likely not result in
similar increases in ridership.
The Bay presents an even more significant challenge with respect to using added roadway
capacity to solve extreme congestion events. Unlike roadways on land, the transbay crossings
cannot be served by parallel, or frontage, roadways. When a bridge or elevated roadway
experiences significant congestion, an accident or an emergency closure, there is no parallel
system of roadways to take to make the crossing. In the transbay corridors, this parallel system
can be provided by public transit. In the Bay Bridge corridor, the BART system, the ferries and
the transbay buses serve as this parallel network. Adding new mixed- flow lanes or bridges
would do little to aid regional mobility in extreme congestion events, while parallel public
transit corridors could move a significant number of people and provide people with an
alternative to the congestion.
Transportation Planning in the Bay Area. Although transportation decisions have a
significant impact on the economic health and the quality of life in a region, many residents do
not know how these decisions are made or which agency is responsible for which component of
the transportation system. Many different agencies and organizations are involved in Bay Area
transportation issues, such as the California Transportation Commission, MTC, the congestion
management authority ( CMA) for each county, BART, the WTA, Caltrain, the Capitol Corridor,
CalTrans, AC Transit, Golden Gate Bridge and Transportation District, the Santa Clara Valley
Transportation Authority ( VTA), the San Francisco Municipal Railway ( MUNI), the Transbay
Joint Powers Authority as well as a number of non- profit organizations that track transportation
projects and advocate for different outcomes in these projects.
The California Transportation Commission was created in 1978 by Assembly Bill 402 in
order to consolidate state transportation planning and to make one agency responsible for
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developing a single, unified California transportation policy. The Commission has nine
members and is responsible for programming and allocating funds for the construction of
highway, passenger rail and transit improvements in the California. It also participates in
strategies to ensure a source of stable funds for California’s transportation needs through the
initiation and development of state and federal legislation.
Although the primary responsibilities of California Department of Transportation ( Caltrans)
are planning, designing, building, operating and maintaining California’s 15,000 mile highway
system, the role of the agency has changed over time to include new responsibilities. These new
responsibilities include overseeing three inter- city passenger rail systems in California,
including the Capitol Corridor service in the Bay Area that operates from San Jose to
Sacramento. These inter- city rail systems are operated by Amtrak under a contract with
Caltrans. Caltrans is also responsible for delivering the state’s State Transportation
Improvement Program ( STIP) and for leading a study on the feasibility of high- speed rail in the
state. A significant component of Caltrans work is the actual construction and maintenance of
California’s roadway and bridge infrastructure, including the seismic retrofit work being done
on the Richmond- San Rafael Bridge, the newly constructed Zampa Bridge to replace the
Carquinez Bridge, and the Bay Bridge. However, rather than simply focusing on their
traditional role as roadway planners and builders, Caltrans has been looking at ways to solve
roadway congestion through non- structural solutions and with an emphasis on non- highway
transportation. This shift is in response to the recognition that roadways alone cannot move the
growing population in the region or solve the congestion problems in California. Caltrans is
also looking towards new ways keep the State’s people and goods moving that will reduce
water and air pollution in California associated with transportation.
The congestion management agencies ( CMAs) are responsible for a number of
transportation planning activities at the county level. Each urban county must have a
designated CMA that develops and updates the Congestion Management Program for that
county and monitors the program’s progress. This program identifies each county’s
transportation priorities. CMAs must also set up a performance review process for the
transportation network that has been designated by each county. A CMA must also designate
service standards for roadways and performance measures for all transportation modes in its
county. In addition to these responsibilities, CMAs must also promote alternatives to the single-occupant
vehicle through transportation demand management measures which discourage
driving alone and establish a program for analyzing the impacts of land use on regional
transportation systems, including estimating the cost for mitigating the impacts caused by these
land use decisions.
MTC is a 19- member commission responsible for planning, coordinating and financing
transportation projects within the nine- county Bay Area. MTC serves two primary roles in
planning and funding Bay Area transportation projects. The first is as the State of California’s
regional transportation planning agency for the Bay Area. The second role is as the agency
designated by the federal government to serve as the Metropolitan Planning Organization
( MPO) for the region. As the state’s regional transportation planning agency, MTC is
responsible for developing the Regional Transportation Plan ( RTP), which serves as the
planning document for almost all transportation projects in the Bay Area, from the seismic
retrofitting of the Richmond- San Rafael Bridge to local street improvements. As the MPO for the
federal government, MTC identifies the appropriate transportation facilities for meeting the
region’s needs, concentrating on those projects that will reduce congestion and improve air
quality.
In addition to these federal and state functions, MTC also manages many of its own projects,
is responsible for administering $ 1 of the tolls from the Bay Area’s seven state bridges and
oversees the long- range planning processes for large, regional transportation projects. Some
examples of the projects managed by MTC include a roving tow truck service to clear incidents
from congested roadways, the Housing Incentive Program and the Traffic Engineering
Technical Assistance Program which provides technical assistance to local governments to aid
15
them in reducing congestion on local and regional roadways. As for long- range planning
projects, MTC has coordinated a number of regional projects, including the Bay Crossings Study
( completed in 2002), the Regional Bicycle Master Plan ( completed in September 2001), the Lifeline
Transit Network ( completed in September 2001) and the Regional Goods Movement Study for the
San Francisco Bay Area ( completed in December 2004).
In determining which projects to include in the RTP, MTC must ensure that the projects are
consistent with current and reliable data, such as regional land use assumptions made by the
Association of Bay Area Governments ( ABAG), which are informed by local land use plans. The
projects must also be consistent with local land use plans and the appropriate coastal
management program ( such as BCDC’s coastal management program for the San Francisco Bay
segment of the California coastal zone). Additionally, MTC analyzes the specific travel route for
each proposal and weighs the merits of various options ( transit or new roadways or system
improvements) and determines which improvements should be incorporated into the RTP and
funded by the money that MTC allocates for this purpose.
MTC is required to update the RTP every two years. Although federal regulations require
the RTP to be a 20- year planning document, the two- year updates allow MTC to include new
projects as the need arises. The RTP includes three funding categories: Committed Funding,
Track 1 and Blueprint. The projects that are listed under Committed Funding are those projects
that have committed funding attached by law, voter mandate or previous MTC programming
actions. Track 1 projects are funded by the monies left over after the committed projects have
been funded. The projects listed as Blueprint projects do not currently have funding. These are
projects that MTC and the region consider worthwhile for further study or funding, should
funding become available. The Blueprint portion of the document is descibed by MTC as an
advocacy document for new transportation revenues to allow the Commission to not only
maintain the existing transportation network, but to expand the system to keep up with
projected Bay Area population and employment growth.
Although not a transportation agency, BCDC is often involved in regional transportation
and land use projects because of the potential impacts of these projects on BCDC’s area of
jurisdiction. BCDC’s involvement in transportation issues began as a response to the number of
roadways that had been placed in and around the Bay, often on fill, and the number of projects
that were proposed at the time the Commission was created in 1965. The background report for
preparation of the Bay Plan identified both the heavy reliance on the private vehicle and the
fragmented approach to transportation planning in the Bay Area at that time as significant
contributors to region’s land use and transportation problems. The report, entitled
Transportation: Surface Transportation on and Around San Francisco Bay, explains the direct
relationship these factors have on the Bay. The report states, “[ s] pace- consuming freeway routes
that disrupt development and landscape have been politically difficult to locate. Alternatives to
freeways receive little consideration because funds for development have been earmarked for
highway purposes and technological development of other modes has lagged. The demand for
new freeway and highway routes along the Bay shoreline and Bay crossings, the lack of
undeveloped open space in which to locate them, and the lack of alternative modes of
transportation have caused pressures for the location of routes on the Bay itself.” It is for this
reason that BCDC works with MTC, Caltrans, ABAG, the WTA and other transportation
agencies at both the policy and project level and why the Commission should continue to
participate in these projects to ensure that the regional transportation and land use decisions do
not result in fill in the Bay or the placement of more roadways and lanes along its shoreline that
separate communities from the Bay.
Transportation Trends. In its amendment to the 2001 RTP, MTC describes transportation
trends at that time as “[ t] ransit trends in the Bay Area are quite similar to national trends.
Demand side factors are significant and include personal choice, the economy, patterns of
development and the cost of gasoline. The size of the transit fleet, the hours of service and
transit operating budgets have all grown at rates exceeding 15 percent, but ridership has not
16
followed.” 4 It is important to note that transit trips increased in number and as a share of all Bay
Area commute trips between 1990- 2000, while the share of single- occupant vehicle trips
decreased. Of the ten largest metropolitan areas in the United States, the Bay Area was the only
one to see this trend: others saw transit ridership fall or become outpaced by growth in drive-alone
trips. 5 However, despite current trends, the region is projected to grow, as is transbay
congestion and ridership on transit- serving transbay routes. How much public transit ridership
grows may largely be determined by the transportation and land use decisions that are made in
the next decade.
Recent updates to the RTP were completed in December 2001 and in February 2005. The
2001 and 2005 updates demonstrated a shift in priorities for MTC and the region. The two most
recent updates to the RTP increase the percentage of funding for public transit and for
improving the efficiencies of the existing transportation system. The 2005 update to the RTP has
several “ firsts” for an RTP document. For the first time, the RTP includes specific policies
relating to the importance of transit supportive land uses and describes prioritizing
discretionary funding for new transit stations on the presence of existing or planned land uses
around new stations that are supportive of transit. The second “ first” in the 2005 RTP is the
inclusion of money for bicycle and pedestrian pathways.
In the RTP adopted by MTC in 2001, 77 percent of the projected transportation funding was
dedicated to public transit, including operations, expansion and rehabilitation. This represented
the largest percentage of transportation dollars spent on public transit of any of the
metropolitan regions in the nation. In addition to dedicating a majority of the transportation
dollars on transit, the 2001 RTP also focuses on utilizing the existing infrastructure more
efficiently through better systems management and increasing access to transit and information.
The 2001 RTP included several policy initiatives that MTC should pursue to increase transit
ridership. These policy initiatives included supporting the legislation to increase the bridge tolls
on Caltrans operated bridges to $ 3, advocating peak pricing on the Bay Bridge and advocating
for a gas tax. The funds of all of these initiatives would be used to pay for increased public
transit and act to discourage the exclusive use of the single- occupant vehicle for all trips around
the region. During this update to the RTP, MTC also indicated that the next update to the RTP
would include land use assumptions that were developed under the Smart Growth Strategy. 6
In December 2003, MTC adopted a Transportation/ Land Use Platform that established a
policy to study the conditioning of the allocation of discretionary transit funds under MTC’s
control to those local jurisdictions that adopt supportive land use measures around new transit
stations. Specifically, MTC included a proposal that it would condition the funds to be spent on
approximately 24 new transit expansion projects by prioritizing funding those projects that
have land use plans that are supportive of public transit use.
MTC’s 2005 RTP, Transportation 2030 Plan for the San Francisco Bay Area ( 2030 Plan) moves
even further away from merely identifying roadways to be funded and the funds that will pay
for these roadways. Rather than using ABAG projections based on the adopted land use plans
for each jurisdiction, the 2030 Plan is based upon ABAG’s Projections 2003. Projections 2003 is
not based upon existing land use planning documents. Instead, Projections 2003 assumes that
land uses and densities will change in certain locations and result in a substantial amount of
new development in infill areas near transit stations. The densities assumed are a range of 36.1
to 44.9 persons per residential acre in urban areas and 6.1 to 7.3 persons per residential acre in
suburban areas. Additionally, the 2030 Plan includes increased funding for the Transportation
for Livable Communities ( TLC) program and Housing Incentive Program ( HIP). The TLC
program provides funds for community based transportation projects that increase the
transportation options available to communities and make transit more accessible. HIP awards
grants to local governments for the construction of new housing near transit stations and
4 Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 2001. Regional Transportation Plan.
5 2000 Census.
6 Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 2001. Regional Transportation Plan.
17
corridors. The 2030 Plan also sets aside regional funds for the first time to fill gaps in the bicycle
plan network and to improve pedestrian facilities.
Another notable trend in Bay Area transportation is the renaissance of ferry transportation
as a way to move people around the Bay. The WTA was established by Senate Bill 916 ( Perata),
signed into law in 1999. Under SB916 the WTA was charged with developing a plan to increase
the network of commuter ferries on the Bay. The plan, A Strategy to Improve Public Transit with
and Environmentally Friendly Ferry System, Final Implementation and Operations Plan ( IOP) was
adopted by the WTA in 2003 and identifies new and expanded commuter ferry terminals and
routes on the Bay. With its IOP completed and adopted, the WTA is currently implementing the
IOP, proposing a new ferry terminal in South San Francisco. The WTA will be phasing ferry
service in over time, with a focus on sites in the central Bay that have a source of
funding– Berkeley and South San Francisco. More detail on the WTA and its plan for increasing
ferry service on the Bay can be found in Chapter 6 of this report and in Figure 1, which depicts
the WTA’s proposal for increased ferry service.
The Bay Area Commute. Approximately 68 percent of the Bay Area’s seven million residents
commute to work by driving alone, almost 13 percent carpool, just under 10 percent take transit,
approximately three percent walk, a little over two percent travel by some other means and four
percent work at home. These percentages, taken from the 2000 census, vary from county to
county. The differences in transit usage appear to be generally based on the differences in land
use mix and density among the counties and the availability of public transit options.
Residential density and the mix of uses in an area, affect the viability and availability of transit
options and modes of transportation other than the single- occupant vehicle. As an example, San
Francisco County had the highest percentage of transit usage at approximately 31 percent, the
highest percentage of people who walked to work at almost 9.5 percent and the lowest
percentage of those who drove to work at just over 40 percent. On the other hand, Napa County
had the lowest transit usage at just less than 1.5 percent, while Santa Clara County had the
highest number of people who drove to work alone at just over 77 percent. As density and land
use mix and intensity decrease the number of people who drive alone to work and for other
trips increases. 7 Of the people who take public transit, 40 percent drive, 12 percent carpool, 28
percent take another form of transit and 20 percent walk or bicycle to transit. 8
Several interesting findings are described in the Bay Area Transportation State of the System
2003, compiled by MTC and Caltrans District 4. One finding is that despite the perception of
widespread congestion in the Bay Area, MTC estimates that approximately 72 percent of the
vehicle miles are traveled at speeds of over 50 miles per hour during peak commute periods.
Another interesting set of findings came from the examination of several commutes in the Bay
Area. In comparing freeway commutes to public transit alternatives, the freeway alternatives
were faster than most of the public transit commutes examined in the study. The Vallejo to San
Francisco route provided a big exception, with the ferry rider saving 25 minutes over the solo
driver. Those that take BART from Walnut Creek to Oakland saved several minutes over solo
drivers for that commute. The Hayward to San Jose trip on Amtrak takes the same amount of
time as it takes to drive the trip alone. Caltrain introduced " Baby Bullet" service in 2004, which
reduced the train trip from San Francisco to San Jose by 30 minutes. The trip now takes just
under one hour and beats driving times in the corridor during even fairly light conditions. For
every other commute that was compared for the report, the freeway commute was faster than
the public transit alternative. 9
7 Census 2000 Supplementary Survey. San Francisco Bay Area.
8 Census 2000. Supplementary Survey. San Francisco Bay Area.
9 Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Caltrans, District 4. 2003. State of the System.
18
20
figure 1 back
21
If public transit is usually not as fast as driving alone, then why do people take public
transit in the Bay Area? A survey conducted by RIDES for Bay Area Commuters ( the non- profit
in charge of operating the Bay Area’s Regional Rideshare Program) in 2002 asked people why
they took transit to work and found that 19 percent stated they took transit because they did not
have a car, 17 percent took transit for comfort/ relaxation, 13 percent took transit due to parking
constraints and costs, 13 percent took transit because it was more economical for them and 12
percent took transit because it was faster for them than driving alone. 10
Transbay trips account for four percent of all regional trips and almost eight percent of all
work trips. Approximately 590,000 people travel the Bay Bridge corridor daily, 109,000 people
travel the San Mateo bridge corridor daily, 107,000 travel the Dumbarton Bridge corridor and
119,430 vehicles cross the Golden Gate Bridge. As mentioned previously, transbay travel is
projected to increase at a greater rate than non- transbay trips, increasing by 40 percent in the
next 20 years. 11
The following sections of the report include a discussion of the past and present trends for
the range of transportation modes that are available for crossing the Bay and traveling along its
shoreline. The discussion includes bridges and roadways, HOV lanes and carpools, HOT lanes,
rail, buses, water transit, walking and cycling. The relationship between transportation and land
use mix and density are described, including research to indicate that as densities are increased
and land uses are diversified, transit usage goes up. Also described in the following sections are
the way that transportation and land use trends may affect the Bay and its resources.
10 RIDES for Bay Area Commuters, Inc.. 2002 Survery.
11 Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 2002. Bay Crossings Study.
22
23
CHAPTER 2
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRANSPORTATION AND LAND USE
BCDC’s 1968 transportation background report identifies a relationship between
transportation and land use. The report states, “[ i] n 1967, much if not most of the Bay Area’s
close- in, readily accessible, readily developable lands have been settled, but the pressures for
development continue. Depending upon the choices made, the policies set, the pattern that
development will take can be a continuing dispersal without direct order, or the development
can be channeled in ways which will make the best use of increasingly scarce land.
Transportation policy will continue to be one of the most important factors influencing the
direction that future development takes. Policies made concerning land use and settlement
patterns will likewise influence the extent and character of the transportation systems and its
elements.” The 1956 Regional Transit Plan developed for the San Francisco Bay Rapid Transit
Commission compared two alternative growth patterns- one dispersed and one concentrated
around nucleated centers and sub- centers. This plan found that if the Bay Area developed in a
dispersed pattern, then reliance on the automobile would increase, as would congestion on the
region’s roadways and pressure for more road construction to accommodate this increased
congestion. However, if the Bay Area developed around a series of nucleated centers and sub-centers
that could be easily served by transit, then the region’s reliance on the automobile and
the resulting congestion associated with this reliance could be reduced and mobility could be
improved for the Bay Area’s residents and businesses. 12 Although many regional agencies at
the time supported a more concentrated pattern of development for the Bay Area that would
reduce reliance on the automobile, the region ultimately developed in a more dispersed way,
making many parts of the Bay Area difficult for public transit to serve.
Transit- Oriented Development. Metropolitan transportation planning agencies across the
country are tasked with achieving an array of seemingly impossible goals. Not only must they
plan for the movement of millions of people and thousands of tons of goods, they must do so in
a way that meets air quality standards, is economically sound, responds to the different groups
that they serve, and maintains the existing infrastructure while planning for growth in the
region. One way these agencies are attempting to address many of the above goals is by linking
transportation and land use decisions to allow for the movement of more people by public
transit. One of the most popular ideas is transit- oriented development ( TOD). The TOD became
a major movement in the 1990s and the idea was to place growth in those areas where people
would be less dependent upon the single- occupancy vehicle. Peter Calthorpe was one of the
first to popularize the TOD and in his book The Next American Metropolis he writes about the
need to better integrate transportation and land use. Calthorpe defines a TOD as “ a mixed- use
community within an average 2,000- foot walking distance of a transit stop and a core
commercial area. TODs mix residential, retail, office, open space, and public uses in a walkable
environment, making it convenient for residents and employees to travel by transit, bicycle, foot
or car.” 13
Research has shown that successful transit- oriented development relies on the four
Ds– density, diversity, design and distance to transit. These components have been shown to
have a strong causal relationship on travel behavior and public transit ridership. For example,
studies and models have shown that a doubling in density within a half- mile of a station will
normally result in a nearly 60 percent increase in transit boardings. The diversity of land use
also has an impact on ridership, with public transit ridership rates at employment centers that
have a mix of uses being between five and 10 percent higher than for single- use employment
12 San Francisco Bay Rapid Transit Commission. 1956. Regional Transit Plan.
13 Calthorpe, Peter. 1993. The Next American Metropolis.
24
centers. Neighborhoods around public transit stations that have been designed with a grid
system of streets, smaller blocks and for safe and convenient pedestrian and cyclist movement,
are associated with public transit usage as much as 20 percent higher than those with typical
suburban subdivision design layouts. 14 The distance to transit is a crucial component and
studies in the Bay Area have shown that those living near public transit stations are generally
five times more likely to commute by public transit than other residents. 15 Do transit- oriented
developments really result in people driving less and in a reduction in vehicle miles traveled?
For those who live in TOD- like developments in the Bay Area, TOD residents averaged around
half of the vehicle miles traveled per year as the residents of suburban subdivisions. 16
In a report sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration entitled Transit- Oriented
Development: Experiences, Challenges and Prospects the authors sum up the findings of the report
by saying, “ A considerable body of research shows that under the right conditions, TODs can
increase transit ridership and its associated environmental benefits. Research shows that those
living in TODs usually patronize transit five to six times as often as typical residents of a
region.” Other factors that were found to contribute to public transit ridership included the
absence of free parking at the destination end of a person’s trip, the number of vehicles per
household and the concentration of destinations and mix of uses along the entire public transit
corridor.
To determine the potential impact of land use decisions on transbay travel over the next 20
years, MTC used the 2020 Central Cities scenario, developed by the Smart Growth Initiative,
and determined that this scenario could significantly reduce vehicle trips and increase transit
trips. MTC describes the findings in the San Francisco Bay Crossings Study Final Report July 2002
as “[ t] hese large scale land- use changes, compared to currently assumed development trends,
reduced transbay travel more than any of the transportation alternatives studied– 50,000 fewer
daily transit riders than the 2025 baseline.” This reduction in transbay vehicle trips is important
to BCDC because such a reduction would relive pressure on existing bridges, eliminating or
delaying pressure to place new fill in the Bay for bridges or tunnels. As the transportation
background report for BCDC stated in 1968 “[ a] s long as freeways remain the primary solution
to transportation problems around the Bay, the Bay remains a possible freeway route.”
Over the last several years, there has been an increase in the number of projects and
proposals that recognize the link between transportation and land use in the Bay Area. The
largest in scope is the Bay Area Smart Growth Strategy Project that resulted in a final report in
October 2002. This project was led by the region’s five regional agencies— the Association of
Bay Area Governments, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area Air Quality
Management District, the Regional Water Quality Control Board and BCDC— and included
significant input from business leaders, elected officials, environmentalists, community leaders
and other interested citizens. The purpose was to identify the ways in which the region could
accommodate projected growth, while improving quality of life and preserving the region’s
natural and cultural resources. The final report makes recommendations regarding housing,
infrastructure, open space and transportation. These recommendations include increasing the
housing options available to all in the Bay Area, improving urban infrastructure, protecting
open space and agricultural lands and reducing dependence on single- occupant vehicles. The
report identifies the next step for the project as developing and enacting the fiscal incentives
and regulatory changes that are necessary for achieving the recommendations identified in the
report.
14 Transit Cooperative Research Program. TCRP Report 102, Transit- Oriented Development in the US:
Experiences, Challenges and Prospects. Sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration.
15 Lund PhD, Hollie, Robert Cervero PhD and Richard Willson PhD. January 2004. Travel Characteristics
of Transit- Oriented Development in California. Final Report.
16 Transit Cooperative Research Program. TCRP Report 102, Transit- Oriented Development in the US:
Experiences, Challenges and Prospects. Sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration
25
MTC has recently funded several programs that relate to land use, including the
Transportation for Livable Communities program and a subset of this program, the Housing
Incentive Program. Transportation for Livable Communities provides capital grants for project
design and construction for community level projects. Examples of projects include pedestrian
and bicycle improvements in Berkeley, improved links between affordable housing to a
renovated shopping center, West Oakland BART and downtown in Oakland and a pedestrian
oriented plaza to link new mixed use development to the Dublin BART station. The Housing
Incentive Program awards capital grants to localities that build high density housing within
one- third of a mile of a major transit station or corridor that has peak period service intervals of
15 minutes or less. Examples of these projects include high density housing near bus lines in
East Palo Alto, a mixed- use project near bus lines and BART in Daly City, a mixed- use project
near a bus line in Berkeley and a transit village adjacent to the BART station in Richmond. Since
1998, the Housing Incentive Program has resulted in $ 60 million being awarded to 149 projects
and increased the mix and densities of uses within walking distance of transit.
In 2003, MTC went a step further and adopted a Transportation/ Land Use Platform which
was described previously in this report and established platform for MTC to condition the
allocation of discretionary transit funds under MTC’s control to those local jurisdictions that
adopt transit supportive land use around new public transit terminals, identified by MTC as
Resolution 3434 Projects. Table 1 provides a list of the projects that MTC has identified as
Resolution 3434 projects. MTC is currently developing a Transit- Oriented Development ( TOD)
Policy for Resolution 3434 Projects. MTC describes the purpose of the project as:
“ MTC is developing a set of policies and programs to improve the
integration of transportation and land use in the Bay Area— including a
specific policy to condition the allocation of regional discretionary transit
funds under MTC’s control, provided by Resolution 3434, on supportive
land use policies for station area and corridors included in the region’s
transit expansion program. This policy is designed to improve the cost-effectiveness
of regional investments in new transit expansions, ease the Bay
Area’s chronic housing shortage, create vibrant new communities, and help
preserve regional open space. The policy will encourage transportation
agencies, local jurisdictions, members of the public and the private sector to
work together to create development patterns that are more supportive of
transit. Project sponsors shall indicate how they will satisfy the TOD policy
requirements as a condition for receiving regional discretionary transit
investments under Resolution 3434.”
Although much has been done recently to link land use and transportation planning, there
are still many barriers to realizing the opportunities that could result from linking these two
types of planning. The continued reliance on the automobile combined with the projected
growth in the region will increase the pressure on the Bay for fill to build new bridges or
tunnels or widen existing infrastructure. For this reason, and because BCDC is one of the five
agencies in the Bay Area with a regional perspective, BCDC should continue to participate in
projects, forums and decisions that support linking land use and transportation planning. Since
many of the land use decision that are made by local governments are outside of the
Commission’s jurisdiction, the Commission should focus on regional policy issues and work
closely with MTC and other regional agencies to ensure the interests of the Bay and its
resources are considered in these processes.
Within the urbanized areas of its jurisdiction and within areas with redevelopment
potential, BCDC should consider high- density, mixed- use development that is within walking
distance to existing or planned transit. For example, the proposed expansion of the ferry system
by the WTA includes new ferry terminals and transit- oriented development surrounding
appropriate terminals. BCDC should work with the WTA to support this concept of increasing
densities, reducing parking, including a mix of uses and public access. This kind of
development would increase access to the Bay and the viability of the ferry system, while
26
reducing the parking necessary along the Bay shoreline, providing new uses and services to
existing communities and increasing the connection that these surrounding communities have
to the Bay.
27
CHAPTER 3
WALKING AND CYCLING
Communities were once designed to be accessible to public transit, with a mix of residential
and neighborhood retail linked by walkways and pedestrian promenades. When the
predominant mode of travel became the automobile, communities were designed to
accommodate cars. The design features incorporated to make automobile travel more
comfortable and convenient included large parking areas, wide surface arterial streets, higher
speed design on community roadways and a more distinct separation between land uses. While
clustering uses together and linking uses with pedestrian and bicycle pathways was good for
public transit, walking and biking, these features made it more difficult and slower to travel by
automobile. As a result many newer developments often failed to include provisions for
walking and bicycling, lacking sidewalks, pedestrian and bicycle pathways. The design of these
communities not only made it difficult, but unsafe, to walk or cycle as a mode of transportation
or as a form of exercise or recreation. The result of designing communities for automobile
movement at the exclusion of all other transportation modes is that fewer people are able to
walk or cycle to work, school or for recreation. Currently, people use their automobiles even for
short trips of under one mile and people without access to an automobile often lack access to
critical community goods and services.
Walking and Cycling for Transportation Purposes. Until recently, there has been a lack of
data available to determine the extent to which providing facilities for non- motorized
transportation actually resulted in an increase in the number of people who commuted by foot
or by bicycle. However, a number of studies and anecdotal evidence indicates that bicycling can
substitute directly for automobile trips and that communities that improve cycling conditions
often experience significant increases in bicycle travel and related reductions in vehicle travel. 17
The presence of public policy support for non- motorized transportation is also a factor in the
number of people who commute by bicycle, with some studies indicating that cycling is five to
10 times higher in communities with supportive policies. 18
One of the first studies designed to determine whether providing non- motorized pathways
resulted in increased usage for commute purposes was conducted in 1997 and found that each
additional mile of bikeway per 100,000 people is associated with a 0.069 percent increase in
bicycle commuting. 19 Research conducted by the North Carolina Highway Safety Research
Center found that the presence of pathways that form a continuous network that linked areas
of community activity was the most important factor in determining the number of people who
bicycled for non- recreational purposes. 20 A study of 20 U. S. cities selected to represent a cross
section of cities in the U. S. found that distance to work and the perceived safety of the trip were
important factors in whether people cycled to work and that people who cycle for errands,
school or work prefer to ride on bicycle paths along highways over the grade- separated paths
17 PBQD. 2000. Data Collection and Modeling Requirements for Assessing Transportation Impacts of
Micro- Scale Design. U. S. Department of Transportation.
18 Comsis Corporation. 1993. Implementing Effective Travel Demand Management Measures: Inventory
of Measures and Synthesis of Experience, U. S. Department of Transportation and Institute of
Transportation Engineers.
19 Nelson, A. C. and D. Allen. If You Build Them, Commuters Will Use Them. Transportation Research
Record, 1997.
20 University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center. FHWA. U. S. Department of
Transportation. 1994. A Compendium of Available Bicycle and Pedestrian Trip Generation Data in the
United States.
28
preferred by recreational users. 21 Another study that analyzed data from 35 large cities in the
U. S. found a correlation between the amount of infrastructure available for non- motorized
transportation and the number of people who commuted by a non- motorized mode. 22 An
interesting finding from this study is that the percentage of people commuting by bicycle is
significantly correlated with three bicycle infrastructure variables, the most significant
correlation being the number of Type 2 bicycle lanes per square mile. The more miles of Type 2
bicycle lanes provided, the more people who commute by bicycle in the city. Results from
modeling the data from the 35 cities in the study indicated that for typical cities with
populations over 250,000, each additional mile of Type 2 bike lane per square mile is associated
with an increase in the share of workers commuting by bicycle of approximately one percent.
The importance of network of continuous pathways designed to connect residential,
commercial, and other community activity centers is identified by a number of studies. As the
Nelson and Allen study states, “ It might be what matters most about the provision of bicycle
pathways for commuting is whether they are being designed for commuting.” 23 The importance
of land use and transportation planning has been identified in several studies which have
indicated that more people use non- motorized transportation for non- recreational purposes
when planning for these modes is integrated into a region’s transit system and land use
pattern. 24 Simply developing pathways for recreational use and hoping they will serve double
duty as commute routes is often not enough. This may explain why cities with approximately
the same amount of non- motorized pathway miles can have vastly different percentages for
commuting on these pathways. In cities where an effort was made to link activity centers, the
amount of people who use non- motorized pathways for non- recreational purposes is higher
than in cities that did not design the pathways to connect different land uses.
The federal government has begun to require that the metropolitan planning organizations
include bicycle and pedestrian facilities in all transportation improvement programs through
the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act ( ISTEA). The federal government also
identified in its National Bicycling and Walking Study the goal of doubling of the share of trips
made by foot or bicycle. 25
Although BCDC is not a transportation agency, there is one form of transportation that the
Commission has been instrumental in securing– public access pathways for walking and
bicycling. Since BCDC’s creation, an additional 935 miles of Bay shoreline has been opened up
to the public. This increased access provides the Bay Area with pathways and amenities to
make walking and cycling along the Bay shoreline safer and more convenient, allowing people
the opportunity to use those forms of travel for either recreation or transportation purposes.
Walking and biking as a transportation choice or option has been overlooked for many
years. The design and street layout of many new communities and public transit stations have
not included accommodations for walking and cycling to work, to run errands, to school, to
access restaurants, retail or entertainment areas or for recreation. Currently, nine percent of
people walk in the Bay Area for all trips, while 3.2 percent walk to work. Walking represents a
larger percentage of trips to school, with 20 percent of those trips being made by people on foot.
The importance of density, design and land use mix in encouraging walking is illustrated by the
percentage of people who walk to work varies from almost 9.5 percent in San Francisco down to
21 Goldsmith, S. A. 1992. National Bicycling and Walking Study, Case Study No. 1: Reasons Why Bicycling
and Walking Are and Are Not Being Used More Extensively as Travel Modes. FHWA, U. S. Department
of Transportation.
22 Dill, Jennifer and Theresa Carr. 2003. Bicycle Commuting and Facilities in Major U. S. Cities: If You
Build Them, Commuters Will Use Them– Another Look. Portland State University.
23 Nelson, A. C. and D. Allen. If You Build Them, Commuters Will Use Them. Transportation Research
Record, 1997.
24 Victoria Transport Policy Institute. 2005. Cycling Improvements: Strategies to Make Cycling
Convenient, Safe and Pleasant. TDM Encyclopedia.
25 Federal Highway Administration. 1999. National Bicycling and Walking Study Five Year Status Report
by he U. S. Department of Transportation.
29
1.5 percent in Contra Costa County. Bike trips represent approximately 1.2 percent of all trips in
the Bay Area. As with walking, cycling represents a larger percentage of trips to school, with
four percent of the people making these trips on bicycle. 26
Bay Area Regional Systems and Trends. As the studies cited above indicate, walking and
cycling trips become much more popular when these modes are supported with safe trails,
signage and linkages to larger trail systems and to major origin and destination points. Several
examples of this include the expansion of the bike paths in Davis, the provision of the Iron
Horse Trail located in the East Bay and the dedication of more space on Valencia Street in San
Francisco. In the City of Davis, the provision of abundant bicycle paths has resulted in a
significant increase in cycling in the city. Bicycle trips now account for more than 25 percent of
all trips taken in Davis. 27 The Iron Horse Trail is a multi- use trail that currently links the East
Bay communities of Concord and Dublin. When completed, the trail will link Livermore to
Suisun Bay for a distance of 33 miles, traveling through 12 cities. The trail also serves as a
connection between residential and commercial areas, job centers, park and open space areas,
schools, other trails and bus stops and BART stations. In addition to using the trail for
recreation and leisure, many are using the trail to access work. Surveys of users have found that
approximately 33 percent of those that use the trail do so for purposes other than recreation.
While providing a more positive environment for non- motorized transportation is not likely to
remove significant numbers of drivers from the region’s roadways, it does provide people with
a healthy alternative to the automobile, particularly for short trips and provides people who are
unable to drive with a safe environment for walking for exercise, errands and other trips. A
system of pathways can also enable transit users to leave their cars at home or provide
connections to transit for people who are unable to drive by providing safe and convenient
access to transit stations. Reducing the number of people who must drive to transit stations also
reduces the localized traffic and parking impacts associated with transit stations.
This focus on pedestrian and cycling trails is creating an increasingly positive environment
for walking and cycling in the Bay Area, providing people the opportunity to walk or cycle for
recreation or transportation purposes. Walking is the most popular leisure activity in the
country and studies have shown that one of the most important determinants of whether or not
someone is physically active is that person’s neighborhood. Factors such as the presence or
absence of sidewalks, traffic, topography, lighting, the presence of others, crime level and
scenery all play a role in whether a person is active. 28 Research by the Center for Disease
Control found that people cited two main reasons for being inactive- a lack of pathways and
sidewalks and safety concerns.
Another project that illustrates the impact of making areas safe for walking and cycling is
the Valencia Street project. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition worked with the City of San
Francisco on a redesign of Valencia Street, a heavily traveled street in San Francisco. The
redesign resulted in reducing the number of lanes dedicated for cars from four to two, adding
bicycle lanes, a median and dedicated turn lanes. The project has reduced vehicle speeds and
significantly increased the number of people who bicycle along the street, from approximately
100 per hour to approximately 200 per hour. The number of automobiles on the street per day
has been reduced from 22,200 per day to 19,700 per day. The public response, based on the calls
received by the Department of Parking and Traffic on the project, has been overwhelmingly
positive.
Many Bay Area residents walk or cycle to work, to BART, buses, trains or ferries. Density
and distance is an important factor for these trips. Over 90 percent of walking trips to BART are
26 Census 2000 Supplementary Survey. San Francisco Bay Area.
27 Killingsworth, Richard and Jean Lamming. July 2001. Development and Public Health: Could Our
Development Patterns be Affecting Our Personal Health? Urban Land.
28 Ewing PhD, Reid. 2003. Relationship Between Urban Sprawl and Physical Activity, Obesity and
Morbidity. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
30
less than one mile in length. In general, walking and cycling are modes used for shorter
distances. In fact, 40 percent of all walking and cycling trips are to locations that are less than
two miles from the point of origin. Approximately 25 percent of these trips are less than one
mile in length. 29 Public transit station planners could encourage walking and cycling by
reducing the number of parking spaces that are available, by providing bicycle and pedestrian
pathways, working to link these pathways to neighborhood and employment centers and by
accommodating bicycles either at the stations or on the transit systems.
Many planning and advocacy organizations, including Bay Area bicycle coalitions, the
Association of Bay Area Government’s Bay Trail project and the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council,
have worked hard to ensure that the benefits of trail systems and dedicated lanes are
considered when projects are being planned. The Bay Area Ridge Trail is planned as a 400- mile
network of trails located along the region’s ridgelines. MTC included a regional bicycle plan in
its 2001 RTP that provided a framework to identify regional priorities for bicycle routes and
facilities. The plan, entitled the 2001 Regional Bicycle Plan for the San Francisco Bay Area, identifies
a system of bicycle routes that, when completed, would both ring and cross the Bay. Figure 2
depicts the MTC’s proposed regional bicycle plan which includes bikeways across the entire
Bay Bridge span, the Richmond- San Rafael Bridge and the Hayward- San Mateo Bridge. In order
to fund the regional bicycle plan, regionally significant pedestrian projects and pedestrian and
bicycle projects that serve schools and public transit, MTC created the Regional Bicycle and
Pedestrian Program. In addition to support made possible by this program, MTC committed
$ 200 million dollars in its 2030 Plan for regionally significant bicycle and pedestrian projects.
The Association of Bay Area Governments is developing a 500- mile network of trails that
accommodates both pedestrians and cyclists along the shoreline of the San Francisco Bay.
Figure 3 depicts the general alignment of the proposed and existing San Francisco Bay Trail
project. The program, the San Francisco Bay Trail project, was created in 1987 by a state bill
authored by then state Senator Bill Lockyer. The concept of the Bay Trail is to create a
continuous link around the shoreline of San Francisco Bay and to provide access to pedestrians
and cyclists across the major toll bridge crossings. As the Bay Trail is designed to provide
continuous access to the Bay and along its shoreline, BCDC has worked closely with its staff to
meet the project’s objective. The Bay Trail is designed to link all nine counties in the Bay Area,
47 of the cities in the region and would cross all of the major toll bridges that cross the Bay. To
date, approximately 240 miles of the trail are completed and trail access exists or is planned and
funded for the new Zampa Bridge, the Benicia- Martinez Bridge, the Dumbarton Bridge, the
Golden Gate Bridge and the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. There is no non- motorized pathway
across the San Mateo- Hayward or the Richmond- San Rafael Bridges or the western span of the
Bay Bridge. The Bay Trail has made some important connections across major freeway systems,
such as Interstate 80 in Berkeley and State Route 92 in Hayward, which has increased access to
the Bay for both regional users and the residents of local neighborhoods. The Bay Trail website
describes a variety of locations and points of interest that lie within two miles of the planned
and existing trail network, including 2.7 million residents, 1.8 million jobs, 57,000 acres of open
space, large employers such as Oracle, United Airlines, Lockheed and Genetech, 12 colleges, 21
Caltrain stations, 20 BART stations, eight VTA stations, six MUNI stations, six Amtrak stations,
two ACE stations, all ferry terminals and large numbers of bus stops. 30
BCDC has been involved in providing public access to and around the Bay’s shoreline for
over 30 years. A significant provision of the McAteer- Petris Act is the requirement that all
projects provide maximum feasible public access to the Bay consistent with the proposed
project. This requirement has resulted in miles of public access around the Bay, served to
increase regional and local access to the Bay, and provided locations for the Bay Trail. The
29 Cervero, Robert. 1995. Travel Choices in Pedestrian versus Automobile Oriented Neighborhoods.
University of California Transportation Center.
30 San Francisco Bay Trail website www. abag. ca. gov/ bayarea/ baytrail/ baytrail. html
31
significant public spaces available at SBC Ballpark, the Tiburon shoreline and the pathways
over the Zampa Bridge are a result of BCDC permit requirements.
Although access has greatly improved for walkers and cyclists, many links need to be
completed for easy and safe to access. To support and encourage walking and cycling dedicated
trails must lead safely and conveniently to places people want to go. In some places, such as the
Valencia Street project, that may mean dedicating less space to cars. Elsewhere, both can be
accommodated. Often, one of the most significant impediments to creating these linkages is the
location of bridge, roadway and rail projects. In the past, these roadways often separated
communities from the Bay, from commercial and recreational areas and often split
neighborhoods that used to exist as one community from one another. In the more heavily
urbanized areas of the waterfront, such as Oakland, Emeryville, Richmond and Berkeley, access
to the Bay has been either difficult or impossible due to major transportation infrastructure.
Prior to the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, public access to San Francisco’s waterfront was
significantly impeded by the Embarcadero structure that separated downtown from the Bay.
Once this structure came down, access to the Bay significantly improved, spurring development
along the waterfront and activity along the waterfront. To make the Bay shoreline accessible to
the public, transportation project planners need to accommodate multiple modes when
designing transportation projects, including roadway, bridge and rail construction and
improvements and at new ferry terminals. Tools that can be used to ensure safe public access to
the Bay shoreline include traffic calming measures, speed humps, raised crosswalks and
intersections, extended and widened sidewalks, marked bicycle paths, grade separated
roadways or railway crossings, pathways that are separated from vehicular traffic, mini-roundabouts,
widened medians, rumble strips, landscaping, pedestrian and bicycle
overcrossings or undercrossings and non- contiguous sidewalks. Such measures encourage
walking and cycling by making them both safe and convenient. 31
31 Transportation Alternatives. 2004. Streets for People
32
34
Figure 2 back
36
Figure 3 back
37
CHAPTER 4
BRIDGES AND ROADWAYS
Seven major bridges span the Bay. All of the original spans were completed before BCDC
was established in 1965. The first vehicular crossing of the Bay was the Dumbarton Bridge,
completed in 1927. The original Carquinez Bridge was also completed in 1927. The original San
Mateo- Hayward Bridge was completed two years later and was the longest bridge in the world
at the time it was built. The Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge were completed in the
late1930’ s. The last two bridges that were constructed over the Bay were the Richmond- San
Rafael Bridge completed in 1956 and the Benicia- Martinez Bridge in 1962. Many of these bridges
have been replaced or substantially renovated since the original completion of the spans. A new
Dumbarton Bridge was built in 1984, the San Mateo- Hayward Bridge was replaced in 1967 and
the Carquinez Bridge was replaced in 1958. The Bay Bridge was renovated in 1958 to remove
the inter- urban rail system ( the Key System) and increase capacity for automobiles. In every
case, the bridge structures were replaced due to increased traffic and for safety reasons. The San
Mateo- Hayward Bridge span was originally constructed as a trestle bridge that required the
raising of the trestle to allow for shipping traffic approximately six times a day, disrupting
automobile traffic.
Building of the Bridges. The building of the bridges over the San Francisco Bay required
dedicated politicians and public employees, visionary engineers and brave construction
workers and resulted in two of the world’s great bridges– the San Francisco- Oakland Bay Bridge
and the Golden Gate Bridge.
The design and construction of the Bay Bridge was initiated by the Hoover- Young San
Francisco Bay Bridge Commission which concluded in 1930 that the bridge was both necessary
to the development of the area and economically and structurally feasible. Rather than one
project, the Bay Bridge was designed as four in order to overcome some of the engineering
challenges presented by spanning such a long distance and at such a height. The four parts of
the project consisted of– two suspension bridges between San Francisco and Yerba Buena Island,
a tunnel through Yerba Buena Island and a cantilever span between San Francisco and Oakland.
The challenges that the engineers and construction crews faced were formidable and resulted in
many firsts. The Bay Bridge was the longest and most expensive bridge ever built, requiring
over 6,500 workers to complete the work. The tunnel through Yerba Buena Island was the tallest
bore in the world and the foundations for the bridge extended the greatest depths below water
of any other structure. One piling was sunk over 240 feet below water. The joining of the two
suspension bridges required a solution from the top creative minds in deep- water foundations
and resulted in the “ Moran- Purcell caisson” which was constructed at a dry dock in Oakland.
The caisson was half the size of a city block and consisted of 55 vertical steel cylinders with each
cylinder measuring 15 feet in diameter. Despite the engineering and construction challenges,
the bridge was completed ahead of schedule and considered a great success.
The Golden Gate Bridge was more politically challenging than the Bay Bridge. Unlike the
Bay Bridge, where there was close to unanimous support for the span, many opposed the
proposal to span the Golden Gate. Cost and aesthetics were among the primary reasons for
opposition and the first designs for the span consisted of railroad trestle- like designs that would
have blocked views of the Golden Gate, the Pacific Ocean and the “ sunsets”. Concerns over the
impact a span would have on the natural beauty of the Golden Gate and its role as the region’s
gateway resulted in a bridge project that placed equal emphasis on function and design. The
outcome was that the engineer and architect on the project designed a work of art that
happened to be functional, rather than a utilitarian bridge.
Heralded as the longest single span in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge took four years to
complete. Since its completion the bridge has served as a symbol of the Bay Area, is one of the
38
most photographed manmade structures in the world and has been the inspiration of countless
good and bad art– from poetry to movies. It is almost universally agreed that rather than
degrade its surroundings, the Golden Gate Bridge honors and improves upon the natural
beauty of the site.
Existing Conditions. Currently, the bridges are going through another round of replacement
and renovation. The reasons are primarily the same— increased congestion, operational
improvements and seismic safety. Although congestion on the bridges increased noticeably in
the late 1990s and early 2000s, in 2002 the growth in bridge traffic had slowed. In 2002, the
average daily traffic on the Bay Area’s bridges, in the toll direction only was 54,920 vehicles on
the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge served 136,952 vehicles westbound per day, the San
Mateo- Hayward Bridge had 42,010 vehicles cross westbound per day, the Dumbarton Bridge
was traversed by 33,009 vehicles, the Richmond- San Rafael Bridge is traveled by 35,878 vehicles
and the Benicia- Martinez Bridge had 50,797 vehicles move across it per day in the toll
direction. 32 The percentage of people who drive alone, participate in carpools or take transit
varies for each span. Recent numbers were gathered for the Bay Bridge, the Dumbarton Bridge
and the San Mateo- Hayward Bridge as part of MTC’s Bay Crossings Study. At the time of the
study, in 2000 and 2001, in the Bay Bridge corridor, the percentage of people who drove alone
on the Bay Bridge was 34 percent, 35 percent participated in carpools, 27 percent took BART,
three percent rode an AC Transit transbay express bus and one percent took a ferry. For the
Dumbarton and San Mateo- Hayward bridge corridors, where there are fewer transit options
and less dense development patterns, 69 percent drove alone, approximately 30 percent
participated in a carpool and one percent took a bus across the Dumbarton Bridge, while less
than one percent took public transit on the San Mateo span. 33 The significantly larger number of
single drivers on the Dumbarton and San Mateo spans means that these bridges can
accommodate fewer people than the Bay Bridge before reaching capacity and becoming
congested and indicates that these bridges could be used more efficiently if successful public
transit and carpool options could be developed.
MTC’s Bay Crossings Study also measured the capacity of these three bridges and counted
the number of cars that crossed the bridges. The Bay Bridge has a capacity of approximately
10,000 vehicles per hour and operates at this capacity in the westbound direction during the
morning peak period. In the eastbound direction the Bay Bridge is at its capacity of
approximately 9,000 vehicles per hour during the evening peak period. The San Mateo-
Hayward Bridge had a capacity of 4,000 vehicles per hour at the time of the study and exceeds
3,000 vehicles per hour in the westbound direction between 6 AM and 9 AM and eastbound
between 4 PM until after 7 PM. The Dumbarton Bridge capacity is 6,000 vehicles per hour. The
bridge does not exceed 4,000 vehicles per hour at any time, while the eastbound direction
exceeds 5,000 vehicles per hour between the hours of 5 PM until after 7 PM.
Over the last decade, there have been a number of projects aimed at improving mobility
across the bridges and making these structures safer, particularly from earthquake damage.
These projects have included the widening of the low trestle portion of the San Mateo-
Hayward Bridge to address congestion and enhance safety ( completed in 2003), a new eastern
span for the Bay Bridge to seismically strengthen the bridge ( construction underway), a new
Carquinez Bridge ( completed in 2004 and renamed the Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge) and the
Benicia- Martinez span that will address congestion, increase the capacity of the bridge by
improving HOV lane access and increase safety ( construction underway) and improvements to
the Richmond- San Rafael and Golden Gate Bridges to seismically strengthen the spans and
repair weather and wear damage.
32 Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Caltrans District 4. 2003. Bay Area Transportation State
of the System.
33 Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 2002. Bay Crossings Study.
39
Public access improvements accompanied many of the projects, increasing bicycle and
pedestrian access across the Bay at the Carquinez and Benicia- Martinez crossings and access on
the eastern span of the Bay Bridge and along the eastern shoreline of the San Mateo- Hayward
Bridge. These projects also raised some issues related to impacts to Bay habitats that had not
been previously addressed, including the effects of pile driving on marine organisms, impacts
to eelgrass beds and related mitigation issues.
Operational improvements to the spans include increasing and improving HOV lane access
to the toll plazas and the implementation of the FasTrak system to allow drivers to pass through
the toll plazas without stopping. A recent study has shown that by participating in carpools,
commuters in the Bay Bridge corridor can reduce their commute times by up to 20 minutes one
way. 34 The FasTrak system can allow more than twice as many vehicles to travel through the
toll plaza on dedicated lanes as can be accommodated on those lanes where tolls are taken. On
the Golden Gate Bridge, 70 percent of the travel during the peak period uses FasTrak. On the
Bay Area’s seven state owned toll bridges, 37 percent of the people traveling during peak
periods use FasTrak. 35 Metering ramps are another congestion management strategy that has
been gaining use in the Bay Area. Metering ramps control the entrance on to bridges, freeways
and roadways to maintain speed and flow and can increase the capacity and efficiency of
existing infrastructure are generally far less costly, have fewer negative impacts to ecosystems
and communities and can be more quickly implemented than new and widened infrastructure
projects.
The Bay shoreline is the location of many of the region’s most heavily traveled roadways,
including Interstate 80, U. S. 101 and Interstate 880, as well as smaller, but still critical roadways
such as State Route 37 in the North Bay and University Avenue, or State Route 109, in the South
Bay. There have been past proposals to widen many of the roadways along the shoreline or to
build parallel roadways to relieve congestion that would have resulted in Bay fill. Most of these
proposals were never realized, while others are still being debated and analyzed. State Route 37
may be widened to four- lanes. This project, including public access and mitigation, is described
in detail in the White Slough Development Act the White Slough Specific Area Plan and the North
Bay Corridor Study.
With respect to new and expanded roadways and bridges MTC’s draft version of its 2030
Plan stated, “ Ever since the ‘ freeway revolt’ in the 1960s, the region has been engaged in a long
running debate about expanding transportation capacity…. Let’s begin with a few facts. First,
the era of major freeway construction is over. During the next two decades, the Bay Area is
expected to spend less on new highway projects than any other large urban area in the
country.” 36
BCDC’s Bay Plan policies specifically state that roads are not water- oriented uses and
require that any additional bridge proposed across the Bay include “ adequate research and
testing” to determine if an alternative solution could overcome the particular congestion
problem. 37 The Suisun Marsh Protection Plan also includes findings and policies that discourage
roadways in the marsh. The plan states,
“ New roadways ( highways, primary and secondary roads) and rail lines that
form barriers to movement of terrestrial wildlife should not be constructed in
the Suisun Marsh or in adjacent uplands necessary to protect the Marsh
except where such roadways and rail lines are necessary in the secondary
management area for the operation of water- related industry and port uses
34 Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Caltrans District 4. 2003. Bay Area Transportation State
of the System.
35 Metropolitan Transportation Commission website. June 2005. Agencies Team up to put Bay Area
Motorists on FasTrak.
36 Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 2005. Transportation 2030 Plan for the San Francisco Bay
Area.
37 San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. San Francisco Bay Plan.
40
within the area designated as a water- related industry reserve in the
Protection Plan at Collinsville. Rail access to serve the water- related
industrial reserve area may be permitted within the existing Sacramento
Northern Railroad right- of- way or along the east side of the Marsh,
whichever route would result in the least disturbance to wetlands and
wildlife. Wherever possible, rail access to the Sacramento River and through
the area designated as a water- related industrial reserve area should be
located above the 10- foot contour in order to avoid adverse impacts to
wetlands. Whenever the reconstructed line would pass through wetland
areas, it should be constructed on trestles.”
Although it is important to identify the policies that pertain to the Suisun Marsh, this report is
written to support an amendment to the Bay Plan does not include changes to the Suisun Marsh
Protection Plan. 38
Given the impacts to the Bay from additional roadways and bridges, the environmental,
social and economic costs of these structures and the Commission’s existing policies that
prohibit roadways and discourage additional bridges, transportation planning and policy
making for the Bay Area should place the focus of future work on increasing the efficiency and
capacity of the existing transportation and public transit infrastructure, while continuing to
provide a policy framework to allow for new bridges to be built. The following sections
describe the possible alternatives for increasing mobility across the Bay without expanding or
building new roadways or bridge structures.
Express Buses, Carpooling, High- Occupancy Vehicle ( HOV) Lanes. Currently there are
approximately 300- lane miles of carpool or high- occupancy vehicle ( HOV) lanes in the Bay
Area. This is a significant increase over the amount of HOV lane miles in 1990, when there were
just 64- lane miles. In addition to the expanded amount of lane miles, there are also four bridge
toll plazas that have lanes dedicated to carpools and high- occupancy vehicles, as well as 66 on
ramps that allow carpools and high- occupancy vehicles to bypass metering lights. Figure 4
depicts the existing and proposed HOV lane network. Many of the lanes are on roadways and
bridges within or near BCDC’s jurisdiction, such as the HOV lane on Interstate 80 through
Emeryville and those on the toll plazas of the bridges. 39
These lanes, known as carpool lanes, HOV lanes or diamond lanes, serve several modes of
transportation, including automobiles with 2+ or 3+ occupants, vanpools, shuttles, motorcycles,
certain hybrid vehicles and buses. Carpooling is the second most popular transportation mode
used to get to work in the Bay Area, with 13 percent of commuters participating in carpools.
Carpool requirements in the Bay Area require two or more occupants in the more suburban
areas such as Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties and three or more occupants in the more
urban areas such as the Bay Bridge and Interstate 80 through Berkeley and Emeryville.
Commuters using the HOV lanes in the region benefit from significant time savings over those
that drive alone. For example, in Sonoma County, carpools using the HOV lanes save
approximately 15 minutes over people driving alone in the mixed- flow lanes. In the South Bay
commuters in the HOV lanes save approximately 40 minutes traveling south along the
Interstate 880 corridor from Whipple Avenue. The transbay HOV lanes save people time as
well. Carpools and buses that use the HOV lane leading to the Bay Bridge in the morning save
approximately 20 minutes over those drivers in the mixed- flow lanes. Those traveling west in
the morning in the HOV lanes to the Dumbarton Bridge save approximately 20 minutes as
well. 40
38 San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. Suisun Marsh Protection Act.
39 Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 2002. High- Occupancy Vehicle Lane Master Plan.
40 Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Caltrans District 4. 2003. Bay Area Transportation State
of the System.
41
HOV lanes can increase the efficiency with which roadways are used by increasing the
number of people that are carried within each vehicle. The carpool lanes along the Interstate 80
through Alameda and Contra Costa counties and a carpool lane along the US 101 in Santa Clara
County move more than 4,500 people per hour in the AM peak period. At peak periods during
the morning commute westbound over the Bay Bridge, the HOV lanes carry nearly two thirds
of all people traveling westbound while carrying only 40 percent of the automobiles during the
same period. The Caltrans performance standard for carpool lanes is 1,800 people per hour and
the majority of the Bay Area’s HOV lanes achieve this standard in the peak travel period and
direction. In off- peak directions many of the HOV lanes fall below the Caltrans performance
standard, but are projected to meet it within the next decade. 41 Expansions of the current HOV
lane miles are already planned by MTC, with 230 lane miles included in the 2001 RTP. 42
When used by buses, HOV lanes can significantly increase the number of people being
moved per hour. Currently, there are no bus- only lanes in the Bay Area, but there are several
areas in the country that have bus- only lanes and, under the appropriate circumstances, such
lanes can be very successful. In New Jersey, a bus- only lane carried more than 20,000 people per
hour into the Lincoln Tunnel during the mid- 1990s, moving more than the combined total of the
remaining 12 mixed- flow lanes. 43 Even without bus- only lanes, access to HOV lanes is critical to
the success of express buses, providing passengers with a time incentive to driving alone.
People who travel over the Bay Bridge on AC Transit transbay buses save approximately 15
minutes off of their morning commute due to the time the bus saves by traveling in the HOV
lane. 44
The Bay Area has a number of express bus services that are managed by a variety of
agencies. The transit agencies that provide express bus service over the Bay are AC Transit,
Golden Gate Bridge and Transportation District and Santa Clara Valley Transportation
Authority. Additionally, a consortium of transit providers operate express bus service in the
Bay Area, including AC Transit, BART, Union City Transit and the Santa Clara Valley
Transportation Authority which provides a transbay bus line over the Dumbarton Bridge. All
five major central bay bridges have transbay bus service, although service varies significantly.
The Dumbarton, San Mateo- Hayward, and Richmond- San Rafael bridges are served by only
one bus- line. The Bay Bridge is served by 22 transbay lines and the Golden Gate Bridge is
served by 25 transbay lines. On the Bay Bridge, three percent of weekday trips or 15,200 people
per day travel over the bridge on AC Transit buses. Many of the transbay buses also link to
other transit, such as BART and Caltrain. 45 The proposed Transbay Terminal in San Francisco
will link transbay buses to more than seven different transit options, including Caltrain and
MUNI.
Express buses provide a number of benefits to the region, including the ability to be
adaptable to changing development patterns in a way that is not possible with fixed rail or even
ferries. Express buses use the existing infrastructure more efficiently and increase its capacity. If
the region had a complete network of HOV lanes, express bus service would likely be more
attractive to commuters. The Bay Area Transportation and Land Use Coalition ( BATLUC)
report on regional transportation includes the creation of a regional web of express buses as one
of its key recommendations for creating a world class transit system. In its report World Class
Transit for the Bay Area, BATLUC recommends using the existing and proposed network of
HOV lanes in the region as “ the backbone of an express bus web, making the most efficient use
41 DKS Associates. 2002 High- Occupancy Vehicle Lane Master Plan Update Final Summary Report
prepared for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Caltrans District 4 and the California
Highway Patrol Golden Gate Division.
42 Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 2001 Regional Transportation Plan.
43 Leman, Christopher. August 1994. Re- thinking HOV- High- Occupancy Vehicle Facilities and the Public
Interest. Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
44 Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 2002. High- Occupancy Vehicle Lane Master Plan.
45 Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 2002. Bay Crossings Study
42
of [ existing resources].” The report identifies successful express bus webs in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, Miami and Ottawa as examples of how the Bay Area could benefit from such
service. 46
In the Bay Area, AC Transit is analyzing bus rapid transit for the region, through the East
Bay Bus Rapid Transit ( BRT) project. AC Transit has already initiated bus rapid transit along
San Pablo Avenue in seven cities, including Berkeley and Oakland and is looking at other
locations to extend bus rapid transit service. The San Pablo Avenue BRT has been very
successful, increasing ridership by 66 percent during peak periods over the former Limited
service. In addition to tripling ridership, the San Pablo Avenue BRT has also resulted in a time
savings of 30 percent over the local service along San Pablo Avenue and a 17 percent time
savings over the Limited service. BRT is more than a bus line that makes fewer stops like
existing Limited service for commuters. BRT incorporates many of the same elements that are
associated with light rail, such as electronic bus arrival displays, buses with low floors and more
doors to speed passenger ingress and egress, shelters to provide comfortable waits, more
frequent schedules and technology that coordinates signal lights to stay green a little longer or
turn green a little sooner to give the buses priority. These factors significantly reduce trip time,
increase passenger comfort and make travel by bus more attractive. In a recent passenger
survey, it was found that approximately 19 percent of current BRT riders formerly drove. The
convenience and time- savings associated with San Pablo Avenue’s BRT service has resulted in a
reduction of 1,100 automobile trips per day along San Pablo Avenue. 47 Bus Rapid Transit is also
being studied in key corridors in San Francisco and Santa Clara counties.
The majority of HOV lanes in California have been constructed as new lanes, rather than
converted from existing lanes. This is likely to continue even though converting an existing lane
can provide a wider range of benefits over adding a new lane. Some of the benefits of
converting an existing lane include: more cost effective, fewer environmental and community
impacts, more likely to result in people shifting peak period trips to public transit, contribute to
air quality improvements. However, it is hard to attain public acceptance for converting
existing mixed- flow lanes to HOV lanes. Additionally, transportation agencies that have