Pandemic uncertainty should pause transit, highway expansion
If readers have been to San Francisco’s old Financial District lately they will have no difficulty finding metered street parking, lunch reservations are never needed and they’ll see mostly empty high-rise office buildings.
It’s the same across the country, even as the pandemic is hopefully winding down. White-collar employees are taking advantage of being allowed to work from remote locations for the bulk of the week.
On a recent visit to New York City, I traveled on a Wednesday at midday — prime commuting time — via New Jersey Transit to meet a friend. My destination was Hamilton, New Jersey, located in the Garden State’s south-central quadrant. When emerging from the train station, I faced a parking lot similar in size to that at Larkspur’s Ferry Terminal. With the exception of 15 or so cars, the facility was empty. On past visits, spaces were filled with cars of commuters headed to jobs in Philadelphia or metro New York.
Golden Gate Bridge auto crossings overall have decreased by 20% from early 2020. The decline is far more pronounced during the hours North Bay workers traditionally commute to San Francisco employment. During those Monday to Friday times, transGolden Gate travel decreased by 35%. That‘s a rough metric of the changes in the North Bay commute wrought by the pandemic.
The peak travel day across the Golden Gate Bridge is no longer a weekday but on Saturdays. Weekend motorists aren’t typically headed to jobs. These are mostly recreation-minded travelers eager to leave their houses and enjoy our region’s plentiful outdoor amenities. It’s no surprise Golden Gate Ferry patronage from Larkspur to the Giants ballpark boomed during this baseball season. The negative implications to office building owners, city-centered retail shops and downtown eateries are obvious.
The trend is mitigated by booming neighborhood and small-town main streets both in the city and in suburban counties including Marin.
No one has an accurate forecast to determine if this work-from-home phenomenon becomes permanent. It’ll take at least another two years for a “new normal” to emerge. It is safe to say that, to an unknown extent, Bay Area travel patterns will permanently change.
That makes it impossible for public transit and mobility planners to make long-term infrastructure decisions. There’s no certainty of knowing, after the pandemic, when or where large numbers of people will be traveling or what mode of transportation will be preferred. It will take at least four years.
The lesson is that transit extensions or capacity expansion plans now on the drawing board should pause by being placed on hold until 2025.
In the North Bay, that pause should include the proposed reconfiguration of downtown San Rafael’s Bettini Transportation Center. The extension of SMART’s train tracks north of Windsor to Healdsburg and Cloverdale should also be paused, as well as instituting rail service linking SMART in South Novato with Vallejo and Solano County.
By 2025 travel patterns will be clear and SMART’s management and Board of Directors will have ample opportunity to prove the train’s worth to Marinites and Sonomans.
That’s essential if a ballot measure with a twothirds supermajority is to pass, continuing the one-quarter cent sales tax which funds SMART. If that measure fails, North Bay rail commuting will cease operation after 2029 when the current tax expires. If that’s the upshot, expansions to Northern Sonoma County or Vallejo will be a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The logic of a pause in transit and highway expansion applies statewide.
Instead, Californians should spend the next three or four years concentrating public funds and efforts on problems that are known now and won’t go away. That includes upgrading water supply infrastructure, devising effective approaches to the homeless crisis, and preparing for inevitable natural disasters including wildland fire, earthquakes and sea level rise.