“Is it safe to take the bus?” That’s the question on people’s minds as we enter into the seventh month of the pandemic in the Bay Area. With ridership down, revenue across all Bay Area transit agencies has taken a huge hit that they may never recover from.
Join us on City Visions tonight at 6pm, as I host Jeffrey Tumlin, Director of the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency (MUNI/SFMTA), to find out how MUNI is coping with all of these changes and planning for the future.
We’ll also hear from Paula Farmer, book buyer at Book Passage in Corte Madera, with her recommendations for books on racial justice, and we’ll get a Covid update from our experts Erin Allday, health reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle and Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, infectious disease specialist at the UCSF School of Medicine.
Call us during the show at 6pm with your questions at 866-798-TALK or send an email to cityvisions@kalw.org. We’re airing on 91.7 FM KALW in San Francisco and streaming live. Hope you can join us!
Imagine: a severe pandemic races through the United States, hitting cities like New York hard. Public transit is partially blamed for the spread, given that transit works best by squeezing in a lot of people in tight places to move them efficiently.
What happens next, as the virus dissipates? After a few years dealing with panic and fear of being too close to others, how will urban residents react?
In response, residents could start to abandon cities and the public transit they depend on. Americans might choose to move out of high-cost, dense transit-dependent urban areas to emerging lower-cost, western cities, built around the automobile and single-family homes. They might abandon transit forever.
The result could be catastrophic, an environmental wasteland dominated by suburban sprawl, crushing traffic, and choking pollution, with little open space or agricultural land preserved. Those left behind in cities to ride transit will predominantly be lower-income individuals who can’t afford a car or single family home – too often people of color. This dynamic will only worsen racial disparities, and transit service, already underfunded, will worsen.
But this harsh reality is actually not the future — it’s what already happened in our past. Specifically, after the 1918-1920 Spanish Flu, urban residents abandoned American cities, particularly in the East Coast, lured to the cheap housing and car culture of places like Los Angeles. Developers sold the West Coast “car suburb” to newcomers as offering an escape from disease-ridden cities. The result was the environmental degradation and ongoing racial residential segregation we see today.
To be sure, since Spanish Flu times, trends on transit have reversed to some extent. Urban rail transit launched a comeback starting in the 1960s, and cities have since been revitalized with strong demand for housing. Voters have increasingly taxed themselves to build more and better transit, particularly with local sales tax measures.
And in the Spanish Flu era, the automobile was new and exciting, but the limits of the technology were not yet widely understood. Consumers only saw the upsides of driving, not the downsides of increased traffic, pollution, transportation costs, suburban isolation and lost open space. Since that time, we’ve learned many of those lessons and implemented new environmental policies to counteract the pollution and sprawl.
But public transit is indeed in serious danger. Fear is powerful, and those with means will choose to drive or work from home instead of taking on the risk of getting the virus from transit. Those with no other option, such as people with low-incomes, service jobs requiring in-person work, or disabilities, will have no other choice, exacerbating social inequities.
The result will be a downward spiral: as ridership plummets, budgets take a hit, transit service is cut back, and the systems overall can become unappealing to lure “choice” riders back who could otherwise drive.
This future in many ways is already here, in the initial months of COVID sheltering. As Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow noted recently in The Atlantic, ridership on bus and rail systems has already dropped from pre-pandemic levels by:
- 74 percent in New York
- 79 percent in Washington, D.C.
- 83 percent in Boston
- 87 percent in the Bay Area
We all have a stake in making sure this outcome isn’t permanent. Transit is essential for cities, as our economic and cultural engines, to function well. We also need transit to reduce driving miles and pollution and reduce pressure to sprawl. And transit can address equity concerns, by providing mobility for those who can’t afford a vehicle.
So how do we save public transit post-Coronavirus and not repeat the mistakes of the past?
First, transit officials and advocates need to address the public’s fear. The evidence on viral spread via transit is mixed at best. On its face, we’ve seen outbreaks in places with heavy public transit use, like in New York City, so the public and some scientists have superficially connected transit ridership with disease spread.
But recent studies in Paris and Austria showed no spread from transit. And looking at the geography, it’s hard to see a connection between COVID and transit:
- Hong Kong with heavy transit use has recorded one-tenth the number of cases as Kansas
- In New York, car-heavy Staten Island has had higher infection rates than transit-dependent Manhattan
- Cities in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan have had little infection compared to suburban parts of the US or Italy, where outskirts of Milan were hit harder than the city itself
In general, spread seems to be more acute in places like nursing homes and prisons and among families living together, not via transit.
Second, transit officials should point to and replicate success stories. Taipei in Taiwan provides perhaps the gold standard. Taiwan officials require mandatory mask wearing on trasit. They use noninvasive handheld or infrared thermometers to screen all riders. They test, trace and quarantine, and they clean the systems well. Transit officials also adjust service to limit crowding. All of these steps require resources in times of budget crunches, so we’ll need financial support for transit, for both environmental and equity reasons.
Third, officials can highlight the miserable alternative to supporting transit. Without transit, we would see significantly more traffic congestion, including traffic deaths (averaging about 37,000 in the US per year). We’d also see more pollution, imperiling our air quality, public health, equity, and climate goals.
Fourth, we need to boost non-automobile alternatives to transit. These options include “active” transportation, timely with e-bike sales skyrocketing and the proliferation of e-scooters. Cities can also explore employing more shuttles and vans instead of mass transit. And they can set aside street infrastructure for all of these uses, as well as offering rebates and other incentives to encourage e-bike and e-scooter purchases, to replicate success we’ve seen with zero-emission passenger vehicles.
And there looms one major, yet controversial idea to consider for the long term: replacing all rail transit with far-cheaper and more efficient automated, electric bus-rapid transit lines (ART) on the dedicated lanes of former rail tracks. This transition would harness new technology in self-driving software and improvements in batteries to save transit agencies orders of magnitude in costs for operations and maintenance compared to rail. And with rows of connected buses, ART can replicate the capacity and electric propulsion of rail at a fraction of the time to build and money to operate — timely for squeezed transit agency budgets. Now might be the time for transit agencies to study these conversions.
In the future, public transit post-COVID doesn’t necessarily have to replicate the past. But unless we act now to bolster public transit and its sustainable alternatives, we may indeed find ourselves moving backwards, in more ways than one.
Sen. Scott Wiener is back trying to boost California housing production again, after his SB 50 legislation to upzone for apartments around transit died in the State Senate in January. This time, he’s proposing a “lighter touch” approach, salvaging an SB 50 provision that would end single-family zoning across the state.
Senate Bill 902 would authorize minimum residential zoning of duplexes in unincorporated county areas or cities under 10,000 residents. Triplexes would be the minimum density for cities between 10,000 and 50,000 residents, while fourplexes would be allowed for cities of 50,000 or more.
Furthermore, while local standards on height, setbacks, and fees, etc. would remain in place, any approval for these multiplexes would be “by right,” meaning environmental review would not apply under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and permits would not be discretionary. In addition, the bill would not apply to parcels with renters any time in the last seven years, historic structures, or high-fire zones.
But wait, there’s more — and this time with a more explicit transit and environmental hook.
SB 902 would also allow local governments the option of rezoning any parcel (including for commercial uses) for up to 10 units in density, provided the parcel is located in a “transit-rich area, a jobs-rich area, or an urban infill site.” The definition of transit-rich means within one-half mile of any rail station or major bus stop, and urban infill site essentially means a previously developed spot surrounded by existing uses on at least 3 or 4 sides. “Jobs-rich” would need to be defined by the state’s planning and housing agencies. Like the multiplex provision, all permitting for these 10-unit parcels would be by-right and therefore not subject to CEQA.
This 10-unit opt-in provision holds the most promise to boost transit ridership and reduce vehicle miles traveled (aka “traffic”), the reason the state is now falling behind on transportation emissions. By allowing an opt-in for greater density, SB 902 provides off-the-shelf tools for local governments that actually want to see more housing near transit and jobs.
That said, the problem in California is that too many transit-rich, high-income local communities want nothing to do with more density. So many of the most critical transit-rich communities (San Francisco Bay Area suburbs and Westside Los Angeles cities like Beverly Hills) likely won’t budge on this tool. Their property-rich residents are just fine with their neighborhoods as they are.
The upside for the environment on the multiplex provision is that accommodating more residents in existing residential neighborhoods could also boost transit, if those new multiplexes are near rail stations and bus stops. And if those new residents drive, at least they would presumably have a shorter commute than if they lived in new exurban sprawl communities (the primary affordable housing alternative, short of leaving the state altogether).
The potential downside is that many of these multiplexes might be in far-flung subdivisions, meaning the new residents will have longer commutes than if SB 50 had passed and they could have lived in an apartment near transit. But the SB 50 opportunity, and all the mandatory affordable housing that would have come with it, is now passed.
As for the politics on SB 902, it seems likely it will be similar to SB 50. Wealthy suburbanites that sank SB 50 will be back en masse to oppose SB 902. Labor may not like the by-right provision (they use CEQA to force project labor agreements on developers) but may appreciate the construction jobs.
The political wildcard will be equity and affordable housing groups, which helped sink SB 50. Will they care about suburban upzoning? Some of these affected areas will have low-income tenants. While as mentioned the bill doesn’t allow redevelopment with renters present anytime in the last seven years, many tenant advocates may not care. Some are even hostile to market-rate development of any type, hoping instead for a government takeover of housing production. So it will be critical to see what positions they take on SB 902, as their opposition to SB 50 provided important political cover for wealthy opponents.
In addition, will environmental groups step up to support the measure? Most were MIA on SB 50, with the exception of NRDC, ClimateResolve and a few others. Some were even opposed, cowed by the tenant group opposition or beholden to NIMBY constituents. So SB 902 gives them a fresh opportunity to finally develop a coherent position on this most pressing environmental issue.
Ultimately, if Sen. Wiener can at least limit tenant group opposition, along with the wealthy NIMBYs who may be more scandalized by the prospect of an apartment building than a triplex, he may have a chance to get the bill passed. And ultimately, it will require the governor, who campaigned on 3.5 million new housing units but has instead seen backwards progress, to step up and get more involved in the political process.
Either way, if the bill has legs, we’ll likely see many changes as it winds its way through the process of political compromise. I’ll be following them closely.
Aaron Gordon at Vice News tackles one of the most pressing subjects on transportation & climate policy: why does the U.S. absolutely suck at building public transit? Whether it’s a bus-rapid transit lane or high-speed rail, the U.S. cannot build these projects anywhere near on time or at a reasonable cost, compared to other advanced economies.
Some examples:
New York City is responsible for the most expensive mile of subway track on Earth, at $3.5 billion per mile, the first segment of the Second Avenue Subway. The second phase is projected to crush that record.
And these statistics:
“Nearly all American urban rail projects cost much more than their European counterparts do,” [transportation scholar Alon] Levy wrote in Citylab. “The cheaper ones cost twice as much, and the more expensive ones about seven times as much.” This includes both heavy rail (subways) and light rail. “Only a handful of American [light rail] lines come in cheaper than $100 million per mile, the upper limit for French light rail.”
So how does Gordon explain the ineptitude? He cites multiple factors, but the big ones seem to be the following:
- Political compromises on routes and station locations, which drive up costs and turn transit projects into “political consensus” projects — a phenomenon I observed quite clearly and documented in my 2014 book Railtown on planning and building Los Angeles Metro Rail.
- Over-reliance on expensive consultants rather than cheaper in-house expertise. This dynamic is a function of the piecemeal, start-and-stop federal and state funding for transit, which means local agencies can’t build up the expertise they need. It’s also a function (in my view) of corruption, as special interests like contractors and labor unions cut deals for big contracts with minimal oversight.
- Overlapping and poor governance in a system of hyper-local control, in which multiple agencies have jurisdiction over projects, resulting in long permitting times and costly compromises.
Gordon is short on solutions in his piece but promises more to come. Meanwhile, other scholars such as Alon Levy and researchers at the Eno Center are also working on this issue. Hopefully we can see some promising reforms get traction soon, because the present situation in the United States is unsustainable and wasteful, in multiple ways.
The San Francisco Bay Area’s population and job centers are famously divided by the bay itself, with jobs and housing on the San Francisco side accessed by commuters to the east via the Bay Bridge or the transbay BART tube. The dream for unlocking access via more transit — and possibly high speed rail — depends on building a second tube
ABC 7 News covered the most recent plans for a potential project, featuring a short clip of me:
This is a subject we covered on my very first City Visions show as a host back in 2016. Regardless of what shape it takes, one thing we know for sure is a second transbay tube will take longer and probably cost more to build than the current plans will estimate. But such a project will be critical for long-term sustainable mobility in the region.
California (and the nation as a whole) is getting worse in our efforts to reduce emissions from transportation (i.e. driving). Last week, I gave a talk in the UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies lecture series on what we can do about it. You can view the recording here:
In brief, we’re failing because driving miles are up while transit usage is down, in part due to poor land use policies that pushing housing farther from jobs. We need to encourage housing near transit and encourage electric vehicle usage for all other driving.
And on the subject of how we’re failing to build enough housing near transit, you can view a recording of a January 30th symposium at UC Hastings School of Law on this topic, featuring two panel discussions (I spoke on the second) and a closing keynote from State Senator Scott Wiener. You can also read a summary of the symposium from Hastings student Leigha Beckman, who helped organize the event.
Happy viewing!
The UN climate conference in Madrid last month may have ended poorly, but conference attendees had a big success story right in front of them. Spain’s success achieving efficient – and enjoyable – land use and transportation outcomes is a model other countries and states should emulate to address climate change.
Spanish cities and towns feature many remarkable urban spaces, not unlike those found in other European countries. These areas tend to prioritize compact apartments located within walking distance of abundant transit, shops, bike lanes and jobs, with many containing pre-automobile-era narrow cobblestone streets built for people and not vehicles. Cities are often built around plazas, typically along with town halls and churches. They also protect against sprawl by prioritizing open space and agricultural land, particularly in the central and southern part of the country. Meanwhile, a high speed rail network connects most of the country’s major urban areas.
The result? While many factors probably come into play, US News in 2019 ranked Spain tops among all countries in terms of the overall happiness of its citizens. The country also ranked 18th in overall quality of life and among the top in food and culture.
You can see this effect on the ground. Spanish cities and towns are among the most walkable and enjoyable cities I’ve experienced. Particularly in the capital city of Madrid, where the UN conference was held, residents can access most destinations by transit or on foot, and the central city is closed to vehicles not registered to central city residents, while any other entering vehicle must meet low- or zero-emission standards. As a result, the Madrid city center is a quiet and clean pedestrian playground. And this same dynamic is present in cities and towns throughout the country, based on my travels there. It’s likely a major reason for the country’s success in terms of emotional well being.
This urban walkability has positive environmental effects, too, particularly on greenhouse gases. According to World Bank figures, Spain’s per capita carbon emissions is 5 metric tons, ranking it approximately 60th on the list of 192 countries, despite having a GDP per capita that ranks roughly 30th. These emission figures stand in stark contrast to the 16.5 metric tons of emissions for the average United States resident, more than 3 times as much as the average Spaniard. And even similarly developed and urban countries like Japan and Germany have almost twice the emissions per capita of the Spanish, with 9.5 per Japanese resident and 8.9 per the average German.
To be sure, some of this climate progress is due to their increasingly clean electricity grid, which has seen a significant deployment of renewables over the past decade. But smaller homes and walkability that decreases driving miles helps, too. For example, overall driving miles (or kilometers, in this case) in the country is relatively low for a developed nation, at approximately 400 billion per year. With 47 million residents in Spain, that equals roughly 8,500 km per person, or 5,287 miles per year (14.5 miles per day per person). By contrast, according to the Eno Center, the average Californian drives 50% more miles than the average Spaniard, at 8,728 miles per year, or 24 miles per day (rural states do even worse, with Wyoming at a whopping 16,900 miles per year, or 46 miles per day per person).
The lessons learned? Policy makers should design towns to maximize walkability and transit access, limit private vehicles, prioritize public spaces like plazas, and preserve surrounding farmland and open space from sprawl. Hopefully attendees at the UN Climate Conference experienced some of these Spanish practices on land use and transportation firsthand. Because the climate-friendly results mean cleaner and happier living overall, something worth achieving everywhere.
Some media appearances from me this week on a range of energy, housing and rail topics:
- “Greater LA” on KCRW radio in Los Angeles covered the conspiracy theory that auto companies dismantled the vast Los Angeles streetcar network in favor of freeways, interviewing me for the segment based on my Railtown book.
- CalMatters reported on a new state legislative analysis of California’s renewable energy program, finding significant emission reductions and many research gaps, which helps deflate a Republican proposal to pause the program (with some quotes from me).
- KPCC’s AirTalk radio program featured a live discussion on Wednesday on the proposed “California Green New Deal” legislation, which in part seeks to boost affordable housing and a just transition for workers out of fossil fuels. I was joined on the program by Sylvia Chi from the Asian Pacific Environmental Network and Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics.
With the legislative session just beginning, I expect the media to continue to focus on the numerous proposals to address our ongoing energy and climate needs. Happy Friday!
California State Senator Scott Wiener launched his third legislative attempt today at boosting California’s housing supply. SB 50 aims to address the state’s massive housing shortage, which has resulted in high home prices and rents, gentrification, displacement, inequality, homelessness, and a mass middle-class exodus to high-emission states like Texas and Arizona.
Because this housing undersupply is caused primarily by restrictive local land use policies in the state’s coastal job centers, Wiener’s approach has been to require cities and counties to allow apartment buildings near major transit centers. His first attempt in 2018 (SB 827) died quickly in committee. His second attempt last year (the birth of SB 50) was unilaterally shelved for a year by State Senator Anthony Portantino, who represents the affluent Southern California city La Cañada Flintridge (that city quickly became a poster child to housing advocates for high income single-family homeowners who don’t want to allow new residents in apartments into their neighborhoods).
The clock is now ticking on SB 50 in 2020. Under legislative rules, the bill must pass the full Senate by the end of this month — and first make it out of Sen. Portantino’s committee.
So Sen. Wiener is trying again, unveiling at an Oakland press conference this morning a critical amendment to delay statewide implementation for two years in order to give local governments the opportunity to develop their own plans that meet or exceed the housing, equity and environmental goals of SB 50. Otherwise, SB 50’s provisions relaxing height, parking and density requirements around major transit stations will automatically prevail.
Specifically, the state (through the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research) will develop guidance for these “local flexibility plans” by mid-2021. Cities and counties must then submit their plans for approval to the California’s Department of Housing and Community Development. That agency will then certify that the local plans are as stringent as SB 50. The local plans must be in place by January 1, 2023 in order to avoid defaulting to SB 50 statewide standards.
Otherwise, the substance of the bill remains essentially unchanged from last spring (here’s my rundown on the last changes before Sen. Portantino shelved it).
These new amendments seek to mollify critics who complained that the statewide approach undercuts local flexibility to meet the targets in a more tailored way. For example, rather than having uniform four-story apartment buildings around a major transit stop, perhaps a city would prefer to meet the overall housing production goals with a taller building in one spot and a shorter building across the street.
Will these changes be enough to satisfy local government objections? Probably not in many cases. The objections are less about local control and more about visceral dislike for apartment buildings and the residents they may bring. Arguments about local control — and relatedly against market-rate housing and instead building only subsidized affordable units — are often not made in good faith. Critics quickly move the goal posts as soon as amendments are made in their direction.
Take for example Sen. Portantino’s initial reaction to these amendments, complaining about not enough affordable housing, per his spokesperson to the San Francisco Chronicle:
“It was the senator’s hope that by taking a breath with SB50 it would focus efforts on actually building affordable housing as opposed to the market-rate housing predominant with SB50.”
This comment ignores that SB 50-type reform would result in the biggest boost to subsidized affordable units in the state’s history, at possibly a seven-fold increase. All without raising taxes or issuing bonds, and without delay about where to build these units even if public funds are available.
Still, these amendments may persuade critics who are on the fence. And perhaps most critically: will Governor Newsom now throw his weight behind the measure to help it pass? This is a big test for the governor on one of his signature campaign issues.
All in all, the next few weeks will be instructive as to whether or not California leadership can meaningfully address the the housing shortage and its severe equity, economic and environmental consequences.
The California Preservation Foundation is hosting a webinar debate today from 11am to noon on the housing shortage, entitled “Point-Counterpoint: Streamlining Housing Development vs Local Control.” I’ll be on the pro-housing side against a few prominent “local control” anti-housing advocates.
Moderated by Diane Kane, PhD (Emeritus Trustee at the California Preservation Foundation), the panelist debaters include:
- Barbara Bry, City Councilmember, City of San Diego
- Todd David, Executive Director, San Francisco Housing Action Coalition
- Ethan Elkind, Director, Climate Program, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, U.C. Berkeley
- Dennis Richards, Planning Commissioner, City of San Francisco
The questions will cover issues like CEQA’s effect on housing production, NIMBY motivation, how historic preservation affects the shortage, and if single-family homes are inherently a ‘bad’ thing.
You can register here (registration is $40 for members and $60 for non-members) to join the webinar and ask your questions of the panelists.
