Running on empty: Bay Area transit in crisis

Written by jrood

After enduring the most brutal year in the history of Bay Area public transit, train and bus operators are barreling down a track toward bankruptcy, the San Jose, Calif., Mercury News reports. The near-inevitable result will be costlier and longer commutes for all, whether they ride or drive.

From BART to Caltrain to
the Valley Transportation Authority, every Bay Area transit agency has
increased fares and reduced train and bus service to plug deep budget holes.
But the changes have produced fewer riders and even less revenue – leading some
to worry that the transit system has entered a death spiral.

Already, more than a
million riders are spending extra money and time each day just to get around.
And a staggering 66,000 daily riders have abandoned Bay Area transit in the
past year – twice the number of drivers that go through the Dumbarton Bridge
toll plaza every day.

Six major agencies – BART,
VTA, Caltrain, SamTrans on the Peninsula, County Connection in the East Bay and
Golden Gate Transit – have lost at least seven percent of their riders in the
last year. Some officials fear they’ll never get them back. While the Bay Area
may be facing an especially alarming situation, transit agencies nationwide
have lost six percent of their riders in the past year as they struggle through
the recession.

And transit agencies are
warning that the worst may be yet to come.

Consider the plight of
BART. The agency’s financial hole has only deepened since it recently phased
out 100 jobs, hiked fares more than six percent, upped parking rates, and
started running three trains an hour instead of four on weeknights and
weekends. BART has lost $32 million in sales tax revenue in the past 12 months,
and it has seen $129 million in state subsidies disappear in the last three
years.

The problems of rising
costs, vanishing state subsidies and declining tax revenues are shared by all
28 of the area’s transit agencies. Without fundamental changes, these Bay Area
transit agencies project a cumulative budget shortfall in 25 years of $8.5
billion, and a capital projects deficit of $17.2 billion. In other words, as a
recent report by the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission concluded,
their current track leads to bankruptcy.

Transit agency officials
began fighting back in late 2009 by joining forces with regional transportation
officials and outside experts to form the Transit Sustainability Project, which
may lead to transit mergers, more efficient service and new taxes by 2012.

The effects of the transit
crisis reach far beyond those who ride buses and trains. Dozens of transit
executives, transportation experts, commuters, business leaders and politicians
interviewed for this series agree: The trouble facing Bay Area transit is
certain to pack more congestion on roads, cripple the region’s ability to
rebound from the current recession, increase the region’s contribution to
global warming and disrupt the lives of those who rely on public
transportation.

One of transit’s main
problems these days is simple, brutal arithmetic. The average Bay Area commute
is 24 miles round-trip. Someone who drives a car that gets 24 miles a gallon is
saving $1.57 on gas each day compared with the peak in 2008. Most daily transit
tickets, in contrast, are 50 cents to $1 costlier than last year, even with
discount bulk passes. That’s a swing of about $2 to $2.50 each weekday – or an
annual hit of $520 to $650 for the transit

El Cerrito resident Katie
Murphy, 50, has her own version of that equation. She began vanpooling to work
at the University of California-San Francisco in October, having grown tired of
the BART and Muni fare increases and the time-consuming commute. Three days a
week on the van is saving her $60 a month, and it’s adding up for her family.

Beyond cost, commuters are
also finding it less convenient to take trains and buses. Because of recent
funding problems, BART weeknight and weekend riders now have to wait up to 20
minutes for a train to arrive. Non-commute time Caltrain riders can find
themselves stuck on platforms for an hour. Thousands of bus riders in the East
Bay, South Bay, Peninsula and San Francisco, including many elderly and
low-income residents, have seen their routes vanish.

Even commuters who take the
area’s most transit-friendly trips may now find driving a more efficient
option.

Eight Bay Area News Group
reporters recently took four commutes into downtown San Francisco, San Jose,
Oakland and Walnut Creek, with one reporter driving and the other taking
transit. In each case, the driver arrived at least a half-hour earlier. Other
than the trip to downtown San Francisco, which was much costlier for the driver
because of the price of parking, the trip price varied by only a few dollars.

The problem is that as the
region’s economy strengthens over the next few years, its highways are certain
to jam up again. But it is an open question how many of the transit options
that commuters abandoned will still be around, awaiting their return.

The pace of the developing
transit crisis accelerated recently and continues to gain steam. Bay Area
transit operators began losing local revenues because of the recession and have
been stripped of $532 million in state aid during the past three years,
including $77 million at the VTA and $60 million at AC Transit. California is
now one of 15 states that provides no state subsidy for transit.

Transit operators responded
by taking routes away from riders and charging them more, resulting in fewer riders
and even less revenue.

The VTA, which saw its
budget gap quadruple to $98 million in just four months last year, is cutting
bus service by 8 percent and light rail operations by nearly 7 percent starting.

Caltrain recently faced
such dire money woes that its board declared a fiscal emergency. It could have
tripled fares and still faced a shortfall. SamTrans eliminated all but one
express route and increased fares by 25 cents, but it reduced its $28.4 million
deficit by just $7.3 million.

AC Transit, trying to
overcome a $57-million deficit, will slash 8.4 percent of its bus service in
March to save $9.6 million. County Connection has lost one-fifth of its revenue
and eliminated one-fourth of its service. Muni changed nearly half its bus
routes in December and raised round-trip fares by a dollar. For all, a
long-term deficit remains.

Authorities agree that the
current fiscal crisis, and the way transit agencies have had to react, is unprecedented.

"I think this is by
far the most difficult time we’ve seen in public transit," said AC Transit
Board Vice President Chris Peeples, a 12-year board member and 30-year transit
rider. "We’ve had ups and downs with changes in the economy, but this is
the worst. With a serious recession and the state taking away local transit
money, the chickens are coming home to roost."

Early last decade, in the
wake of the dot-com crash and the post-Sept. 11 recession, Caltrain ridership
plunged. Still, the agency had enough money to invest in more service to raise
revenues. The operator began construction on an expansion in 2002. It
introduced the baby bullet train in June 2004, then quickly began running 22 of
the zippy trains per day. That service is now Caltrain’s most popular and
economically efficient.

Officials say that strategy
was not an option this time around. With nothing in reserve and a bigger
deficit, Caltrain has cut eight of its 98 weekday trains to stay afloat.

Even the most optimistic
transit officials say they won’t return to better financial footing until
ridership rises and taxpayer subsidies return – and that will take years.

And it might not be
possible without new taxes and investments, plus more efficient service. So
far, none of the major transit agencies has been able to figure out how to get
there.

"I’m not sure that the
Answer, with a capital A, exists," said Metropolitan Transportation
Commission spokesman John Goodwin.

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