SF Transit Sucks, Seattle Not So Bad
Lucky you, dear reader. Right now, you are off at Bumbershoot, enjoying beautiful weather, great music, and a disturbingly well-equipped Starbucks tent. Me? I am in San Francisco, and here in the Bay Area, I am actually starting to long for Seattle’s transit system.
I know it is part of the holy gospel of whining about Seattle transit to say, “why can’t we have a system like Portland or San Francisco?” Admittedly, I found Portland’s system impressive [mb]. But SF? Really?
In theory, SF transit is great. It’s an amalgamation of city, state, and county resources spread across multiple transportation The Bay Area’s transit website lists 23 bus systems, 6 rail systems, 6 ferry systems, 20 shuttle systems (including 5 shuttle-to-rail), and 16 miscellaneous systems including something known as the Valley of the Moon Commute Club. You’d think a transit grid so comprehensive would give you the ability to go anywhere, anytime, and do anything you wanted.
But in practice, “amalgamation” and “comprehensive” means “disorganized, poorly-maintained mess.” With so many systems, there is a distinct lack of integration, and no system seems to be well-funded enough to maintain itself. Additionally, systems that cross city or county boundaries often suffer from restrictions placed by other governments. These problems are most evident when looking at the BART, Caltrain, and the Bay Area trip planner.
Seattle transit advocates particularly like to point to the Bay Area’s primary rail systems, the BART and CalTrain, as examples of a well-designed rail system to replace leisure and commuting traffic. I truly wonder if these people have ever ridden the BART. Sure, lots of commuters take them, but saying that riding the BART is better than commuting across the Bay is like saying that you prefer eating dirt to eating mud. Expensive, slow, terrifyingly shaky dirt that will collapse and drown you in case of an earthquake. And has moldy stained carpets.
But even with such a devil’s dilemma, the incentive system is failing, particularly with Caltrain. For some commuters, it’s actually become cheaper and faster to drive, particularly with the spread of hybrids. A friend now drives his Prius to San Mateo every day instead of taking Caltrain. It wasn’t a hard decision, because the drive is twice as fast and four times cheaper. Most importantly, the drive is fairly predictable, while Caltrain is often unpredictably delayed. Even when Caltrain is on time, city and county ordinances providing funding also provide speed restrictions, such as Redwood City). This disintegration even extends to commuter traffic, as certain counties (such as San Mateo) refuses to designate carpool lanes on interstates within their limits.
Nowhere is the Bay Area’s transit disorganization better seen than in its trip planner [511.org]. The Bay Area trip planner could not plan its way out of a paper bag. The design is terrible (no alternate routes, no estimated walking times, basic stuff) but the data is even worse. I feel sorry for whoever tried to design it. But that is the problem with having a billion different transit systems all run by different people: there is no integration, nothing to help you navigate all the different systems.
Sure, I will always long for the halcyon days of working in DC and taking the blessed Metro everywhere. But faced with a complex, unkempt, badly delayed system, I long for the simplicity of taking a pretty green bus downtown and transferring to go just about anywhere in the city. I miss relatively clean, air-conditioned buses with comfortable seats. I plan trips with MetroKC’s trip planner just to remember the good times. (Okay, not really.)
Seattle’s system could be better. Everything could be better. But Seattle, we’ve got a pretty good bus system already. With the addition of well-planned light rail, Portland would have nothing on us. The grass is certainly not greener in the Bay Area, so ride your green bus a little more cheerfully.
This is blatantly untrue. I visited San Francisco this summer and BART was amazing. Perhaps you’re a prissy car driver who can’t stand mass transit. Perhaps you didn’t travel to the minority parts of the city. Busses in the central district of Seattle run about once an hour, and there are only about three of them. Total. There are trains and busses in the mission district of SF that will get you anywhere in the city in less than 20 minutes.
Perhaps commuters have it easier by car in SF, but the poor and minority communities are far worse off in Seattle than SF, and I think that’s a more important metric for us to focus on as a city. Not everyone who needs to get around can afford a car.
Interesting take, Kristen. I used to live in Berkeley and for a short time worked in Burlingame. I had a car but chose to use public transportation most of the time. I’d walk from my apartment near campus to the downtown Berkeley BART station, get off at Embarcadero in the city, hop on the Muni and take it to the Caltrain, then ride Caltrain to Burlingame. The one-way trip took about an hour and a half and I don’t recall ever having problems with delays. In fact, I remember being very pleased with the integration of the various services and lamented that the Puget Sound area didn’t offer such extensive services. If you’ve ever had to ride the 194 from the airport to the city and connect with whatever bus you need to get back to your neighborhood, you learn to appreciate the convenience and relative comfort of the Bay Area rail systems.
Then I moved to New York (and London) and learned what real public transit was. That said, I think we have to accept that there isn’t a perfect answer. I think BART’s great at connecting pretty distant parts of the Bay Area. I think the Muni is decent for in-city travel. I think Caltrain is ok for the South Bay stuff. That I could go from Berkeley in the East Bay to Burlingame in the South Bay without too much trouble was impressive to me. I can’t imagine, given the comparatively late start they got on building those systems, that they could’ve done much better.
With that in mind, I have pretty low expectations for Sound Transit’s Light Rail. The routes, even in theory, aren’t ideal and the first several years are going to be trial by fire. I expect a steady stream of problems and delays for quite awhile. And I think we’re just going to have to make the best of it.
As someone who lived in SF for 8 years, here’s my take:
- BART simply does not “suck”. If you’re afraid the tunnel is going to collapse, that’s really your neurosis. Yes, it is kind of noisy in a couple of spots.
- Huh - your post is titled “SF Transit…” but then you actually compare the ENTIRE bay area’s transit system. Anyway, greater Seattle is like 3.5 Million residents (I think). Bay Area is like 7 or 8 Million residents (give or take). You have to account for that size difference when comparing regions.
- Saying Caltrain is “four times as expensive” as driving is kind of a fake comparison. You have to factor in the $20K spent on the car, especially as it was apparently purchased mainly to commute. Once that’s factored in, it’d probably take years to break even. (I understand that the unpredictability of CalTrain was also an issue).
I do agree that Bay Area transit has lots of areas for improvement. But I just don’t think you’ve really supported your assertion that it “sucks” that well. Basically you’re saying that the trip-planner is not so good and that multi-jurisdiction planning is complex.
You didn’t even get to the worst part of SF’s transit. The drivers. They are the surliest lot I’ve encountered anywhere. Seattle’s transit operators are completely cheerful in comparison.
One of SF transit’s biggest issues is the entrenched and complacent administration and operators who seem to resent having to actually do their jobs on a daily basis and do not care about quality at all.
But having been a resident of SF (the actual city, not “SF” used to denote the entire Bay Area) for 8 years, I can say that my transit experience certainly did not “suck” in comparison to transit here.
A friend of mine just moved to SF and he had a hell of a time getting a MUNI pass for this month. Apparently all the store vendors ran out and we later learned that MUNI intentionally undersupplies their vendors because they want late comers to end up having to pay the fares per use.
Some of the terrible inefficient practices of SF transit are intentional, and in the name of making a buck.
So how much is the Bay Bridge being shut over the long weekend causing BART to have record usage coloring your perception?
BART may not be the most efficient line, and it may not really go anywhere other than Dublin and SFO, but it’s better than the 194 or the Community Transit hour-plus-in-traffic buses with none after 5:30 to Marysville.
And I love the Underground, even though it’s slow, smelly, and run-down, because when I lived in Reading I could buy a train ticket and a two-zone travel card for $12, and it would get me anywhere in the city in a reasonable time and then home in one piece. And I mean anywhere, and I mean reasonable. Here, you have to carefully plan everything and allow for traffic and just maybe you’ll get there in an hour, which is 5 minutes less than it would have taken you to walk.
Oh, and as much as you’d bitch about the Bay Area systems, it could be worse. Much worse.
Well, everyone certainly has their opinion!
Sarah, you are correct that I don’t have experience with poor communities in Seattle. I suppose I should specify that Seattle transit’s system works better for me than SF’s. However I don’t consider myself a prissy car driver, I just bought a car for the first time two months ago and use it in the city once a day at most.
Ryan, you pointed out something I forgot to point out, which is that there are things I really like about SF transit. I love the MUNI cable cars. I wish I could use them more, I really prefer it to the BART. And even as much as I make fun of the BART, it is great to have a well-designed rapid transit option. It magically seems to go everywhere I want to go.
Gomez, that is ridiculous! But it makes sense from an evil point of view, the MUNI passes are a really good deal ($45/month, which is the same as Seattle’s bus-only pass).
Pffft,
* I have an apartment in SF (SOMA, so I am “actually in the city” as you say) and a house in Seattle, so I do have the experience of using transit as a resident rather than a tourist as you seem to be implying.
* Yes, I’m neurotic, but I’m much more afraid of the Bay Bridge (or the viaduct!) than the BART.
* One thing about blog titles is that they are space-limited. So I used SF, and thought my usage of “sucks” was obviously tongue-in-cheek. You’ll notice I used Bay Area throughout the actual post. I only use “San Francisco” when referring to what Seattleites say or when referring to my own perspective as a San Francisco resident.
* Actually my primary assertion was that the current system has an incentive breakdown, particularly because of being caught between conflicting interests of the Bay Area’s different cities and counties. I only used the trip planner as an example of one consequence of this disorganization.
* So true about the drivers. Seattle’s drivers are awesome, I have never had a surly bus driver in Seattle. Okay, there was that forgetful one who closed the doors on me, but even he wasn’t pissed off like the drivers here. It makes a really big difference.
Maybe I am just cranky because I miss Seattle…then again, I miss SF when I’m in Seattle!
Also, there’s quite a bit of snot in response to Lauren’s post. We have to keep in mind that part of the reason these transit systems are in place is to try and get as many citizens to ditch their cars as possible. Many of the citizens who try to commute via these transit systems are not going to be the transit veterans that many of us are, and are going to notice many of the things that Lauren pointed out.
To attack Lauren for noting these things in the first place isn’t very productive on your parts. The biggest step in proliferating transit usage is to understand the needs and points of view of those who want to use it.
Discussion IMO should be more about identifying and troubleshooting the systems’ problems and less about attacking anyone who dares to point them out.
Bad form, people. Bad form.
Dylan, oh yeah, I totally avoided it this weekend. That’s actually a really good example of what pffft was saying about the bad attitude of transit administration here–even with the Bay Bridge closed, they still went on weekend schedule and then holiday schedule today. That really pissed me off. Fortunately I have used it outside this weekend (I live part-time here and part-time in Seattle–although I’m actually not coming back to Seattle until January, so it’s not so part-time right now), I purposefully avoided it because it would make me truly hateful. For the most part I actually like Bay Area transit, just not as much as Seattle.
And anything is a step up from Wichita transit, better known as “Whoa, look, a bus!” *one year later* “Whoa, look, a bus!”
Gomez, thanks for the defense, I have to admit that the comments here have hurt my feelings a little. Especially because I am such a loyal transit user–as I noted above I haven’t owned a car until a couple months ago. Just because I am a girl who thinks having carpets on a subway is gross means that I am a “prissy car driver”? I have even written about Seattle buses here before, in fact I think my most popular post so far has been either the one about the 48 [mb] or the one about pedestrians in Pike Place Market [mb].
If any of you actually knew me, you would know that I am Seattle bus chick through and through. I am proud to know at least one route off the top of my head that goes just about anywhere in Seattle, I am my own trip planner! And certainly a good part of my frustration with Bay Area transit (although as I mentioned above, I generally do like Bay Area transit) is that I just don’t know it the way I know Seattle buses. I can’t just walk out, jump on the 11 and transfer my way to anywhere I want.
I am surprised about the negative comments as well. Although I usually am a Pollyanna Seattle bus rider anyway, I thought the tone of this post was more about how good it is here in Seattle, as opposed to how bad it is there in the greater San Francisco region/Bay Area/blah blah blah. Ah, the problems with tone via post/email/text/whatevs.
In any case, Kristen introduced me to my current love affair: MyBus and has merited transit goddess status, just on that fact alone. So, if she wants to say “SF transit sucks” that’s totally allowed.
Thanks C Ro, I was hoping my favorite bus partner-in-crime would jump in! That was actually my intention, to remind people of how good they have it in Seattle, not to dump all over the Bay Area. There are a number of fundamental problems in the Bay Area, such as lack of integration caused by conflicting interests decreasing efficiency (think the war over the viaduct but with a million more players), which Seattle largely doesn’t have. My point was that it is better to have one well-funded, mostly well-run bus system than to be so spread out across systems and governments.
Kristen - you SAY that your intention was:
But your entire post was ABOUT the Bay Area’s transit system, not Seattle’s transit system. There’s nary a sentence about Seattle’s transit system in your post except to say we’ve got a “pretty good bus system”.
You basically submit a multi-paragraph rant about the Bay Area’s transit system, including how taking BART instead of driving is like “eating dirt”, and then when people focus on the rant part (which is 95% of the post), you worry that they’re missing the point.
Maybe you’re not making the point you think you’re making. :)
Well, I think part of the reason for the reaction to your post is that there are a LOT of Bay Area transplants up here (myself included) who really yearn for a similarly convenient and expansive rail system in Seattle. Seattle’s bus system is one of the best in the country - but it’s still the bus and regardless of the unreasonableness of the sentiment, buses are viewed as inferior to rail.
Don’t ask me why.
pffft, you must have very low standards for ranting, Dylan will surely be insulted that you even place me in the same category. Again the paragraph you take issue with (about the BART) was intended to be humorous exaggeration. It seems you’re taking things a bit too seriously. I guess my point can only be taken if we agree on the fundamental premise that the internet is not srs bizness. Here, have some kittens.