The Agonizing Potential of the Bay Area’s Public Transit
By: Bim-Ray Yau
During this past winter vacation, an old friend from Atlanta visited San Francisco. We ate dinner at Chinatown, explored the night view of downtown SF – all cherished memories.
My friend took an Uber ride back to her hotel at Millbrae. After I bid her goodbye, I stepped into the BART station at Powell Street to wait for my train ride home. The time was around 9PM; not too late into the night. When I arrived on the platform, the timetable sign displayed ‘10-car train to Antioch in 26 minutes’. I must have just missed the previous train for Antioch, I realized. So, I waited, pacing around the massive platforms.
Finally, the train arrived. I needed to make a cross-platform transfer at 19th Street/Oakland station to make my way back to Berkeley. When the direct Richmond service from San Francisco does not operate, BART promises a timed transfer between Antioch and Richmond trains.
But, the train I boarded did not make the timed transfer in time. I, along with a few dozen other passengers headed towards Richmond, would have to wait another 30 minutes in Oakland for our next train to arrive.
The entire journey from Powell Street to Downtown Berkeley was supposed to clock in at around half an hour. When I finally reached home, the time was almost 11:30PM, over two hours after I arrived at the BART station at Powell Street.
The most important factor of public transit service besides safety is to provide reliable, efficient service that can get people from place to place in a predictable manner. A transit system can omit amenities like intricate public art, avant-garde technology, and sleek trains just as long as they serve their most basic function: to transport. My BART journey was anything but efficient or predictable — and similar major inconveniences occur more often than not, with BART’s poor frequencies (as much as 30 minutes between trains) and persistent equipment problems that run back almost a decade. Add on well-documented cleanliness and crime issues that plagues the system, and the result is a transit system that fails to satisfy its operational goals. To think that BART is far from the worst experience I have had with American public transit (my sole LA Metro experience made me actively fear for my safety).
Coming from Taipei to the San Francisco Bay Area makes the public transportation culture shock even worse. Back home, Taipei Metro trains arrive on average 3-minute headways on the line I take the most. A train ride costs at most $2 to get around almost everywhere in Greater Taipei. Spotless trains and station platforms devoid of crime and trespassers mean a pleasant experience for riding transit. Wherever the train does not get you, an equally efficient bus network has you covered, with seamless integration between fare systems compared to the Bay Area’s hot mess of distinct agencies. I do not expect the Bay Area to have a public transport system equal in every way to that of Taipei or most other East Asian metropolises. As a region with less density, much higher costs of doing business, and wildly different infrastructure demands, the Bay Area cannot just copy the East Asian model verbatim and expect a perfect fit. But surely the Bay Area’s myriad of transit agencies, from BART to MUNI to VTA, can manage better than what service they offer right now.
The most frustrating part of the Bay Area’s transit infrastructure is that much of the foundations for a robust, world-class transit system already exists. BART’s automated operations, fast train speeds, large capacity, and network coverage give the system much potential to improve. MUNI and AC Transit’s relatively clean buses and wide coverage mean supporting bus networks already operate. Caltrain’s modernization project means the Bay Area will get a regional rail system comparable to the world’s best. The Clipper card shared by most Bay Area transit agencies means that an integrated fare system’s foundation already exists. But none of the authorities seem to have much impetus in pushing for sweeping reforms, even though public transit in the Bay Area faces a near-existential ridership crisis with the ongoing pandemic and transition to remote work.
Choices regarding public transportation planning are never easy to make —but also never impossible. A journey back in time to late-20th century Taipei tells a tale that the San Francisco Bay Area could very well still embark on. Its transportation arteries clogged by automobiles, Taipei resembled a traffic hell all too familiar to today’s drivers on the MacArthur Maze or Bay Bridge. An ambitious project to construct a subway emerged as a response to the predicament, but the process to build this network was anything but smooth. The first Taipei Metro line saw its trains catch on fire twice during testing; Matra, the manufacturer of the trains and signaling systems, refused to take responsibility and terminated its contract, leaving Taipei’s first subway line with no maintenance services. After excruciating training development and political perseverance in the face of calls for canceling the project altogether, the system’s problems got mitigated and expansion continued apace. Yet fate remained cruel to the Taipei Metro, sending Typhoon Nari to flood the entire underground portion of the network and its operational headquarters. Extensive damage to trains and the system’s infrastructure seemed to doom Taipei’s public transportation dreams.
Against all odds once more, the metro pulled off a stunning revival. Three months after the flooding, Taipei Metro returned to full service. The system plagued by reliability issues during its infancy became the most reliable metro system in the world, averaging a near-100% on-time performance that would put even the punctuality-obsessed Japanese railways to shame. All of this happened while the metro experienced rapid network expansions, going from a single 10-kilometer line in 1996 to a 6-line, ~150-kilometer long system today (with more lines under construction and/or planning). Customer satisfaction hovers at around 95% despite averaging over 2 million daily riders pre-pandemic in 2018 (in contrast, BART had 56% customer satisfaction in 2018 while averaging one-fifth of Taipei’s ridership on weekdays).
A Taipei Metro train departing Jiantan Station. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Most of all, the system lived up to its original goal of improving Taipei’s traffic problems: a new line built in 2010, for example, helped to increase average car speed along its road corridor by 24%, proving public transportation’s effectiveness. The system has become integral to Taipei’s identity as a modern metropolis, so much that NIMBYs who opposed the metro’s construction in their neighborhoods ended up begging for new stations after witnessing its convenience revitalize communities. While the same problems that plague the Bay Area, from expensive construction costs to NIMBYism, still affect Taipei’s public transportation to some extent, these obstacles do not prevent Taipei from operating an efficient, safe, and comfortable system for its citizens.
My hometown’s story shows that a city which has never experienced proper, efficient public transportation can still develop a world-class transport system. Political perseverance, steady funding, and dedication to service can improve the public transit experience for all, even when faced with setbacks on the scale that Taipei experienced. The Bay Area’s public transport networks have much work to do if they want to ensure their continued relevance in people’s lives. Here’s to hoping that they can finally live up to their potential and provide world-class service — taking public transportation should never be a chore.