Network Management Business Case at risk of going off track

Fragmented governance has long been at the core of the Bay Area’s challenges to the goals of providing a well-coordinated transit system for riders. To address this, the region’s Transformation Action Plan adopted nearly a year ago recommended a governance study be completed in 2022 to “select a preferred alternative structure(s) for Regional Network Management (RNM) and recommend next steps to achieve implementation.” 

However, more than six months into the Network Management Business Case, the study is at risk of going seriously off track due to calls from transit agencies for time-consuming, exhaustive analysis to ‘prove’ the value of regionalizing certain transit system functions, which may limit the outcomes to incremental reforms.

Riders who want to see the region continue prioritize creating a comprehensive, accountable Network Manager capable of fully integrating fares, service, and wayfinding should speak up at the September 12th Network Management Business Case advisory group meeting between 1-3pm, or submit an email to info@bayareametro.com. Riders may wish to echo concerns summarized in this Joint Letter from Seamless Bay Area and four other groups.

The Network Management Business Case kicked off in January 2022 with the goal of being completed by September 2022, recommending an accountable network manager structure that could be advanced in legislation as early as 2023.

However, after months of concerted efforts by MTC and their consultant team to build consensus among transit agency leaders and staff around the goals of this study of governance options, on June 6th, transit agency general managers that sit on the study’s advisory group expressed confusion that the study seemed to be heading toward evaluating new governance structures - and skepticism that reformed governance would provide value to the region. 

Instead of engaging in a discussion about what criteria should be used to evaluate different network management models (the intended purpose of the meeting), general managers instead debated whether the consultant’s approach constituted a true ‘business case’ or an ‘organizational assessment’. 

By contrast, the non-transit-GM members of the advisory committee, as well as the dozen or so members of the public who commented, had no such confusion about the key question at the heart of the Network Management Business Case. Consultant Tamim Raad expressed it clearly in the meeting:  “What are the best governance models, organization models, in terms of authority and mandate, to deliver on the outcomes agreed upon by the Blue Ribbon Task Force?” Jim Wunderman of the Bay Area Council put it more frankly: “We’re losing the damn transit system - we’ve got to do something bold.”

The outcome of the June 6th  comments from transit agency general managers seeking to revisit the purpose and scope of the Network Management Business Case, unfortunately, has led MTC staff managing the study to take a step backward, shift the methodology of the study, and postpone the completion of the study by four months, until February 2023. 

The revised methodology and timeline will be unveiled at the September 12 Advisory Group meeting. The new methodology was developed in partnership with the general manager members of the advisory group, and without the participation of the other, non-transit agency members of the group. 

An outcome of using the time on granular analysis to prove the value of regional coordination is that the outcome of the study may be redirected toward incremental change. Obviously, the first steps toward improvements, such as the all-agency BayPass pilot, are moving forward and it’s important to continue such progress.  But the materials for the September 12th meeting seem to imply that the outcome could be incremental changes followed by an indefinite pause (depending on the meaning of the red triangle).

The different potential ‘network management accountabilities’ - which have been discussed at length for over year through the BRTF, informed by consultant expertise and backed up by academic research - are now going to get independently evaluated for the ‘cost-benefit’ of regionalization - setting the region up for still more debates over which specific transit network function should be regionalized. 

And the delay also means that legislative steps to advance a coherent network management structure may not be ready in time for the 2023 legislative cycle.

Excerpt from Sept. 12 Network Management Business Case Advisory Group meeting materials, showing how the transit system functions previously agreed upon by the Blue Ribbon Task Force over a year ago, to be regionalized are now going to get independently evaluated, adding four more months to the project.

There is a real risk of this study turning into a wild goose chase - a never-ending pursuit of quantitative analysis of decisions that are fundamentally judgment calls based on knowledgeable assessment. If past experience is any indication, transit agencies will continue to demand more ‘evidence’ and ‘analysis’ of the need for reform and claim ‘unique circumstances’ in the Bay Area that justify extreme caution and limiting the scope of proposed governance reforms. They will seek to minimize the individual risk to them as an agency or dilution of authority, rather than focusing on maximizing the benefit to the public - a transit ‘tragedy of the commons’. 

Seamless Bay Area and Silicon Valley Independent Living Center, who are both represented on the Advisory Group Committee, submitted a joint letter with TransForm, Silicon Valley Leadership Group, and Joint Venture Silicon Valley expressing concern about the new methodology, calling the “bottom-up analysis” presented in the Sept 12th update be combined with the continued analysis and assessment of more comprehensive regional network manager structures previously presented to the advisory group and to MTC, including an Operator-led Network Manager or an MTC-led Network Manager.  Such alternatives correspond to transformative alternatives explored in Seamless Bay Area’s 2021 report Governing Transit Seamlessly: Options for a Bay Area Network Manager, as well as SPUR’s 2020 report, A Regional Transit Coordinator for the Bay Area. 

If you want to see progress toward a well-coordinated transit system for riders, you can call into the meeting and urge MTC and transit agency leaders to follow through with commitments made to the public at the BRTF. 

Riders can express their opinion at the September 12th Network Management Business Case Advisory Group meeting from 1-3pm (Zoom: https://bayareametro.zoom.us/j/81364284677).  Seamless Bay Area encourages riders to speak up in support of keeping the Business Case focused on long term, comprehensive governance options for a Network Manager that follow the principle of  “begin with the end in mind” - creating a resilient long-term institutional structure that can grow to fulfill the vision of a rider-friendly, high-ridership system.