Regional Collaboration

COVID Compels New Task Force to Confront Bay Area Transit’s Existential Crisis

By Jim Spering 
Chairman
Metropolitan Transportation Commission Blue Ribbon Recovery Task Force

The San Francisco Bay Area, like metropolitan regions around the world, has been forced by COVID-19 to revamp, resize, and refocus its transit system. But the Bay Area also has embarked on an effort to re-think its network. The current pandemic crisis presents an opportunity for our region to address problems that have plagued the system for far too long. When the pandemic finally passes, our region won’t return to “normal” but rather to “different.”

At the heart of this effort is the Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force for which I serve as Chair. Formed last spring by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) following its April 2020 allocation of federal CARES Act funds, the 32-member Task Force includes other local elected officials; Assemblymember David Chiu (D-San Francisco); California State Transportation Agency Secretary David Kim; general managers of large and small transit operators; business and labor groups, as well as advocates for people with disabilities; and transit and social justice advocates.

The COVID-19 crisis is an acute condition. But the Bay Area transit network also has chronic underlying conditions that should not be ignored. One need not be a member of the Task Force to recognize that Bay Area residents and visitors alike must now navigate a frankly antiquated transit network built for the 1970s as opposed to meeting the needs of today. 

A Crisis Within A Crisis

With almost 8 million residents living across nine counties and 101 cities, the Bay Area is home to one of the largest public transit networks in the U.S. and the highest share (12 percent) of commute trips taken on transit in California. Due to COVID-19, the number of trips taken each month on the region’s buses, trains, and ferries dropped to just 10.7 million in October 2020 from about 45 million a year earlier. Fare revenue has fallen even more steeply — closer to 90 percent — due to proportionally higher ridership declines on rail and ferry systems with higher fares. The result is a crisis for Bay Area transit like never before.

Our region’s residents have a shared identity through their proximity to one of the largest estuaries on the planet, known to all as the San Francisco Bay and are linked together by eight toll bridges and the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART)’s Transbay tube — as well as by the Clipper card, the region’s transit fare payment card. For passengers, Clipper has removed the hassle of needing exact change or even knowing the fare when riding transit in the Bay Area. But the card hasn’t unified the fares themselves. Trips of identical distance in the same general area can cost completely different sums, depending on which system a passenger is riding. Discounts vary by system too.

This is because the Bay Area’s transit system actually is operated by at least 27 separate agencies. My home county of Solano, for instance, is served by seven different operators. Some Bay Area agencies, such as BART and AC Transit, are independent districts established by the state Legislature with directly elected boards; joint powers authorities include Caltrain and Solano County Transit (SolTrans); while other agencies, such as Fairfield and Suisun Transit (FAST) and Vacaville CityCoach, are municipal operators. While about 90 percent of all Bay Area transit riders are carried by just seven agencies, the region’s small bus operators play critical roles connecting riders to the larger systems, as well as providing local trips.

Even before COVID-19, Bay Area transit ridership had begun to drop. In 2015, SPUR, a San Francisco think-tank, published a report, Seamless Transit, recommending ways to make transit function like one “rational, easy-to-use system.” The goal was the creation of a more customer-focused system that removes the friction that can result from having so many different operators with their own independent schedules, and different signage, maps, and logos.

Assemblymember Chiu in early 2020 introduced AB 2057 to foster a more unified, more equitable and more widely used transit system. The bill would have established the Bay Area Seamless Transit Task Force to make recommendations on a host of issues to improve transit connectivity and performance. While the bill did not advance last year, the conversations it generated laid the foundation for MTC’s establishment of the Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force.

Recovery Task Force

One of the Task Force’s first roles was to assist MTC in understanding the scale of the crisis facing Bay Area transit systems and to help guide the Commission’s regional response through expedited distribution of the second allocation of CARES Act funds. Once the Task Force moved past an initial focus on federal dollars — and health and safety — it pivoted to exploring what the region needs for long-term transformation.

I stressed at the Task Force’s initial meeting last May that every transit agency in the Bay Area will face serious challenges for years to come, and that each will have to coordinate action to make sure every dollar is invested most effectively. 

The current crisis gives us a chance to focus on shared priorities for the post-pandemic world.

Equity has been a core theme in Task Force discussions from the outset. The brunt of the pandemic and its deep economic disruption has fallen disproportionately on people of color and low-income households. Moreover, those who continue to ride transit today are generally those who are most reliant upon it and are often the essential service workers who are so critical to keeping our economy and health care systems functioning. Later this month the Task Force will be presented with equity principles to guide development of a Transit Transformation Action Plan, slated for completion by June of this year. These principles are being developed in consultation with community-based organizations and advocacy organizations focused on equity. 

The Task Force also is examining the concept of a transit network manager, which could be given authority over items such as fares, schedules, and customer information. The network manager concept would enable multiple operators to deliver service, while delivering a unified experience to customers. What potential responsibilities the network manager should have — and options for how this role might be structured — will be explored by the Task Force in the coming months.

Task Force member Rick Ramacier, General Manager for County Connection, forecasts, “Coming out of the pandemic – hopefully later this year – the Task Force will focus on improving the regional connectivity of Bay Area public transit services. This will be very helpful as public transit continues its customer focus pivot.”

BART General Manager and Task Force member Bob Powers makes a similar point, “The work we are prioritizing right now, through the Task Force, will help rebuild transit ridership in the Bay Area.” 

Powers adds, “Collectively, we are exploring simple but impactful solutions that will make it easier for people to ride transit and navigate from one system to another, including things like better schedule coordination and easy to read signs and maps.  Some of the changes we want to accomplish are more complex and will require more funding, but they will make Bay Area transit more resilient and equitable.” 

Deeper Collaboration

One unexpected and welcome outcome of the pandemic is an unprecedented level of coordination among Bay Area transit operators independent of the Task Force. “COVID forced all the region’s general managers to meet weekly to share strategies on minimizing COVID transmission,” said Jeff Tumlin, General Manager for San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which carries close to half of the region’s transit trips. “As a result of those meetings, we are realizing how much more we can do to integrate our services, making it easier for passengers and more efficient for us.” 

The financial crisis facing operators has also led to a greater degree of collaboration among agencies seeking ways to continue to provide service to riders, even as many lines have been eliminated. For example, Golden Gate Transit is now providing intra-San Francisco service in the northeast part of the city, and SamTrans in the southwest. 

“We’ve realized that if we sync operator sign-ups in our labor contracts, it would make it possible to maintain our timed transfers with other agencies,” said Tumlin. “More than ever, San Francisco’s economic recovery is dependent upon all the region’s transit operators COVID recovery.”

With a June target for release of the Task Force’s Action Plan, which will identify key steps needed to realize the long-held vision of a more connected, more efficient, and more user-focused Bay Area transit network, my colleagues and I have a lot of work to do. Assemblymember Chiu intends to author a bill to implement the Task Force’s recommendations this year. This will leave just a few short months for him to incorporate the recommendations into legislation that must be passed by both houses by September.

As Chiu told us at last month’s Task Force meeting, “If we wait until 2022 to enact legislation, then it doesn’t go into effect until 2023. And, frankly, we can’t afford to wait that long.” 

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Jim Spering is a Solano County Supervisor. He has represented Solano County on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission since 1987.
 

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