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The other night my friend and I reconsidered our plan to visit Half Moon Bay, given the current closure of Highway 92. She wondered first about other routes, then about public transit. But of course, there is no separate transit route to the coast. If you live in Half Moon Bay, you are out of luck.
In fact, the Bay Area is the only major work center I’ve known that doesn’t have a real transit system. There’s one train line, and if you don’t live and/or work next to Caltrain, it’s not how you get around. And, yes, people are back to driving to work.
The result of living in a transit-starved environment can be twisted. We depend on cars for everything, leading to some fanciful dreams of alternatives, like bicycle commuting. The best known diversion to self-powered biking in 2015 was Facebook, at 3% of staff – in good weather. After extensive regional bike lane improvements, we are hoping to see if Meta hits 5%. That’s probably not the solution.
How is it that this planet-sensitive region has no transit route to the coast? More urgently, how is it that there is no transit from the south Peninsula to the East Bay? The latter has both existing housing and housing sites, but the drive over the Dumbarton Bridge is a bad trade of wasted time for the lower rent, and anyway Highways 101 and 880 can’t handle more bridge traffic.
Since 1999, there have been several attempts to build a cross-bay link via the old Dumbarton Rail right of way – the mostly abandoned rail line from Redwood City through Menlo Park to Union City. It would connect Caltrain with BART. You may recall that voters authorized at least two huge bonds in that period for the local share of project cost. What happened to that effort, and what happened to the money?
The answer is largely that, since then and still today, our city, county and state legislators have other things they’d rather talk about. More newsworthy things. Lately that takes the form of extensive hearings on housing, greenhouse, and equity issues – ironic, because available transit would meaningfully and immediately address all of those. The money got siphoned of for East Bay BART. Meanwhile, if you haven’t followed, at least seven huge new office parks are due to open on the Peninsula in the next four years, and our housing demand and transportation demand will boom, again.
Last fall I contacted mayors, supervisors, state and federal representatives for the south Peninsula, and some major land and business owners as well. Without exception, all knew about the coming surge of office space, and all were truly enthusiastic about any likelihood of boosting the Dumbarton Rail project. Indeed, over the last five years, Facebook invested millions of dollars with SamTrans to study and outline a rail project, even forming a construction consortium to shorten the build time from a government project to more like private industry. It seemed like a team that couldn’t be denied.
But there was not enough political will to get the agency ducks in a row. Then-Rep. Jackie Speier and many local leaders pressed hard behind the scenes, but MTC – the local agency that controls Bay Area transportation spending – just couldn’t make the government side of the commitment, preferring to divert funds again to BART. The Dumbarton Rail project was downgraded to “Tier 2,” meaning it would not get agency support. When in 2021 and 2022 Washington, D.C., had billions offered up for local transportation projects, the Bay Area was silent. And that’s where we stand.
So I challenge our state and federal representatives, and above all, the un-elected agencies that hold the purse strings for Bay Area transportation. It’s encouraging that county Supervisors Ray Mueller and Warren Slocum are strong advocates, but they are blocked by agency infighting. We’ve had enough of hearing how BART is more important. We’ve had enough of toll lanes. There are 4 million people in Silicon Valley that have been the economic engine of California, and pay more in taxes than any other region. It’s time we got the transportation infrastructure that nearly every other major work center in the world has built.
To those that hold the purse strings: What does it take to get you on our team?
Henry Riggs is a a local architect and longtime Menlo Park planning commissioner who is speaking on his own behalf.
