Transit Center by Egan Snow, on Flickr. Used under SS BY-SA 2.0 license.
Thanks to a century’s worth of bad regulations, the Bettini Transit Center in downtown San Rafael needs to be rebuilt so SMART can get to the Larkspur Ferry Terminal. The transit center is the busiest transit hub in the North Bay and forms the lynchpin of service in Marin. Getting it right, therefore, is critical, and GGT has four options its considering to do so.
Read MoreIn GGT's quarterly schedule adjustment, the agency will do as it planned this past summer and cut the long-suffering Route 80, a plodding local bus route that stopped at every bus stop from San Francisco to Santa Rosa. However, Highway 101 service could use more tweaks to better integrate Route 71 and other lines south of San Rafael.
The new basic San Francisco-Santa Rosa service will operate like the image to the right. Timed transfers between the 101 and 71 at Novato will ensure easy access to any stop between Santa Rosa and Marin City, while the express/local service pattern will better serve the larger long-distance market to San Francisco.
This is similar to Clem Tillier's proposed Caltrain schedule, with a Silicon Valley Express and San Mateo Local.
Unfortunately, the timed transfers aren't ideal. Before 8:55am, transfers between the 71 and 101 are 6 minutes. After 8:55, they extend to 9 minutes, a hefty chunk of time for riders.
As well, the 70 often follows the 71 too closely, once as close as 3 minutes behind. Though GGT is providing four local buses in a given hour, or one on average every 15 minutes, it instead has a 3 minute wait, followed by a 30 minute wait, another 30 minute wait, then another 3 minute wait. Though GGT is running enough buses to provide show-up-and-go service, the agency effectively continuing its two-bus-per-hour baseline schedule. It is, quite honestly, a waste of money.
Other tweaks to the schedule are quite good.
The largest concern is whether this new adjustment will lead to personnel shortages, which have plagued GGT for the past two quarters. Schedules should meet, not exceed, the agency's capacity, and adjustments are when any personnel shortages can be smoothed out.
While the adjusted Highway 101 service isn't as smooth as it ought to be, with long transfers and weirdly inconsistent headways between the 70 and 71, the new schedule is overall positive and uncharacteristically bold. As long as this doesn't lead to more personnel shortages, the new schedule will be a success.
UPDATE: To clarify, the updates to the 35 and 36 are at the direction of Marin Transit, which contracts out their operation to GGT. Any change to the 71, which is under the same contract, would need to first start with Marin Transit. A fuller post on that mess is forthcoming.
Despite promises to the contrary, Golden Gate Transit’s personnel woes have continued. Despite yet another opportunity to make their schedule match their personnel for a second time, GGT cancelled a run of Route 54 on Friday and another this morning. What started as a headache is fast becoming a glaring indictment of GGT’s scheduling and personnel management. In June, GGT’s drivers announced that, thanks to scheduling changes, the agency would not have enough drivers to meet its scheduling obligations. Soon, riders who went through the hoops to get text and email alerts started receiving cancellation notices the morning of their ride. For people who catch the same bus every day, this was frustrating. Questions mushroomed: if GGT knew it couldn’t meet its new scheduling obligations, why did it bother to write an unrealistic schedule?
Not to worry, said GGT. We’re hiring more drivers, so in September cancellations will be a thing of the past. In the interim, the agency permanently cancelled four morning and four evening runs on the 4, 24, and 54.
Still, the unscheduled cancellations mounted, so that up to 7 runs would be cancelled in a single morning.
With the release of its fall schedule and the graduation of its new class of drivers, GGT had a chance to put its terrible summer behind it. Yet, both the scheduled cancelations as well as the unscheduled cancellations continue.
That they continue raises some troubling questions about GGT’s approach to customer service, scheduling, and personnel. Were schedulers informed of how many drivers to expect on a given day? Were they instructed to exceed standard personnel schedule padding? Or, did personnel managers not know how many drivers to expect? No answer to these questions would shine well on the agency.
GGT needs to get its house in order, and fast. Transit riders need consistency to plan their morning. With constant cancellations despite promises to the contrary, GGT is simply driving away the riders it is supposed to serve.
The latest schedule adjustment to GGT’s buses goes into effect today, and it offers mixed news for commuters. While GGT did expand service between San Francisco and Sonoma on the 101X, service cuts from earlier this summer remain in effect. In short, this adjustment is somewhat of a wash.
To deal with ongoing personnel shortages, GGT cut eight commuter runs: one in the morning and evening on Route 4, two in the morning and evening on the 24, and one in the morning and evening on the 54. People weren’t too pleased, but it was better than unplanned cancellations the morning of. (These continued, but at least they became more rare.)
The new schedule doesn’t restore any of these runs. Though the latest crop of drivers, who start today, were supposed to have alleviated the service cuts, apparently GGT thought they should assign drivers elsewhere.
Elsewhere in the schedule, Route 2’s first run (5:15am) was folded into Route 4’s first (5:10am, which is rescheduled to 4:58am). Both runs used to arrive at San Francisco at the same time, so consolidating saves a bit of money and manpower. Route 70’s 4:30am run, which left from the San Rafael Transit Center, was also cancelled, as the first 27 duplicates the run just five minutes later.
Route 92, the only real commuter bus from San Francisco to Marin, added two northbound morning runs to Marin City. Route 93, the San Francisco shuttle route, added two new evening runs to its schedule. Route 23 has a few new school service runs to White Hill Middle School, too.
The bigger deal is the new 101X evening trip. The 101X uses a different route than the other commuters and functions as a solid express bus for Sonoma residents. By added a new trip at 5:35pm, the 101X is a much better, and faster, bus for commuters and San Francisco daytrippers from Sonoma.
GGT is tweaking its schedule in smart ways around the edges, as it does every quarter. From the standpoint of customer service, I’m not keen on inconsistent service patterns, like running Route 4 through Marin City and Sausalito just once in the morning. While they do make operational sense, customers crave consistency. Signage, maps, and other wayfinding devices all must show the inconsistent routing, which could easily lead to more confusion.
(Someone might recall seeing the Route 4 symbol on their stop in Sausalito and take a more regular 4 up to Mill Valley, completely bypassing their home and get pissed at GGT.)
The 101X is a savvy move by GGT, which is trying to improve connectivity between Sonoma and San Francisco.
But none of that balances out the insult to riders that are the supposedly temporarily cancelled runs on 4, 24, and 54. Now that there are more drivers, GGT should return to the brand of high-quality and reliable service it has built over the past 40 years. No matter how clever the adjustments to other routes are, the loss of service on these three popular routes is deeply felt by riders.
Be sure to pick up a copy of the new route guide on the bus today, and tweet your impressions with the new service to @theGreaterMarin, @GoldenGateBus, or both.
Well that was fast. Not even one day after permanently eliminating four morning commuter bus departures to prevent unplanned cancellations, Golden Gate Transit (GGT) had three unplanned cancellations, all on Novato's Route 54. It amounted to a 30 percent reduction in service on a popular and necessary route, forcing some riders to stand for the almost 90 minute trip.
Ever since releasing their newest schedule, GGT has been cancelling departures on a number of commuter routes. It claims this is because of higher-than-expected driver attrition, but the agency's drivers were apparently aware of the problem even before the new schedule was released. Rather than create a schedule that fits the driver pool available, GGT planned for the unscheduled cancellations.
The next driver class, which will graduate in September, are supposed to alleviate the pain. In the interim, GGT created scheduled cancellations on routes 4, 24, and 54. These scheduled cancellations, which went into effect today, were meant to put a stop to the uncertainty by right-sizing the number of departures to the number of typically available drivers.
Despite scheduling cancellations, the GGT's online schedules haven't changed. One presumes they're also still on Google Maps. I don't doubt this is confusing and frustrating new riders.
Apparently not. With four scheduled cancellations and three unscheduled cancellations, GGT was apparently down seven drivers - far more than normal. Before this, GGT would only cancel up to three departures per day. This is unprecedented.
Consistent commuter bus schedules are vital to maintaining a one- or no-car household. By cancelling routes, GGT is forcing hundreds of families to reevaluate whether this service is reliable enough to use for a regular commute. It must, must staunch the bleeding now, before it does even more damage to itself. GGT worked hard for decades to build a reputation for reliability, and now it's burning it down for no reason other than its own negligence.
In answer to their ongoing driver shortage and attendant bus run cancellations, Golden Gate Transit (GGT) declared it would cancel 4 runs in the morning and 4 in the evening until the shortage is resolved. It’s welcome, but not enough to restore faith in the agency.
The 4 cancelled southbound runs are:
The 4 cancelled northbound runs are:
GGT took this step because it had “higher than expected attrition rates” and so had to frequently cancel commuter trips throughout Marin. By permanently cancelling runs, it hopes they won’t have to cancel them without prior notification.
There were substantial problems with how GGT handled the problem. Email and text notifications were only available by emailing contact@goldengate.org and weren’t published through GGT’s Twitter feed or the general route alerts. This was a dramatic disservice to riders. Indeed, the first word this problem was coming was from bus drivers giving voice announcements to full buses, and the story was broken online only by Daniel Skarka in a Google+ post. The on-bus announcements should have been supplemented by announcements on every social media and outreach channel GGT has.
More damning is the fact that GGT had knowledge of this problem before the quarterly schedule adjustment: Skarka’s 54 driver announced it well before the release of the new schedule. Had GGT structured the new schedule to fit expected staffing levels, they would never have had to cancel runs in the first place. The wounds to GGT’s reputation as a reliable service, which will likely last for a very long time, were entirely self-inflicted.
We’ve seen some good signs lately with GGT’s ferry system – new docks at Sausalito, more consistent and numerous ferry runs at Larkspur – but the bus system continues to struggle with mismanagement. Even the inauguration of all-day Route 27 service doesn’t work well, with arrival times at San Rafael nearly identical to Route 70.
GGT is moving towards becoming a more thoughtful and creative organization, but this #missingbus scandal shows it’s still an agency struggling with its own ineptitude.
UPDATE: I neglected to mention: the cancelled runs will stop beginning July 29.
For Santa Rosans who’ve stayed too late in San Francisco, they know the slog once the 101 stops running: 3 hours on Route 80 up to downtown, likely arriving well after midnight.
Ridership on the 80 has been steadily declining, with most of the trips on the service actually being intra-Marin trips – that is, from those who would be just as happy on a 70 or 71 as on an 80 – while ridership on the 101 has been steadily increasing. Simplifying the system by folding the revenue hours of the 80 into the 70 and 101 seems like a no-brainer.
Currently, there are 9 routes plying Highway 101, but GGT is looking at just its 3 Basic routes: 70, 80, and 101. The 70 offers local service from Novato to San Francisco, stopping at every bus pad in between. The 80 offers local service from Santa Rosa to San Francisco. The 101 offers local service in Sonoma and skip-stop service through Marin, stopping only at Novato, San Rafael, and the Spencer Avenue bus pad.
GGT wants to eliminate Route 80 and hand over its runs – typically in the morning and evening – to the two remaining services. Route 70 would cover its local service in Marin, while Route 101 would cover its local service in Sonoma, so that there would be no loss of service span or service frequency. In other words, the system will work better. SF-to-Sonoma riders won’t need to slog through all Marin’s local stops, and Marin riders will just see a number change.
To optimize the usefulness of the new service pattern, a timed transfer will be important at Novato to the 70 and local routes. This will give travelers between Sonoma and Marin access to all of the other county’s bus pads with a simple and short transfer. A timed transfer with Mendocino County’s Route 68 at Santa Rosa, too, will allow GGT travelers access to points far to the north of GGT’s service range.
The total net cost of this switch will be about $100,000 per year. While well worth the cost, it’s odd this isn’t a free change. The service hours and span of the 80 are simply being divvied up, not added to.
This is a similar plan to one Clem Tillier proposed for Caltrain: a local San Mateo train and a Santa Clara local that skips most of San Mateo’s stops on its way to San Francisco. Given the quasi-rail nature of GGT’s highway service, it’s not surprising that what would work well in for a rail line would also work well for a bus system.
Ideally, GGT wouldn’t stop there, and would partner with Marin Transit reexamine all their all-day highway routes. Route 71 duplicates Route 70 within Marin but doesn’t go into San Francisco. Route 36 duplicates it between San Rafael and Marin City, as does Route 17. Routes 4, 24 27, and 92 also operate all day along Highway 101 to San Francisco, but they run on different routes once they enter the City.
Perhaps some or all of these service hours would do better in the basic 70 and 101 lines, allowing greater frequency and reliability outside of just the interlining areas.
This is an all-too-rare positive step by GGT to streamline its operations and run a better service, and they deserve applause. The next step is a Title VI examination, required by federal law, to ensure the change doesn’t adversely affect minority populations, followed by as public hearings. Here’s hoping everything goes well.
This morning, no fewer than 5 Golden Gate Transit buses were cancelled: 2 runs of Route 24, 2 runs of Route 54, and 1 run of Route 27. Other routes don't have email alerts, so it's unknown whether any of those were cancelled. It's also unknown whether any northbound trips will be cancelled this evening. At least we know there's a solution under way. Under the post on Golden Gate Transit's (GGT's) high cancellation rate on Route 54 and elsewhere in the system, customer service responded with an answer:
Golden Gate Transit’s goal is to never cancel trips on our routes, and we do everything possible to prevent cancellations. Unfortunately, we have fewer drivers right now due to a much higher attrition rate than expected. Because of this shortage of drivers, we have had more cancellations than we have experienced for some time. Employees are volunteering to work extra hours to minimize these disruptions in service. When Golden Gate Transit is forced to make a cancellation, we rotate routes so that one route is not harder hit than any other. We try to distribute cancellations as evenly as possible throughout our system. We encourage our customers to sign up for our rider alerts so they may get notification via email or text when there are cancellations or other service disruptions. Visit our website at http://www.goldengate.org to sign up for these alerts.
The current bus operator class graduates later this summer, with another class expected to graduate by the end of the year. Both of these classes are larger than most training classes, and will hopefully provide Golden Gate Transit the manpower it needs to prevent cancellations. We appreciate your patience while we work hard to alleviate this problem and want our riders to know that we are dedicated to bringing you reliable service.
While knowledge of the cause of the disruptions certainly doesn't make them any better or tolerable, it's good to know there is a solution in sight. Without dates we won't know when this solution is coming, of course, but I suspect that by September things will look better.
Once the situation improves, GGT must go out of its way to repair its tarnished image. A week of free trips on the effected lines would certainly help, as would some old-fashioned PR outreach. Implementing real-time arrivals would help, too.
Alas, until then, GGT commuters should keep an ear out for cancellations. Follow and report missing buses on Twitter with the #missingbus tag. Email contact@goldengate.org to sign up for text alerts for select routes - 24, 27, 54, and 76 (other routes aren't available). Keep your fellow commuter apprised.
Last month, Novato transit rider Danny Skarka reported on a bus driver’s claim that, due to a lack of drivers, commute Route 54 would often have cancelled buses under the new schedule. I never heard back from Golden Gate Transit (GGT) about the claim, but it seems Skarka’s driver was right.
For a number of days since the start of the new schedule, Route 54 has cancelled runs without prior notice, apparently on both the southbound and northbound trips. Another rider, Andrew Fox, reports:
[T]he last two 54s I've been on have been absolutely jam-packed. Last Wednesday there were numerous standees due to a canceled bus (I took Thursday and Friday off, so I don't know about those days), and then of course you know about the situation this morning. We had 9 standees, all of whom got on at the busy Alameda del Prado bus pad/park-and-ride.
In my experience the 54 is a very busy bus. Commuters in Novato like me really rely upon it, especially given how miserable traffic has become in the last few years. I for one refuse to drive into the city anymore. Novato commuters have the choice of two different commute bus routes: the 56 or the 54, but the majority of them use the 54 due to the fact that it stops in more locations than the 56. This is a pretty lousy way to encourage transit use.
It's irksome to see these buses canceled, especially when we hear news of new routes in Southern Marin ("the Wave Bus") and see buses to Mill Valley (the 4) fly by every 5 minutes or so.
It also seems as though the problem is not isolated to the 54. Sonoma commuter Kathryn Hecht, who rides the 74, reported a cancelled evening run that meant an hour-long delay in San Francisco, as well as a cancelled morning run:
Hey @GoldenGateBus. SB #74 (6:12 4th/c) canceled today? Did this go out in a text alert?
— Kathryn Hecht (@kphechtny) June 16, 2014
@GoldenGateBus Also 3:05PM NB on 6/12 (waited for hour then stood whole way). Text alerts please? #NoBueno
— Kathryn Hecht (@kphechtny) June 16, 2014
In any other industry, spotty quality is a sign of either a collapsing business model or inept management. The customer service experience is paramount to building a strong brand and strong customer base. For a scheduled service, like transit, this is even more important. People expect consistency, and they expect the schedule to be a promise, not a maybe.
We’ve discussed GGT’s failures in the past, but this is far worse than avoiding real-time arrival systems or not allowing rear-door exits. Simply put, GGT is making a stealth cut to Northern Marin and Sonoma service to expand Central and Southern Marin service. This is bad business and a further sign of GGT’s lack of managerial skill. If it continues, it will lose customers and turn what should be a premium transit product into a product of last resort.
GGT is burning its brand, and for no reason. It should immediately hire new drivers to staunch the bleeding and issue a very public apology to its Northern Marin and Sonoma commuters, perhaps with free rides for a month on the effected routes.
There are deeper structural problems to GGT’s service model, of which this is just a symptom. GGT needs to staunch this bleeding and change its operating model to ensure problems like this never happen again.
The other day on Twitter, Danny Skarka, a regular rider of GGT's commuter route 54 (Novato), said his driver announced there was a looming driver shortage. The result, said the driver, will be unreliable service on the 54. Skarka followed up with a Google+ post, reproduced here in full:
This is what the driver announced this morning:
When the new schedule starts in June, our bus will not have a regular driver. Our bus, the 54, is considered "expendable" and when they are short drivers, our bus will be cancelled with no notice.
I felt sorry for the driver. The rider reaction was less than positive. The 54 has been plagued for some time.
My assumption is not ALL 54s are expendable, but considering how full they get, canceling any one will cause a ripple effect of overcrowded buses. I have been on many 54s with standing room only. "Bus Surfing" at 60 mph and no seat belt.
They are often short drivers. So this scenario will happen. I have already seem many cancelled 54s.
Unfortunately GGT is not very tech. A Geo-aware mobile app (since we all have a smart phone on us ) where we can set what route we use would be wonderful. It could give us updates. We could refresh Clipper Cards much more easily without the delay seen now using the website. In other cities, the bus location shows up on maps so you can tell if you need to run to a stop to meet a bus. Tag data could tell us if a bus was full. Much can be approved.
I don't know the agencies challenges so it's not fair to be overly critical. However, the same agency is raising bridge tolls, and charging for parking at ferries. So non-drivers are stuck with the monopoly.
I am considering starting a #MissingBus hash on Twitter for passengers to help each other. Something easily followed and contributed to.
Comments please.
If true, this is a disturbing lack of regard for GGT's customers and GGT's mission. Reliable bus service is vital to a commuter. What will someone do if they usually take the last 54 and it never shows up?
I have an email out to Golden Gate Transit to find out how true Skarka's assertions might be and to get some information on staffing and service hours in the June schedule and I will update if I get any more information.
The principal problem with Larkspur Ferry parking is really that it has poor connections to other modes, especially bus. Though there used to be a shuttle system in place, it didn't do well and was cut years ago. While the Wave has taken a step toward reintroducing the shuttle, Golden Gate Transit has ignored regular bus service from the 29, as well as daytime and weekend trips to and from the ferry. To help riders get a visual of their options, I've created an integrated bus/ferry schedule (PDF) for routes 17, 25, 29, and 228 - all of which serve Larkspur Ferry Terminal at some time or another. The Interurban light rail schedule (PDF) did the same thing with the Sausalito Ferry.
On the weekdays, what stands out to me is the very long connections for people coming from San Francisco. Though the 29 does pretty well for those heading to the ferry during the day - most require waits of only 10-15 minutes - it's awful for connections from the ferry. Most connections are between 20-30 minutes, a couple leave only a minute to spare, and just a handful are in the sweet spot between 5 and 10 minutes. Optimizing the time points between the bus and ferry could boost ridership all on its own, without any need for new service.
Study the schedule yourself and you'll see what I mean. And, if you're a frequent ferry rider, print it out and keep it in your schedule book.
Though by all accounts Golden Gate Transit's commuter bus system is quite popular, it is increasingly out of touch with the commute times of Marin's modern workforce. Marinites leave for work later, but GGT continues to operate with early-morning service. FiveThirtyEight recently took Census data and determined which metropolitan areas get to work the latest. The San Francisco metro area, of which Marin is a part, got fifth on the list, with a median arrival time of 8:17am but a 75th percentile arrival time of about 9:30am. The bottom of the range is about 7:45am.
Just after reading this, reader John Browne, a frequent rider of the last Route 18 from Kentfield, tweeted:
Why does @GoldenGateBus insist on small bus on last run of the morning on 18 route?!
— John Browne (@j_p_browne) April 24, 2014
Now the 18 is standing room only! Nice job @GoldenGateBus . What are you thinking?!
— John Browne (@j_p_browne) April 24, 2014
Commute patterns have changed in SF. Tech workers start day later. @GoldenGateBus @theGreaterMarin
— John Browne (@j_p_browne) April 24, 2014
It turns out John Browne is right.
Using the same Census data FiveThirtyEight used (though without the math to convert it into the ranges author Nate Silver did), I plotted out the average departure times for Marin commuters taking all modes to work. Transit commuters leave work at roughly the same rate as others up until 9am:
The proportion of transit riders leaving home between 9 and 10 stays down after the drop from 8:30 to 8:59 while other modes pop back up.
A glance at the span of service for Marin's commute buses makes it easy to see why that might be. On average, the last Marin stop for a Marin commuter line is about 8:27, while the average last departure is a bit earlier at 8am. In other words, if you want to get out of Marin by bus, you're probably going to have to leave home before 8 or 8:30, and that's exactly what shows up in the Census data.
GGT should reexamine the county's travel demand and which final buses are the most crowded and aim to add service to those lines later in the morning. Adding to service span will scoop up riders that want to leave later, and can also give earlier riders the peace of mind that they can leave later if needed, helping shore up ridership earlier in the morning, too.
It's not just tech workers that are leaving later in the day, it's Marinites in general. Our transit system should start scheduling for that.
This week, tolls increased on the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time in 6 years, to $6 with FasTrak. Though there was some grumbling and a bit of consternation from drivers who now need to deal with a more expensive commute, these cost hikes are no stranger to transit riders, who have faced annual fare increases for over a decade. A quick look at the discount toll and average discount fare (adjusted for inflation) starts to get at the picture:
Though it's obvious from above, the point is best expressed from the ratio of fares-to-toll:
In 1992, the average round-trip bus fare was 1.62 times the discount toll. That ratio reached a high of 2.44 last July 1, when the latest fare increase was made. Now that the tolls have gone up, the ratio has dropped to 2.03, the lowest it's been in 5 years, but that will be transitory. On July 1, when fares increase another 5 percent, the ratio will head back up again, to 2.14.
If fares continue to increase 5 percent every year, that ratio will continue to widen, even with annual $0.25 toll hikes, to 2.22 in 2018.
Strictly from an equity perspective, this is unjust. Bus riders tend to be lower-income, and so have a more difficult time taking fare hikes, while the opposite tends to be true of drivers. Not only that, but others who can't drive - those who are blind, albino, elderly, and others - are disproportionately hit by fare hikes.
By pushing away those who have access to the driving alternative, too, the fare hikes render transit more and more into a second-class social welfare service rather than the first-class transportation service it could be.
From a technical perspective, those new drivers adds to congestion at the rush hours, forcing everyone, rider and driver alike, into a slog every morning and night. It's a terribly inefficient transit system, destroying any advantage of having a freeway. San Francisco, Sonoma, and Marin all suffer.
The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District (GGBHTD) has as its explicit goal that fares should cover at least 25 percent of bus operations and 40 percent of ferry operations. By raising fares regularly, GGBHTD is trying to hit that moving target. Bus ridership has dropped dramatically since 2000 and with it has fallen transportation income, while operating costs have jacked up the price of providing service.
To compensate, GGBHTD has hiked fares every year since 1998, boosting inflation-adjusted fares 82 percent.
The problem is that GGBHTD isn't thinking like a business, where income is more than just a function of price, and it's not thinking like a government agency, with broader societal concerns than mere income. The end result is a nonsensical and unjust policy of never-ending fare hikes far beyond inflation and ever-slower commutes.
The core technical mission of GGBHTD should be to help prevent congestion in the areas most immediately effected by its policies, namely Central and Southern Marin, and work with the transit and congestion management agencies in San Francisco, Marin, and Sonoma to prevent or mitigate it in the rest of its commute shed. This would fit with the original founding purpose of Golden Gate Transit, which was to resolve congestion on the Golden Gate Bridge.
To ensure its historic, technical mission is fulfilled, GGBHTD needs to rework its pricing scheme with congestion in mind. This will mean tolls will rise, but not necessarily too much. If fares stay flat or even decrease, that daily congestion toll may not need to rise nearly so much to ensure congestion is alleviated. Physical changes, such as creating carpool lanes on 101 as far as Lombard in San Francisco, will also help mitigate congestion and, therefore, that toll hike.
The core social justice mission for GGBHTD should be to ensure transit is a tool of freedom for the poor and car-free, rather than make this one more way they can't succeed. This would fit with the original purpose of having Greyhound take up the transit slack once our light rail system was put out of business by GGBHTD.
Yet progress is made in this equally historic social justice mission simply when GGBHTD meets its technical mission, which by necessity will decrease the fare/toll gap. If the district invests the new toll revenue in more frequent bus service and better bus infrastructure, it will elevate raise the prestige and enjoyment of using the bus system.
Finally, GGBHTD's efforts will increase ridership (and therefore fares), to meet its new mission of keeping fare revenue in sync with operating costs.
The ever-rising gap between fares and tolls is symptomatic of deep dysfunction in the heart of GGBHTD. An obsession with a single metric - revenue - has led to an incredibly inefficient transportation system and caused the district to fail in the missions it was founded to accomplish. Drivers, riders, the poor, the rich - all suffer under this scheme.
*As Golden Gate Transit doesn't keep historic bus and ferry fares available online, rather just fare increases, this is backwards-calculated from the average cost to travel from the North Bay to San Francisco on bus and ferry. GGT also doesn't keep historic fare increases available from before 1993.
During Marin’s big Pineapple Express a few of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of taking the bus all over Marin. Stepping off a bus without worrying about parking or gas or finding the car always feels liberating to me, so I thoroughly enjoyed that aspect. But thanks to bad stop design, I and my fellow riders got soaked.
After chatting up some of protestors of WinCup, I walked along the narrow sidewalk to the closest southbound bus pad, not just to see what the walk was like but also because I had to get to Mill Valley. Aside from protestors using up the entire sidewalk width, forcing me to walk in the street, it wasn’t so bad. The bus pad, though, was another story.
The bus pad shelter allowed the wind to whip rain right in the face of me and my fellow travelers. The bench was so soaked that sitting would have made for a cold and soggy experience. Someone else waiting spoke very little English but pointed at the rain and the bench and laughed. "Very wet," she said, and it was quite clear she thought the situation was ridiculous. Though she was heading to Mill Valley, too, she hopped on the next bus that came (Route 36) just to get out of the wet. I decided to stick it out, though, and my Route 17 bus arrived soon enough.
Alas, the Mill Valley Depot, central bus station of this most wealthy of towns, was in even worse shape. The roof dripped everywhere, soaking not just the benches but anyone who risked standing under it without an umbrella. Water trickled in from every slat in the roof and positively poured in through the light fixture.
The state of repair on the Depot and the quality of the bus pad stops tells riders, You don’t really matter. For one of the wealthiest counties in the country and one that prides itself on being green and supporting the less fortunate, that’s unacceptable.
If buses are a travel mode of equal stature to the car or ferry, bus stops – especially signature stops like the Depot – need to be treated like it. They should be comfortable, or at least bearable. The people who ride the bus for work or out of necessity do matter.
In light of some criticism regarding a $300,000 transit marketing study, Dick Spotswood makes a good recommendation: require Marin's elected officials take transit to their meetings at least once per week. Though it won't take the place of a marketing study, the observations of actual use are irreplaceable. Spotswood writes:
If transit directors ride their own buses they'll have a splendid opportunity to fully understand the system they govern. They'll gain direct input from bus passengers and drivers without consultants in the way.
This isn't about Golden Gate's excellent commuter buses serving San Francisco's central business district. Sears understands that, as she once commuted by bus when she worked in the city.
It's about buses that start and end in Marin, funded by Marin taxpayers and governed by county supervisors and two council members, Novato's Madeline Kellner and Stephanie Moulton-Peters of Mill Valley.
A theoretical understanding of a transit system doesn't always comport with some of the day-to-day inconveniences. Golden Gate Transit (GGT) and Marin Transit (MT) both have some pretty glaring theoretical issues - lack of real-time arrival data, lack of fare coordination, three-transfer trips, poor quality bus pads - there are some things you just need to experience to have them in the top of your mind. When a bus is late and you miss your timed transfer, that's a huge inconvenience. When a bus stops running just before your event is over, that's a major problem. When you arrive to your stop on time but the bus passed by early, that might mean an hour wait.
What's big to someone on the ground might only appear as an obscure metric on a report, or not appear on a report at all. As an infrequent rider, I'm surprised when I ride at how fantastic the system is, on one hand, and how much room for improvement there is on the other. [If you want to report on some of these day-to-day inconveniences, drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter, or email. -ed]
Putting this understanding and frustration into the hands of elected officials can be a powerful tool to push back against staff when they're dragging their feet. An applicant of GGT's citizens' advisory committee recently told me about staff brushing off a question about real-time arrival data, which was promised to be available "in six months" for over a year now. Though this advisory committee can't do much, a county supervisor would be able to do quite a bit.
We do need marketing studies and we do need a marketing campaign for GGT and MT, as there are issues that might apply to an area elected officials just don't encounter, but that's just one part of an integrated whole. We need our elected officials riding the bus around Marin. Perhaps then they'll find not just why Marinites don't ride the bus, but also some easy ways it could be so much better.
Mass transit an incredibly efficient way to move large numbers of people from two fixed locations or along a constrained space, like a bridge. Buried in a recent Marin IJ article we found out just how efficient they were: at rush hour, buses make up less than 1 percent of all vehicles on the Golden Gate Bridge but, along with ferries, carry 27 percent of the people. In other words, GGT adds a full lane and a half of capacity to the bridge and 101.
That is astounding, and a testament to the value of transit. The toll fees paid to support the transit system are well-spent, as they keep the freeway running smoothly for all users.
Well, somewhat smoothly. The HOV lanes through San Rafael and the Twin Cities are jammed, and without the old reversible lanes from Marin City to San Francisco, buses are prone to get stuck in bridge traffic. Finding ways to fix that problem would go a long way to improving bus traffic flow. Extending the planned Van Ness bus-only lanes along Lombard to the Bridge would go even further, and help ease a commute for thousands of Marinites and Sonomans.
In a stroke of good news, GGT will begin charging $2 for parking at the Larkspur Ferry Terminal (LFT) on January 6. The charge is part of a progressive plan to manage access at LFT. Last year, there were few ways to get o LFT without a car, but the parking lot filled up after 8:30am, leaving mid-day travelers stranded and depressing ridership.
GGT tackled this high demand by implementing a shuttle bus in Ross Valley, called the Wave, to give people an alternative to driving. With the $2 charge, GGT is also trying to encourage people to use the shuttle or bike. In short, rather than try to boost parking supply by building garages, GGT is trying to reduce parking demand.
It’s a smart plan. Travel from LFT is highly “peaked,” with a lot of people taking the ferry for commutes to and from San Francisco but hardly anyone taking it in the middle of the day. Boosting the parking supply would further overwhelm those morning ferries.
It’s cheaper to encourage people to take the bus to and from the ferry or to and from the city with a parking charge. The result is a parking lot with space for afternoon riders and essentially the same number of commute riders.
GGT staff should monitor the situation carefully and establish a goal of a certain percentage of spaces available after the morning rush. With such a goal in mind, the Board could raise or lower the parking charge as needed to attain that goal.
The next big thing for Marin-San Francisco LFT riders are new bus pads under the 101 overpass at Sir Francis Drake. Approved as part of the Greenbrae Interchange Project, the pads will mean travelers on the 101 trunk line routes (17, 36, 70, 71, 80, and possibly 101) will be able to easily transfer to the ferry, unlike the current trek from Paradise Drive. SMART will likely come soon after that.
Combined with the parking charge, LFT will be able to accommodate more years of booming ridership growth and allow it to become the all-day service the Sausalito ferry is. Though it will bump up against the limits of its ferry infrastructure eventually, that is a far better problem than being limited by a parking lot.
Route 72X and other commuter buses are packed, and their ridership is rising. With tolls set to rise on the Golden Gate Bridge, the problem could get even worse. While a good thing, Golden Gate Transit (GGT) needs to figure out how to deal with the rising tide. GGT has two ways to accommodate excess ridership: increase the bus frequency or increase the bus size.
Frequency is freedom. Rather than spacing buses to come every 30 minutes, GGT might space them every 15, or 7, or 3. This reduces the penalty for missing your bus, as there will be another one coming soon.
The upside is that this can induce demand, especially if development and transportation policies at either end of the line encourage transit use. More trips are viable by this bus, as riders have more flexibility to schedule their trips. Casual riders, if the bus comes frequently enough, won’t need to check a schedule at all. For a commuter line, the rider just needs to know that buses leave between, say, 5am and 9:30am. Any more detail is unnecessary.
The downside is that frequency, especially on commuter lines, is expensive. GGT pays its drivers full-time, and a number of the buses deadhead (run Not In Service) up to Santa Rosa or San Rafael after their commute runs. Improved frequency will mean more drivers and likely more deadheading.
This added burden may be beyond GGT’s capability to deliver. Increasing frequency on round-trip Basic services, such as the 101, or turning deadhead runs into northbound commuter service would allow fares to recoup the costs.
While it doesn’t induce demand in the same way a more-frequent route may, a larger bus will accommodate the extra ridership without adding significantly to operating costs. Other bus systems use extra-long buses to meet demand, but these would be difficult to navigate around downtown San Francisco and tend to be too utilitarian for commuters’ taste.
A better method would be to use double-decker buses similar to those used by Megabus and Google (like the Van Hool TDX27 Astromega). They have rear storage capacity for 8 bicycles (Google runs with rack space for another 4 on the rear), enough seating for 91 passengers, and aren’t significantly taller or longer than the MCI buses currently in use by GGT. And, unlike the MCI buses, these have rear doors.
Currently, all GGT buses offload and load at the front door, reducing the rear doors to vestigial afterthoughts. The delay of boarding passengers waiting others getting off adds to operating expenses and trip time. With larger buses, this effect is exaggerated. If GGT got its act together and allowed passengers to get off the bus at the rear doors, a rear door on large-capacity GGT commuter buses would save the agency quite a bit on already expensive routes. Allowing commuters to board at the rear would save even more time and money.
Double-deckers wouldn't be unprecedented in the Bay Area. The Google Shuttle is a great success. They navigate San Francisco's streets with relative ease and provide a comfortable way for their workers to get to Silicon Valley.
Whether with bigger buses, or with greater frequency, GGT will need to address its crowding. At least internally, it start to consider the costs and trade-offs to each approach.