Tag Archives: transit

MacArthur LightRail

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This evening’s conversation at the bar turned to the terrible state of the Emery Go-Round. One friend of mine who takes it regularly bemoaned the delays and the lack of seating. Another former rider recalled watching multiple buses pass him by because they were too full.

It seems most people taking Emery Go-Round are traveling between Oakland’s MacArthur BART Station and a job, or maybe shopping in the nearby small city of Emeryville. It’s free, and subsidized by Emeryville businesses who want to provide access for their employees and/or customers. It’s a noble idea, but sadly the experience of riding it is not too good.

I propose instead a public transit replacement for Emery Go-Round, and more!

My idea below is a light rail line serving communities between Oakland’s Grand Lake district and the shopping and employment options of Emeryville. It has a prominent stop at the MacArthur BART station in the middle of the line, and the Emeryville terminus is the Amtrak station, allowing for important transit connections.

I don’t want to get too in-the-weeds about the minutia of such a project. I mean, it’s a three-mile fantasy transit map made by an obsessive dork who should be using his time more wisely. Let’s not be too ridiculous!

Having said that, here are a few notes notes on my MacArthur Light Rail:

  • The map shows only the most important stations. Certainly there would be more stops along the route, though hopefully fewer than many bus lines.
  • Speaking of buses, an even more ambitious version of this project could continue east along the MacArthur Freeway corridor past Grand Lake, and all the way to the Eastmont Transit Center in East Oakland. This would basically replace the AC Transit 57 bus. Maybe someday I’ll add that section to the map, but since I live in Grand Lake and work in Emeryville, I am very selfishly focusing on that stretch.
  • The rail right-of-way in Emeryville at the Amtrak and Bay Street stations would need to be negotiated with the stakeholders there (Amtrak, Union Pacific, etc.). Looking at satellite maps it seems doable.
  • The Bay Street Station would need to be configured with appropriate pedestrian overpasses both east (towards Horton Street, Novartis and Pixar) and west (towards the Bay Street Mall and IKEA).
  • Continuing South, the satellite views make it look relatively trivial to bring the line down through some underused industrial property, and onto Sherwin Avenue near Horton Street. Hopefully something could be worked out with the property owner, or there’s always the last resort of eminent domain.
  • The next section, between Best Buy and Office Depot, and behind Home Depot is interesting. It’s mostly a parking lot, and an access road. Again, hopefully the property owners would play ball. There’s also a very lightly used 580 freeway onramp back there, which is fed by MacArthur Boulevard, via a tunnel under San Pablo Avenue. I think that closing that onramp, and re-designing the whole area for a light rail line would serve the public immeasurably better than the current lightly-used infrastructure.
  • The MacArthur BART stop should be designed with ease-of-transfers between the two systems as the top priority.
  • If this truly replaced Emery Go-Round and the 57 bus line, traffic congestion on 40th Street would lighten up significantly, which is a nice bonus since it’s a major bicycle route.
  • Adding this kind of light rail would probably increase the desirability of housing along it, which could lead to the combined improvements and challenges of gentrification along this stretch of MacArthur.
  • In general the three-lane MacArthur Boulevard between San Pablo and Broadway is underused. It used to be a highway between Castro Valley and Oakland, but was replaced by the MacArthur Freeway (the 580) in the 60’s. Adding light rail traffic would probably entail the removal of two lanes of traffic, but would not be very burdensome because of the underuse.
  • Congestion on MacArthur increases between Broadway and the Grand Lake area. It gets tricky because the geography of the area forces the road to narrow and parallel the freeway. There don’t seem to be many good solutions to getting light rail through this area. One possibility would be to underground the line, but that is obviously very expensive. In my map you’ll see that the light rail line leaves MacArthur and heads onto the residential street of Santa Clara as it approaches Grand Lake. It seems like the most realistic route all things considered.
  • Despite my claim that this light rail could replace Emery Go-Round, I should note that Emery Go-Round’s three lines cover far more ground than what I’ve proposed. I still think my proposal is totally awesome, but if it truly replaced Emery Go-Round some small number of citizens currently being served by those lines would be getting shafted.

As you can see I get pretty obsessed about these kinds of notions. In a couple of my legacy posts from a few years ago I argued for a huge overhaul of all the Bay Area transit districts which included the creation of a single massive rail line between San Jose and Santa Rosa. I still think there’s a lot of merit to that kind of big picture reworking, but probably future posts will be more like this one: smaller and more focused. Hopefully it will allow me to post more of them without getting overwhelmed by the many moving parts to such complicated systems.

BAM: San Jose to Santa Rosa, and beyond!

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As part of my ongoing fantasy reworking of Bay Area transit, here is the next installment: a 150+ mile rail corridor from Cloverdale to Gilroy, including San Jose, San Francisco, Santa Rosa and more. It sounds crazy I know, but hear me out.

First of all, remember that my transit plans are only loosely tied to reality. I have created a world where the vast majority of public transit is handled by one agency: the imaginary Bay Area Metro, or BAM. In this world there are no environmental impact surveys, no budget deficits, no earthquakes and no NIMBYism. I just want to imagine what Bay Area transit could be if our leaders were more visionary, our state was less broke, and our populace was less obstructionist.

Much of the infrastructure for the Cloverdale -> Gilroy train already exists. It includes the entire length of the work-in-progress SMART system (Cloverdale -> Larkspur), approved by voters in 2008. That right there is 70 miles of track.

Additionally the 60 miles of Caltrain’s existing tracks between Millbrae and Gilroy is part of the corridor.

Finally, the 10 miles of BART track between Millbrae and Daly City is the last bit of existing infrastructure to be included.

That leaves roughly 20 miles of track to lay, and eight or so stations to construct. Not a trivial task to be sure, but far easier to get your head around than an entire 150+ mile system.

At this point I should probably explain the monstrous caveat with the above plan. You see, even though in my world Caltrain and BART (and all the other transit agencies) have merged, the physical reality is that Caltrain and BART use different gauge tracks in their systems. Caltrain uses what’s called standard gauge, where the distance between rails is 4 feet, 8.5 inches, while BART uses Indian gauge at 5 feet, 6 inches. So clearly my idea as described would appear to be fatally flawed.

The solution of course is to rip up the BART tracks (yes all 100+ miles of them!) and replace them with standard gauge, which is how it should have been built all along. Standard gauge is used by 60% of railroads worldwide, including the New York Subway and Chicago’s ‘L’ train. Once the BART tracks are replaced, we can have true integration between it and Caltrain (and eventually Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor to Sacramento, and the Altamont Commuter Express to Stockton).

Caveat aside there is still the expensive and politically difficult task of building the 20 miles of track between the southern terminus of the SMART line (Larkspur Landing) and the Daly City station. Below you’ll see my proposal for such a system. The way I see it, most or all of the new track running through San Francisco would be underground, while the part in Marin would be mostly above-ground.

And yes, it goes across the Golden Gate Bridge! How cool would that be to remove a couple lanes of traffic to accommodate a train? People would go ape-shit in protesting this of course, but I don’t care. Marin commuters can take the train to work. Commuting to downtown SF will be a snap because if you remember from my previous post, the BAM system also has a new subway running the entire length of Geary street. These two lines will intersect at a new subway station at the intersection of Geary and Park Presidio Blvd, allowing for easy access to downtown.

So I guess that’s enough backstory. Below are a few maps showing the proposed layout.

The colors are as follows: red is the existing commuter rail infrastructure (BART and Caltrain), green is future commuter rail growth (both real and imaginary), blue is existing light rail (MUNI), and cyan is future light rail growth. Purple icons represent transfer stations.

The first map shows the entire system. You can zoom and scroll around the map as with any Google map, or look below at some pre-zoomed views.


View SMART Extension in a larger map

The second map is a closeup of the new rail that would be laid along 19th Avenue/Park Presidio Boulevard in San Francisco up to the Golden Gate Bridge. Note the station placement intersects with existing light rail lines at Judah and Taraval, and the future rail line at Geary. It also has strategic station placement at SFSU/Stonestown, the museum complex at Golden Gate Park, and the Golden Gate Bridge itself.


View SMART Extension in a larger map

This final map shows southern Marin. The tracks would be primarily above ground, with two new stations south of the already planned Larkspur Landing Station. I envision a large park-and-ride at the Strawberry Station to accommodate SF commuters. And yes, I know it’s pretty ambitious to include a station at Sausalito, but what the hell.


View SMART Extension in a larger map

Transit

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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!