Spell Archives - Los Gatos News And Events

San Francisco’s Empty Prepare Automobiles Spell Hassle for Public Transit

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 14:38:03 +0000

My adventure on San Francisco Bay Area public transportation to see how the system is recovering after Covid-19 did not begin auspiciously. It was about 8:30 a.m. on the last Tuesday in September, and I was waiting at a bus stop on Silicon Valley’s main drag, El Camino Real, in Mountain View. Nearly a dozen people were waiting with me. Then a shiny unmarked bus with “RIDE MPK” on its electronic destination sign pulled up, and almost all of them got in — headed, I guessed, for the sprawling Menlo Park office campus of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp parent Meta Platforms Inc.Together with one other guy at the stop, I watched in anticipation as a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority 22 bus to Palo Alto pulled up behind the RIDE MPK bus, then in dismay as it switched lanes and proceeded to the next intersection. After the other guy asked the driver of the private bus if he could drop us off in Palo Alto (answer: no), the two of us sprinted about 50 yards to where the VTA 22 bus was still waiting at what turned out to be a helpfully long red light. The driver let us on (with no apology for skipping our stop), and the rest of the ride to Palo Alto’s California Avenue shopping district, where I was meeting a friend for coffee, was uneventful.

After coffee, I resumed my planned circumnavigation of the San Francisco Bay by walking a couple of blocks to the California Ave. Caltrain station, walking through an underpass that looked as if it would take me to the northbound platform, walking back through that underpass after a nice woman walking her dog informed me that I couldn’t get to the train that way (she said people frequently make that mistake), then walking through the correct underpass. From there I traveled by:

• Caltrain to Fourth Street in San Francisco

• San Francisco Muni N-Judah light-rail train to Embarcadero station

• Golden Gate Transit ferry to Larkspur

• Golden Gate Transit 580 bus to the El Cerrito Del Norte Bay Area Rapid Transit station

• BART orange line train to the Berryessa/North San Jose station

• Lyft Bay Wheels bike to San Jose Diridon Station

• VTA Rapid 522 bus back to my hotel in Mountain View

The journey took about 10 hours, including that coffee in Palo Alto; a break for lunch, emailing and phone charging at Bloomberg’s office on the Embarcadero not far from the Ferry Building in San Francisco; some book shopping at the Marin Country Mart in Larkspur while I killed time waiting for a Marin Transit 228 bus, followed by a mile-long walk to Bellam Blvd. in San Rafael, mostly on a bike path, after Google Maps informed me that the 228 bus was running late and would miss the connection to the next bus to El Cerrito; and a couple of ride-extending wrong turns in San Jose (where I could also have traveled by bus or light rail but chose the bike for variety’s sake).

The approximate distance traveled was 160 miles (257 kilometers). The total cost was $32.52, which would have been about $45 but for the half-price fares BART was charging during September in celebration of its 50th birthday and the discount on bike rides afforded by my Lyft Pink membership, which I have because Lyft also operates the Citi Bike service in New York, where I live. I could have paid for all of it through the Clipper account in my iPhone wallet, but I didn’t do so with the bike because my way was cheaper, and I ended up buying my Caltrain ticket with a credit card because I couldn’t figure out how to use the Clipper reader — although I subsequently saw enough other people succeeding at this to believe the problem lay more with me than with Caltrain.

All in all it was a pleasant, often scenic experience, with Larkspur the only bad connection. And no, I never had trouble finding a seat. I was on the two VTA buses at rush hour, and at times most seats on them were occupied, but they never felt crowded. The same was true on BART as we rode through Berkeley and Oakland, but after Warm Springs/South Fremont I was the only person in my train car during its late-afternoon journey to the last two stations on the line, both of which have been in service only since June 2020.

My motivation for all this (other than that I enjoy riding on trains and boats) was to explore the situation with the US public transportation network that has taken the biggest hit from the pandemic and accompanying shift to remote work. In 2019, the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley metropolitan area, which consists of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties, was second only to metropolitan New York City in the percentage of employed people who travel to work primarily by public transportation, at 18.9%. It then experienced the steepest drop in that percentage among the top public transportation metros, with its transit share falling to just 4.9% in 2021, behind Boston-Cambridge and even the great metropolis of Ithaca, New York.

The other metropolitan area through which I traveled, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara — also known as Santa Clara County or, roughly, Silicon Valley — had only a 1.1% transit share in 2021, down from 4.7% in 2019. And yes, the people in the Ride MPK bus count as public transportation users in these statistics, which are from the American Community Survey conducted annually by the US Census Bureau. Respondents are supposed to check “bus” if that’s the main way they got to work and not asked whether that bus was public or private.

What drove commuting by transit down was mainly a huge increase in working from home, with the percentage of workers doing so jumping to about 35% last year in both the San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas from 7.2% and 4.8%, respectively, in 2019, higher than in any other large US metro area, and topping 45% in parts of San Francisco, San Jose and some suburbs.

Here’s complete(ish) transit ridership data through June of this year for the entire nine-county San Francisco Bay Area, which encompasses the two metropolitan areas already mentioned as well as three smaller ones along the north side of the bay: Santa Rosa, Napa and Vallejo.

Bay Area bus ridership in June was 62% of what it was before the pandemic in June 2019, and ferry ridership was 56%. Rail ridership was at only 35%. That’s because trains in the Bay Area were used mainly by white-collar commuters, and of course they were the ones most able to stop commuting and work from home. Another way to see this is by transit agency, of which there are reputedly 27 in the Bay Area (a trio of San Francisco Chronicle journalists tried to ride as many as they could the day after my journey and made it on to 17), although only 16 appear to report ridership data to the Federal Transit Administration.(1)

Commuter-focused rail services BART and Caltrain have experienced the steepest ridership declines since 2019. Golden Gate Transit, which operates ferries and intercounty commuter buses, is next. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Bay Area Vanpool, which subsidizes and helps bring together groups of people commuting together with unpaid drivers, has been the only service to report an increase in ridership. Apart from that, agencies focused on local bus service have generally done best, with Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) an exception that can probably be explained by the fact that it only went into full service in August 2017 and people were still figuring out that it existed in June 2019. (It was certainly a surprise to me when I encountered a station on my walk from Larkspur to San Rafael.)

The ridership recovery at BART and especially Caltrain has also lagged behind those at other commuter-oriented rail operations across the country such as New Jersey Transit and the Washington Metro.

These numbers are through July (the Bay Area transit charts stop at June because the National Transit Database didn’t have any July numbers for AC Transit). Since then, some large Bay Area corporations have been leaning harder on employees to come into the office at least two or three days a week, and daily BART statistics show that September ridership was back to about 40% of normal at midweek and more than 60% of normal on weekends. (And, yes, tickets were half price in September, but so far October doesn’t seem much different.) Here’s how that stacks up against the rail services operated by New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is also nice enough to report daily ridership stats.

So far BART, the MTA and other transit agencies nationwide have been able to keep running despite the ridership declines thanks to almost $70 billion in federal pandemic aid. But starting in the middle of next year, they will face a financial reckoning, and it turns out BART and Caltrain are among the most vulnerable large US transit agencies because, before the pandemic, fares covered almost three-quarters of their operating expenses. The following chart is adapted from a recent analysis of the looming public transportation fiscal cliff by Garett Shrode of the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington. It shows all the US transit agencies that had (1) operating expenses of $100 million or more in 2019 and (2) farebox revenue that covered 40% or more of those expenses.

The New York City subway, by the way, had a farebox recovery rate of 70% in 2019; buses dragged NYC Transit’s score down to 53%. The largest transit agency with the lowest farebox recovery in 2019 was the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, at 15%. The San Francisco Muni was fourth lowest, at 23%. LA Metro, which I rode on and wrote about in February, is a bus-focused operation that caters to a much poorer ridership than Caltrain or BART, and this is to a lesser extent true of SF Muni as well. These agencies provide essential services, and their lower farebox recovery rates aren’t necessarily a sign of failure. But it does seem a little perverse that Caltrain and BART, the two large US transit agencies that have been most successful in getting riders to pay the bills, now face perhaps the most dire budget outlook.

One way to remedy that, of course, would be to get more riders. Barring a spectacular reversal of the work-from-home trend, this will require bringing aboard more non-commuters, and there are big obstacles to that. I can report from ample personal experience that BART is the most efficient way to travel at rush hour from Lafayette, the East Bay suburb where I grew up, to downtown San Francisco and back. At other times of the day, and between other destinations in the Bay Area, a car will usually get you there quicker. The region experienced most of its growth after the arrival of the automobile and is thus laid out to favor car transport over other modes — as is true of all but a few US metropolitan areas.

California is in the early stages of a bold effort to change this by forcing its cities and suburbs to become denser, adopting legislation that allows homeowners in most of the state to add dwelling units to existing homes as well as divide their lots in two and build duplexes on each lot. It also streamlines housing approvals in commercially zoned areas and bans local governments from requiring parking spaces for residential and commercial developments within half a mile of major transit stops, among other things. If you squint, it’s possible to see a future in which many more Bay Area residents can walk to transit. And, let’s be honest, getting places by car is much more of a hassle.

In the meantime, the simplest way to make transit more convenient outside of rush hour is to increase its frequency. Low ridership and budgetary pressures are pushing Bay Area transit agencies in the opposite direction, but the data showing a much stronger recovery in ridership on weekends rather than weekdays at BART and the New York commuter railroads indicate that some schedule rejiggering away from peak commuting hours to other periods might entice new riders — as well as save money, given that peak service costs more to provide than off-peak does.

Report chilly on faucet for San Francisco Bay Space after rain and snow break area’s lengthy dry spell

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 02:34:16 +0000

LATEST Feb 22, 5:25 pm A cold front that finally brought rain into the Bay Area on Tuesday had another surprise: snow and hail.

There were several reports Tuesday afternoon of hail in the East Bay, including in Oakland and San Ramon.

No that’s not snow! We have received several reports of #hail falling all across the East Bay, here’s what it looked like in San Ramon. According to ABC7 Meteorologist @DrewTumaABC7 our best chance for hail is now until 8 pm Latest on winter #storm here: https://t.co/n3QBk9wFzc pic.twitter.com/MVeRP9m9lC

— LiveDoppler7 (@LiveDoppler7) February 23, 2022

There was also seen snow falling near Dublin.

Snow falling now near Dublin! pic.twitter.com/83DXqd2Ddo

— Mike Nicco (@MikeNiccoABC7) February 22, 2022

Feb 22, 1 pm The San Francisco Bay Area could have its coldest night of the year after scattered rain showers passed through the region on Monday, ending a 44-day dry streak for the region.

The National Weather Service’s Bay Area office announced Tuesday that a “freeze warning” is in effect for the interior areas of the Bay Area, the North Bay, and the Central Coast overnight, with freezing temperatures expected in these areas between 2 am on Wednesday and 9 am on Friday.

Sub-freezing temperatures are expected during the overnight & early morning hours over the next several days. A Freeze Warning is in effect for interior areas. Take action now to prepare and check on those without adequate access to shelter, including your pets. #CAwx #BayAreaWX pic.twitter.com/mfLJxk3Ny3

— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) February 22, 2022

Temperatures could fall into the mid-20s to low 30s in some areas. NWS forecaster Brayden Murdoch says the NWS is looking at temperatures hitting as low as 28 degrees in some areas, which, he says, signifies a “hard freeze.” A hard freeze can destroy plants, damage unprotected outdoor equipment and be a danger to people.

The NWS noted Santa Rosa and Gilroy might break record lows overnight. ABC 7 forecaster Drew Tuma also pointed out on Twitter that the low in San Francisco may drop to 39 degrees, which would be the coldest temperature in the city in the past six years.

If San Francisco drops to 39°, it’ll be the coldest night in more than 6 years. We have a chance to drop that low tonight and tomorrow night

— Drew Tuma (@DrewTumaABC7) February 22, 2022

In anticipation of the hard freeze, the weather service warns people to take action now “and check on those without adequate access to shelter, including your pets.”

“This will not be just one night of colder temperatures, but several nights in a row,” the NWS said.

A view of the fresh snowfall at Palisades Tahoe on Feb. 22, 2022. Up to a foot of snow fell on the slopes of Palisades Tahoe from the most recent storm.

Palidades Tahoe

Feb 22, 11 am While San Francisco got its first rain in weeks on Monday night, a storm rolled into the Lake Tahoe region and delivered the first significant snow in weeks. South Tahoe Now reports that many ski areas got a foot of snow overnight. The site also reports that “another 2-5″ of snow at lake level is possible by the time the weather system exits tonight.”

Here are some of the overnight snow totals:

Heavenly — 12″

Kirkwood — 7″

Mount Rose — 12-14″

North Star — 13″

Palisades — 12″

A view of the fresh snowfall at Palisades Tahoe on Feb. 22, 2022. Up to a foot of snow fell on the slopes of Palisades Tahoe from the most recent storm.

Kate Abraham/Palidades Tahoe

Feb 22, 6:30 am Isolated showers fell through parts of the Bay Area overnight, the National Weather Service reported, ending a 44-day streak of zero precipitation from January 8 through February 20. NWS forecaster Brayden Murdoch told SFGate that “this is fairly light” but everyone in the Bay Area should get a little.

But given the long dry spell, even a little rain prompted some serious enthusiasm from the weather service, including a video posted on Twitter that celebrated the glorious .004″ of rain that fell in San Francisco.

Happy 2-22-22! If you can’t tell we’re pretty excited by the rain Here’s the most recent radar loop showing scattered showers and high elevation snow showers. Showers will continue through the day with an afternoon tstorm possible. #cawx pic.twitter.com/PjlpTrzXHR

— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) February 22, 2022

The weather service says the showers “will continue through the day with an afternoon ‘thunderstorm’ possible.”

The post Report chilly on faucet for San Francisco Bay Space after rain and snow break area’s lengthy dry spell appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

‘Sure’ — Climate Service Response To In a single day Showers; 44-Day Dry Spell Ends – CBS San Francisco

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 15:33:20 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — It may have been less than a shot glass, but the 0.01 inches of rain that fell late Monday night in San Francisco broke a 44-day streak of zero precipitation dating back to January 8th.

There was a one-word reaction on the National Weather Service’s twitter page.

yes

YES!#CAwx pic.twitter.com/3O4cZFRWal

— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) February 22, 2022

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While showers were light in the Bay Area, the front was pelting the Sierra with a snowstorm that could dump as much as a foot at the higher elevations. Chain controls were in place early Tuesday in the high passes on Highway 50 and I-80.

Chances for even more rainfall will linger over the San Francisco Bay Area throughout the day as the a layer of cold, unstable air floats over the region.

“Isolated to scattered rain showers persist over the region this morning within the cold, unstable air mass aloft,” the weather service said. “These rain showers are likely to continue through today before diminishing from north to south late tonight and into early Wednesday morning.”

The unstable air could trigger brief hail storms and lightning — a fire threat in the hills dried out during the dry spell.

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“There’s going to be a lot of cold air in the upper levels of the atmosphere. That increases how unstable the atmosphere is, which increases the threat of cloud-to-ground lightning,” explained First Alert Chief Meteorologist Paul Heggen. “The unstable environment, coupled with the cold air, will also allow some small hail to fall out of any showers that manage to become thunderstorms.”

The Monterey area will get the most rain, according to the weather service, about half an inch in the Santa Lucia Range.

Once the rain showers wind down Tuesday evening, cold temperatures will take over for the rest of the week. Most of the North Bay is under a Freeze Watch for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings. That’s likely to be upgraded to Freeze Warning, as temperatures will drop to the mid to upper 20s in the early mornings.

Other inland parts of the Bay Area will drop to near freezing, which will prompt a Frost Advisory. Bay Area residents are advised to take care to protect sensitive vegetation and outdoor plumbing, and make sure outdoor pets have a warm place to shelter.

“The coldest temperatures will likely occur Thursday morning when lows drop into the mid 20 in the coldest portions of the North Bay Valleys and interior Monterey County,” the weather service warned.

Later in the week, dry conditions will return.

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“High pressure over the eastern Pacific will build back toward the California coast late in the week and into the upcoming weekend,” the weather service said. “This will result in a slight warming trend and return to dry weather conditions. Longer range guidance suggest a return to unsettled conditions early next week, yet rainfall does not look overly impressive.”

The post ‘Sure’ — Climate Service Response To In a single day Showers; 44-Day Dry Spell Ends – CBS San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.