Proponents of seamless transit argue that integrating the Bay Area’s 27 transit agencies will improve rider experiences and get people back on transit.
A Tangled Knot
Emily Polk wakes up at 5 A.M. and leaves while it’s still dark outside on days where she has to get to Stanford University campus from her home in the East Bay. Dr. Polk is an advanced lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford, and has lived in the East Bay for 7 out of the 10 years she’s been at Stanford.
“I’ve tried everything,” Dr. Polk explains about how she gets to campus.
One route to campus involves taking the ferry from the East Bay to San Francisco, walking 30 minutes from the Ferry Station to the Caltrain Station, taking Caltrain from San Francisco to Palo Alto, and then catching the Stanford Marguerite Shuttle to get from the Caltrain Station to campus.
Another option is taking the bus to the 12th Street Station in Oakland, transferring over to BART, taking BART to the Millbrae Caltrain Station, transferring over to Caltrain, taking Caltrain from Millbrae to Palo Alto, and taking the Marguerite Shuttle to campus.
Riders at the Palo Alto Caltrain Station, with the Marguerite Shuttle and Caltrain shown side-by-side. Stanford Transportation
At each stop, Dr. Polk has to factor in waiting times. All together, it would take Dr. Polk 2 hours to get from home to campus using either of these routes. It takes under an hour to drive.
“It’s so much more than just being a complicated commute. It’s exhausting, it’s time consuming, and it’s soul-sucking,” explained Dr. Polk. This sentiment is shared by many others who rely on public transit to get around the Bay Area.
In the Bay Area, there are 27 different transit agencies operating independently instead of a single regional transit system. Caitlin Casey, a Stanford student studying public policy, describes public transportation in the U.S. as a “tangled knot.” In the Bay Area in particular, it’s confusing because “you’re not just learning one system, you’re learning a lot of systems.”
Seamless transit is a vision for public transit in the Bay Area that would make public transit more accessible and convenient for riders by better integrating the 27 transit agencies. Seamless transit is a system with less wait time, lower fares, and more direct service to get from point A to point B– saving riders time, money, and headaches.
Map of the 27 different transit agencies operating in the Bay Area. Seamless Bay Area
Efforts to improve public transit in the Bay Area come at a critical time. Weekday ridership on Caltrain is 30% of what it was prior to the pandemic, according to Supervisor Dave Pine, who served on the Caltrain board for six years. This is due in large part to more people working remotely from home. “When you lose riders you lose revenue,” explains Supervisor Pine. If public transit agencies continue to lose service, they may have to cut service, which would then result in more lost service, leading to a “downward spiral.”
Proponents of seamless transit believe that integrating service between the transit agencies could provide the boost in ridership needed to sustain the system.
Creating a Seamless Vision
Ian Griffiths is the policy director at Seamless Bay Area, a non-profit dedicated to promoting seamless transit. Seamless Bay Area works by “both building a diverse grassroots movement for change and advocating for the policy and governance reforms that can make that vision a reality.”
Seamless Bay Area’s website goes into detail on a number of reforms and transformations they would like to see. One proposal is integrated fares that make it cheaper to transfer between different modes of transit. Their 2040 vision map envisions a future with regional express rail, express bus, and metro / subway that would allow for more direct routes with fewer transfers.
Seamless Bay Area Vision Map, including Regional Express Rail, Regional Express Bus, Metro / Subway, Street-Level Rapid Transit, Commuter Lines, and High Speed Rail. Seamless Bay Area
In 2020, Seamless Bay Area sponsored a California bill, AB 2057, that would create a task force to look at funding, governance, and organization of Bay Area public transit. The bill did not move forward because of the pandemic. Still, because there was a lot of excitement around the bill, MTC, which oversees transportation planning, financing, and coordination for the San Francisco Bay Area, created a task force, explained Griffiths.
The resulting Blue Ribbon Task Force was made up of 32 members representing transit agencies, elected officials, and advocacy groups. The convening of all of these stakeholders was an opportunity to co-create a vision for the future of transit in the Bay Area.
Zoom meeting of the Blue Ribbon Task Force. Seamless Bay Area
The Bay Area Transit Transformation Action Plan, created by the Task Force, “articulates for the first time the main structural changes that need to happen to transit,” said Griffiths. Over a three year timeline that goes through 2024, the action plan proposes 27 steps to transform transit. Actions include being able to use the Clipper card for all transit agencies, synchronized schedules across operators, and the creation of a regional ballot measure that would provide a permanent source of funding for public transit. According to Griffiths, many of these steps, particularly a regional ballot measure, had never been officially acknowledged by MTC prior to the Blue Ribbon Task Force.
The general managers of all 27 transit agencies voted unanimously to approve the Blue Ribbon Action Plan. Because of the participation from all of the stakeholders, this action plan had “a level of buy-in and legitimacy” that hadn’t been seen before, explained Griffiths.
The plan was also strongly supported by MTC commissioner Gina Papan. However, Commissioner Papan explained that even though the general managers of the transit agencies unanimously approved the plan, none of the transit agencies’ boards have signed off. Commissioner Papan believes that all 27 transit agencies' boards need to sign off on the concepts of the action plan, “or we will never transform transit.”
According to Commissioner Papan, implementing the seamless transit aspects of the action plan have been “an enormous struggle,” due to an attitude of "we’re not going to show cooperation” among the transit agencies.
Griffiths believes that it’s been a “mixed bag of progress and slipping behind” since the action plan was released in 2021. For example, free transfers between different modes of transportation were supposed to happen in summer 2024, but that timeline has been delayed until later in 2024 due to slowdowns in getting all of the transit agencies set up with Clipper cards. This example is “symptomatic of how difficult it is to roll out basic changes that people have agreed upon now for two years…because we don't have the governance structures in place to roll out these policies quickly.”
Further, Griffiths explains that difficulties arise when changes have to be approved by all 27 transit agency boards. “If one board has second thoughts about it, even if the general manager has signed off on it, we might not even get free transfers in 2024, or it might be free transfers except for one agency which defeats the promise of free transfers.”
Building a Sustainable Future
“Public transportation is at the intersection of a lot of issues: environmentalism, climate action, racial and social equity. I think there’s something very important about how people get places,” said Casey, who is working on a public transit project for her senior practicum in public policy.
Not only can public transit have great environmental benefits by reducing harmful pollution through getting people out of their cars, but it also has strong equity implications. For Bay Area residents who don’t have access to a car, public transit is necessary. Dr. Polk, who leads Environmental Justice efforts at Stanford, says that this is one of the reasons why marginalized and underserved communities are often the people that are most “green.”
If public transit is inaccessible, it can “limit your ability to access medical care, food, and school,” explains Casey. Dr. Polk adds that people who solely use public transit to get around the Bay Area must be exhausted by “the life drain” that comes with having to navigate all of the transfers and interchanging agencies.
Riders on BART. Jessica Christian, San Francisco Chronicle
One of Seamless Bay Area’s current priorities is addressing the “near term financial challenge” wherein many transit agencies are going to run out of money in the next 1-2 years due to reduced ridership and increased costs. Seamless Bay Area is working closely with transit agencies, MTC, and other advocacy groups to try to get state funding to prevent agencies from having to cut service.
However, Griffiths clarifies that this is only the “near term strategy.” In the long term, Seamless Bay Area is looking to pair a ballot measure that would secure long-term transit funding with the establishment of a network manager to oversee and enforce integration of the transit agencies.
Griffiths explained, “when it comes to the point where we’re putting something on the ballot we can say not only are we asking voters to pay more taxes for transit, but we’re also saying this is the plan we have to change governance of Bay Area transit to actually ensure that that new money delivers not just the same old system that you were pretty unsatisfied with before but a better integrated system.”
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Ella Norman is a junior at Stanford University studying Human Biology with a concentration in Social Determinants of Health and Environmental Justice. She is passionate about the intersections of health and Environmental Justice and achieving a Just Transition to a green economy.
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