In 2011, after months of analysis, VTA identified an optimal project for BRT on El Camino Real. The optimal project balanced transit benefit with cost, project impacts and the likelihood of receiving federal funding. The optimal project would have installed BRT infrastructure between Palo Alto and Downtown San Jose—including the conversion of 10.3 miles of the two median travel lanes into dedicated BRT lanes between Showers Drive in Mountain View and Lafayette Street in Santa Clara. The portions of the corridor west of Showers Drive and east of Lafayette Street would not have dedicated lanes and BRT vehicles would operate in the travel lane with cars.
In the spring of 2012, VTA asked city councils to take an official action on the optimal project. San Jose and Santa Clara endorsed the project. Sunnyvale rejected it and Mountain View and Los Altos have indicated opposition—all three cities indicated a preference for a street configuration where the BRT vehicles operate in the right lane with cars.
Without the possibility of dedicated lanes in Sunnyvale and likely not in Mountain View or Los Altos, it became clear that the optimal project was not politically feasible and that VTA should pursue other BRT options on El Camino Real that are compatible with the cities’ visions for the corridor. This brings up several questions:
- At some point, having a minimal amount of dedicated lanes (about three miles in Santa Clara out of 17 miles total) makes the project not that different from current service. Is it worth the cost or would it be better to put the project on hold until political support for more miles of dedicated BRT lanes arises?
- It’s always nice to spend other people’s money, but the fewer miles of dedicated BRT lanes the project has, the less likely it is to receive federal funding. If the entire project has to be funded with local Measure A funds, is it worth it? Would those funds be better spent on other transit projects like BART, light rail and other BRT routes?
- Santa Clara and San Jose developed plans for transit-oriented corridors and acted on those plans by endorsing the optimal project. Should their progressive actions go unrecognized due to the decisions made by their western neighbors?
- Would building a mixed-flow configuration in Mountain View, Los Altos and Sunnyvale preclude future development of dedicated lanes?
- Should the project only be built in Santa Clara and San Jose with no changes in Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos and Sunnyvale? This would mean that two methods of fare collection and boarding would exist on the same route—off-board fare collection and all-door boarding east of Halford Ave and slower, on-board fare collection and single-door boarding west of Halford Ave. Would that be too confusing?
After analyzing the remaining project possibilities, the BRT Project Team has come to support a revised project that installs dedicated BRT lanes in Santa Clara between Halford Ave and Lafayette Street and mixed-flow infrastructure between Palo Alto and Sunnyvale as well as in San Jose. While the transit improvement will not be as great as the optimal project, the revised project would have many virtues:
- It would be a good transit improvement along VTA’s highest ridership route that is politically feasible and could be in operation as early as 2017.
- It would construct the longest segment of dedicated BRT lanes in Santa Clara County.
- It would bring the western portion of the 522 corridor up to BRT status (the portion east of Downtown San Jose will be operational in August of 2014).
- It would recognize Santa Clara and San Jose’s commitment to planning for transit.
- It is projected to travel faster, increase ridership and cost less to operate, which would decrease VTA’s operating costs.
- Fewer dedicated lanes means a lower project cost. The optimal project was projected to cost $240 million. The revised project could be about half that.
- Recent changes in federal funding structures separate majority dedicated lane BRT projects from other BRT projects, potentially making the revised project more competitive than it would have been just last month.
- If Mountain View, Los Altos and Sunnyvale change their mind about wanting dedicated lanes after seeing them in action in Santa Clara, dedicated lanes could be built incrementally with a minimal sunk cost as curbside stations could be relocated to medians.
To be clear, the revised project described above is a staff recommendation. The decision about which BRT project—if any—VTA will pursue through environmental study and the Caltrans review process will be made by VTA’s Board of Directors in the coming months. A Board of Directors Workshop to discuss the BRT program is scheduled for September 21. Members of the public are welcome to provide questions and comments at the Board Workshop. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to contribute in the comments below or email us at valley.rapid@vta.org.
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El Camino Real is not the problem. 85, 237, 880, 680, 280, 205, 80, and etc. are the problem! You need to build mass rapid transport an public domain along these corridors, with ample ability to transfer from car to Rapid Transit at the remote termini. Then people would welcome the opportunity to play with their iPad instead of driving in congested slow moving traffic. The El Camino approach is only feasible after you have gotten people from Fresno, Modesto, Stockton, and Sacramento into the Bay area.
After getting people here a transport system, such as cars2go, or pedicabs is needed to get people from the bay area termini to their workplaces and homes. Useable mass transit has to connect every distant terminus with both home and office in the Bay Area. I.e., it has to connect everything in the bay area to everything else in the Bay Area.
You can start with mass transit along one route such as 680 to create demand. Or you can start the system to connect everything to everything within the Bay Area. One will create the demand for the other. Once people can get around without their car in the Bay area you will accomplish something. Cars2go should be able to create its own market in the Bay Area without massive government funding. Pedicabs can also be independent franchises (Example: Austin, TX). Government has to “enable” these independent enterprises. Pedal cabs in Sunnyvale would likely find a market for taking workers to restaurants and to the train stations. It can start small and grow. Instead of a massive project likely doomed to failure, small enterprises can grow from the ground up and correct their mistakes as they go. Tourists will take pictures of our pedicabs and cars2go. Perhaps a few horsedrawn carriages can be thrown in for tourists.
Don’t fight this by citing problems with conflicting jurisdictions. That’s a strawman. That’s the problem that we elect representatives to solve. Mass transit is a system problem and it has to be solved as a system problem. Think big — just don’t mess up El Camino for me. Also think small — like cars2go and pedicabs, nobodies’ approval may be needed for them.
If you cram the El Camino project down people’s throats you may be surprised at how angry all of us who live a few blocks or more from El Camino will become. People are angry and upset with government now — just wait and see how much angrier they can get when you screw up their daily errends.
We need protected bike lanes, first. Let’s get that done before we go prioritizing motorized transit over non-motorized even more than it already is.
@ Peter Smith
There is no reason why bike lane improvements cannot be completed simultaneously with upgrade to BRT. This is not an either/or proposition.
I think that it’s important that VTA continue working on this project. El Camino Real is the most heavily used VTA line, and even a small improvement in travel time would be vast when multiplied by the enormous numbers of people riding the buses on El Camino (more than 20,000 a day between the current local and rapid service). It’s also important as a symbolic move and as a demonstration, to demonstrate to the community what rapid transit can mean. Once rapid transit has proven itself in Santa Clara and San José, citizens who take transit will want to see it in their own communities.
One advantage to using BRT as a technology on this project is that it can be built and operated in stages. Also, since most riders travel quite a ways on the line, improvements in Santa Clara and San José will benefit not only the residents of those communities but also all those who travel through them. Even for people who travel outside that area, it would still be a boon because it would reduce delays in a congested area, thus bringing the buses closer to on-time all along the line.
This shouldn’t be seen as just a transit project, either. Part of this project is to improve things for the nonmotorized modes in the cities it passes through, through a better pedestrian environment, safer crossings, easier access to transit (whether the already-existing local or the new Rapid) and possible bicycle improvements.
Also, this is an economic development project. Most transit users walk when they get to their destinations; having people walking creates economic opportunity because walkers are travelling at speeds such that they can easily and spontaneously enter a local business. Also, as Jane Jacobs pointed out in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, having people on the streets, especially at times throughout the day, contributes to a safer environment for everybody by having many people passively supervising the streets. Also, by attracting greater numbers of pedestrians, it is safer to be a pedestrian simply because drivers are more likely to be expecting pedestrians. Whether Valley Rapid attracts pedestrians through transit or simply through creating a more pleasant pedestrian environment, the effects will be positive.
These more localized benefits won’t necessarily benefit the whole region per se, but they will provide two critical things: first of all, they will be a demonstration of what rapid transit can bring; second of all, they will provide benefits to residents of other communities who chose to visit the communities catalyzed by the project.
VTA should be careful with the branding, however, and not dilute the Valley Rapid brand. I’m not arguing that the El Camino buses should not be called Valley Rapid—name proliferation is also a problem. However, if the Valley Rapid-branded vehicles are seen at the west end of the corridor running the same service patterns as existing transit service, when there is a later upgrade anywhere in the system people may be skeptical and see it only as a branding change. Jarrett Walker wrote: “if we eliminate some features of the brand, does the brand still signify a distinct product that does what it claims to do?” I think in this case it can, but we must be careful not to make Valley Rapid too broad a brand.
I don’t think the disparate fare systems are necessarily a problem, and I’m not convinced that two are needed. If Clipper card readers were installed at the rear doors, any rider with a Clipper card or valid pass (monthly, daily or Eco Pass) could board at any door. Riders needing to pay cash could still board at the front (and perhaps pay a higher fare to persuade them to switch to Clipper). Fare enforcement could be handled with fare inspectors, as it would be on the dedicated part of the route. Ticket vending machines could be installed at critical transfer points even outside of the dedicated section, further speeding boarding. San Francisco has implemented this all-door boarding and proof of payment system on its local buses already, so it is definitely doable.
Lastly, in Los Ángeles, the Metro Rapid has no dedicated right of way and has still been wildly successful, showing what is possible with transit in a diverse urban environment. By providing some dedicated right-of-way, this project can start tending towards true rapid transit.
Also, even without dedicated lanes outside of San José and Santa Clara, this project will increase the frequency of the Rapid buses from 15 to 10 minutes, making the service easier to use without a timetable. This is especially important given that the Rapid is headway-scheduled, meaning the bus does not wait at timepoints. Knowing that there will be a bus within 10 minutes makes it much easier to abandon the schedule and use transit as you would use other forms of transportation, not structuring your trip, day or life around it. Of course, having fewer miles of dedicated lanes means it costs VTA more to operate a bus because they pay drivers per hour not per mile, so traveling faster means reduced operating cost and more available funds for additional service, and fewer dedicated lanes mean it will be more expensive to operate at high frequencies, as Jarrett Walker has often pointed out.
So, to summarize, the project is still potentially viable. Even with just a few miles of dedicated lanes, it can still speed travel times of anyone traveling through that section and can reduce schedule uncertainty for other travelers. Other, more localized, benefits will serve as examples to the community and will also serve to create destinations. The fare policy issue can be addressed without having two completely separate fare policies. And this project will improve the frequency of the existing Rapid bus, making it more useful.