Casey Miner

Ariel Dekovic, a regular bike commuter and this reporter's companion on her morning ride, shows that biking to work doesn't have to mean leaving your heels at home.

(San Francisco – Casey Miner, KALW News) The numbers are still rolling in, but organizers of this year's Bike to Work Day said an unprecedented number of cyclists hit the streets this morning. Numbers are always high in San Francisco, but across the bay, the East Bay Bicycle Coalition estimated that 10,000 riders participated in Alameda County alone -- up 12.3% from last year. It didn't hurt that it was a beautiful spring morning and that cheerful volunteers were stationed all over Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville handing out goodie bags, free coffee, and free pancakes.

On a day-to-day basis, biking from the East Bay to a job in the city is not for the faint of heart – it's certainly possible, but it's not that convenient, especially given a rush hour prohibition on bikes on BART. This morning, SF-bound commuters who made it down to the water got a free ferry ride to San Francisco. Ferry spokesman Ernest Sanchez said deckhands on the Alameda-Oakland ferry counted 143 bikes this morning, compared to the usual 20 or 30. (And on my ride at least, everything was quite orderly).

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After the feel-good BTWD ride, does anyone make the leap to regular bike commuting? "We don't have specific numbers," said EBBC Exeuctive Director Renee Rivera. "But what we do see is increasing numbers of people parking their bikes at BART stations. So I think it's safe to say a lot of people are finding ways to bike to BART."

(San Francisco -- Casey Miner, KALW News)  In Alameda County, AC Transit bus riders are waiting to find out whether the agency will raise fares for the second time in two years. Like many transit operators, AC Transit has suffered from a severe drop in state funding, and it’s facing a $21 million deficit for next year. Raising fares is one way for them to try and fill that gap. But there’s a tradeoff: many AC Transit riders live on low or fixed incomes. They don’t have cars, and AC Transit is the only way for them to get around the East Bay.

Listen to what's at stake over at KALW News.

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(San Francisco–Casey Miner, KALW News) San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee announced today that the city plans to encourage electric vehicle ownership – and calm "range anxiety" – by installing free charging stations in 19 city-owned garages and several other locations around the city, ranging from SFO airport to neighborhood branch libraries. The juice will flow freely until 2013, when the city will likely begin to price it. Full press release from the Mayor's office below.

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(San Francisco – Casey Miner, KALW News) BART riders shouldn't be surprised to see police from local agencies on their trains over the next few weeks as part of Operation Railsafe, a TSA program that asks transit police to partner with local law enforcement during times of "heightened alert." BART Officials announced stepped-up security in the system yesterday in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death. Spokesperson Jim Allison said a special team, known as the Critical Asset Patrol, will be concentrated in the densest areas of the train system, in downtown Oakland and downtown San Francisco. As for how long the new security measures will last? "That's not made public," said Allison. "We're not going to say, 'Hey, Al Qaeda, we're back to regular security.'" As of this morning Allison said he had heard of no specific threats.

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(San Francisco – Casey Miner, KALW News) Would you want the local train to run an extra hour on Friday nights, if it meant it’d also have to start later on Saturday morning? That’s what BART staff will be asking both current and would-be riders over the next few weeks as they evaluate whether to try out running the later trains in a six-month pilot this fall.

Earlier today the Bay Area transit agency's board heard a staff report weighing the pros and cons of the demonstration project, which would see the last train leave San Francisco around 1:30am Friday nights, instead of 12:30am as it does now. The first Saturday morning trains would start their runs at 7am, instead of 6am. That may not be enough for the 23,000 people who want trains to run 24 hours –  in case you’re curious, here’s why they don’t – but it would be a landmark change for BART, which has not changed its schedule for more than 30 years.

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In the report, staff estimated that the change would come out roughly evenly in terms of ridership – they’d lose about 3,000 early-morning riders, but gain roughly 2,600 in late-nighters. But, they stressed, those numbers were educated guesses at best. Without significant public outreach, it’s impossible to know how many people would start using BART who don’t do so now. Several board members pointed out that it wasn’t just late-night partiers who would benefit: shift workers at hotels, restaurants, and the region’s airports could also take advantage of the changes.

Similarly, the agency has very limited data on who exactly uses the trains Saturday mornings. What information they do have suggests that people board throughout the system, but most get off in downtown San Francisco. Finding out who those people are, and what they’re doing on those mornings, is the next major step, and will be the focus of public outreach in the coming weeks.

Tester seats in BART's mobile seat lab.

Missed the news about the future of parking, the future of traffic jams, or the future of the (now germ-incubating) BART seats? Kick back and hear TN's Casey Miner tell you everything you need to know, over at KALW News.

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Tester seats in BART's mobile seat lab.

(San Francisco – Casey Miner, KALW News) When BART opened in 1972, its trains were ultra-modern: sleek and silver, with comfortable upholstered seats and the promise of a leisurely ride. Today, that’s more a vision than a reality. Most of the cars running have been on the tracks for decades, rush-hour trains are packed to the gills, and those comfy seats are germ bonanzas. This hasn’t escaped the attention of the agency, which is now designing what it calls “The Fleet of the Future” –  brand-new cars, designed to handle more people, more effectively. They want public input, and they’re taking their show on the road: Monday morning, BART debuted its new mobile seat lab, a series of test seats that customers can try out for comfort, leg room, height, cleanliness and more. Over the next few months, officials will bring the test seats to neighborhoods and BART stations around the region to ask everyone from seniors to cyclists, parents and airport-goers, what they want from their trains.

Though they’re not explicitly testing it just yet, BART board president Bob Franklin acknowledged that cleanliness is a big issue. “They have to be easily cleaned,” he said. “Then we’ll make them as comfy as possible.”

As far as the redesign goes, this is just the beginning. In addition to reconfigured seats, the trains will likely have more doors, better bicycle accommodations, and information monitors, among other features. BART expects its fleet replacement project to take 13 years and cost nearly three and a half billion dollars. Want to throw in your two cents? Head over to the seat lab when it comes to your neighborhood (BART says the schedule is coming soon).

(San Francisco–Casey Miner, KALW News) San Francisco launched its real-time parking data feed Thursday morning at City Hall – and, fittingly, there was more than enough parking to go around. A strong start, as the city hopes the dynamic pricing pilot will ease congestion and generally improve people’s quality of life.

People deciding whether to drive into one of the project’s eight test neighborhoods can look online to check parking availability and price – or, if they’re on the go, they can use a handy iPhone app. (Sorry, Android users, nothing for you yet, though the city promises apps for other smartphones in a few weeks.) Over time, the parking prices will change from block to block in response to supply and demand, raising prices consistently on some streets until there is at least one space available on every block.

I wanted to test it out for myself, so I checked the site from my home in the East Bay before heading out for the press conference. San Francisco's downtown is usually fairly crowded, and though some neighborhoods are worse than others, I usually won't even consider driving unless I absolutely have to. But at 10am, it looked like I’d have no trouble finding parking within one block of City Hall.

(San Francisco – Casey Miner, KALW News) The price may be steep, but the payoff is high: a dense city where no one ever has to circle for parking. On Thursday, San Francisco will officially launch SFpark, a dynamic pricing program that aims to ensure at least one free space on every block at any given time.

The price of that space will vary depending on demand: for the first few months, prices will remain in the city's normal range of $2-$3.50 an hour, but eventually they could go as high as $18 a space for, say, parking outside the ballpark during a Giants game. But don't worry, you won't get walloped: prices will increase incrementally by no more than 50 cents each month (so no $16 jumps), and everyone will be able to access real-time pricing and availability info. If it's too expensive to drive, the city's hoping people won't.

(San Francisco–Casey Miner, KALW News) AC Transit’s line 376 runs through a dangerous stretch of North Richmond – an unincorporated part of Contra Costa County. So far this year, it has experienced six violent incidents, including shot-out windows and assaulted passengers. Things got so bad that in late February, county sheriff’s deputies started shadowing the bus, escorting it once it enters North Richmond until it leaves that neighborhood. It’s only about a mile stretch. For a while the deputies were following the bus every day; now, it’s only when they can spare an officer. So most of the time, drivers are on their own.

Listen over at KALW News to find out what it's like to drive this line.

The Popular Palo Alto California Avenue Station Would See No Weekend Trains if Plan Is Approved (Photo: Caltrain)

(San Francisco – Casey Miner, KALW News) Caltrain’s Joint Powers Board voted Thursday to keep its current level of service – at least for the next two weeks. Facing a $30 million deficit, the board had debated a series of cuts that would have closed three stations indefinitely and cut 10 weekly trains, including the popular Baby Bullet service. And that was the less drastic proposal: the agency at one point threatened to cut nearly half its trains, whittling service down to peak commute hours only.

Caltrain is unique among the Bay Area's many transit agencies in that it has no dedicated funding source. But board members decided today to spend the next two weeks looking for the money to preserve service as-is. Hundreds of riders have spoken out to oppose the cuts, even hosting a weekend summit to generate ideas.

The most recent proposal was a compromise – most service retained, but in a way that would inconvenience some riders. Caltrain spokeswoman Christine Dunn said staff based its recommendations on a combination of factors including ridership at each station, proximity to other stations, and geographic equity (in other words, making service available down the whole Peninsula). Dunn said that if the plan were adopted the agency expected to sacrifice about $2 million annually in lost ridership, but that overall the cuts would save them $5.3 million – a net gain of $3.3 million.

We'll be following this as it develops; interested Caltrain riders can check out the latest proposed schedule for themselves here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/randychiu/3503567616/sizes/m/in/photostream/

When you really think about it, you probably don't use your car all that much.  You drive to work – then leave your car in the lot all day while you’re inside. Or you leave town for a few days – then don’t use your car for the next three weeks. Meanwhile, plenty of other people don’t have cars, but sometimes need them.

Three new companies in the San Francisco Bay Area – Getaround, RelayRides, and Spride Share – are trying to match those idle cars with people who want to drive them. Each model is a little different, but the basic idea is the same: when you’re not using your car, you can rent it out to anyone who needs it. And if you need a car? You can rent anything from your neighbor's station wagon to a brand-new Tesla Roadster.

Transportation Nation's Casey Miner will be on The Takeaway this  morning to talk about personal car-sharing-- listen below! And catch her full story later that day on KALW News.

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(San Francisco – Casey Miner, KALW News) A new report by transit advocacy group Transportation for America provides a sobering assessment of the condition of California's bridges: in short, not good.The report finds that one in eight bridges are structurally deficient in some way. In the Bay Area, that number rises to one in five; in San Francisco, it's more than one in three.

A bridge is considered "structurally deficient" when one of three bridge components – deck, superstructure, or substructure – receives a poor grade on a federal scale. The worst bridges receive low grades across the board. Of the 40 San Francisco bridges deemed structurally deficient, city officials oversee only five; four of those are currently slated for repair. Caltrans and other agencies are responsible for the rest.  The bridges that received the lowest rankings were by the Caltrain station at 22nd and 23rd Streets; the most highly-traveled structurally deficient bridge was the 5th St./Hwy 101 bridge.

The report did not assess the state's biggest, most iconic bridges – neither the Bay Bridge nor the Golden Gate bridge were included. Instead, it looked at the thousands of workaday bridges that most motorists hardly think of: the highway on-ramps and overpasses that connect freeways and surface streets. These bridges are, on average, just over 44 years old – slightly older than the national average of 42 years. Most bridges are designed to last roughly 50 years.

The report notes that though California's bridges rank in the bottom third nationally, the state has used up all available federal funding to try and address the problem, even going so far as to shift funds designated for other purposes. The state spent $907 million on bridge repair in 2008. The report notes that across the country, repair needs far outstrip available funds: while funding has increased by $650 million over the past several years, the need has increased by $22.8 billion.

Read the full report here.

(photo by Gubatron/Flickr)

(San Francisco – Casey Miner, KALW News) More and more people are using iPads, laptops or smart phones when they travel  on public transportation – but that number might drop off as trains, planes and buses become more crowded.  New findings by the researchers at DePaul University show that use of technology on public transit grew at record rates last year. But public transit remains, well, public – and that means not everyone’s comfortable digging into personal emails or commenting liberally on Facebook.

The researchers measured how people's behavior changed as their surroundings grew more crowded, basing their findings on observations of more than 16,000 passengers on 215 bus, rail, and plane rides. "On the largest buses, seating about 80, technology use falls by more than a third when more than 40 people are on board," said Joe Schweiterman, one of the researchers on the study. The effects were similar on airplanes. In particular, people were much less likely to use devices with large screens, or to make cell phone calls, than they were when they felt their surroundings were private. "We hear endless complaints that the coach cabins of airplanes have become awful places to use technology," said Schweiterman.

Technology use remains most prevalent on the Acela trains in the Northeast corridor, which, at 42 inches each, has by far the roomiest seats. On those trains and on intercity buses, it was common for more than half of passengers to be glued to their devices. But when conditions get crowded, tech use goes down significantly. So as more people take, say, long-distance bus rides, will their own hangups keep them offline?

“Crowding is the enemy of those techno travelers who like to use multiple devices at once, such as working on laptops and placing cell phone calls," said Schweiterman. "In crowds, they abandoned this type of behavior.”

Winner of the Art Contest for the Central Subway Chinatown Station

(San Francisco -- Casey Miner, KALW News) When it's all done, San Francisco's Central Subway will add four stops to the light rail line that runs up the city's southeast side. By the time it opens it will have been in the works for 15 years; the price tag is $1.6 billion. At a time when MUNI is already facing more than a billion-dollar deficit over the next 20 years, is building the subway worth it? Listen to our report over at KALW News.

(San Francisco -- Casey Miner, KALW News) The new census numbers mean big changes for California politics. Huge population growth in the Central Valley, compared to relatively anemic growth in the coastal cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, seems likely to shift a good deal of the state's political clout inland to cities like Bakersfield and Fresno. That's also where the first high-speed rail tracks will be laid. What some have called a "train to nowhere" is now a train to the fastest-growing part of the state.

"We're particularly interested to see the growth in these Central Valley cities," said Rachel Wall, a spokeswoman for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. "In Fresno and Bakersfield the populations are increasing, but they're still very isolated as far as accessibility and mobility." Wall added that these cities would be among those who saw the first jobs come from the project.

But Central Valley politicians aren't necessarily buying it.

High-speed rail is getting a lot of attention--from President Obama's call for a nationwide rail network, to Florida's Rick Scott being the latest in a string of Republican governors to cancel rail plans--but bullet trains are by no means the only emerging intercity transportation mode.

Buses are on the rise. In fact, high-tech buses are the fastest growing form of intercity transportation. New companies like Megabus, and Bolt Bus, a subsidiary of Greyhound, are snagging new passengers away from air and rail competitors each year with low fares and streetside pick ups. So much so that some cities are considering regulating the fast growing industry.

In California, Casey Miner or KALW investigates if this rising trend might act as an interim substitute for high-speed rail, which will take a decade or more to complete from Los Angeles to San Fransisco.  Hear all about it over at KALW News.

AC Transit bus (photo by lensovet/Wikimedia Commons)

(San Francisco--Casey Miner, KALW News) If you've had a chance to listen to Back of the Bus, you know a little something about civil rights and Bay Area transportation. The quick version: local transit advocates believe money goes disproportionately to big rail projects like the Oakland Airport Connector at the expense of the local bus service used primarily by low-income and minority riders. Last month the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on that topic -- and it says the transit advocates are wrong.  But you can bet the story won't end here.

(San Francisco–Casey Miner, KALW News) If U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is unable to put together a deal to save Florida's high speed rail, California wants the $2.4. billion.  And California is likely to get a bunch if it if the Florida deal falls through: it has the most advanced program, after Florida, in the nation.

Governor Jerry Brown and Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein have already issued statements similar to those released after Wisconsin and Ohio returned their funds. "It is now clear that California will lead the way in demonstrating the viability of high speed rail to the rest of the country," wrote the senators; "The $2 billion that Florida rejected are more than welcome here," said Brown.

At least one congressman has also gotten in on the action; John Garamendi (D-Walnut Creek) wrote "we’re prepared to show the rest of the country what a modern transportation network looks like and will gladly invest every penny the federal government is willing to provide."

The politicians' statements get at the curious paradox of high-speed rail in this country: the more states reject high-speed rail because of perceived political and financial risk, the better the chance that the systems that do get funded will have the resources to avoid those problems. "The money reallocated to us from Ohio and Wisconsin enabled us to double the length of our initial construction," said California High Speed Rail Authority spokeswoman Rachel Wall. "We know how to use this money." Wall said the Authority is currently in discussions with the Federal Railroad Administration about whether and how California would obtain the funds.

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(San Francisco–Casey Miner, KALW News) It's a truism well-known in transportation circles that it's much easier for transit agencies to get money for new projects than it is to find cash for ongoing operations and maintenance. Here in the Bay Area we've got several big expansions on in the works, despite the fact that all of our transit agencies face ongoing cash-flow problems.

President Obama's proposed federal budget includes hundreds of millions of dollars for the Bay Area, including money for SF Muni to move forward on two big projects : $200 million to build the Central Subway from downtown up through Chinatown, and $30 million to build BRT on Van Ness Avenue. Both projects are also depending on additional federal grants.

But there's a wrinkle.