You would think that in an era of transit agencies hiking their fares and slashing their service that different systems operating in the same area would coordinate their routes and schedules in order to spend their dwindling resources wisely, right? Well, you would be wrong.
AC Transit, the bus service provider in Oakland, California, and BART, the modern rapid transit system that covers the whole Bay Area in California, have operated routes that have competed with each other for years. The most notable example of this competition is AC Transit's Transbay Express routes operating along many of the same corridors as BART trains. However, they are not totally operating the same routes because while BART can only take riders to a BART station, AC Transit can take riders into the neighborhoods their homes are in and therefore avoid the last mile problem.
Recent plans for a BRT line operated by AC Transit put the transit provider more directly in competition with BART. The proposed BRT line will operate from San Leandro BART station to Berkely BART station. There is already a rapid way of traveling from San Leandro BART to Berkely BART: BART! In addition, the BRT stops will be nearby, although not exactly at, the BART stations in between San Leandro and Berkely. Why is AC Transit spending money serving a route that already has not only BART but frequent local and limited stop bus service, especially when in the past few years they have severely cut their bus service to a point where it is extremely difficult to use public transit in Oakland, with the exception of a handful of mostly northwest - southeast corridors? There is some hope that due to continued budget problems AC Transit may postpone their BRT line, which has experienced difficulty in securing political approval for the necessary bus only lanes in supposedly progressive Berkely and San Leando, in order to spare the rest of their system from further cutbacks. AC Transit needs to spend its money complementing BART and not competing with it.
Comments
Really? You think this is competition? I’m sorry, I expected a fellow transit advocate and planner to get this one.
BART has 9 stations along those 14 miles. The proposed BRT system would have a stop every four blocks. International Boulevard (roughly the southern half of the Oakland route) is in desperate need of help – crime, prostitution, lack of basic neighborhood services, and… surprisingly – traffic. The 2007 Oakland Bike Master Plan identified International Boulevard as the most dangerous street per mile for pedestrian fatalities. Telegraph, the other half for Oakland’s BRT, is the most dangerous for bikes. So yes, BART has stations along that route, but the spaces in between need help.
The proposed BRT plan would bring traffic calming to those 14 miles along Oakland’s core, making it safer for people to walk around and support businesses that need it. Not to mention offering reliable transit to people that want to go to more than 9 places in a city of 400,000.
So yes, people won’t take BRT from San Leandro to Berkeley. But don’t write off those spaces in between.
Thanks for your comment, Ruth. I am quite in favor of pedestrian improvements and traffic calming along the International Blvd – Telegraph Rd corridor. We can make that improvement without the transit. If AC Transit had not cut so much of their bus service lately, then I would feel better about this project, although to me it doesn’t seem like the actual service will be a tremendous improvement over the current 1R: there simply are too many stops. Also, the planned reduction in local bus service to partially pay for the new route leaves me concerned. But the significant reduction in bus service has left many in the city of Oakland with very poor transit options, especially at night and on the weekend. Is it the right move to invest so heavily in a single corridor – which already has excellent bus service – when so many others do not even have an adequate level of basic service? What if we used the operating funding for this BRT line to instead restore all the night and weekend service that has been cut in the past few years?