Letters from San Francisco
I found myself in The City some time last month.
There’s lots to see within the Bay Area especially from the perspective of a student of transit. Apart from the usual buses and heavy rail, there’s also the world-famous cable cars. There are even trolleybuses, what they call BRT, and streetcars stopping in the middle of the road!
These are my reflections as a visitor to the Bay Area; I was there in late September (if you recall, I said I was overseas in the CRL2 announcement analysis), but it always takes a bit of reflection so that’s why I’m writing this now.
Information gladly given
Let’s start by taking a bird’s eye view of the situation.
Much ink has been spilled on the balkanization inherent in the transport network of the Bay Area. As a tourist, I was fortunate enough to not have to make too many multi-agency transfers — if your plans mean you largely stick within the City of San Francisco proper, Muni handles most if not all of your needs. Except getting to the airport of course — you need to take BART, which is a completely different fare scale, and only offers a measly 50 cent transfer discount to Muni. And only in one direction! Things get even worse once you leave SF, which will be a trend.
The Americans also are very aware of the fact that they need to make public transportation easy to use in order to attract people. This means they place a bigger premium on things like next-vehicle information, consolidated data sources (despite the balkanization!) and descriptive maps that even show rough frequency information directly on the map.
At proper bus stops, the generally lower amount of services at each stop usually means the barrier to providing customer information systems is much lower as well. Nearly every proper bus stop I went to has a screen that announces the time to the next bus/tram, and a push-to-talk button that reads out the same information for the benefit of the visually handicapped.
On a regional level, key transport hubs also show vehicle arrival times; not only for trains but also for buses calling at nearby bus stops. Yes, they didn’t all always work when I was there, but the Muni ones are being upgraded; regionally it’s also apparently a new initiative. And I have to draw this distinction because there are bus stops and Muni Metro stops that are just markings on a nearby street lamppost.
At least in Muni, the network itself is also straightforward. The 30-Stockton mostly goes up and down Stockton Street. The 22-Fillmore, Fillmore Street. The 38-Geary, Geary Street/Boulevard. They do have the same one-way CBD streets as we do, though, which form most of the exceptions — for example, inbound 38-Geary buses (to the Financial District and downtown SF) use O’Farrell when Geary becomes one-way.
Being there
Ride Muni for a while and it’s immediately apparent why they’re an all door boarding success story, especially in 2022.
The flat fare system and the use of mobile app-based ticketing means people really only need to tap their cards when boarding, unlike us when we have to do it on both boarding and alighting. Some don’t even have to care. While you can say on one hand that this is America and fare evasion is a thing, pass holders — and there are many of them — apparently only need to produce a pass, either on a Clipper card or on the MuniMobile app, when challenged to do so by a fare inspection officer.
With a very attractive $5 day pass for those who don’t need the cable cars, that included me as well, which brings me to my second point. $5 is two trips worth of travel, which basically means apart from the commute to work and back, everything else is free. And that is if you can’t already squeeze in any further errands within the two-hour no-questions-asked transfer policy — planning ahead wisely, any further travel is basically free if you can reach your final destination within the two-hour limit. That’s what flat fares, albeit a high one, let you do.
That said, other Bay Area agencies have managed to implement fare capping in the London style, which is naturally more convenient as you don’t have to think so much about where you’re going. On VTA in the Silicon Valley it’s $7.50 (three trips) and on AC Transit in Oakland and the East Bay it’s $5 (also three trips, but an 80% discount off the third). One wonders why Muni hasn’t been able to do it, especially since they all use the same Clipper smart card. Although this is a double edged sword, as we will see.
On a network level, two things immediately stand out as well. Firstly, there is a night bus network in the Bay Area. Like what we used to do, they ran at every 30 minutes or so at night. But what makes Muni’s night bus a better deal than us is that for the most part, they run the same routes as the day bus — that means some routes like the 5, 14, and 38 just do the same thing 24/7, no questions asked. There are some route changes and night-only routes, but these are typically mergers of daytime routes, ensuring the daytime corridors still have some form of night service.
Secondly, rapid buses do not require an additional fare. But the few Rapid buses are mostly BRT-ish routes meant to provide faster travel in places where Muni Metro ought to run but doesn’t, and are thus held to the same standards as Muni Metro. For one, building rail along Geary to replace the 38/38R has been discussed since the streetcars were lifted in 1956; in the meantime the 38R has become Muni’s busiest bus service with nearly 30k daily riders in 2019.
The experience
There’s only so many ways to design a bus or a train, so realistically a lot of Muni still feels like home. But there are still several learning points. Firstly, all their buses are at least hybrid-electric. The trolleybus network was also not torn down unlike much of the world (including Singapore!) and thus they also have quite a fair bit of electric buses, albeit using trolley wires as their main source of energy. Well, they have a much smaller service area and a much smaller fleet; but if even London can bring up their emissions standards it means we’re quite far behind.
On Muni Metro LRVs and buses, Muni is also a big fan of flip benches, which are semipermanently locked in the downwards position. Sounds familiar? But yet, official documentation says that the benches need to be flipped up to provide wheelchair spaces. This design could be revisited for our LRT vehicles as well, which have the same space constraints as Muni LRVs and thus don’t provide wheelchair spaces by default; a wheelchair could easily block the doors or standing space for other passengers. And on heavy rail trains, just make the unlock buttons easily accessible instead of behind a staff-operated hatch.
A larger willingness to use paint in SF, as part of what they call Quick-Build Projects, to modify the purpose and use of road lanes also helps them improve bus travel speeds and put in place on-road cycling lanes and such. Not all we can rely on (for example, we have much lesser curbside parking here), but the effort is commendable. Muni is also a much bigger fan of closing and moving stops around junctions to improve travel times, as part of their Transit Delay Hot Spots Program. Permanent projects such as the Van Ness BRT (see below) and Geary bus priority schemes have also been implemented.
These we could still take notes from, given that the SFMTA’s jurisdiction includes all forms of transport within The City (they even run the public carparks), and the Singapore LTA is equally empowered within our local legislative infrastructure.
I was also unfortunate enough to be caught up in major BART service changes as well. On the first occasion, “electrical problems” in the Transbay Tube caused only one track to be in operation. In Singapore they would likely have closed the entire line to hunt down the issue. But BART instead chose to operate on the remaining single track — sure people had to add a lot more travel time, but at least they were able to get somewhere. Free bus boarding on regional bus operators was also offered, similar to our practice. BART also has much greater flexibility to do such single tracking due to their crossovers being paired, unlike in Singapore where emergency crossovers are mostly only in a single direction and limits the single tracking that can be done.
The second one was a planned closure for maintenance works. This was more interesting, where staff opened the staff gate and allowed people to exit and reenter the system for free; albeit only if they had just come from, or were headed to, the bridging buses offered. From a fare collection perspective, this means that the trip is charged based on the rail distance; we do the same, albeit by using cards to track.
Things to be thankful for
That said, the grass isn’t always that much greener on the other side.
Think TEL delays are bad? The Central Subway is far worse. Construction started in 2010 and it was originally slated to open in 2018. But the Central Subway will only open on November 19, barely within a promised Fall 2022 deadline. And even so, this is not a complete opening. Until sometime around Chinese New Year next year, the Central Subway will only operate a shuttle between the four new stations and only on weekends. This is a story that’s too long for a blog post in any case, but at least here an effort is being made.
Secondly, fares are steep, BART especially so. In September 2022 they offered half off the usual fare, which made things more bearable. Otherwise, it’s $10 USD (S$14) from SFO airport to Montgomery Street in the middle of SF’s Financial District, a 30min ride. The comparable trip from Changi Airport to City Hall, both normal trains making all stops, costs just under $2 even after the impending fare hike. That’s around seven (7) times lesser.
Yes, Muni has two hours of free transfers, but the $2.50 single fare means there’s added pressure on making the most out of the two hours. It could be a case of old habits die hard, but I found myself, on the few days of my trip where I didn’t get a daily pass, having to order takeout instead of eating at several restaurants in order to get somewhere before the two-hour limit was up. Likewise, AC Transit may have the $5 daily cap; but having to change buses means you pay twice for that single trip; I got closer to the cap but because I didn’t spend much time there, wasn’t in a position to redeem my 50 cent return trip.
Thirdly, while this is a more general issue across North America and not unique to SF or the Bay Area, vehicle frequencies are generally horrible. The worst case I saw in SF was a 20min wait for a trolleybus (it was the 2-Sutter, if anyone asks) and since the last bus is at 7pm, had I missed that I’d have to walk a few blocks to take another route. Maybe I should have done that, since I could always have taken a trolley bus another day, and perhaps this is a lesson for us in whether we should be spreading out service like that too. Paradoxically, to quote Muni themselves:
The use of trolley buses is generally restricted to lines on which a high-enough frequency of service can justify the expense of the electric power system installation and vehicle costs.
Things got worse in the Silicon Valley though. There I got into a 50min wait for bus 40 to the Computer History Museum from Mountain View station. And the VTA Light Rail, which even has stretches of dedicated track, some of it elevated, was running at 30 minutes between trains on a weekend. Even Johor Bahru might have a better level of public transport service.
Then again, the public transport system is just a representation of the greater society it exists in. There are greater social issues in America that result in the state of public transportation being what it is, and I don’t think the blog is a good place to soapbox about any of those.
But it does make me feel glad to be home, even if travel does lend a bit of perspective.
