East Bay Bus Rapid Transit

News Flash!: AC Transit Board of Directors votes to certify East Bay BRT FEIR, moving Downtown Oakland to San Leandro option forward towards City Council Approval!

Transit in Oakland and San Leandro took a huge step towards a much better future tonight, thanks to the efforts of its visionary leadership on the AC Transit Board of Directors. With 6 of the 7 Directors present, they unanimously certified the FEIR and adopted the Downtown Oakland to San Leandro alternative for BRT!

Over three dozen speakers came out in support of the plan, and emboldened the AC Transit Board of Directors to vote the way they did. They were also able to see a video advocating for BRT proudly produced by Youth Uprising (which can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKUHj9hapaU).

This would not have happened without the broad support from youth, labor, environmental, social justice, and environmental justice groups as well as "just regular  residents" who were represented by 45 supporters at the AC Transit Board of Directors meeting on April 25th, 2012..

Many thanks to the 22 groups that have signed on to the coalition letter (see below)  and all the support that has been demonstrated leading up to this point. Their engagement has been paramount to moving such a progressive project forward.

The East Bay BRT project has the HIGHEST rating for a transit project in the nation, according to the FTA. It promises to deliver the most efficiency for the least amount of money spent on transit improvements. Once implemented, Oakland and San Leandro will truly have a world-class transit system. Despite the affordability, it will create over 300 local construction jobs, improve air quality, allow for the purchase of better designed, cleaner vehicles, make streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists, while at the same time creating a truly reliable transit system that people can truly depend on to come frequently and reliably.

Next Steps

The approval process is not over yet, though. AC Transit must still negotiate an agreement with the cities of Oakland and San Leandro. Those City Councils will be voting on this project sometime in June. If we are ever going to break-ground on BRT, it will need to get agreements there first.

Those agreements at the City Councils will not happen without community support.

Please stay tuned and be prepared to show up and voice support again to the Oakland and San Leandro City Council in June. We'll need to demonstrate in numbers again that details which still have yet to be worked out (such as stop distances and locations,  impacts on traffic and parking, and support for small businesses along the route during construction) have been sufficiently addressed (assuming they will be!) so the Council members can feel comfortable adopting the project. TransForm staff will be monitoring the project as it moves forward and will be ensuring that these issues are being addressed as best as possible.

If you would like to stay informed of these issues as they move along, please let TransForm know and we'll be sure to invite you to the next BRT Coalition meeting we'll have within the next few weeks. Either way, we will be publishing a date soon when supporters can meet again to discuss next steps.

For those that came out to the AC Transit Board meeting, the community meetings, or have signed on to the coaltion letter or individual petition cards in support of BRT -THANK YOU, and ADELANTE!

If you have a moment more, please consider sending an email expressing thanks to the Board of Directors for their leadership and vision:

Elsa Ortiz, President of the Board: eortiz@actransit.org
Jeff Davis, Vice President of the Board: jdavis@actransit.org
Joe Wallace; jwallace@actransit.org
Greg Harper: gharper@actransit.org
Mark Williams: mawilliams@actransit.org
Joel Young: jyoung@actransit.org
Chris Peeples: cpeeples@actransit.org

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AC Transit Releases the Final Environmental Impact Report for their East Bay Bus Rapid Transit Project!

In compliance with CEQA guidelines, AC Transit has worked with community stakeholders to address comments made to them about the East Bay BRT project as defined in the DRAFT Environmental Impact Report, released around this time last year.

The Final Environmental Impact Report (or FEIR) includes a project that runs from Oakland to San Leandro BART, bringing bike lanes, new stations with lower impacts to parking, more landscaped median and other changes that we feel are for the better for local stakeholders, and which reduces the total cost of the project to reflect the funding that is currently available.

AC Transit recently held seven community meetings along the route and will now take the project to the AC Transit Board of Directors and the City Councils of Oakland and San Leandro over the next several weeks, seeking their approval to continue on with the final engineering of the project.

Bringing Bus Rapid Transit to Life

For the past six years, TransForm has worked in Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro to build community awareness of AC Transit's proposed East Bay Bus Rapid Transit project with the goal of supporting the cities and AC Transit in ensuring that the east bay gets a model BRT that delivers great service and meets the community's needs.

Traveling along Telegraph Avenue, International Boulevard, and East 14th Street, BRT is proposed to reduce current trip times along this corridor by 30%, and will attract over 9,000 new daily passengers.  AC Transit's BRT service will also reduce operating costs while increasing ridership, enabling the transit agency to better support the rest of the system.

Some of the reasons why residents who we have spoken to support BRT are as follows:

Transit Improvements:
  • Level boarding eliminates need for lifts or ramps for wheelchairs and or for people with disabilities or traveling with strollers or carts. Boarding will be exactly like boarding BART. This makes boarding for people in wheelchairs much faster and safer.
  • Dedicated lanes keep buses out of traffic, running on time, and prevents bus bunching, which helps to reduce operations cost, allowing for more service and less cuts
  • Buses will come every 5 minutes all day long (not just during peak hours!)
  • Traffic Signal Priority systems will hold green lights longer for approaching BRT vehicles, minimizing the amount of time that BRT stops for anything other than passengers
  • All Door Boarding will legally allow passengers to board through any door tagging their Clipper Cards to scanners located at each door. This eliminates crowding at the front of the vehicle, and speeds up boarding.
  • BRT Stations will all have seating, lighting, shelter, State of the Art Information Systems, and public art. BRT stations will be placed no more than 1/3 of a mile apart, at key destinations and where transfers happen along the route.
  • Center Boarding stations allow passengers to wait together (safety in numbers) regardless of the direction they are heading. Center-running, platform stations also make it easier for passengers to navigate, and change direction if needed.
Safety from Crime:
  • Increased lighting at stations makes waiting for transit much safer;
  • Emergency phones at stations provide direct links to police or sheriff;
  • Cameras at stations act as crime deterrents;
  • Fare Inspection officers also increase presence of authority, and can act as "eyes and ears" of police or sheriff;
  • Higher concentrations of passengers at stations (rather than scattered along at stops) increase overall "eyes on the street" and decrease isolation of potential victims waiting for a bus alone on the side of the road, in the dark;
  • Higher frequency of bus arrival times (every 5 minutes during the day -all day-), and improved reliability significantly decrease time spent waiting for the bus, and exposing one's self as a potential target for crime.
Safety from Traffic:
  • Dedicated lanes calm car traffic to safer speeds
  • Bike lanes calm car traffic to safer speeds, and get bikes off of sidewalks;
  • New traffic signals make it safer to cross the street;
  • Improved crosswalks and bulb-outs increase visibility of pedestrians;
  • Increased street lighting increases visibility of pedestrians;
  • BRT Stations also act as pedestrian refuges, even for those who simply wan to cross the street.

Health Benefits

  • Improved ambulance and fire response times by giving emergency vehicles access to a traffic-free dedicated bus lane;
  • Creates bike lanes, which encourage biking which has been proven to improve health;
  • By offering greener choices for transportation, BRT reduces asthma and other respiratory problems by reducing air pollution;
  • Reduces obesity and health problems by creating safe, accessible and walkable communities. BRT would create pleasant transit stops and safer streets and sidewalks;
  • Provides more frequent, reliable transit to health and medical centers along the corridor.

Economic Benefits

  • Turns a 45 minute bus ride into a 30 minute bus ride, saving time and money for riders;
  • By offering people a competitive, reliable alternative to a private vehicle, household transportation costs can be reduced, thereby freeing up more resources for other necessities such as housing and healthcare;
  • BRT creates hundreds of local jobs (300 Construction jobs, and hundreds more support jobs);
  • Invests $180M into Oakland and San Leandro from Regional, State and Federal sources;
  • Acts as a catalyst for the implementation of the International Blvd. TOD Plan, which has allowed for Oakland to be poised to recieve nearly $1M in additional planning efforts (see page 3 of this PDF: http://www.sgc.ca.gov/meetings/20120510/PlanningGrantsRound2-corrected.pdf
  • Attracts private investment (BRT in Cleveland attracted some $4.3B of investment into it's struggling economy); 
  • Reduces the cost of transit operations to allow for more frequent service (5 minute headways all day).
Environmental Benefits:
  • Reduces GHG's by 1,900 tons per year by attracting more riders and with new, state-of-the-art hybrid buses that reduce travel times by 30%
  • Cleaner, greener buses (made in the USA) means improved air quality and reducing air pollution that causes asthma and other respiratory illnesses;
  • Saves 210,000 gallons of gas from being burned per year in Alameda Co.

Response to Frequently Asked Questions (BRT FAQ's)

Distance between stops: BRT stations combine local service and Rapid service, and will be spaced 1/3rd of a mile apart, on average;

BRT Stations will be closer together than "1R" stops but spaced further apart than then "1" stops today.  The BRT stations will be located where transfers to other lines happen, and where 90% of current passengers take transit from now. However, about 10% of passengers may need to walk to a different place where a new BRT station will be located nearby. On average BRT stations will be about 1/3 of a mile apart. If right between two BRT stations, one may need to walk about 1/6th of a mile, equivalant to 880 feet, which is the distance one must walk now to get to City Hall from the currently existing 1/1R bus stop on Broadway between 13th and 14th Streets (see the Google map here: http://g.co/maps/kj4ur)

Curbside BRT:  Some people are calling for "Curbside BRT", which would have BRT lanes running down the side of the street, with BRT stopping at "bulbout stations". This idea was not supported by AC Transit because it has several fatal flaws;

1. Curbside BRT still gets stuck behind double parked-cars, cars making right-hand turns or parallel parking, as the Silver line does in Boston and as BRT gets stuck behind traffic in Santiago Chile, losing much of the time-saving benefits gained by level, all-door boarding. 

2. Curbside BRT is less safe for passengers and pedestrians. whereas one would be required to cross the full width (at least two lanes of mixed flow traffic) of the street twice to get to any destination and back. Center running BRT, with platforms in the middle of the street require passengers to cross only one lane of mixed flow traffic at a time (at signalized crosswalks, of course) to get to the platforms or pedestrian refuges. It also becomes safter to change direction mid-route, eliminating the need to cross any streets if simply going the other direction (if one misses their stop or decides to reverse direction).

3. Curbside BRT removes the potential for platforms to serve as pedestrian refuges, as tney would in Center-Running BRT, where pedestrians, particularily people who need more time to cross the street, can pause at the BRT platform in the middle of the street and safely wait for the next signal phase before they cross the rest of the street (see graphic attached below)

4. Curbside BRT stations are proposed by some to be 1/2 mile apart (w/ less stations and local service between stations), and would require higher operating costs along the corridor to provide service. Curbside BRT stopping every 1/2 mile (and running less often) would then be more of a service for people moving through the community.

5. Curbside BRT stations would be more narrow in width, making it more difficult for more than one wheelchair at a time to pass each other on the platforms. Even though the stations would be built parallel to the sidewalk, to be level with the floor of the buses, they would be elevated from the sidewalk itself or at a sloped angle that may be difficult to negotiate for people with limited mobility.

Why not use BRT Funding for improvements throughout the system?

The funding that has been earmarked for BRT is available for captial projects only. By law, it cannot be used for operations. The funding that  was possibly availble for operations (CMAQ funds) has already been shifted away from the project to reduce service cuts two years ago. If AC Transit does not use this money for BRT, it will lose the great majority of it. Some of it (previous Regional Measure 2 funds) would still be available for operations and maintenance of Rapid Bus lines (like the 1R and the 72R).

Funding Sources

  1. Regional Measure 2 (RM-2) – $43.4 million for Construction. RM-2 includes $3 million annually to operate the system.
  2. Alameda County Measure B, – $5.5 million for construction.
  3. Federal Small Starts – $75 Million (Anticipated).
  4. State Transportation Improvement Program – $40.0 Million
  5. Federal Section 5309 Bus - $3.1 million for construction
  6. AC Transit bus procurement program funds - $4.9 million for vehicles

East Bay BRT Status: City by City

In May 2010, San Leandro and Oakland supported the study of creating dedicated BRT lanes.  This gave the green light for AC Transit to move forward in looking at the impacts and benefits of a full BRT system with dedicated lanes, stations, proof-of-payment system, and other amenities that will greatly improve service along the heavily used 1/1R line.

Center-running dedicated lanes would keep BRT out of traffic, allowing for reliability that current "Rapid" buses cannot deliver, while still allowing for the creation of bike lanes, and preserving most of the parking that some merchants have expressed concerns over.

TransForm applauds Oakland and San Leandro's City Councils for their efforts to help find a way to improve the comfort, safety, frequency, reliability, and affordability of bus service.

Check out the details on the decisions made in each city:

Ongoing Community Planning

TransForm is currently reaching out to community groups, residents, businesses and other stakeholders in an effort to ensure that their concerns about BRT are being addressed by AC Transit by time the final proposal. So far, our efforts have resulted in better parking mitigations, station location, and pedestrian infrastructure improvements.

Additionally, BRT will be the catalyst in the International Blvd. Transit-Oriented Development Plan, which creates more walkable communities along International Blvd.

Resources:

Learn more about the project during this three-minute AC Transit video and at AC Transit's BRT website.

Questions about TransForm's work to shape and win Bus Rapid Transit in the East Bay?  Want to get involved?  Contact Joel Ramos.

You can make TransForm an even stronger advocate in 2011 by donating now.

East Bay BRT illustrations courtesy of FMG Architects and Cambridge Systematics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Curbside versus Center-Lane BRT26.57 KB
BRT Coalition Letter of Support3.27 MB