While on an
extended vacation last month, I visited some of the major cities on
the US west coast, and took the opportunity to explore their trains,
buses, and even ferries. As In Transit starts a new season,
appearing on Tuesdays and Thursdays, look for upcoming profiles of
Portland and Seattle. These cities are great to visit, and also
offer some fresh ideas on how to make transit better. but first,
let’s take a quick spin around hilly San Francisco.
This remarkable
city is actually a tiny chunk of a much larger metropolis wrapped
around San Francisco Bay. Oakland and San Jose also make up part of
the string of cities and towns know as the Bay Area. The bay itself
has been a great challenge to engineers and commuters, requiring
massive bridges and tunnels in order to cross it. It’s large enough
that commuter ferries are still a major part of the transportation
system.
Coping with
difficult geography has helped make San Francisco world famous,
thanks to the magnificent Golden Gate Bridge and the much-loved
cable cars that are still pulled along the city’s steep streets by
underground cables. Commuters still use these unique transit
vehicles, when they are not crammed with tourists.
Further
enhancing transit as an attraction in itself, old streetcars from
around the world have been put into daily service on new lines. The
vintage trams from across the US, Italy and Australia are so popular
that once again visitors often displace the locals.
Yet San
Francisco has another network of modern streetcars for commuters to
use. Several lines come together downtown, travelling underground in
what’s called the Muni Metro. Muni, the City of San Francisco’s
transit authority, oversees buses, streetcars and the cable cars.
But the real backbone of this sprawling metropolis is a
long-distance subway system known as BART.
The Bay Area
Rapid Transit system stretches far into the suburbs, and downtown
runs directly beneath the Muni Metro. Between San Francisco and
Oakland, BART trains travel the Transbay Tube under San Francisco
Bay. This major engineering major feat, along with other parts of
the original BART system, is now over thirty years old. Fearing that
an earthquake could endanger the tunnels and elevated sections of
the rail system, BART officials want to bring the oldest
infrastructure up to modern standards. This November, local voters
will be asked to approve a quake-protection plan at a cost of $1.7
billion Canadian.
Travelling by
transit is not cheap here, especially for long distance commuters.
Depending on how far you go, one-way tickets on BART range from
$1.25 US ($1.60) to a maximum of $7.45 US -- almost 10 dollars.
Riders transferring from BART have to pay again to use Muni, but
there is a discount. Several busy ferry lines also bring workers to
downtown San Francisco at no less than five dollars Canadian each
way.
A few blocks
from the historic ferry building, regional transportation planners
want to build a new “multimodal” transit hub, linking suburban buses
and the commuter rail line known as Caltrain. This busy train
service carries riders between San Francisco, San Jose and the many
computer companies of Silicon Valley. The proposed Transbay Terminal
would bring Caltrain into the heart of San Francisco.
Navigating all
these transit agencies can be tricky for a visitor, and may turn off
car-loving Californians. In response to this fragmented transit
network, a central information service called “511” has been
created. Transit and auto commuters can now access crucial travel
details through a single three-digit phone number, or log on to
www.511.org. This impressive new service is not without glitches,
but should be studied very closely by officials here in the
increasingly gridlocked Golden Horseshoe.
Send e-mail to
transit@eddrass.com. Include
address and phone number.