Bay Area Diaries — Part III: Golden Gate Transit

What gives the city identity beyond mere municipal boundaries and civic government? Unique icons. Great cities, in time and space, have an element that could be either manmade or natural, but the presence of it is singular enough to become so closely associated with the area and its people. It’s something that one city has that no other can authentically claim. Every city has at least one.

New York City has the Empire State Building. Seattle has the Space Needle. Los Angeles has the Hollywood sign.

Each of these cities obviously has more architectural and natural features that also contribute to a sort of metropolitan image association. San Francisco has many as well. Sanfran has a distinct architectural style of houses that immediately leaps out and gives away its location. Other towering structures uniquely Sanfran are the Transamerica Building, which serves as the company’s logo, and Coit Tower. Sanfran also has monuments that double as modes of transportation: cable cars, responsible for transporting thousands per day and improving sales of Rice-a-Roni. But Sanfran’s most iconic landmark has size, span and sensory stimulation.

Nothing in San Francisco is more iconic than the Golden Gate Bridge.

We know the bridge is one of mankind’s engineering marvels. We know thousands travel between Sanfran and the North Bay, and many more visit it for the perfect photograph or vacation video. What’s not as well known, probably because it doesn’t have much visual appeal and because the forest is more interesting than the sum of its trees, is that the Golden Gate Bridge has a posse.

Golden Gate is not just a bridge. It’s a bus company as well.

And a ferry service.

Let’s ride across the Golden Gate Bridge using the structure’s own coach service.

The bridge, under the authority of a state-created special district, has three divisions. Two of them pertain to transporting passengers who do not drive across the bridge. One of the district’s divisions is Golden Gate Transit, a bus service with operations serving three counties. It’s complicated to explain Golden Gate’s bus functions, but the L.A. equivalent would be a love child of LADOT’s Commuter Express and Foothill Transit’s El Monte Busway services.

Most of Golden Gate Transit’s fleet of buses is idle for a large part of the day. The bulk of service is dedicated to commuter express buses heading into San Francisco in the morning and out to Marin and Sonoma Counties in the afternoon. Is that all? Fortunately, no. Unfortunately, what little service exists outside of rush hours can be charitably described as brutally, unpleasantly slow that the experience of crossing the bridge doesn’t adequately compensate.

The “basic” services that run off-peak are lines that end in “0″. The spine of the Golden Gate Transit operation are lines 70/71/80. These three services run along US-101 between the San Francisco Civic Center to Novato or northern Santa Rosa. A full-length trip on Line 80 runs about three hours. One way.

Asking locals about their experiences riding a basic route, they rattled off their loathing of the service, prefacing their answer with a facial expresson that looks like they had just chewed broken glass. So just how bad is a ride like that?

If there’s an answer, it’s not going to be in this entry. Part III of the Bay Area Diaries chronicles trips made on two commuter trips between San Francisco and Santa Rosa, north on Line 72 on January 15 and south on Line 73 on January 17.

Northern passage

Line 72 arrives in front of the Transbay Terminal.

The north 72 trip departed Fremont and First streets at 3:40 p.m. This was the single busiest stop in San Francisco. A few people had been aboard MCI #643, but 20 passengers boarded outside of the Transbay Terminal. A few others boarded along Sansome Street in the Financial District, with no boardings along North Point Avenue. Almost all passengers are regulars. Most paid with discount tickets, and four people used the Bay Area’s equivalent of TAP, TransLink. One poor sap paid the maximum $8.40 one-way cash fare.

This early afternoon 72 trip had a respectable 30 passengers. Line 72 is a commuter route that runs nonstop between San Francisco and Rohnert Park, then exits US-101 and serves local stops in Rohnert Park and Santa Rosa. All but 7 passengers exited in Rohnert Park, and the bus emptied at the Transit Mall. Northbound buses do not turn into the street. The bus arrived about two hours later, reasonably close to its schedule.

Some sights to behold, all from the windows of a Golden Gate Transit bus. Above is the span of the Golden Gate Bridge, as seen from San Francisco. Below, a windshield-eye view of the bridge’s San Francisco end. And should anyone ask why there are no hands visible on the steering wheel, the bus was not self-propelled. The driver was a leprechaun, though.

Southern crossing

The pickings were slim for people who aren’t morning persons. For a city of its size, Santa Rosa has a surprising amount of options for leaving the city. The quantity doesn’t make up for the quality. Here’s the dealt hand:

• Line 72. Pro: San Francisco in 2 hours. Con: Last trip leaves too early in the morning.
• Line 72X. Pro: Even faster than Line 72. Con: Does not serve downtown Santa Rosa, therefore it’s not an option.
• Line 73. Pro: Slower than 72, but still about 30-45 minutes faster than Line 80. Con: The last trip at 7:20 a.m. is still very early.
• Line 80. Pro: It’s there. Con: It’s there.
• Amtrak Thruway bus. Pro: Faster than any Golden Gate Transit bus on its best day. Con: Train connection is in Martinez, and it’s another 1-2 hours into San Francisco. Also, the bus fare is $14.
• Sonoma County Airport Express. Pro: Also faster than Golden Gate Transit, relatively frequent service, and serves San Francisco and Oakland airports for BART connections. Con: The most expensive option, at $28 one way. Also, BART ride back into San Francisco makes overall trip as slow as Line 80.
• Greyhound. Pro: It’s there, and mimics Line 80 but finishes the trip in half the time. Con: Only one trip per day, in the afternoon.

The pig with the prettiest lipstick was Line 73. It still left very early, at 7:20 a.m., and took about 2 hours, 20 minutes into San Francisco, but it was good enough.

Golden Gate Transit Line 73 arrives at the Santa Rosa Transit Mall. It was only a few years ago Golden Gate Transit made the leap into the late 1970s and began to spec their buses with electronic headsigns. Most of the fleet, including MCI #646, still has rollsigns. On the rear, the bus line number is displayed in figure-8 calculator digits.

This trip had 40 people boarding throughout Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park and Petaluma. MCI #646 was three-fourths full. This bus, like 72, draws a fair amount of riders from diverse backgrounds. These express buses draw Financial District office workers, a few students, and many other working Joes and Janes who must ride for over 2 hours each way to make ends meet.

The choice pastime among most riders, as on similar express buses in L.A. and elsewhere, is sleep. The early rise and long trip is offset by a good chance to catch a few Zs. The buses had a smooth suspension, and the large reclining seats make catnaps tolerable. Unlike commuter rail services, where riders tend to engage in conversation and the atmosphere is more lively, the buses were hushed. Bay Area riders showed some good manners and refrained from using cell phones. The few who remained awake used the time to catch up on iPod listening.

Line 73 was noticeably slower, not only because it stopped in Petaluma, but also because it took the slower approach into San Francisco, via Van Ness Avenue through the Civic Center and east on Mission Street. Small numbers of passengers alight every few blocks, and the bus must struggle to get out of the stop. Going through the Financial District is definitely faster. Line 73 arrived in front of the Transbay Terminal at around 9:35 a.m.

The Golden Gate Transit MCI moons the camera on Mission Street outside of the Transbay Terminal as it nears the end of a 2+ hour trip. If the MCI is not immediately visible in the photo, road crews painted a helpful caption on Mission. One of the best reasons for taking a bus in Sanfran is not having to deal with The City’s ornery traffic laws. For instance, at Fremont Street, drivers are allowed to turn as long as it’s neither right nor left.

Over two hours each way, just on one bus, was tiresome. According to Google Maps, the routes are about 55 miles each way, an extremely long commuting distance. Golden Gate, to its credit, has the nicest bus fleet in the Bay Area. MCIs, being long-distance coaches, are the plushest buses for commuter service. Even the RTS and Orion warhorses have comfortable suburban bus amenities. Bus fares, depending on distance traveled, compare favorably with the Bridge’s $5 toll and are more than competitive when Sanfran’s parking prices are factored in. Nevertheless, the run times need to come down, and fast.

Is there a SMARTer way?

There are two major obstacles, though. One is Golden Gate Transit itself. The District, per its charter by the state legislature, cannot run a public transit service. It sounds contradictory, but those green buses and ferries are congestion mitigation tools designed to remove cars from the bridge. This is also LADOT’s approach to transit service. The District must orient its bus service to transport passengers across the Golden Gate Bridge, and it cannot impose any taxes of its own. Bridge tolls can subsidize passenger services, but not for travel within counties. And neither Sonoma nor Marin counties are keen on making things any better.

Marin County forms the second, and more formidable, obstacle. To better understand Marin, imagine if Hancock Park was its own county and implemented a transportation general plan. Marin County, one of the wealthiest areas of the state, not only refused to opt in to the BART district, but hands down it has the worst transit access in the entire Bay Area. The bus service that does exist is mostly Golden Gate commuter service, and the county contracts with Golden Gate Transit to provide a barely noticeable “network” of about a half dozen bus routes. Marin’s stonewalling makes it difficult to provide transit to the area, and even through it, as Sonoma County is more supportive of public transportation.

One of the more recent attempts to improve transit in Sonoma and Marin counties was to create a commuter rail line. Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit — SMART, how cute — would run through both counties, but not go across the water. It would terminate at the Larkspur Ferry Terminal, and passengers would then take a ferry over into Sanfran. The tax measure did not receive the supermajority of votes in 2006 to start the service. The measure had more support from Sonoma County.

The SMART proposal heads back to the voters this November. The starter service would be similar to the commute bus service now, with trips to the ferry in the morning and away in the afternoons, but SMART is aiming for weekend service, too. The Northwestern Pacific Railroad right of way is still extant, so land acquisition is minimal. The SMART route restores a former busy corridor that is parallel to, and the precursor, of US-101. Santa Rosa’s vibrant Railroad Square district illustrates the history, and the importance, of the trains to the North Bay.

Of course, alternatives to the train service would have to be studied, and bus rapid transit would surely be one of them. Except here is a scenario where bus rapid transit would have cost advantages but becomes too cumbersome to manage. Here’s the problem. If Sonoma and Marin counties settle for BRT, they would have to leave the job to Golden Gate Transit. It could conceivably take the basic routes and reduce stops to provide a faster service, much as Foothill Transit did with Silver Streak. The District’s charter forces it to focus on buses that cross the Golden Gate Bridge. That precludes the counties from tailoring the buses to local needs.

Alternatively, the counties could set up a new transit district, one that would duplicate what Golden Gate Transit provides now. If local control becomes paramount, this new district would form a compromise with Golden Gate Transit to divide the territory and screw the passengers at the same time. The new district would operate within Sonoma and Marin counties, and say go as far south as Sausalito. Golden Gate Transit would then scale back basic bus service to just shuttle people across the bridge, and maybe keep a few commute routes. However, passengers would be forced to transfer and have longer trips.

Does this sound silly? Sad to say, this is actually how transit commissions resolve territorial issues. Local control was a battle cry in L.A. for many years, but the impulses have been weaker in the last few years. The Bay Area is not all that different, especially when BART has the reputation of sweeping into a county like a locust plague.

The SMART plan for commuter rail is reasonable. Sonoma and Marin may not be getting BART levels of service, but there is a historic railroad that can be rehabbed into a service that mimics existing travel patterns. It also would deliver a very specific service, and the train route avoids a turf war with the Bridge District.

Nick Kibre, intrepid 295bus blogger, comes through for MetroRiderLA again with a gem from his site’s archives. He wrote a good analysis of the 2006 SMART vote and shown what were some of the issues of implementing a service. Plus, he’s closer to the action. Friends of SMART is the advocacy organization fighting the good fight in the North Bay.

In a future installment of the Bay Area Diaries, an alternative suggestion to the Golden Gate Bridge commute will be floated.

Previously:

• Prologue
• Part II: Megabus

Photo by neutralSurface via Flickr (Creative Commons license)

BART Board for upcoming arrivals: Santa Rosa CityBus and Sonoma County Transit around Santa Rosa arrives in 1 day Golden Gate Ferry to Larkspur arrives in 2 days Muni Metro trains to Balboa Park arrive in 3 days Muni buses around San Francisco arrive in 4 days CalTrain to Millbrae arrives in 5 days BART to Pittsburg/Bay Point arrives in 6 days Closing thoughts arrive in 1 week