Transportation Improvements and Accountability in San Francisco Bay Area

Transportation Improvements and Accountability in San Francisco Bay Area

The process has been much more painful and has taken much longer than anyone anticipated, but today, by any measure, San Francisco is a world-class city. The Bay Area in particular is poised to become one of the most livable regions in the entire nation as the result of progressive and far-sighted transportation projects and investments in civic infrastructure. To determine how recent transportation improvements and the related issues of accountability have played out in recent years in the San Francisco area, this paper provides an overview of recent transportation initiatives in the region, followed by an assessment of what accountability issues emerged as a result. A summary of the research and salient findings are presented in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Recent Transportation Initiatives and Improvements in San Francisco Bay Area. Perhaps the most well-known and visible of San Francisco's transportation initiatives to date is the Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, the troubled but forward-thinking Bay Area Rapid Transit system. In fact, San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose have all extended key transit links throughout the Bay Area; this process produced, by the mid-20th century, a highly efficient, multifaceted transportation network (Rodriguez 11). The introduction of an expansive network of freeways, combined with the impact of the BART by the 1970s resulted in local leaders encouraging residents from throughout the region to visit, work, and live in their cities or suburbs; however, many Bay Area residents complained that these initiatives efforts by their civic leaders to attract outsiders from throughout the region were adversely affecting their lifestyles, and protests began to take place over transit connections that they felt undermined local culture and traditions (Rodriguez 11).

There are clearly a number of forces at work besides the citizenry in the Bay Area that are influencing the placement and types of transportations initiatives being sought today. For example, Rodriguez points out that, "The Bay Area's geography channeled urban development along distinct paths. San Francisco may be the most European-like city in the United States, but beginning in the 1840s towns sprouted up along the Bayshore" (11). The region's mountains and the Bay Area itself also forced the construction of railroad and streetcar lines, highways, and BART along almost the same routes. Each of the new transportation technologies that emerged over the years served to transform small settlements that had been built around a preceding transit system. For instance, Oakland actually began its existence as a mere ferry suburb of San Francisco; however, the introduction of streetcars in the early 1900s helped to transform it into the modern city it is today. Likewise, Berkeley also began as a ferry-streetcar suburb of San Francisco and Oakland and subsequently evolved into a city during the automobile era (Rodriguez 12).

Notwithstanding the enormity of the contributions made by BART and the other transportation networks in place today, one of the most notable recent achievements has been the restoration of the city's waterfront. According to Ellis (2002), "The former double-decked elevated Embarcadero Freeway, which was built in the late 1950s and disfigured the city's access to the Bay, was badly damaged in the 1989 earthquake and has been torn down to be replaced with a fine boulevard, lined with stately rows of Canary Island palm trees" (26). Furthermore, despite the concerns of traffic experts, the removal of the freeway did not result in gridlock or back-ups across the Bay, but rather managed to disperse traffic easily along nearby surface streets. "Most importantly," Ellis says, "it has allowed the city to regain its waterfront and given access to the splendid Ferry Building and pier buildings" (27). All of this progress was not without controversy, of course, and the accountability issues associated with these transportation initiatives are discussed further below.

Accountability Issues. The costs overruns being experienced in typical urban rapid transit projects, particularly San Francisco BART system, are well-known, but there remains a relative paucity of timely data for comparison purposes. What is known, though, is that the Bay Area planners were not alone in their underestimation of the costs associated with its construction. According to Buhl, Flyvbjerg, and Holm (2002), "Comparative studies of actual and estimated costs in transportation infrastructure development are few. Where such studies exist, they are typically single-case studies or they cover a sample of projects too small to allow systematic, statistical analyses" (279). Based on their study of transportation initiatives across the country, including San Francisco's BART system, Buhl et al. found that the error of underestimating costs was significantly much more common and much larger than the error of overestimating costs. "Underestimation of costs at the time of decision to build is the rule rather than the exception for transportation infrastructure projects. Frequent and substantial cost escalation is the result," they say (281).

There have also been some enormous political constraints to the development of effective transportation solutions in the Bay Area because of the numbers of people involved and their close proximity to the Bay Area, many with conflicting interests. Over the years, these forces have stalled, delayed, cancelled, changed or otherwise made more expensive virtually any transportation initiative that extended beyond San Francisco's immediate city limits. As time progressed, the transportation projects that were intended to link cities around the Bay, including ferries, railroads, streetcars, bridges, and highways, made it clear that there was a growing need for regional cooperation; these projects also highlighted the existence of jealousies and fears among regional urban leaders. For instance, Rodriguez reports that during the construction of the Bay Bridge in the 1930s, San Francisco and Oakland leaders proudly boasted about how the giant span would bring a future of regional cooperation. "Yet upon completion," Rodriguez adds, "they could not even agree on which side of the bridge to stage the opening day ceremonies, and so state and local officials had to make speeches, pose for photographs, and cut a steel chain at either end of the span" (11). Such conflicts and lack of cooperation were only exacerbated with the construction of new freeways in the 1950s and BART in the 1960s. The need for regional cooperation became glaringly apparent and California state officials were insistent that the freeways being constructed in the Bay Area should serve regional interests rather than those of a particular city, and urban leaders became increasingly anxious that the freeways would undermine local goals if state engineers were unresponsive to their design concerns (Rodriguez 12). According to this author, "Bay Area residents and officials celebrated BART as a transit system that would finally tie the metropolis together and encourage greater cooperation. But they feared that BART and its regional board would make design decisions that benefited their rivals and hurt local development" (Rodriguez 13). Not surprisingly, this vast network of transportation networks resulted in some degradation to the unique qualities of individual communities, a process that resulted in criticism from residents as well as civic leaders for having a negative impact on community traditions and identities (Rodriguez 13). These fears were not entirely unfounded either; while these transportation projects have represented the foundation for the Bay Area's future economic progress, there have been some significant consequences that were not foreseen. San Francisco became the most expensive city in the U.S. As a result, but "Stopping projects like these is like trying to slow down an oil-tanker" (Ellis 27).