As I mentioned in a previous post, I consider myself somewhat of a public transit nerd. I love public transit. Specifically I love train-based transit; buses can go to hell.

Growing up on the fringes of Tucson, with a single Mom, and no older siblings to shuttle me around, I was often left to the mercy of the Sun Tran bus system. Now, in all fairness, Sun Tran was not a terrible system. It covered the city thoroughly, and the buses were modern, air-condidtioned and comfortable.

But Sun Tran had one major flaw: it operated buses, and not trains.

It’s an interesting question why I, and so many people, prefer trains to buses. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not completely above riding buses, but I feel more like I suffer through them, than enjoy them. In part, I think there is a certain classism amongst myself and my peer group — you know the type; we’re perfectly happy to take BART to San Francisco for our commute, or a night out (nevermind the godawful closing time of 12:00), but god forbid we ride the 72 down San Pablo through West Oakland.

Another anti-bus argument, and perhaps a more reasonable one, is that they are stuck on city streets, at the whims of traffic, and so are slower and less reliable than a train system.

Plus people romanticize trains. Whether you’re a subway-riding New York commuter, a five-year old fan of Thomas the Tank Engine, a model-train hobbyist, or a backpacking 20-something with a Eurail pass, trains are just cool. Buses? Well, not so much…

Bay Area transit is decent, especially for a West Coast city, but it could be SO much better. Maybe the BART system was a bold idea in its day, but since then little has changed. It’s true that BART now goes to SFO, and further out into the East Bay exurbs, but that’s hardly bold. What about the densely populated, inner bay area? Arguably, investing in more BART coverage in San Francisco and Oakland would server more people than extending the fringes (which by the way just encourages more leapfrog sprawl instead of denser urban areas).

But it’s not just BART that we need to consider, and that gets to the crux of one of the biggest problems we have: too many transit agencies. The Bay Area’s 7.5 million residents are served by many different agencies. Here’s just a handful off the top of my head:  SF Muni, BART,Caltrain, AC Transit, SamTrans, Golden Gate Transit.

Now I understand the reasons for this: primarily that the Bay Area is made up of a diverse group of cities and counties, each with its own interests, demographics, taxes and budgets, and their transit systems have grown up organically, more-or-less independent of one another. It would be impossible to have a regional transit system with all those competing interests. Right?

Wrong!

New York’s MTA serves many  millions of people in 14 counties in two states, including subways, commuter rail, and yes, buses. Portland’s TriMet covers three counties, and is widely considered a model for smart, sustainible approach to transit, and urban planning in general. Elsewhere in California, yes it is true that the Metro agency is limited to Los Angeles County, but that includes more people than the Bay Area, and in many diverse municipalities, over a similarly large geographical area.

So why is a regional approach better?

For starters, with a regional authority you have planners looking at the big picture, so they can work to accommodate transit patterns that cross city and county lines. Also, with regional control you could greatly eliminate redundant transit service and administrative overhead, and simplify union wage/benefits negotiations.

A third reason is the greater customer simplicity of one single system, with one single fee structure and transfer policy. Wouldn’t it be great, for example, if you could exit BART at Civic Center, and go directly to the N-Judah Muni line, without having to climb to the ticket level, exit BART, then enter Muni, and go back down to your new train?

Besides the difficulty of wrangling and combining the multitude of transit agencies, there are certainly other major issues with expanding Bay Area transit. They include paying for it (California is broke), geology (ack, earthquakes!), geography (there are bodies of water and mountains in the way), and NIMBYism (yes to transit, but not in my neighborhood!).

Those things don’t concern me. In my Sim-City-esque mindset, I am King Dan, and I make the transit decisions. Pay for it? Bah, toll roads and gas taxes. Earthquakes? They do it in Japan! Cross the bay? Build more bridges! NIMBYism? Tough shit, I make the decisions.

And so, to that end, I present to you, the re-imagining of the Bay Area’s transit network in my vision. Naturally, caveats abound. For one thing, I am only going to concern myself with trains: commuter, subway, and light rail. Buses (and ferries) are obviously important components to the system, but since this is my transit-fantasy, I’m going to pretty-much ignore them, except of course where bus lines will likely be replaced by rail.

I have purposely left out a couple of rail lines into San Jose: Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor, and the Altamont Commuter Express. Also missing is Santa Clara county’s VTA light rail system. Maybe eventually I’ll focus more on the South Bay, but right now it will be mostly SF and Oakland.

Also ignored is the planned California high-speed rail. It’s a costly endeavor, with a lot of problems to solve, and a long ways away. Someday I might broaden my scope to the whole state, but for the moment I’m focusing on the Bay Area.

This is going to be an ongoing series of posts, as I plan and refine my transit takeover. I’ll add and modify lines to the system, and provide maps to show off the ideas.

For starters let’s take a look at how the Bay Area’s transit looks currently. Below is a map showing the three major rail systems. Red lines are BART (primarily commuter rail, with some subway stations in downtown San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland), aqua is Caltrain (commuter rail), and blue is SFMuni (light rail streetcars). The markers indicate subway and above ground stations on their respective lines. The purple markers are dual-purpose stations, for example the Market Street subway stations serve both BART and Muni. Looking at this view, it looks like we have pretty good coverage! San Francisco, for those geographically challenged, is the top of the western peninsula on the map. You can see it contains a rather dense-looking array of transit options.

View Bay Area Transit Today in a larger map

But looks can be deceiving. Here is a zoomed-in look at San Francisco. Notice how, despite the seeming-density in the view above, it’s a bit disappointing close-up. Not only is the northwestern quadrant completely devoid of trains, but also huge swaths of the rest of the city are not covered. Even the densely populated northeast corner is only serviced by the Market street subway, and the historic streetcar, which runs from Market up the waterfront to Fisherman’s Wharf. The old-fashioned streetcars are charming, but they are slow, and serve tourists more than locals. And the light rail lines in the western half of the city, once they’ve exited the subway, are pretty slow themselves. They run on surface streets, so have similar traffic problems as buses.

View Bay Area Transit Today in a larger map

Now remember, in the new Last-Dan-Standing-Bay-Area utopia, there is no MUNI, no Caltrain, etc. All Bay Area transit is consolidated into one agency: let’s call it Bay Area Metro, or BAM. BAM operates commuter rail (i.e. Caltrain and BART) and light rail (i.e. MUNI), plus all the rest of the agencies I list above (and more).

So first, what does the current system look like under BAM. I’ll change the colors to define the type of rail line, red for commuter, and blue for light rail. Also, let’s add in any known, or proposed changes to the Bay Area systems that are in the pipeline* such as the Transbay Terminal, the exciting, but flawed, central subway, BART’s extensions to Livermore and Santa Clara, and the SMART rail system that will connect Sonoma county with Marin. I’ll color those too: green for commuter rail, and aqua for light rail.

View MBA in a larger map

Finally, below I will add the first fantasy subway line across San Francisco: the six mile Geary line. Remember, the green indicates a new BART type of commuter rail, so I envision this new Geary line meeting up with the current BART subway at Montgomery and continuing into the East Bay. At least for now. Future posts may alter my crazy scheme even more. Mwahahahahahahaha!

View Geary in a larger map

* I am purposely ignoring the Oakland Airport Connector, as I have a better plan for getting to and from the airport. Stay tuned for a future post that explains it!