San Francisco: "Transit First" In Name Only

Throughout the Bay Area, residents will point to San Francisco as a city you can get by without owning a car - but while the low modeshare for 'drive-alone' to work is impressive, it still beats transit. And the progress in the last decade has been minimal.

"The goal of The City's transit-first policy was to make Muni a convenient alternative to automobiles. But that hasn't happened. Muni posted a 73 percent on-time performance rate for the 2011 fiscal year, the agency's lowest mark since 2008 and well below the voter-mandated goal of 85 percent."

"Most people like the transit-first policy in theory," said Ed Reiskin, executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which operates Muni. "But when it comes to losing their own parking space or a traffic lane that they use a lot, they become less of a fan."

A comparison of how residents travel each day to work - note that the first % is for 2000 and the next for 2009 - go to article itself to see it formatted more clearly.

2000 2009

Drive alone 40.5% 38.9%

Carpool 10.8% 7.4%

Public transit 31.1% 31.8%

Taxi, motorcycle, 1.6% 1.8%

Bike 2.1% 3.0%

Walk 9.4% 10.3%

Work at home 4.6% 6.8%

Source: SFMTA 2010 Transportation Fact Sheet

Thanks to Lowell Grattan