Measure 2 puts the people of the Bay Area firmly in charge of their own future, combining new ferry, rail, and bus services with select highway improvements and bicycle/pedestrian projects, all paid for with a modest $1 toll increase on the region’s seven state-owned toll bridges. The plan would raise about $125 million each year and help bankroll a Bay Area renaissance of improved mobility, smarter land-use decisions, increased waterfront vitality, and higher quality of life.
By Bobby Winston
Published: February, 2004
With no help expected from Sacramento or Washington, D.C., it’s clear that the Bay Area is going to have to solve its mobility problems on its own. And we’ve got to start immediately.
The first step comes March 2 when voters in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Solano counties consider Regional Measure 2, the Regional Traffic Relief Plan. Measure 2 puts the people of the Bay Area firmly in charge of their own future, combining new ferry, rail, and bus services with select highway improvements and bicycle/pedestrian projects, all paid for with a modest $1 toll increase on the region’s seven state-owned toll bridges. The plan would raise about $125 million each year and help bankroll a Bay Area renaissance of improved mobility, smarter land-use decisions, increased waterfront vitality, and higher quality of life.
Interestingly, Bay Area residents can thank state politicos for the chance to take regional transportation issues into our own hands. “We looked at the facts,” explains East Bay state Sen. Don Perata, who introduced the legislation that put Measure 2 on the ballot, “and it was clear that a regional ballot measure is the best way to go. Given the battles over how to deal with the state budget deficit, it might be the only way to get transportation projects moving for quite some time.”
The Regional Traffic Relief Plan has three distinct goals: improving transit connections around the Bay Area, increasing transit options in transbay corridors, and delivering congestion relief at critical chokepoints on the bridge approaches. Rescuing new ferry services and other key projects from state budget limbo is icing on the cake. Commenting on the expansive scope of the Regional Traffic Relief Plan, Perata aide Ezra Rapport says, “It’s quite intentional. The regionwide impact of traffic congestion demands broad-based improvement.”
Stuart Cohen, executive director of the Oakland-based Transportation and Land Use Coalition, echoes Rapport’s analysis, “The bottom line is that this plan gives people legitimate transit options. It embraces the Bay as an asset instead of an obstacle. It puts rail all around the Bay. And it connects the transit services to one another.”
Noting that participants in the development of the Measure 2 expenditure plan included transit agencies, Caltrans, business groups, environmental activists, and social equity organizations, Cohen said, “This proves just how much is possible when we all work together.”
One of the keys to the Regional Traffic Congestion Relief Plan is its focus on the bridge corridors and their approaches. With the Bay Area’s population projected to grow by 1.5 million people between now and 2025, forecaster predict travel across the bay will mushroom by 50 percent—far outpacing the expected 30 percent increase in regional travel overall.
The plan calls for an expanded ferry system to handle a big share of the burgeoning transbay travel market, with funds to buy new environmentally-friendly vessels and to operate more frequent service on the Alameda/Oakland and Vallejo routes as well as new routes linking San Francisco with Berkeley/Albany and South Francisco. Approval of Measure 2 also would provide up to $48 million for spare vessels and improvements to San Francisco’s Ferry Building, $28 million for a new ferry/bus terminal in Vallejo, up to $5 million for a study on the potential use of San Quentin as a ferry/bus/train hub, $3 million a year to help finance San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit Authority (WTA) operations, and up to $1 million to investigate potential ridership on Richmond-to-San Francisco ferry route.
“The Regional Traffic Relief Plan basically fulfills the vision the WTA outlined when it was formed five years ago,” says Steve Castleberry, the authority’s chief executive officer. Noting that cleaner air and alternatives to driving are among the byproducts of that vision, Castleberry is most effusive about the plan’s impact on waterfront communities. “There’s a direct link between active ferry terminals and community vitality,” he says.
Castleberry points to Vallejo, where the success of the Baylink ferry is a driving force in the downtown waterfront renewal. He expects similar stories to unfold at the Berkeley Marina, South San Francisco’s Oyster Point, and the old Alameda Naval Air Station, now being redeveloped as Alameda Point. Looking farther ahead, he figures the introduction of consistent ferry service also would give Richmond’s waterfront redevelopment efforts a big shot in the arm.
Castleberry predicts waterfront communities will become increasingly distinct as ferry service and new development flourish. “San Francisco’s Ferry Building is a winner because it’s unique. Same with Jack London Square in Oakland. Alameda Point is only a mile away from Jack London, but the neighborhoods will be as different from one another as the Financial District is from Sausalito.”
One place where ferry service certainly would alter the neighborhood vibe is San Quentin, which is being studied as a site for a multi-modal terminal linking ferries, buses, and commuter trains if the California Department of Corrections opts to vacate the historic property.
Despite the crucial support for ferry service, the Regional Traffic Relief Plan doesn’t turn its back on Bay Area highways. It includes millions of dollars to improve travel on important bridge approaches, with projects like upgrades to the U.S. 101/Sir Francis Drake Blvd. interchange near the Larkspur ferry terminal, a long-overdue reconfiguration of the Interstate 80/680 junction in Cordelia, a fourth bore for the Caldecott Tunnel, safer on- and off-ramps along Interstate 880 in Oakland, and a desperately needed carpool lane along eastbound Interstate 80 between Highway 4 and the Carquinez Bridge.
Other big items on the Measure 2 investment ticket include seismic strengthening of BART’s transbay tube, a BART link to the Oakland Airport; the first leg in a planned BART extension to San Jose; a rail link between eastern Contra Costa County and the Pittsburg/Bay Point BART station; a rebuilt Transbay Terminal in San Francisco, where a downtown Caltrain extension would connect with AC Transit, BART, Muni, SamTrans and Golden Gate Transit; new commuter rail service across a rehabilitated Dumbarton rail bridge; and a Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit District extension from San Rafael to the ferry terminal at Larkspur or San Quentin. The measure also would fund regionwide installation of the TransLink® smart card system—allowing riders to use a single fare card on any Bay Area ferry, bus or rail system —and provide $22 million to improve access to transit stations for bicyclists and pedestrians.
Voters in several Bay Area counties have approved measures to fund construction of new transit projects over the years. But few of these measures included any money for putting new vehicles into operation. Measure 2 breaks the pattern by providing up to 38 percent of annual revenues to transit agencies to pay for the ferry crews, bus drivers, train operators, mechanics and others needed to put the new metal into service.
Linking capital funds and operating money is one feature that makes this a real plan. The process churned out a practical, comprehensive plan this time.
Carrying out the Regional Traffic Relief Plan is the job of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), which also serves as the Bay Area Toll Authority. And money from Measure 2 comes with numerous strings attached. To make sure projects deliver the expected benefits, MTC must adopt ridership and farebox recovery standards before allocating any funds for transit operations. The Commission will be able to cut funding for a project or even reassign funds to another project in the same corridor if the performance standards aren’t met.
“The plan makes it possible for the Bay Area to get maximum bang for the buck,” says MTC’s Randy Rentschler. “Squeezing extra mileage out of local dollars is all the more important because Sacramento and Washington, D.C. simply have not provided the leadership needed to solve congestion problems.”
State and federal support for transportation has dwindled so much that it would take nearly every penny that now comes to the Bay Area just to adequately maintain the our existing transportation system for the next 25 years. But with the region’s population set to grow by more than 20 percent during this period, a complete shutdown of new projects is not an option. The Regional Traffic Relief Plan wisely uses local money to meet local needs, addressing the most important challenges of the future without turning our backs on the responsibilities of today.
