Mid-Week Links

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/18756600 w=620&h=349] Could you imagine something like this at Marin's transit centers? With GGT's long, long headways, it would make sense to have screens in local shops as well as more detailed information screens at the stops themselves, perhaps with an interactive map of the routes. Chicago's Bus Tracker: Taking the Guesswork Out of Waiting for the Bus from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

Marin

This week, SMART went totally braindead and decided to play the villain.  The district, in defiance of the Secretary of State, passed an election ordinance requiring that RepealSMART include an unbiased statement with the repeal effort's signature petition, the first step to getting its initiative on the ballot.  RepealSMART has chosen to ignore the directive.  In other news:

• The County Board of Supervisors passed a fairly gentle plan to ease some of the barriers to affordable housing.  Brad Breithaupt thinks it's going to be yet another target for anti-development rage.
• Residents in Larkspur want to build a farm where the already-approved New Home Co. housing development is scheduled to be built.  They have little chance of success.
• Another week, another total road closure: a flaming tractor-trailer crash closed southbound Highway 101, closing all southbound lanes for over two hours.  A shame there wasn't some sort of rail-based mass transit alternative...
• IJ endorsements are in for the Ross Valley School Board, College of Marin Board, Novato School Board, Reed School Board, and Mill Valley School Board.
• Consolidation of emergency services in the Ross Valley continues, with Ross beginning to consider integrating its fire department with one of its neighbors.
• Children and parents got outside and got some exercise this past week in Mill Valley, participating in International Walk (and Roll) to School Day.  The Feds noticed, too, and recently awarded San Anselmo and San Rafael $1.8 million to improve its sidewalks around three local schools as part of the Safe Routes to School program.
• Homestead Valley will get a very, very narrow sidewalk on a very, very slow street.
• The architecturally lazy Novato city offices move forward.
• The San Anselmo Andronico's will remain open after Renovo Capital completes its acquisition of the ill-fated company.
• Patch's Kelly Dunleavy goes over the Fairfax town budget with the city and opponents to its half-cent sales tax proposal and finds that numbers can be more than they seem to be.
• San Rafael's Corporate Center will likely be rezoned to allow for medical and research uses, eliminating 77 parking spaces in its gargantuan 1,323 space lot and allowing for a greater diversity of uses for the downtown office complex.

The Greater Marin

• While Marin debates the value of SMART, Santa Rosa continues to move forward with renewal plans.
• Washington, DC - the city, not the feds - has come a long, long way since the days of Marion Barry, with foreign investors flocking to sock their money away in a stable regional economy. Part of the reason: a strong Metro system.
• Apparently, the only way to combat congestion is through congestion pricing.
• If you're going to build massive rail projects like BART, the best way to go is subterranean.
• While I looked at the cost of driving alone on Marin and found it to be hideously expensive, it's only one part of the whole economic puzzle, which apparently costs trillions to operate and maintain.  To save that money, we'll need to spend trillions more on a total infrastructure overhaul.  Could be fun.
• But in the meantime, the poorest places of the world are finding hope in good urban design.

The Theory: SMART to San Francisco

Building a rail line to San Francisco is the Holy Grail for many in the commuting public.  By 2035, there will be an estimated 80,000 commute trips across the Golden Gate Bridge every day, and both San Francisco and the SMART district counties could be well-served by a rail line going across the Golden Gate Bridge.  It sounds like a fabulous idea, but would it actually be worth the expense?  Let’s pencil this out.

SMART, presumably, would run along the old NWP railroad tracks to Sausalito, duplicating the old rail route.  From there, would proceed as the old BART plan did, tunneling through the Marin Headlands to the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco, becoming a subway thereafter to run under Geary Boulevard before finally terminating at either the San Francisco Caltrain station or the Transbay Transit Center.

The Marin section would cut through Larkspur and Corte Madera, running at surface, bypass downtown Mill Valley and most of Sausalito before diving beneath the hills.  Larkspur to Sausalito costs would likely be higher than the rest of the rail line, as the old rails have been torn up for trails.  Given the cost of renovating the Alto Tunnel as well, a cost of $174 million – $20 million per mile – is not unreasonable.  The fact that this would run through some very low-density residential neighborhoods, however, would likely mean significant neighborhood opposition.  Running along Highway 101 would be significantly more expensive, as there is no single right-of-way for SMART to operate with, and there is no freeway median for the train to run down.

Sausalito to San Francisco would be a major undertaking.  The Marin Headlands present a major tunnel project, and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge would be a huge engineering endeavor.  Since all construction would be new and involve a tunneling project, from this point on the project would cost around $150,000 between $500 million and $1 billion per mile.  The line would continue on the BART alignment once it reached the city, hitting its first station at the Presidio, serving Industrial Light and Magic, before tunneling to Geary.  Total cost for this segment would be between $3 billion and $6 billion.

The Geary Boulevard alignment is important for this plan.  Muni bus service along the Geary route is over capacity and is the busiest bus route in the Bay Area.  The neighborhood has begged Muni for a subway but to no avail, as costs are extremely prohibitive, but from a transit perspective the project would be worthwhile.  Here, SMART has a choice.  It could stop at a Geary Boulevard transfer station, probably on Arguello or Masonic and allow passengers to transfer to Muni, or it could continue onward in the Muni tunnel.

There are costs to either choice.  Forcing passengers to transfer to Muni far from the Financial District would make the route less attractive to potential riders, but partnering with Muni to build the subway would be extremely expensive.  Despite this, the odds of actually building the subway would increase if Muni were to shoulder the cost with another transit agency, and the intra-San Francisco passengers would help to offset some of the cost to SMART.  If SMART chooses to go on, it would proceed along Geary with stops along the way until Market Street.  The cost for this segment would be around $330 million between $1.1 and $2.2 billion.

At Market, SMART again faces a decision.  It could proceed along the Central Subway to the Caltrain terminal, requiring express rails to be put in at considerable cost.  It could proceed forward to the Transbay Transit Center at an even more considerable cost, or it could stop at Union Square, allowing passengers to transfer to the Central Subway or BART and finish their trips.  The cost of the crossing under Market would likely be at least $1 billion but would provide a significant improvement in service to passengers, allowing a single rail ride from Santa Rosa to California’s High Speed Rail network, Caltrain, and a number of regional buses.

The total cost of a San Rafael to Transbay Transit Center line, using these numbers, is $2.5 billion between $5.3 and $9.6 billion.

The problem for this line is that ridership just is not there.  Already, 28% of commutes to San Francisco from Marin are made by transit.  If SMART’s numbers hold out through a whole system, only another 10% of ridership – about 8,000 – would shift to the train.  This would bring Marin in line with the mode share for San Mateo-San Francisco commuting at a total cost of $147,000 $400,000 per new rider, minimum.  To make it as cost-effective as SMART’s initial operating segment, 40,000 new riders per day would have to switch, an unrealistically high number without a significant change to growth patterns in the Bay Area an astronomically high number for Marin.

Building SMART to San Francisco would be nice, but in a world of limited resources it would be a massive waste of funds.  For that money, Golden Gate Transit could improve its bus system such that the towns it serves could begin to focus on transit-oriented development, SMART could extend to Sausalito, and there would be plenty of money left over for bike lanes, sidewalks, and a second track and electrification of the SMART route, and that only gets us through half the money.  Unless costs come down, a San Francisco SMART should stay strictly theoretical.

EDIT: After some off-line comments, I realized I had grossly underestimated the cost of subway construction without tearing up Geary, and updated the costs to reflect that.

Transit Commuting Saves Marin Millions

Some have wondered why I made the previous post in isolation to the cost of a transit commute.  Although I did point out that a transit commute saves at least the San Francisco-bound Novato commuter a ridiculous amount of money, I did not examine the county-wide costs because I wanted to emphasize the benefits to living where you can walk or bike to work.  Transit, both in my post and Mr. Money Moustache's, is sloppy seconds: it still costs more than walking or biking. Another reason I left out transit is the lack of work-trip fare data.  Golden Gate Transit (GGT), the local bus and ferry agency, aggregates all fares for each mode into a single average fare.  In addition, GGT operates outside of Marin as a regional bus service in Sonoma and is just about the only way to get into Marin by transit.  Finally, the Blue and Gold Ferry, separate from GGT,  doesn't even share its data, so its fares are left out.  Each of these factors pollutes the data and makes any analysis less accurate.

But what the hell, right?  Let's call this a back-of-the-envelope calculation, the kind you make when proving a point at a party.  Don't take this as accurate, but take it as a rough idea of something approximating the actual amount Marin residents spend on transit and how much they could save by relying more on transit.

Golden Gate Transit's average fare for all riders on its ferries and buses was $3.02 in fiscal year 2010.  Taking this as our base, we find that the average transit commuter spends about $1,500 per year on commuting and $19,500 over a decade.  Good deal, a savings of $29,600 over the average car commuter per decade.

Transit makes up only 7% of work trips by Marin residents despite the cost savings.  Playing out our $3.02 average fare means commuters spend about $9.6 million per year on transit, or $124.8 million over a decade.  This is in comparison to the $7 billion we spend to commute alone.  If 1% of our car commuters switched to transit, that would be a savings of $6.8 million per year and $88.6 million per decade.  If our transit riders switched to single-passenger car commuting, they'd spend $88 million more per year and lose $1.1 billion in wealth over a decade.

Mind you, this is for the average commuter.  While a car commuter from Novato to San Francisco saves $11,000 per year by switching to transit, a car commuter going to Solano County probably won't find transit a feasible option at any price.  But if changing homes to be closer to work or changing jobs to be closer to home isn't an option, you should reexamine the long-term costs of that car commute and see how much taking the bus might save.  You might be surprised by what you find.

Car Commuting Costs Marin Billions

Marin’s commuting workforce travels quite a distance for work, 11.5 miles each way on average, thanks in part to its relatively suburban character.  Although most would say such a commute isn’t terrible, commuting even that far is a massive financial loss to everyone involved, and Marin’s economy suffers for it.

Financial blogger Mr. Money Mustache recently penned a fantastic piece on the true cost of commuting (which I truly recommend) and found that an 18 mile commute, roughly from downtown San Rafael to Market Street, costs around $75,000 over the course of a decade and wastes roughly 1.3 working years of time.  He factors in the IRS cost of $0.51 per mile in car depreciation, gas, and the like and assumes that it could be reinvested at about 5% interest.  This is crazy, and that’s just for one person.

How much time and money is lost to commuting alone in Marin?  The average drive-alone Marinite travels 11.46 miles to work, the distance from Petaluma to Novato.  After taking into account a bit of tolling and parking, this average joe spends $3,800 and 24 working days on his commute each year.  If he valued his time as much as his employer, that lost time is worth another $6,500.  This works out to almost $50,000 in lost wealth and 7 wasted months over a decade.  As a county, we spend $565 million every year to commute alone, and every decade we lose an astounding $7.3 billion in wealth and $9.5 billion worth of time.

Hearing these numbers, you’re probably thinking of abandoning your place in Sleepy Hollow and finding someplace nice in Russian Hill, or you’re worried I’ll want to make Grant Avenue a satellite Financial District.  Don’t worry.  I’m not advocating emptying out Marin, or turning Novato into Oakland, but I want to point out the immense, direct costs of investing so heavily in car-centered infrastructure.  Each 1% of the commuting populace that drives alone rather than paying down a mortgage costs Marin’s economy $106.4 million every decade.

Infill development is one way out of this mess.  By bringing workers and jobs closer together, Marinites will be able to save time and money if they want to drive, to the tune of $255 per mile closer to work, and will be more likely to bike or walk to work.  These don’t need to be monstrous apartment buildings or affordable housing, but there are enough redundant parking garages and vacant lots to provide a healthy amount of space without damaging the fabric and culture of our towns.

The other way out is through improved transit investments.  Although travel by transit is often no faster, and sometimes slower, than driving, that time can be put to more productive use than simply driving through stop-and-go traffic on 101, and transit is almost always cheaper than driving.  Switching from driving to taking the wifi-equipped 101 bus to San Francisco, for example, can save a Novato commuter up to $11,000 per year in parking fees, tolls and vehicle wear-and-tear.

These are the discussions Marin should have about its future.  How can we boost alternative transportation?  How can we intelligently promote infill development?  These are also the discussions we should have with our families.  Personally I’d rather have $11,000 at the end of the year than the convenience of being totally flexible with when I can leave the office.

We often simply accept the commutes we’re given as foregone conclusions and don’t count the ways they hurt our wallets and our time; if we do reexamine our commute, it’s often with the time horizon of a month or a year.  It’s high time we started to look at things a little more broadly.

-------------------

Commuting statistics used for the above information is from Change in Motion from December, 2008, by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.  Mode share and commuter numbers are the 2006 observed base.  If you would like to see my work, you can download the spreadsheet I made here.  If I made any particularly egregious mathematical errors, do let me know in the comments.

Mid-Week Links: Baby Steps

County Proper

• The never-ending news of rail in Marin continues with Novato's final approval of the mighty and efficient freight train, which will now run through the city as far as Eureka.  Santa Rosa got its first new freight train this week, too.  (IJ, Patch, Press-Democrat)
• In a mishmash of acronyms, MTC considers SMART's pedestrian facilities for TIGER funds. (IJ, Fast Lane)
• Work is starting to add HOV lanes to the Novato Narrows, an area of Highway 101 north of the Atherton Avenue exit.  Freeway widening is never a good answer to traffic, especially with a train on the way, but at least it's HOV. (Patch, IJ)
• Meanwhile, Novato declares sprawl to be the way forward, approving zoning for affordable housing at 20 units per acre instead of the State-mandated 30 units per acre.  Although 20 units per acre could do some good, as the form matters more than the density, the downgrade is a loss to the city. (IJ, Transit in Utah)

Near Marin

• ABAG, MTC, and BAAQMD might buy a place together in San Francisco.  ABAG and MTC currently share a much more transit-accessible space in Oakland, but it's too small for what they want.  Maybe they'll live up to their own mandates? (Mercury News)
• It looks like they got the memo: AC Transit and BART are looking to merge.  As two of the largest transit agencies in the region, their merger would go a long way to better integrate Bay Area transit.
• Regional development agencies got the axe this last budget cycle, and they're suing to stop the state from shutting them down.
• California passed a law (SB 582) mandating employers offer benefits to its bike-commuting employees, just as they do to their car-commuting employees.  Now the Governor just has to sign it. (Cyclicious)

Greater Marin

• If you've ever worried about bike commuting (it's too hot, too cold, too wet, too tiresome), maybe you should give one of these things a try.  No problem to hit 28MPH and an optional electric assist for troublesome hills.  One of these could go from San Anselmo to the Ferry in 10 minutes, no gas required.  (Inhabitat)