The Bay Area should follow LA’s lead to increase transit ridership

I spent last weekend in LA, and, as I often do, thought a lot about transit. What’s amazed me over the past few years is how much LA has expanded its transit options and how many people are choosing transit over driving. When I left LA in 2000, I could never have imaged that such a thing would take place.

Sure, LA still sometimes lives up to its car-centric stereotype that was so wonderfully depicted in L.A. Story, a movie made in 1991. In one of the scenes, a character gets in his car and drives two doors down to his neighbor’s house. In another scene, this dialog takes place:

Sara: What did you have in mind?
Harris: Well, I was thinking of taking you on a cultural tour of L.A.
Sara: That’s the first fifteen minutes, then what?
Harris: All right, a cynic. First stop is six blocks from here.
Sara: Why don’t we walk?
Harris: Walk? A walk in L.A.?

But in other ways, things have changed. The subway actually goes places you want to go. The Orange Line BRT in the San Fernando Valley is packed to capacity. (Yes, even valley girls ride BRT.) The DASH system in downtown gets you across town quickly, and for $.25. And Metro has huge plans for expansion for the subway and light rail system over the next 10 years, which when completed will serve nearly every part of the city.

So how did LA go from being a near transit desert to having the leading transit agency in the state?

Marketing.

OK, it wasn’t just marketing, but in LA, nothing sells without branding and advertising and Metro gets this. Take a look at this video that explains the novel approach Metro has taken towards gaining ridership (via The City Fix):

Can you imagine if BART or AC Transit embarked on that kind of makeover and advertising campaign? Of course, choosing to spend money on advertising is not an easy decision, as The City Fix explains:

The common perception is that money spent on marketing would be better spent on the transit systems themselves. The problem with this line of thinking is that it is short sighted. Over time, a sustained investment in marketing increases the number of people who use transit. Increased ridership leads to increased revenue and, ideally, an increase in service to match the new demand. That’s what’s happening in LA right with Measure R [the transit sales tax that LA recently passed]. It’s also what Clayton Lane, a transport expert for EMBARQ, calls “the virtuous cycle.”

Some riders are forced to ride transit because it is their only option, but marketing can have a huge impact on choice riders. The City Fix describes the impact advertising has had in LA:

The most impressive outcome of Metro’s marketing is that it has convinced people to start using its services. Following Metro’s re-brand, discretionary riders, those people who have the choice to commute by car or transit, have jumped from 24 to 36 percent. That is, Metro’s new clean and modern image is actually getting people into transit and helping address this city’s notorious traffic problem.

BART and AC Transit should take a page from Metro’s book and take branding and advertising more seriously. It could be the best way to increase ridership, increase buy-in to the system, and ultimately to increase local funding for transit.

Broadway shuttle offers environmental, economic & community benefits at no cost to the General Fund

Tomorrow’s committee meetings are going to be packed with some exciting, forward thinking transportation projects, including an update on BRT and another discussion of the citywide parking study at the Public Works Committee. But the transit item I’m most excited to will be heard before the Community & Economic Development Committee (CED) – a free shuttle on Broadway from Uptown to Jack London Square.

Sound too good to be true, considering the dire situation our city budget is in?

Well, it’s not, because the shuttle won’t use any money from the General Fund. In fact, most of the funds covering the project come from a grant and private funding sources. As the Oakbook explains:

A $1 million grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District combined with $200,000 from Jack London Square Partners and $160,000 from downtown area redevelopment funds will pay for most of the shuttle’s first two years of operation.

This is not the first time a free shuttle linked Jack London Square to other parts of downtown. Between 1996 and 2001, a free, lunchtime service between Embarcadero and Grand Avenue ferried 1,000 passengers a day before a lack of private funding forced it to shut down…

I didn’t live in Oakland when that shuttle was still running, but I’ve heard that people loved it, even though it was limited to lunchtime hours. The proposed shuttled has funding to run from 7am-7pm, Monday-Friday at 10-15 minute intervals. I know, I know – that’s not ideal and won’t help much with dinner and weekend dining and entertainment, but keep in mind that this is just the start of the project. There is great interest in ultimately expanding the hours to evenings and weekends if the shuttle is successful, and city staff will be reviewing the shuttle after three months, six months, and one year to see what changes should be made.

But even without evening and weekend service, the shuttle will hugely improve the connectivity of downtown Oakland’s various neighborhoods. A problem that I’ve written about before is that downtown Oakland has lots of vibrant neighborhoods, but they’re not entirely contiguous and they’re spread out so it’s difficult to get between them quickly. What this means is that downtown workers (and some residents) either spend most of their time in their particular downtown neighborhood, or they drive around downtown, which is not desirable, in terms of efficiency, environmental pollution, and community connectedness.

I worked on Webster and 14th for four and a half years, and in that time I rarely strayed from the City Center and Chinatown areas to get lunch, simply because I didn’t have enough time to get to the other downtown neighborhoods. Had this shuttle existed, I would have explored Old Oakland, Uptown, and even Jack London Square, and I probably wouldn’t be the only Oaklander who has never eaten at Ratto’s.

You might be wondering why I didn’t just take the bus to get around for lunch. The first reason is the cost. Two dollars is a reasonable fare to pay to get to work but to pay $2.25 round-trip to get to a lunch that costs $10 doesn’t usually make sense. Even when I had a monthly bus pass, I didn’t use the bus all that much to get around downtown because of reliability. The 72 would have gotten me to Jack London Square and I could make this work using NextBus, but when I finished lunch, I could have gotten lucky and caught a bus right away or could have waited for 20 minutes until the next bus arrived.

The free Broadway shuttle will break through both of these barriers and will be more reliable because its route is short and riders can board quickly from the front and rear doors. Beyond this, many people who don’t ride the bus because they’re uncomfortable with it will likely ride the shuttle, which will be advertised to businesses and employees and will be branded differently than AC Transit.

The staff report estimates that the daily ridership of the shuttle will be 2,045, and I think that’s doable between commutes from home or BART, lunch trips, rides to happy hours, and random errands.

Why am I so sure this can be successful? Because it worked in LA, and much like I feel about BRT, if LA drivers can be lured out of their cars to use particular public transit lines, than so can Oaklanders. LA’s downtown shuttle, the DASH, has been wildly successful. It started out in the late 80s with one line and has been expanded to six lines that criss-cross through downtown and run at 5-20 minute intervals. The fare is $.25 and in 2006, the daily ridership of the lines ranged from 351 riders (the most infrequent line) to 7,520 riders (the 5 minute headway line).

Downtown LA of course is denser and geographically larger than Oakland so we’ll never have that kind of ridership, but downtown LA and Oakland have a lot in common otherwise. Both areas were near-abandoned, except for government offices, until redevelopment efforts brought new businesses and residents to the area. Both have new, thriving arts and entertainment scenes. And both are served by multiple types of transit that connect to the DASH and will connect to the Broadway shuttle.

As businesses in downtown Oakland grow and Oakland attempts to attract new businesses to the area, the shuttle will be a huge benefit. If marketed correctly, the shuttle should be able to meet its ridership goals quickly. For a cost of zero to Oakland’s General Fund, the shuttle will help Oakland meet its environmental and economic goals, while also making downtown Oakland feel more connected. The CED Committee should approve this project and the City should move swiftly to implement it.

To see the committee discussion, tune into KTOP at 2pm or follow the meeting on Twitter #oakmtg.

Replay 10/18/07: Los Angeles/Oakland Reflections: Privatization of Urban Public Space

My trip to LA last week made me reflect a lot on the differences of urban planning and living in Los Angeles and Oakland. Part of my thoughts reflect on my experience growing up in LA, and other thoughts might be influenced by a book I’m in the middle of reading, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, by Mike Davis. So I thought I’d write a series of posts about my Oakland and Los Angeles inspired reflections on urban space.

Growing up in LA, my concepts of public space were limited to parks and beaches. The closest I ever got to an urban public center was an indoor mall in the San Fernando Valley.

One of the things that struck me and ultimately drew me to the East Bay was the amount of public space here and how effectively this space was used. I remember my first trip to Berkeley, which happened to be during the Telegraph holiday street fair. I was enthralled by the vendors lining the streets, the cars being held back, and the people crowding the pavement.

I soon learned that Telegraph wasn’t always such an expansive, car-free street, but it didn’t matter. There were other public spaces and events to enjoy: a jazz band playing near the downtown Berkeley BART stop, a rally at Sproul Plaza on the UC Berkeley campus, the San Francisco Mime Troup performing in Cedar-Rose park, a picnic in the Berkeley or Oakland rose gardens, or a stroll around Lake Merritt.

I’ve come to take this public space for granted, but I was jolted out of this complacency in LA last weekend. Unfortunately, the conference I was attending was at the Sheraton in Universal City. I could write several posts about the ridiculousness of Universal City being a separate city from Los Angeles, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that I think it’s even more useless and disruptive than Emeryville is to Oakland.

After days of hotel food and deliveries from Vegan Express, some of my friends and I decided we wanted to go out to eat but didn’t want to hop in a car. So our only option was hopping on the shuttle to City Walk. In my many years of Los Angeles living, I had managed never to step foot into City Walk, and I quickly learned that I hadn’t missed a thing.

As you walk “inside”, you are immediately surrounded by lights and sounds. There are stores and restaurants everywhere, everyone brighter and louder than the next. Music plays, but it changes as you enter into different “zones.” Water spurts from the ground in the most inelegant arches I’ve ever seen.

But wait – this isn’t Hollywood, or Times Square. There are no homeless people. There’s no litter on the ground. Cars don’t zoom buy and practically run you over as you cross the street. There’s no smell of urine in the air.

I guess the absence of these urban features must relieve the average City Walk goer, but it really freaked me out. Needless to say, after we ate our sushi, we got out of there as quickly as we could.

City Walk was clearly created for tourists, but not just for tourists from other countries and states. It’s aimed at pleasing suburban tourists. It’s aimed to make them feel like they’re having an urban Hollywood experience, without all the annoyances of a real city.

Yesterday, I walked through the Oakland City Center to get some soup, and I realized that the City Center is not nearly as bad as I had thought it was. It’s more open and less intrusive than a mall or City Walk. If that’s the worst Oakland can do with privatizing public space, I can live with that.

Mike Davis (and others) often write about Los Angeles as being the model city of the future, for better or worse, but I’m more hopeful than that. If he’s right though, I hope Oakland never follows LA in privatizing public space.

Los Angeles/Oakland Reflections: Privatization of Urban Public Space

My trip to LA last week made me reflect a lot on the differences of urban planning and living in Los Angeles and Oakland. Part of my thoughts reflect on my experience growing up in LA, and other thoughts might be influenced by a book I’m in the middle of reading, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, by Mike Davis. So I thought I’d write a series of posts about my Oakland and Los Angeles inspired reflections on urban space.

Growing up in LA, my concepts of public space were limited to parks and beaches. The closest I ever got to an urban public center was an indoor mall in the San Fernando Valley.

One of the things that struck me and ultimately drew me to the East Bay was the amount of public space here and how effectively this space was used. I remember my first trip to Berkeley, which happened to be during the Telegraph holiday street fair. I was enthralled by the vendors lining the streets, the cars being held back, and the people crowding the pavement.

I soon learned that Telegraph wasn’t always such an expansive, car-free street, but it didn’t matter. There were other public spaces and events to enjoy: a jazz band playing near the downtown Berkeley BART stop, a rally at Sproul Plaza on the UC Berkeley campus, the San Francisco Mime Troup performing in Cedar-Rose park, a picnic in the Berkeley or Oakland rose gardens, or a stroll around Lake Merritt.

I’ve come to take this public space for granted, but I was jolted out of this complacency in LA last weekend. Unfortunately, the conference I was attending was at the Sheraton in Universal City. I could write several posts about the ridiculousness of Universal City being a separate city from Los Angeles, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that I think it’s even more useless and disruptive than Emeryville is to Oakland.

After days of hotel food and deliveries from Vegan Express, some of my friends and I decided we wanted to go out to eat but didn’t want to hop in a car. So our only option was hopping on the shuttle to City Walk. In my many years of Los Angeles living, I had managed never to step foot into City Walk, and I quickly learned that I hadn’t missed a thing.

As you walk “inside”, you are immediately surrounded by lights and sounds. There are stores and restaurants everywhere, everyone brighter and louder than the next. Music plays, but it changes as you enter into different “zones.” Water spurts from the ground in the most inelegant arches I’ve ever seen.

But wait – this isn’t Hollywood, or Times Square. There are no homeless people. There’s no litter on the ground. Cars don’t zoom buy and practically run you over as you cross the street. There’s no smell of urine in the air.

I guess the absence of these urban features must relieve the average City Walk goer, but it really freaked me out. Needless to say, after we ate our sushi, we got out of there as quickly as we could.

City Walk was clearly created for tourists, but not just for tourists from other countries and states. It’s aimed at pleasing suburban tourists. It’s aimed to make them feel like they’re having an urban Hollywood experience, without all the annoyances of a real city.

Yesterday, I walked through the Oakland City Center to get some soup, and I realized that the City Center is not nearly as bad as I had thought it was. It’s more open and less intrusive than a mall or City Walk. If that’s the worst Oakland can do with privatizing public space, I can live with that.

Mike Davis (and others) often write about Los Angeles as being the model city of the future, for better or worse, but I’m more hopeful than that. If he’s right though, I hope Oakland never follows LA in privatizing public space.