For decades, one of the biggest complaints about public transit in the Bay Area has been the lack of convenient late-night options. Trying to get out of San Francisco after midnight is like falling into a live-action version of The Neverending Story: endless dramatic adventures featuring malicious werewolves and a dark force threatening to engulf everyone.
A new report bluntly acknowledges the problem and offers actionable recommendations for BART, Muni, and AC Transit. Based on more than 2,800 responses to a community survey, the 27-page report critiques a system that’s skeletal, unresponsive, and inefficient for the ever-growing Bay Area.
As supervisor Scott Wiener notes in his introduction,“San Francisco is a 24-hour, world-class city” with a $4.2 billion nighttime economy and more than 52,000 workers on the graveyard shift. Many of those workers — who are also often low-income — rely on public transit during hours when it’s essentially unavailable or unreliable. Indeed, 20 percent of the 250,000 weeknight trips taken between 9pm and 5am in San Francisco are on public transit. From midnight to 5am, two-thirds of those trips are to or from another Bay Area county.
For many riders, alternatives such as a rideshare service are simply unaffordable. The report urges the SFMTA to regulate taxi drivers and recommends an $11 flat rate for two or more passengers who share a ride. The report also floats the possibility of city-subsidized taxis for low-income commuters.
Of course, the great white whale of Bay Area transit has long been 24-hour BART service. Despite years of public pressure, BART insists that all-night ridership isn’t feasible given the need for track maintenance. “I don’t accept the contention that it would just be impossible [for BART] to go a little bit later on Friday and Saturday night. There has to be a way for them to work it out,” supervisor Wiener has said. The report is more guardedly optimistic, stating, “While 24-hour rail service is decades away and would require substantial funding for major new capital investments and operating costs that have not been identified, appropriate and timely steps must be taken to work toward its implementation.”
Safety is another concern the report raises. Sixty percent of those surveyed say they don’t travel between midnight and 5am because of safety concerns; 70 percent of women don’t travel during those hours. In perhaps its most provocative recommendation, the report suggests temporarily closing streets “in commercial corridors with vibrant nightlife” once bars announce last call. This would minimize the possibility of drunk pedestrians wandering into traffic or creating roadblocks.
The Board of Supervisors’ Land Use and Economic Development Committee will hold a hearing to discuss the report, which you can read here.
[via KQED; photo courtesy of Jason Schlachet/Flickr]
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