Routes, Riders, and Rondo Alla Turca

Public transportation across the Bay Area is struggling with perpetually low ridership. 5 reporters for North Gate Radio each tell a story examining how different transportation agencies are trying to fix the problem.

Transcript

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: Public transportation is a lifeline for office and late night workers, for the elderly, for students, for anyone who can’t or doesn’t want to drive. But it’s in trouble in the Bay Area. 

[News Broadcast]: Do you ride BART? Half a million people a day used to. California struggling with continued low ridership. The agency’s finances are so bad the state officials are looking at ways to keep them from running out of money.

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: Many people have a mixed relationship with public transportation. They depend on it, but it frustrates them. It can bring moments of beauty and respite or bring up issues of safety and hardship. It gets them places, but not everywhere. In other words, transit isn’t perfect, even when it’s not struggling.

And we set out to unpack this. I’m your host, Ellie Prickett Morgan. Together with four other reporters from Northgate Radio, we looked into what works and what doesn’t. Across BART, AC Transit, and the area’s ferries, and what it means for riders.

Part of Transit’s struggle in the Bay is that ridership, a crucial source of funding for these agencies, hasn’t recovered from the pandemic. But one agency, the ferries, is an exception to the rule. Ferries have connected Bay Area communities for more than 150 years. Our reporter, Julia Mayer, takes us on board to find out why ferry ridership is up in the bay. [water splashing]

Julia Mayer: It’s a beautiful day at the Oakland Ferry Terminal. The water glistens in the morning sun. In front of me is a long line of commuters with backpacks, cell phones, and bicycles.

We depart at 8 o’clock sharp. The skyline of San Francisco appears on the horizon. Cars pile up on the bay bridge as we glide through the water below. 25 minutes later, we reach the ferry building, a place steeped in history. In 1930, this was the Grand Central Station for ferries. 50 million passengers a year pass through these halls to get on a boat.

A perfect place to catch up with Carl Nolte, a long time San Francisco Chronicle columnist. 

Carl Nolte: When I was a little kid, I got hooked on the ferry boats, and my big problem is, I never grew up. 

Julia Mayer: Having watched these waters for over seven decades, Carl witnessed both the Ferris decline after the bridges were built and their unexpected comeback in the 70s.

Carl Nolte: My favorite boat is the Saucito ferry boat. We’re in a desert boat every day, sometimes. My favorite seat is at the main deck on the starboard side. Usually I read on there. Otherwise, I go on the after deck and watch the city fall away. 

Julia Mayer: Today, 17 vessels run six routes across the bay. And while Caltrain and BART have only recovered about half their ridership, the ferries are up to more than 80%.

Michael Golarty, Planning Director at the Water Emergency Transportation Authority, or WIDA, explains that the ferry offers a unique experience. 

Michael Gougherty: It really actually is the best part of my day. I, on the way to the ferry, I purposely pocket my phone and detach from screen time and pick up a book and read.

Our approach is don’t mess that up. Run the boats on time, have crews that are safe, professional and courteous, and just let the service sell itself. 

Julia Mayer: BART is actually faster and cheaper between Oakland and San Francisco. But these commuters are still choosing the ferry experience. Why? I reached out to Kari Watkins, a California transportation researcher from UC Davis.

She told me public transit ridership is back to pre pandemic levels in Los Angeles. 

Kari Watkins: And that’s because the LA system is much more based on people who rely on transit and really, for financial reasons, often don’t have a choice of another way to get around. Whereas in the Bay, they were transit riders because of congestion and stress.

Julia Mayer: Perhaps, socioeconomics also play a role in why the ferry is the only public transit doing better in the Bay post pandemic. Ferry riders here are choosing a longer and more expensive commute. Well, because They probably can. And it’s not just here. In Seattle, ferries are at 78 percent of pre pandemic ridership, compared to just 62 percent for buses.

And New York City’s ferries have not only fully recovered their ridership levels, they have surpassed them.

On board the ferry from San Francisco to Vallejo, the atmosphere is calm yet lively. Passengers work on laptops, read books, or unwind with a drink after work. I ask a few, what keeps you going? 

Ferry Rider #1: This is quite clean and easy. 

Ferry Rider #2: No traffic, great Wi Fi, easy to work. So I get an extra hour on each end for work. And, uh, and sometimes I visit the bar after work and it’s a nice way to get help. 

Ferry Rider #3: I take the ferry because it is better than taking part. It’s cleaner. And I think it’s safer. 

Julia Mayer: These voices paint a picture of what makes the ferry experience unique. A blend of comfort and charm that other transit options just can’t match. And WIDA has big plans to expand routes to Treasure Island, Mission Bay and Berkeley by 2050. The challenge? Funding. That’s why passenger numbers are so crucial, explains Michael Gougherty 

Michael Gougherty: the more riders we get back, the further our transit subsidy can stretch, and the more new services, the more enhanced services we’ll begin to offer.

Julia Mayer: The current success shows that ferries are becoming more essential, especially on routes where BART is an option, like San Francisco to Vallejo, where I spoke with this enthusiastic rider. 

Ferry Rider #4: Taking the ferry is literally the best way to cross the bay. I moved from the East Bay to Vallejo specifically. to take the ferry and it’s been a great ride ever since.

Julia Mayer: On the Ferry in Vallejo, I’m Julia Mayer for Northgate Radio.

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: Unlike the ferries, AC Transit, the bus operator for Alameda County, has had a harder time getting riders back. And that’s put its finances in a tough spot. To stay cost neutral, back in October, EZ Transit’s board approved a controversial plan to change existing bus schedules that will cut and consolidate routes across the East Bay.

It’s called the Realign Plan. But East Bay bus drivers say they’re already working grueling schedules and this plan won’t help. Jack Watkins has been driving buses in the East Bay for five years.

I joined Watkins on the 51A, which starts at Fruitvale Park. 

Jack Watkins: So a bus full of kids, right? Full of children and people getting to work. 

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: But today’s rainy, so there are fewer passengers and it’s right before the Thanksgiving holiday. So Watkins is optimistic that he can finish this leg of the route on time.

When we get to the end of the route That optimism proves to be unrealized. 

Jack Watkins: I was about 11 minutes late. 

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: Wow, even, even under those conditions? Yes, 

Jack Watkins: yes, yes, yes. 

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: For Watkins, every minute he’s late is a minute less of break time. Today, that 11 minute delay means he loses more than half of the time he could use to recover before he’s right back on the road.

It’s a vicious cycle where drivers feel pressured to forego rest, skip meals, and drive faster just to make the schedules work. 

Jack Watkins: We’re all guilty of it. Um, okay, so I got to drive faster. If I got to get to the end of this line, I got to drive faster. But driving faster means not being safe. 

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: The other trade off drivers make to get to their destinations on time?

They don’t stop to use the bathroom. A 2018 survey of amalgamated transit union drivers across the country found that almost a third of bus drivers report having urinary tract infections or kidney infections. That’s twice the rate of the general population. Watkins explained that if it’s a bathroom emergency, he can press the bathroom button, which lets a supervisor watching the bus GPS know, hey, this bus isn’t moving because the driver’s pulled over.

to use the facilities. 

Jack Watkins: But that only acts as a band aid to the problem because the problem is every day I’m going to be 15 minutes late to get to the end of the line. So these schedules need to be modified in such a way that accommodates for the actual real life time it takes to get to the line, right?

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: Watkins worries that those accommodations for real life are not being thought about in the new Realign plan. Realign came out of AC Transit’s struggle to get ridership back after the pandemic. Under Realign, bus service will be 85 percent of what it was back in 2019. AC Transit says when making the plan, they tracked ridership, did 49 public engagements, and quite a bit of social media outreach over the course of two years.

Laurel Padget-Seekins, a transportation justice advocate for the Bay Area nonprofit Public Advocate, says that the data driven methodology used by AC Transit is missing some key driver related information. 

Laurel Paget-Seekins: How long it took the bus to get from A to B right from the sort of GPS tracker on the bus, but they don’t know Is what the driver had to do to make that time, right?

Like, did they always pull over to the curb and lower the bus for the senior who needed it? Did they run a yellow light? Did they start the bus before you as a passenger got seated? 

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: Robert Lyles, AC Transit’s media affairs manager, said via email that AC Transit has a dedicated labor relations team, and they did engage drivers in the route designing process.

They were given surveys in both hardcopy and digital formats. The labor relations team set up town halls to listen to bus operator concerns. And Lyles wrote that those concerns led to two lines being redesigned to accommodate driver needs. He added that AC Transit has been working closely with the bus operators union throughout the process.

Watkins is an assistant shop steward with that union. A TU Local 1 92. He told me those input opportunities were not enough and he wasn’t alone in feeling that way. 

AC Transit Board Member: 24 roll call director Becks. 

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: At the October 9th AC Transit board of directors meeting where Realign was up for a vote. ETU 1 92 packed the conference room.

It was a C of red, A TU T-shirts early on. The board realizes how many public commenters showed up, and this happens.

AC Transit Board Member: The board. The president has chosen to limit public comment on item 6A to one minute, so public comment will be limited to one minute tonight. 

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: About 15 minutes into public comment, Darlene Robinson Cornell, who says she’s been a driver for 17 years, takes the stand.

Darlene Robinson-Cornell: I start at 5am, I get a break at 7. At the top of the hour, seven. 

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: Darlene works a morning schedule, like Watkins, which means the middle of her shift includes rush hour, so she’s always behind schedule. She starts talking about her work day the day before, and the energy in the room shifts. 

Darlene Robinson-Cornell: Yesterday was so bad. I went home and cried! I am emotionally exhausted! I bring a salad, I bring a salad for lunch every day, and I take it home every day! Set this new sign up, and I’m tired of it! 

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: Darlene’s speech hits a nerve, and the other drivers who go up keep referring back to her. 

Public Commenter #1: Um, after witnessing that speech, uh, I wasn’t going to say anything, but now it’s just like, You can see the passion in these drivers and these passengers.

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: More than 50 public commenters, including drivers, teachers, and other community members, make their case as to why the plan should not pass. After more than two hours, the board gets to a vote and Realign passes. Five to two. Ultimately, the need to keep operating costs stable won out. Watkins called the whole experience 

Jack Watkins: These are our conditions. We’ve been telling you these conditions for years. You know what they are, and you have to accommodate us or you’re not going to have drivers to drive this bus. 

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: Realign will take effect in August of 2025. Also coming this summer, the expiration of ATU 192’s contracts, which will have to be renegotiated.

And Watkins says that the conversations are starting amongst drivers about a potential strike. But right now, nothing is certain.

For East Bay drivers and riders, the summer is going to bring a change.

AC Transit, the Ferry, and BART are all on the Clipper system, a reloadable transit card that riders use to pay for most Bay Area public transportation. The Ferry and BART fares are calculated based on distance, and the daily cost of a commute can add up. Clipper Start, a program that offers low income riders half off fares, is trying to address high prices.

But its future is uncertain. Anna Zou has more. 

Anna Zou: I met up with Cal undergrad Noah Soriano at downtown Berkeley BART to join them on their commute home from school. They’re currently unemployed and live in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Noah relies on their bike, buses and BART to get around. And BART is the priciest option. 

Noah Soriano: I was just trying to find any resource possible to reduce the costs since I can’t drive. 

Anna Zou: On campus, Noah ran into students tabling about transit issues. 

Noah Soriano: And I was like, is there any way that Berkeley can pay for my BART rides?

And they’re like, no. And then they’re like, well, you could get Clipper Start at least. 

Anna Zou: Clipper Start began as a pilot program in 2020. It was funded using a one time COVID relief grant from the federal government and was supposed to end after 18 months. The program originally gave low income commuters 20 percent off all Clipper system rides, including BART, and it’s been so popular that the discount got bumped up to 50 percent in January 2024.

John Goodwin: Making transit easier for low income people to ride is not going to solve the problem of poverty in the Bay Area. 

Anna Zou: John Goodwin’s the Assistant Director of Communications for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, known as MTC. 

John Goodwin: But it can make life in an expensive area like ours. Easier for folks with low incomes, 

Anna Zou: John told me MTC continues to fund Clipper Start with money from the California Transit Assistance Program and the cap and trade program and Clipper Start has been extended until June 2025.

Back on Bart Noah shares what they love most about their commute 

Noah Soriano: when that goes above ground and you get to get a really good view of the city or all of the lights. 

Anna Zou: Noah’s one of 43, 000 people who currently use Clipper Start. 

Noah Soriano: It’s definitely helping me reduce the costs. It’s not helping eliminate the costs.

Anna Zou: Noah pays 4. 80 round trip with their Clipper Start discount when they travel from downtown Berkeley to 16th Street Mission. And they make that trip at least four times a week. They had no idea the program could sunset as early as June until I broke the news. 

Noah Soriano: That would really suck. Then I would have to pay a lot more money.

I think I already pay like 20 a week. Now I’d have to pay 40 a week. 

Anna Zou: Noah told me they used to jump over the fare gates before getting Clippers Start to save money. But new, much taller gates were installed at 16th Street Mission to help reduce fare evasion. So, when I asked what they’d do if Clippers Start ends 

Noah Soriano: Maybe I’d feel less motivated to go to class.

I feel like I would buy less food and eat less because I would be like, I’m already spending so much money on bar.

Anna Zou: It’s still unclear whether Clipper Start will be extended yet again, or terminated. Here’s John Goodwin from MTC. 

John Goodwin: I’m just really hesitant to say when a decision would be made to either extend the Clipper Start pilot, eliminate the Clipper Start pilot, or make Clipper Start permanent. Too many moving pieces, in my view.

Thank you. 

Anna Zou: While I was reporting this story, BART announced that fares will increase by 5. 5 percent in January 2025 due to inflation. For Northgate Radio, I’m Anna Zou.

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: Thousands of people use Clipper to get across the bay into San Francisco, where one BART station has its own particular 

quirk. Lisa Plachy reports. 

Lisa Plachy: In a large hallway at the Civic Center BART station, you can hear Mozart. Centuries old hits like Rondo Alla Turca and Fur Elise have been playing here for the past six years, but That wasn’t always the case.

[News Broadcast]: New at 5, we have shocking video of what’s going on in one of the busiest BART stations in the Bay Area. Several junkies blatantly shooting up. In 

Lisa Plachy: April of 2018, KPIX5, a local news station, picked up a video circulating the internet that documented one man’s commute through that same hallway. 

[News Broadcast]: Open IV drug use, unconscious men and women. Piles of vomit on either side of the hallways. This is a morning walk through the Civic Center BART and Muni station. 

Lisa Plachy: The video showed multiple people in states of crisis, using drugs, slumped over, or passed out in the open with no intervention. It didn’t take long to make its way back to BART officials.

Bevan Dufty: So obviously the video did go viral. 

Lisa Plachy: That’s Bevan Dufty. 

Bevan Dufty: It was explosive in terms of the reaction from the public. 

Lisa Plachy: Dufty was on the BART Board of Directors for the district that includes Civic Center when the video went viral. Afterwards, he worked with his team to figure out different ways to tame activity at the station.

Bevan Dufty: We just walked around and I think we looked and saw that there was the infrastructure to have music and we just said, huh, what would this be like? 

Lisa Plachy: Dufty said they were looking for literally anything they could do, and the music seemed to have a positive impact. So Bart kept it playing almost 24 7 for the next six years.

Bevan Dufty: It just was calming. It just had this sense of, like, it’s not, you know, you’re not walking through mayhem.

Lisa Plachy: Bart isn’t the first to try using music to influence behavior. It’s a common practice by all kinds of businesses, either to make people more comfortable in a space or to move them along. But does it actually work? I talked to Dan Stokols, a professor emeritus at UC Irvine who studies social ecology and environmental psychology.

He told me that it depends on a lot of different factors. 

Dan Stokols: One being, how loud the music is being played. If it’s overbearing and, and it’s too intrusive, uh, people can be annoyed by it. On the other hand, if, if it’s played softly or people are at least amenable to or open to classical music, it might be a kind of a soothing, positive addition to the situation.

Lisa Plachy: So I went back to Civic Center to ask people what they thought. And whether the music was making the station better. 

Angus Kirkenwell: And I feel like even though this is like, you know, super depressing and grim down here, like a dystopian science fiction movie, like the music actually like cancels it out a bit, you know?

Norma: I like it. It’s nice. It’s, you know, I wouldn’t mind if it continued, but I can understand why constantly it might be a little too much. It’s calming. It is. But, um, I don’t know if it’s going 

Lisa Plachy: to help. Maybe more people falling asleep in here. Over the years, BART has also increased police presence, hired more crisis intervention officers, and installed fare evasion gates at Civic Center.

So while it’s hard to pinpoint what the music is or is not doing, there is a noticeable difference in what you see there. 

Bevan Dufty: The people that are coming here are not stopping and setting up shop. They’re, um, going about their business. They’re going to school or work or whatever. 

Lisa Plachy: While everyone I talked to liked the music, they were all passing through.

Dan Stokols at UC Irvine says that could be another factor in its effectiveness. 

Dan Stokols: There’s such a huge variety of response depending on, you know, how, how long they have to spend in the space, whether they have control over the source of the sound or not. 

Lisa Plachy: And the more time I spent there, the more I understood why you wouldn’t linger.

I’ve been in this hallway for about 37 minutes and I have to say I’m kind of over it. According to Dufty though, there’s a happy medium between negative and positive reactions. 

Bevan Dufty: The wild thing about transit is, if it’s kind of a neutral experience, it’s not in your memory bank. But maybe it’s just nice that they don’t have to think about anything and just have a normal, uneventful, not particularly memorable transit experience.

Lisa Plachy: In a station long defined by chaos, maybe that’s the ideal. But a little music doesn’t seem to hurt. I’m Lisa Plachy for Northgate Radio.

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: Reporter Nava Rawls moved from Atlanta to the Bay a few months ago and immediately started riding BART. She was impressed with how easy it was to get around until the clock struck midnight. That’s when the trains stopped. A fun night out was suddenly ruined by the stress of navigating a route home. Fun is one thing, but how does this affect late night workers who actually depend on BART to get to and from their jobs?

Nava went on a mission to find out. 

Nava Rawls: It’s Saturday night, or Sunday morning rather, in San Francisco’s Tenderly neighborhood. I’m waiting for the bus with 27 year old Nikita Darin, a bouncer at a local music venue. He clocked out at 12. 30 a. m. and is trying to get home to East Oakland. The Civic Center BART station is already closed, so We’re gonna catch the 38 to Market Street, and from there we’ll wait for the 800.

As we wait for the bus, a heated screaming match begins across the street. A man lays face down on the sidewalk near her feet, which is covered with litter and used needles. San Francisco’s Tenderloin, where Nikita works every night, has a reputation as a dangerous, crime ridden neighborhood. 

Nikita Daron: There are people out here in all kinds of situations, desperate situations.

Acting unpredictably. I kind of just keep to myself. 

Nava Rawls: At 1 19 a. m. The 38 bus arrives. This will be our first of three buses tonight, if we catch them all. 

Nikita Daron: Gosh, the 800. This is one frustrating part about catching that bus is bus drivers will not always stop for you. 

Nava Rawls: After an eight minute ride on the 38, No, 

no, no, no, no, no.

We ran to get on the 800, which, as predicted, almost left us in the dust. 

Nikita Daron: If we missed this bus, we would have had to wait for another like an hour and a half. 

Nava Rawls: The 800 takes us across the Bay Bridge to Oakland, but we have one more shuttle to catch. It doesn’t arrive until 2. 40 a. m., two hours after Nikita first got off work.

With a limited budget, taking an Uber or Lyft home from work is out of the question. 

Nikita Daron: Especially on a Saturday night, it could be like over 40 bucks. 

Nava Rawls: But if BART was open later, Nikita’s commute could be less than an hour without breaking the bank. And he’s not the only one. 70 percent of BART ridership is commuters.

But its limited schedule excludes a big chunk of those commuters. Why? 

Jim Allison: We get the question a lot, why don’t you run 24 hours a day? Well, it’s simply not feasible for us to do that and maintain a safe system and make sure that we meet all the requirements of maintaining the tracks. 

Nava Rawls: That was Jim Allison, a spokesperson for BART.

According to Jim, it’s not fair to compare BART’s hours to subways in other major cities like New York or Chicago. Those systems have many more tracks, so when maintenance is needed, it’s easier to reroute the trains. BART doesn’t have that luxury. 

Jim Allison: I think the biggest change that would take place was be if we were to have a second Transbay crossing a second Transbay to. 

Nava Rawls: Building an underwater rail system is really complicated and expensive.

The one we have now was built 50 years ago. It took four years and 180 million, which in today’s money is 1. 4 billion. 

Jim Allison: So I would say it’s not, um, out of the question that we would be able to do that, but it would be a long time in the future. 

Nava Rawls: And extending BART’s hours wouldn’t be an easy fix for all late night workers.

Rachel Fuller: I try to avoid the bar at night as much as possible. 

Nava Rawls: That’s Rachel Fuller, an East Bay bartender. During the week, her shift ends at a time where she could catch the last train home from downtown Berkeley to El Cerrito, but she’d rather pay for a rideshare service. And unlike Nikita, she lives much closer to her job, so her rideshare costs are cheaper.

I have had a man follow me around at the BART, and I have had people harass me on the BART, so if that’s happening during the day, I don’t even want to imagine what’s happening at night. 

But even with her discomfort using the BART at night Rachel thinks hours should be extended. 

Rachel Fuller: I don’t think it should close personally.

I think that that’s something that I feel like should be constantly running because what about service industry workers? Like they need to get home.

Nava Rawls: It’s 2 55 AM. Nikita and I finally arrived in East Oakland and the journey still isn’t over. He could either walk or take another bus to get to the rest of the way home. But tonight he gets a ride from his roommate Josh. 

Nikita Daron: I’d say that this was like a 6, 7 out of 10 pretty, pretty successful commute. And here my angel on golden wings has arrived to save me from an extra 20 minutes walking on my two feet.

Nava Rawls: And with that, Nikita finally got home without the help of Bart at around 3. 15am, nearly three hours after the end of his shift. For Northgate Radio, I’m Nava Rawls.

Ellie Pricket-Morgan: Over the next few years, the Bay Area will face an uphill battle to save service as a financial crisis looms. For now, we’ll see. Morning through night, buses, trains, boats, and trolleys are still the shepherds of thousands. To work, to school, and back home again. Who are not only depending on transit, but rooting for it.

We want to thank Shereen Marisol Miraji and Ethan Tovin-Lindsey for their guidance, input and edits. Also, Rick Johnson for incredible production support. We’d also like to thank Jack Watkins and Jordan Williams for being down to get interviewed after long days at work. For archived news footage, thank you to KPIX5, CBS News Bay Area, and ABC7.

Music is courtesy of Blue Dot Sessions. For Northgate Radio, I’m Ellie Prickett Morgan.