How public transportation is recovering in the Bay Area
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Public transit in the Bay Area is slowly climbing back up from its steep drop in ridership during the pandemic, but transit trips are still nowhere near pre-COVID-19 levels.
Driving the news: Ridership on San Francisco's Muni Metro light rail network is up 43% this year while BART's is up almost 20%, per data from the American Public Transportation Association. Transit agencies will look to sustain that upward trend heading into 2024.
What's happening: After warning elected officials this year that they would have to substantially cut back on services without state support, BART and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) are expected to receive the vast majority of the $776 million in state and regional subsidies for the Bay Area.
- The emergency funds approved by the Legislature come with some conditions. The agencies must sufficiently address fare evasion and continue efforts to coordinate uniform wayfinding across the Bay's 27 transit agencies to streamline rider experience.
- For BART, that means following through with updating all 715 of its fare gates with clear, six-foot-tall, sensor-activated panels by 2025. (The agency is also increasing fares next year.)
- Caltrain, which is set to receive a much smaller portion of the subsidies, has announced plans to complete its electrification project by next fall, which would cut wait times at stations and run faster trains.
- Meanwhile, the San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority is working with the Finnish maritime technology company Wärtsilä to design the region's first zero-emission high-speed ferries. Construction is slated to start by the end of next year.
Of note: The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), which oversees planning and financing for transit in the region, recently partnered with Lyft to reduce annual membership prices for the Bay Wheels regional bikeshare program and add over 2,000 e-bikes to the fleet to bolster ridership.
Zoom out: California High-Speed Rail Authority will use nearly $3.1 billion in federal investments for the construction of a high-speed rail project aimed at connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles.
- A separate high-speed rail project aimed at connecting Los Angeles to Las Vegas has also been allocated $3 billion in federal funding. The route would serve over 11 million passengers per year, according to the Biden administration.
The big picture: Several local transit agencies have committed to helping combat the Bay Area's homelessness crisis by investing in affordable housing, deploying in-transit crisis intervention teams and partnering with homeless outreach services.
- MTC is also studying the possibility of launching a single pass that can be used for unlimited access to Bay Area bus, rail and ferry services across different agencies.
Go deeper: How transportation impacts health in San Francisco