In the fight over scarce transit resources, will riders lose out?
A showdown between Bay Area transit agencies over precious Federal CARES Act relief funding resources is underway that could have a big impact on the accessibility, connectivity, and utility of our transit system for years to come.
Two paths lie ahead -- one involves treating our transit system as an integrated network, and trying to preserve as much mobility and access as possible for the greatest number of people, with a focus on serving transit-dependent people and essential workers who are the most reliant on transit during the pandemic. The other involves treating agencies as isolated, competing systems without a common rider base, reinforcing inequitable and inefficient patterns of transit use.
The current state of Bay Area transit: core bus lines running full alongside empty trains
Consider the context for the current battle over resources:
Many bus agencies are reporting that key routes are running at full capacity at certain times of the day, and buses often are forced to pass up riders. Many of the busiest routes run parallel to BART and Caltrain; including
Muni’s 14 and 14R, from 24th St. Mission BART to Embarcadero;
Samtrans’ ECR, which runs alongside Caltrain and BART; and VTA’s 522, which runs alongside Caltrain; and
AC Transit’s 1/1R along International Boulevard and 72 along San Pablo Ave.
To support 6-foot social distancing, a standard bus can carry a maximum of 10-15 people. By comparison, a BART train can carry 30 people per car (300 per 10-car train); Caltrain can carry 40-50 per car (about 200 per train). In other words, a BART train can carry the equivalent of 20-30 buses, and a Caltrain train can carry the equivalent of 10-20 buses.
Low income and transit-dependent people make up the majority of people riding transit currently across all systems.
By comparison, BART, whose ridership is down 88%, and Caltrain whose ridership is down by over 95%, have significant unused capacity to carry more passengers.
BART and Caltrain’s ridership is especially low right now in part because current fare policies heavily encourage low income people to take slow buses - which nowadays are often full - instead of fast, empty trains.
Proposed funding formula focuses on agencies, not riders
Infographic summarizing the CARES Phase 1 allocations among 25 transit agencies (Source: MTC).
How the remaining $500 million in CARES Act funding gets distributed will largely determine how long different parts of the Bay Area transit systems can continue running, and how much service can be provided. As Marin Transit General Manager Nancy Whelan stated during the June 15 Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force meeting, “Different operators face different fiscal cliffs at different times”, due to each agency’s unique cost and revenue structures.
MTC shared their proposed formula for distributing the remaining CARES funding among the region’s 25 main operators at the June 15 meeting. No network plan or other policy requirements were proposed to be tied to the funding to guarantee service on certain corridors or ensure a connected system. MTC’s formula is based on projected revenue loss for each transit agency through the end of the year, considering lost fares, sales tax, and other revenues. MTC staff say that while identifying a “core transit network” is a laudable goal, they simply don’t have enough time to do this prior to the July deadline to allocate CARES funding.
MTC has proposed a well-intentioned yet flawed equity “adjustment” in an attempt to recognize the unique impact of the COVID crisis on low income and transit-dependent people. MTC’s proposed adjustment shifts CARES funding away from agencies that, before the pandemic, had a smaller share of low income riders - such as BART and Caltrain - toward agencies that historically served a higher share of low income riders.
Excerpt from MTC’s presentation on June 15th showing the share each transit agency’s ridership that is low income; the main consideration for their proposed equity adjustment.
Seamless Bay Area strongly supports equity policies that expand access to transit and opportunity among low income and vulnerable groups. Unfortunately, by shuffling funding between agencies based on historically inequitable service, MTC’s proposed equity does little to help low income people today.
Not only does MTC’s proposed equity adjustment not really expand equitable access, but by diverting funding from BART and Caltrain, it puts these agencies at particular risk of drastic, long-term service cuts that could leave us with terrible regional connectivity for years - something that would be bad for riders of all incomes. For BART, it increases the likelihood that the current infrequent 30-minute service will exist for years to come, inhibiting recovery of much of the region’s connecting transit systems. In the case of Caltrain, a complete indefinite shutdown of the railroad is a real possibility.
Improve equitable access to transit by fixing fares
A more effective equity “adjustment” would be to maintain frequent service on BART and Caltrain and focus on making fares more equitable on those systems, taking advantage of their greater efficiency and capacity to carry 10-30 times as many passengers as buses traveling along parallel, crowded routes.
There are at least three simple ways this could be done quickly, as part of the upcoming CARES Act allocation:
Eliminate transfer fees between trains and buses. By giving passengers 100% fare credit for their transfers between BART/Caltrain and local bus systems, we can encourage more low-income people to transfer to less crowded trains when it makes sense to do so. For example, riders on the 14 bus in San Francisco headed to a destination near a downtown BART station should transfer to BART at 24th St. to get to their destination faster and without paying more, freeing up space on the bus for others.
Require that BART and Caltrain charge no more than the local bus fare for local trips and, where possible, honor local bus passes. Thousands of people have discounted AC Transit, Muni, VTA, and SamTrans, and other passes that are only valid on local buses or light rail. Passengers that would benefit from using BART or Caltrain for all or part of their trip could be allowed to use their local bus passes for these journeys. On Caltrain this would be simple to implement - because of the proof-of-payment system, passengers would just need to show their bus pass to the fare inspector. This is more complex on BART due to fare gates; at a bare minimum, BART could temporarily adopt a new fare schedule that made any BART fares within a local transit agency boundary equal to the local transit fare. This would be a big benefit to AC Transit riders who might want to use BART for part of their trip - they’d be guaranteed that they’d never be charged more than the maximum AC Transit fare, $2.50, so long as their whole trip is within the AC Transit district. When combined with the practice of eliminating transfer fees between trains and buses, this policy would very meaningfully expand access to opportunity and high quality transit for low income people - while enabling greater social distancing.
Expand the upcoming means-based fare discount pilot to 50% on BART and Caltrain. A third option for improving equitable access would be expanding the discount of the Clipper START program, a means-based fare discount program available to low income riders beginning July 15. Of the four agencies participating in the pilot, BART and Caltrain only originally agreed to a 20% discount, but Muni and Golden Gate Transit offered a 50% discount. In response to the ridership drop of COVID-19, the Caltrain board recently agreed to expand the discount to 50% from 20%. Recognizing how low fare revenue is during the pandemic, BART could join Caltrain and easily expand the discount to 50%, offering low-income riders a break and potentially also helping shift more riders to BART.
One or more of these equity policies should be seriously considered by MTC as an alternative to the blunt equity “adjustment” proposed, which - if implemented - will hasten service cuts on BART and Caltrain that could leave our region with a weakly connected system and force more people of all incomes into cars.
Rather than cutting service on our most connected, fast, and efficient transit in the name of equity due to those systems’ historically inequitable fare policies, let’s use this as an opportunity to compel those systems to open up their services to more low income people. In doing this, we’ll help more people get to their destinations faster, enable greater social distancing, and be able to spend our limited funding resources more efficiently.