Mapping the Bay Area’s Future Transit Network
The Bay Area is on the brink of making some once-in-a-generation decisions about its transportation network. Planning is well underway for the Downtown Extension that will send Caltrain and California High Speed Rail (CAHSR) trains underground from Potrero Hill to the Salesforce Transit Center. BART and Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor just received bids from companies competing to plan a badly-needed second transbay rail crossing. Many more transformative transportation mega-projects have been proposed: the 980 freeway removal, the Central Subway Extension, and the undergrounding of the M Ocean View, to name just a few.
Now is the time to think about how these discrete projects can fit together as part of a comprehensive transportation network. Since the Niners’ season tragically ended, I’ve spent the past several Sundays mapping out what that network could look like sometime in the 2040s, under the most ambitious scenario. These are not fantasy maps: All of the transit lines depicted here have been proposed in some form by transit agencies and planning organizations in the Bay Area.
There are plenty of highly skilled professionals at organizations like SPUR, the MTC, and Seamless Bay Area working on the region’s transportation network development. Compared to them, I am just a dude with some colored pencils and a thing for maps. I do however, have a working knowledge of many of the projects, proposals, and corridors that are part of the transportation planning discussion, based on my research and journalism. And unlike the professional planners engaged in this work, I am in a position to present these concepts without worrying about budgets, politics, engineering, or sensitive ongoing negotiations. I figured people might appreciate seeing what the Bay Area’s future transportation system could look like in two-ish decades, if the region, the state, and the nation get their act together on a New Deal era scale.
Also… I made some pretty pictures. Why shouldn’t I post them on the internet?
San Francisco
BART Core Connector through San Francisco
The second transbay tube provides the impetus for building the ever-elusive subways along Geary Boulevard and through the Sunset District. This new transbay BART line, call it the Core Connector, would enter San Francisco at Mission Bay, where there would be a new BART/Caltrain/CAHSR station. It would then travel up 7th Street, adding a new station at Showplace Square/West SoMa, and a transfer to the main BART spine at Civic Center. From there it would run west along Geary, complimenting the boulevard’s forthcoming bus rapid transit line, which could provide high quality local service. At Park Presidio, the Core Connector would veer south, traveling along 19th Avenue through the Sunset District. South of Sloat Blvd., the Core Connector would share a tunnel with the new M Ocean View Muni subway, as well as transfer stations at Stonestown and SF State/Parkmerced. The Core Connector would then rejoin the BART spine just before or after Daly City station. The line could continue to SFO, bolstering service to that station and the other San Mateo County stops, and making the airport transit-accessible to a much wider swath of the city.
West Side Subway for the M Ocean View
A Muni subway spine, with frequent four-car trains and no disruptions from cars from Ocean View to the Embarcadero, would provide a huge increase in capacity and reliability to the beleaguered Muni subway. Supervisor Norman Yee recently directed SFMTA to accelerate its latest study of this project, which has been in the mix since Proposition B of 1966, a failed comprehensive mass transit proposal for San Francisco.
M Ocean View trains would continue underground from West Portal beneath the existing Muni right of way, adding stations at St. Francis Circle (possibly), Stonestown, SF State/Parkmerced and a new terminus station across Junipero Serra Blvd. in Ocean View. The J Church would be extended from its existing terminus at Balboa Park to follow the current M tracks, connecting with the M subway at the new Ocean View station. The K Ingleside could remain a surface streetcar, providing the local service at Lakeshore, St. Francis Circle and 14th Ave no longer provided by the M.
Here, more than any of the other proposed transit lines on the map, land-use patterns will need to change to justify a subway. The Parkmerced redevelopment, which will eventually triple the population of the neighborhood, is an important first step. The owners of the Stonestown Mall have indicated that they are interested in building high-density housing on their property as well. Both of these projects could be tapped to provide political and financial support for the subway. Both of them should be encouraged to include as little parking as possible to stimulate subway ridership.
Central Subway Extension
The Central Subway, expected to open in 2021, will be awfully short, with just three underground stations. The Central Subway tunnel already extends from the existing terminus in Chinatown to North Beach, where a new station could be added. Planners are continuing to study future extensions to Fisherman’s Wharf, the Marina, and even the Presidio. Near the Presidio terminus, a bus station could be constructed for connections to Marin and Sonoma County. The Central Subway extension would connect with the under construction Van Ness bus rapid transit line, as well as a potential future bus rapid transit corridor down Divisadero or Fillmore.
Downtown Extension and Caltrain Electrification
The Downtown Extension connecting the existing Caltrain tracks to the Salesforce Transit Center is well into the planning stage. The tunnel would eliminate all at-grade crossings in San Francisco, while adding a new underground station at 4th and King and a potential development site at the existing railyard there. In addition to the DTX, planners have proposed a new infill Caltrain station at Oakdale Avenue, providing express transit service from Bayview to Downtown.
Currently envisioned as a terminus station, the Salesforce Transit Center could greatly benefit from through-running turn-around tracks, like those being constructed at LA’s Union Station. This would significantly increase the number of trains that could pass through the station. San Francisco’s through-running tracks could travel along the Embarcadero before turning down King Street and rejoining the main line. This new underground link could be developed in coordination with the city’s ongoing seawall renovation.
Caltrain electrification is the Bay Area’s sleeper transportation megaproject. When it’s complete in 2022, the electrified tracks and trainsets will allow for frequent, rapid transit style service, similar to BART. More trains — one every ten minutes or more in each direction — will be able to travel faster up and down the corridor, achieving speeds as high as 79 miles per hour. Caltrain thinks this could unlock a tremendous amount of pent up demand: as many as 243,000 daily riders by 2040, up from 65,000 today.
The key to making this new rapid transit line work will be grade separation. It’s an expensive proposition — grade separating the entire corridor could cost $11.1 billion, according to Caltrain’s estimates. Once California High Speed Rail gets thrown into the mix, more passing tracks will also be essential. Caltrain is aware of these issues, and is developing plans to address them.
East Bay
BART Core Connector through Alameda and Oakland
The new transbay tube would send BART and Caltrain/CAHSR trains in a shared tunnel with separate tracks (BART runs on extra-wide tracks, all of the other trains use standard-gauge tracks) from Mission Bay to the western tip of Alameda Island. Soon after making land, the non-BART trains would cross the Oakland Estuary and join the Capitol Corridor main line at the West Oakland railyard.
The first new East Bay BART station would be located in Alameda Point, the redevelopment of the Alameda Naval Base. (Once again, here’s a major development that could be induced to contribute to the new line, in exchange for increasing density and reducing parking). The line could have a second stop close to the College of Alameda, before crossing the Oakland Estuary near Howard Terminal, the potential future site of the A’s ballpark and a major new development. There could be a stop right at the ballpark, or a couple blocks inland in Old Oakland. This stop could potentially serve as a transfer to the BayLine, described below.
From there, the line would travel along the 980 corridor, newly bereft of freeway, as envisioned by Connect Oakland. Two or three new stops could be added before the Core Connector line rejoins the existing BART spine south of MacArthur Station, after which point it would provide increased service to popular stations in Berkeley, El Cerrito and Richmond.
All of the land vacated by the freeway could be transformed into high-density housing. Value capture financing could be used to help pay for the new BART line and stations, as well as open space, schools, and affordable housing. Without the freeway acting as a barrier, West Oakland would no longer be cut off from downtown. And while these new stations would likely be within a mile or so of existing BART stations, they would radically expand easy, walkable BART access to some of Oakland’s most densely populated, most impoverished neighborhoods.
Capitol Corridor and the BayLine
The Capitol Corridor tracks following the East Bay coastline will be newly connected to High Speed Rail and Caltrain via a second transbay tube, but the electrified trains coming from across the Bay will be incompatible with Capitol Corridor’s non-electric tracks. In order to become a functional part of the regional transportation system, Capitol Corridor’s tracks will need to be electrified. That means the state will have to do battle with Union Pacific, the track’s owners, who have so far balked at the concept because of the double-decker freight trains they run to and from the Port of Oakland.
Once the Capitol Corridor is electrified, it makes sense to take advantage of the benefits of trains that can act more or less like BART. But unlike Caltrain, which already has frequent stops, Capitol Corridor is a regional service with many stops five or more miles apart. Electrification provides the opportunity to add a new transit service, with new infill stations, along the existing tracks. I call this the BayLine. It would provide local service from Pinole to Hayward, with stops every 1.5 miles or so, paralleling extremely congested stretches of the 80 and 880 freeways. The line would provide easy transit access to major job centers in Emeryville and Northwest Berkeley, and major redevelopment sites like Brooklyn Basin and the Oakland Coliseum property. The line fills gaps in BART service through East Oakland and San Leandro, reducing the need for BART infill stations. The BayLine would also pass by lots of underused industrial lands that could be rezoned for housing.
Just as with Caltrain, grade-separation and passing tracks will be essential. Union Pacific freight trains will need to continue to operate along these tracks, even as they learn to coexist with more passenger traffic. All of that gets easier when trains can pass one another, and without the added hazard of street crossings. Even if nothing like the BayLine ever comes into existence, the tracks running along the Embarcadero at Jack London Square, with heavy rail commuter and freight trains running like a streetcar in the median of a busy street, need to go either above or below ground. Street-running heavy rail is a Dickensian relic that most major American cities eliminated long ago.
Emeryville Connector: Perhaps by the 2040s, the Bay Area will have an appetite for more infill transit projects. One of the best could be a people mover or light rail line between Emeryville and MacArthur station, with one or two stops in between, providing an east-west connector between the East Bay’s two parallel transit spines. Future extensions of this line could follow the 580 through East Oakland and eventually swing to the southwest to reconnect with BART and the BayLine.
What would it take to achieve this vision?
Once again, this is not a fantasy map. These transit lines are grounded in actual proposals and existing technological capabilities. Whether they get built largely depends on politics. So what kind of politics could produce this map?
· A renewed focus on the urban core
Since it was created, BART has consistently been focused on ever more distant expansions. Today, there is much talk about a second transbay tube, but a conspicuous hush about where this new BART line would go on either side of the Bay, especially since the existing BART tracks through San Francisco and Oakland are already accommodating as many trains as they can during peak hours. The second Transbay Tube provides the opportunity for BART to massively expand within the urban core of the Bay Area, serving the densest neighborhoods with the highest ridership potential. Most of the other transit extensions depicted here flow from the possibilities unlocked by a new BART/standard-gauge rail tunnel under the Bay.
Some people might look at this map and say, “Many of these neighborhoods already have transit service nearby, why do they need more?” Planners would have to communicate that adding capacity in the urban core allows for increased service throughout the system. Redundancies like a second transbay tube or a second line across San Francisco insulate the entire system from delays by providing alternate routes. Redundancies also increase resilience in the event of earthquakes or floods. Finally, a second transbay tube would create the possibility of all-night BART service.
None of this is to suggest the Bay Area should — or would need to — abandon more suburban transit projects. The Dumbarton rail crossing, connecting SMART trains to Vallejo and the Capitol Corridor, and extending rail lines down the 680 and 580 corridors, and creating a regional express bus system are all exciting possibilities. The question is, what should BART and regional transportation planners prioritize in the immediate future?
· Unprecedented inter-agency collaboration
For a system like this to work, more transit agencies are going to have to share tunnels and stations, similar to the BART/Muni Subway down Market Street. They’d likely also have to share construction and operational costs, and sometimes even tracks. With a BART line through the Sunset and Richmond, Muni would likely need new revenue streams to replace all of those lost fares. Realistically, only a single, regional transit agency could ever construct and operate a system as interconnected as this. Policymakers are already moving in this direction with the Seamless Transit Act, introduced in February by Assemblymember David Chiu.
· Get the most out of existing infrastructure
Caltrain is leading the nation in transforming its suburban commuter rail service into a frequent, all-day, rapid transit style service, like the RER in Paris, or Germany’s S Bahns. Electrifying existing tracks is by far the cheapest and fastest way to create high quality rail transit service. The Bay Area has the opportunity to continue leading on this front by electrifying the Capitol Corridor tracks in the East Bay. Getting the most out of the Bay Areas existing rail corridors also means eliminating at-grade street crossings and adding passing tracks.
· Connect transportation policy to climate policy
The MTC predicts that the Bay Area population will grow by about 25 percent, or 1.9 million people, by 2040. How will all of those people get around? The prospect of most, or even some of the newcomers using cars as their primary mode of transportation is nightmarish. There’s just not enough space. Meanwhile, climate change is only getting worse. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in California; it accounts for 45 percent of San Francisco’s emissions and 60 percent of Berkeley’s. Investing in green mass transportation is the single biggest thing the Bay Area can do to combat climate change. Once more with feeling…
· A willingness to make hard choices
If the Bay Area is to create a transit system like this, which is itself a keystone to a statewide high-speed rail network, it’s going to have to embrace not only a different politics, but a different view of government, and a different kind of lifestyle that no longer revolves around cars and single family homes.
The state will have to become more activist. It will probably have to exercise eminent domain more liberally than it has in the recent past. It will have to rollback community engagement and review processes to a certain degree, and learn to live with some very loud critics. There will be difficult tradeoffs: a green transportation network will likely come at the expense of some sensitive wetlands at Alameda Point, among other local environmental concerns.
The people who live and work near these new transit lines will have to endure construction for many years, and they will not be happy about it. Hopefully, technology can make this process easier. What if Elon Musk focused his Boring Company’s efforts on cheaper, faster, less disruptive mass transit tunneling? For that matter, what if venture capitalists started funding autonomous train and bus technology the way they fund autonomous cars?
On this map, the inner Bay Area starts to look more like a European or East Asian city. The built environment is going to have to look more like it too. In order for this transit system to reach its potential, housing and job growth will need to be concentrated along these new lines. That would require an upzoning akin to the failed SB 50, making it legal to build more homes and less parking near transit. These new transit lines would make it possible for a lot more people to live in the inner core of the Bay Area — where there are the most jobs, where it’s easiest to live car-free, and where, if housing costs are any indication, many, many more people would like to live.
Finally, there’s the small issue of funding. LA and Seattle have funded major transit expansions through sales tax increases, and the Bay Area could follow their lead with the FASTER proposal that could make the November 2020 ballot. Critics are quick to point out that sales tax increases are regressive, although FASTER is slated to include a tax credit designed to mitigate this. It’s also possible to imagine a scenario where developers and property owners along the proposed transit lines contribute to their construction through some kind of value capture or tax increment financing. But if that happens, then the government has less leverage to use those mechanisms and others to create transit-oriented affordable housing. It seems to me that the only way to build a comprehensive, core-focused transit network in the Bay Area and build lots of affordable housing near the new lines is with Green New Deal type money.
