Photo from front cover of “Getting on Board”.

Crowded buses, less frequent bus service, and longer commutes are linked to heightened stress, missed medical appointments, and more social isolation among transit-dependent bus riders.

These are among the findings in a first-of-its kind study titled “Getting on Board for Health: A Health Impact Assessment of Bus Funding and Access”, which gleans directly from bus riders reflections on how service cuts and fare increases affect their bus-trip experience and their ability to travel to jobs, school, friends and family, and health-care appointments. The Sierra Club participated in shaping the study.

The Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD) along with 16 non-profit organizations and public agencies, conducted the assessment to explore the health implications of recent bus-service cuts and fare increases on transit-dependent bus riders. Other studies have explored health impacts of transportation projects in terms of physical activity, traffic safety, and air quality. This study adds a missing perspective to regional transportation discussions by focusing on the potential health benefits of improved mobility when public transit is affordable, reliable, and accessible to all.

The health-impact assessment, completed in 2012, included surveys and focus groups with 477 transit-dependent bus riders in highly transit-dependent areas of Alameda County. Bus riders were asked how recent service cuts and fare increases affected their bus-trip experience, affordability, and access to essential destinations.

Among transit-dependent riders in this study:

• 9 in 10 student riders (89%) take the bus every time they go to school;
• 8 in 10 working riders (83%) take the bus every time they go to work;
• 1 in 4 riders (24%) take the bus every time they go to see friends or family.

Fare hikes and service cuts have a discernible impact on the health and wellbeing of transit-dependent bus riders. Among those surveyed:

• almost 9 in 10 (88%) were affected by recent service cuts;
• over 8 in 10 (83%) say they have more difficulty getting to their job, school, social activities, or doctor’s office; riders report how service cuts have led to missed work and wages, late arrivals and absences at school, increased social isolation, and missed health-care appointments – situations that can be harmful to long-term health and well-being;
• over 6 in 10 (61%) are experiencing longer bus wait times, over one-third (37%) are experiencing more-crowded buses, and almost one-third (31%) are experiencing longer commutes. Longer waits, crowding, and longer commutes contribute to increased stress, which can lead to a range of health problems;
• a small portion (6%) began driving or getting rides in cars. This additional driving will increase vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse-gas emissions.

“Everyone needs affordable, reliable transportation. For local residents without access to a car, public transportation is a lifeline to jobs, education, family and friends, recreation, medical care, and healthy food,” explained Alameda County public-health director Dr. Muntu Davis. “When service is reduced, many are left without a reliable way to get to their daily needs, which can have significant quality-of-life consequences.”

The study is timed to inform funding priorities that the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) will make in July. Those decisions, included in the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP), will determine how $289 billion in local-state-federal transportation funding is distributed across the nine-county Bay Area over the next 25+ years.

The RTP shapes a large portion of the funding that goes to public transit. For many operators, RTP will be a critical factor in determining whether there are enough funds to maintain existing levels of service, and to restore and expand service, or whether operators are forced to cut service and raise fares again.

Elena Berman, coordinator of St. Mary’s Center Senior Advocates for Hope and Justice, remarked, “We chose to be a part of this study because . . . for our members at St. Mary’s Center, the bus serves as a lifeline. It can be their only mode of transportation to the most basic of needs. Well-run and affordable buses allow one of the most vulnerable populations to remain independent.”

With these health impacts identified, the study recommends that MTC increase funding for public transit, including bus service, in the upcoming RTP. While this study focused on transit-dependent bus riders in Alameda County, there are 2.2 million residents in the San Francisco Bay Area who do not own or have access to a car. Increased transit funding would support the health of transit-dependent riders throughout the region.

The full “Getting on Board for Health” report and Executive Summary are available on-line.

Photo: Flickr / OZinOH (cc)

2013 is the 40th anniversary of San Francisco’s “Transit First” policy–yet until recently, implementation has been slow and grudging.

Last year, after a six-year study, the city approved Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) for Van Ness, for a part of the 47 and 49 lines. The struggle for BRT for Geary has gone on for 10 years and still has a long way to go. But for this major anniversary year Muni has released the first draft of a dense 380-page Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Transit Effectiveness Project. TEP could be a large step.

TEP has a detailed tool kit of methods to speed up transit along many lines, including:

• some partially dedicated lanes;
• bus bulbs;
• fewer stops;
• less parking;
• fewer stop signs;
• more signal lights, all with transit priority (that is, allowing buses to signal their approach and get an expedited green light).

TEP also includes some service increases and route changes and the transformation of some lines, such as the 5 Fulton, into ‘Rapid Transit Lines’. On the lines studied, the EIR forecasts reduction in travel times by 10 – 25%, based on which tools from the kit are applied.

The Sierra Club hopes that the plan will be revised to give specific estimates  of the time saved on each line, both for an individual trip and for all riders combined. This will help decision-makers and the public understand how effective these improvements can be. Two minutes a day for an individual rider is a moderately attractive improvement. Two minutes a day for 30,000 daily riders on a busy line–167 hours daily–would be a whopping saving of time.

On the other hand, we are concerned about drastic changes in some routes, such as the 19 Polk, which would be shortened, and the 22 Fillmore, which would be rerouted and in part replaced with vans for a time period. On other lines, significant loops in hilly parts of the city would be eliminated.

In addition, the TEP does not go far enough. According to staff of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, ridership increase due to the TEP is projected to be only 2.5 to 10% over projected population growth.  TEP includes some significant improvements, but it is not yet the great transformation that will get people out of cars and attain the goal of Transit First.

To see the proposals for your line, see www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=2970.

Howard Strassner, Executive Committee, Sierra Club San Francisco Group

Why would the Contra Costa Transportation Authority study building a highway (State Route 239) between Tracy and Brentwood?

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) has rated SR 239 as the worst-performing large road proposal in the Bay Area.

The CCTA’s five-page draft Impetus Statement on the project resembles a cost-benefit review–but leaving out the costs and negative impacts. In particular, it doesn’t consider the greenhouse gases that would be released into the atmosphere in the construction of the road or by driving on it. Would SR 239 help California meet its goals for reducing greenhouse gases? If SR 239 would aggravate climate change, why study further? The statement also leaves out the project’s impacts on open-space preservation.

Money spent on this project is money taken away from projects that might effectively meet the area’s real transportation needs. No spending source has yet been identified, but our guess is that funds would come from the county sales tax. MTC will allow a bad project to go forward if it doesn’t involve MTC funding.

The Sierra Club opposes construction of new freeway lanes, but SR 239 would have two freeway segments. If the study moves forward, will environmentally acceptable alternatives be considered?

No mass transit is planned along SR 239. Without mass transit, how can the project possibly reduce greenhouse gases?

One of the early justifications presented for SR 239 was as an evacuation route after a terrorist attack in Brentwood; this now appears to have been deleted. Levee failure is still a concern, but would it not be a better use of public funds to strengthen Delta levees rather than building an escape route?

One of the alleged needs for SR 239 is to accommodate increased truck traffic. The Impetus Statement, however, describes the M-580 Marine Highway, a container-on-a-barge service that will ship containers from Port of Oakland to Port of Stockton. This is expected to eliminate 180,000 truck trips a year from Interstates 80, 205 and 580. Would SR 239 still be needed?

The Sierra Club is doubtful about the value of continued study of SR 239. At the very least, climate-change implications and open-space preservation should be thoroughly reviewed before proceeding further along the lines being followed by the CCTA.

CCTA will hold public meetings on this project in April. We will add information about them to this article when we get the schedule.

The draft impetus statement is available at http://trilink239.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Draft_impetus_statement.pdf.

Matt Williams, co-chair, Transportation and Compact Growth Committee, Sierra Club Bay Chapter

AC Transit transbay bus.

But a consultant to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) has proposed such cuts.

One proposal is for AC to reduce the number of bus stops to make buses run faster. This would force many riders to walk farther, to take a slow local bus to reach the transbay bus, to drive to their bus stop–or to drive to San Francisco. We fear that too many riders would make this last choice, bringing more cold-engine starts, more carbon in the atmosphere, and increased traffic congestion.

The consultant also suggests replacing some direct transbay bus service with local buses that would take riders to BART stations (“the two-seat ride”). But BART riders know that there is no available second seat on the packed trains. BART is already at capacity during commute hours at most of the stations in the AC service area. Once again, many transbay riders would switch to driving.

The Sierra Club urges MTC to rethink its direction on transbay bus service, and to increase its financial support to AC Transit to market its wonderful transbay bus service. That would be a lot more cost-effective than spending about $1 billion to enlarge BART’s Embarcadero and Montgomery stations.

WhatYouCanDo

The People on the Bus is an organization working with the Sierra Club on these concerns. Contact them at pob@earthlink.net

Matt Williams, co-chair, Sierra Club Bay Chapter Transportation Committee

Muni. Photo by Lydia Gans.

The Club’s San Francisco Group is warily watching a number of proposed changes in San Francisco’s transportation planning.

In 2012 San Francisco’s County Transportation Authority, Municipal Transportation Agency, and Planning Department began rolling out a proposed Transportation Sustainability Program. This TSP is now undergoing environmental review.

A key impetus for the TSP has been changes by the state Office of Planning and Research in its interpretation of transportation-planning requirements under the California Environmental Quality Act. Until now, planners were required to analyze a proposed project’s impact on “level of service” (LOS)—or the speed that cars would move through intersections if a proposed project is built. Now the TSP is hoping to replace LOS with a new alternative—assessing projects based on the number of auto trips generated (ATG). LOS measures just the project’s impacts on cars; ATG will measure the impacts of added traffic on everyone else, and so, if implemented right, should favor transit, pedestrians, and bicyclists.

Related to the TSP is the updated Transit Impact Development Fee (TIDF) passed by the San Francisco supervisors at the end of 2012, several years late. This fee, assessed on developers of commercial projects, is for funding capital programs for mitigating projects’ transportation impacts. The TSP proposes broadening that fee to include residential ones, as well.

But, as always, the devil is in the details. While some of the Supervisors’ changes to the TIDF please transit advocates, questions linger. Has the new TIDF captured enough new projects, or does it exempt too many? Similarly, will the TSP capture enough new projects or exempt too many? For example, the updated TIDF exempts non-profits of all sizes, and even parking garages, and the current draft of the TSP exempts single-family homes, and empowers the Planning Commission to make other exemptions. Also, are the increased per-square-foot fees in both the TIDF and the proposed TSP high enough? In other words, will these policies bring in enough revenue for the city to effectively deal with the transportation impacts of new development? The TIDF, and the TSP once it is made law, will be in place until the Board of Supervisors chooses to amend or repeal them.

Another major concern in the TSP is its proposal to eliminate the general requirement that Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) on individual projects include transportation impacts (though policymakers would have the option of requiring that transportation impacts be included in EIRs on individual projects). Instead the city would prepare one vast EIR (to be reassessed every five years) projecting development citywide 20 years out. Environmentalists and transit advocates recall apprehensively the last time policymakers decided to forego an EIR on a major project, the implementation of the Bicycle Plan. In that case, the courts enjoined implementation of the plan for four years, until an EIR was completed and certified. The first project to be approved without a transportation analysis could become another time-consuming legal battleground. In any case, can a periodic citywide EIR be counted on to adequately foresee the impacts of each potential project?

Other changes will stem from SB 375, the anti-sprawl and anti-climate-change legislation signed into law in 2008 by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (see “TIPping the balance”, December 2012, front page). The Sierra Club is participating in One Bay Area meetings of policy-makers to address SB 375 implementation. The plan that is to come out of the discussions, called the Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS), is a regional effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions through changes in land-use and transportation policies. It is due to be adopted in April and is to be in existence through 2040. The plan seeks to use transportation grants as leverage to get communities to build their allotment of regional housing needs (as determined by the Association of Bay Area Governments). Communities that do so will get funds for transportation projects.

Finally, unrelated to state law is legislation introduced by District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener to allow new development projects to contain extra parking spaces for carshare vehicles. This legislation will be heard at the Board of Supervisors some time in early 2013. The Sierra Club opposes this change. The Club supports carshare in concept, but allowing more parking spaces will add to street congestion, impact the flow of transit, and exacerbate climate change. The city should instead dedicate curbside parking spaces for carshare–as has been done in Hoboken NJ and Emeryville.

Sue Vaughan, secretary, Sierra Club San Francisco Group