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For transbay bus riders, it seems like a fantasy: A dedicated lane across the Bay Bridge to free their chariots from traffic.
For Bay Bridge drivers already enduring one of the region’s worst commutes, losing one of those five lanes seems like the stuff of nightmares.
New research from the Bay Area’s congestion management agency indicates that reserving a lane across the span for buses would make the fears of car drivers come true — but wouldn’t deliver the relief bus riders are hoping for.
It would save “less than five minutes” on morning trips into San Francisco, said Randy Rentschler, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, citing a forthcoming study the agency is working on. Typically, Rentschler said, “The bridge is not the problem.”
If you really want to speed those buses up, he said, more effective plans are already in the works to streamline the gridlock to and from the bridge by expanding bus and carpool lanes on East Bay freeways.
Dedicated lanes that free buses from car traffic are one of the changes planners say the Bay Area needs to embrace if it’s going to reverse declining public transportation ridership and reduce the traffic and carbon emissions cars cause. But the idea often faces stiff resistance from car drivers who fear the change only means less space and more traffic for them.
The idea of reviving the bus-only lane that spanned the Bay Bridge for a short time decades ago seems to come up every few years. This time around it attracted interest from a raft of Bay Area mayors, legislators and transit advocates after Oakland Assemblymember Rob Bonta pledged to look into the concept.
today i learned that in 1962 there was a bus lane on the bay bridge for @rideact; ridership was up 12.8% year-over-year and travel time across the bridge went from 25 minutes to 12 – 13 minutes
it was removed a year later because the lane was “needed for general auto traffic” pic.twitter.com/74gy1W69cN
— chris arvin (@chrisarvinsf) October 11, 2019
The idea is a long way from becoming reality, with a lot more studying and planning — not to mention political will — needed before Bay Bridge commuters see any change.
Still, several bus riders said they were on board.
“It makes such a great difference for the toll plaza that it would be great to extend it,” said Christina Sherby, who rides an AC Transit bus from her home in Oakland to her job in San Francisco.
The boards of AC Transit, which runs about 600 transbay bus trips each day, and BART, which is bursting at the seams each morning with commuters on San Francisco-bound trains, each passed resolutions last week supporting a bus-only lane.
“It will allow more frequent, reliable and faster service, contributing substantially to the quality of transbay service,” read the resolution AC Transit’s board approved unanimously, which noted that “concern about the effect of bus-only lanes on auto traffic have made it impossible to go forward to date.”
But drivers aren’t thrilled at the prospect of further squeezing Bay Bridge car traffic down to four lanes instead of five.
“It will make everything worse,” said Robert Greenberg, a musician who crosses the bridge occasionally to perform in San Francisco.
Reducing the bridge’s car capacity by a lane would mean even worse traffic if drivers keep driving. If they do what transit advocates hope and switch to taking public transit, bus agencies and BART would need to provide substantially more service to accommodate thousands of new riders — which wouldn’t be cheap.
“We need 10 more lanes, not to take them away,” Greenberg said.
What would it look like?
As it stands now, buses coming from the East Bay have dedicated lanes that let them cruise past backups at the Bay Bridge toll plaza and metering lights. They rejoin regular car traffic for the five-mile trip across the bridge, then bypass congested San Francisco city streets thanks to a bus-only off-ramp into the Salesforce Transit Center.
It’s not clear what a bus lane between the metering lights and the transit center exit might look like.
Previous iterations of the proposal have called for a “contra-flow” lane during rush hour, which in the morning would allow westbound buses to drive on the bridge’s lower deck with a barrier to separate them from the lighter eastbound car traffic, and vice-versa for the evening commute.
Another option would be to convert one of the lanes in each direction to a diamond lane for carpools and buses. Or the lane could be reserved for buses, pushing all car traffic into the remaining four lanes.
Jerome Parra, a spokesman for Bonta, said his office is still researching the idea and “figuring out if it’s a good move” before potentially introducing legislation to kickstart the planning process.
The decision will ultimately come down to Caltrans, which has not weighed in either for or against the idea.
“We would evaluate traffic impacts and potential improvements on the bridge, its approaches and the region” before deciding whether to create a bus-only lane, spokesman Bart Ney wrote in an email. The agency would also seek public input about the change, and consult with the MTC and other local transportation groups.
“We would need to evaluate if we could provide enough buses to accommodate the amount of automobiles being replaced in this mode shift,” Ney added.
Jams lead to bridge
Even if the time savings from a dedicated lane across the bridge are small, Carter Lavin — an occasional transbay bus rider who suggested the idea to Bonta in an exchange on Facebook — said it could be worth it if thousands more bridge commuters are taking transit.
Having a dedicated lane would also make bus trips more reliable, Lavin posited, since riders wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught in the backup from the fender-benders and breakdowns that occasionally snarl bridge commutes.
.@CarterLavin and @RobBontaCA are awesome and I really hope we can make a bus only lane on the Bay Bridge happen! It would be huge for transbay transit riders. pic.twitter.com/cUt9pVTdGA
— Rebecca Saltzman (@RebeccaForBART) January 4, 2020
“People would love to get out of their cars and get onto a bus that zips across the bridge,” Lavin said.
Rentschler, the MTC spokesman, said the commission plans to release its study of the bus lane idea next month.
He said the commission’s research shows the delays for buses are worst on the approaches to the dedicated lanes they take through the toll plaza, because the coaches get stuck in stop-and-go car traffic that backs up well before those entrances. Rentschler said researchers are also looking into whether a bus lane could save more time for afternoon riders leaving San Francisco, because there are no metering lights to control eastbound traffic.
MTC officials are pushing for fixes to extend bus and carpool lanes approaching the bridge on Interstate 580 and West Grand Avenue in Oakland. They also want to make the trip faster for buses coming from Powell Street in Emeryville, which today can’t access the long flyover lane that carries buses along Interstate 80 to the toll plaza.
Oakland attorney Chantal Jenkins said the bus she takes to work in San Francisco regularly creeps up Grand Avenue on its way to a short bus lane through the toll plaza. She was a fan of the MTC’s proposal to extend the street’s bus lane by nearly a mile along its shoulder.
“Once you get on the bridge it’s usually much easier,” Jenkins said. As for a bus lane beyond that, she said, “I don’t know how much more it would do.”
