City of Alameda – AC Transit ILC
May 17, 2023 Meeting Notes
1. Roll Call/Welcome and Introductions
Attendees: Director Sarah Syed (chair), Councilmember Tracy Jensen, Councilmember Tony Daysog
Meeting started at 9:07 AM
2. Announcements/Public Comments
3. Notes from the Previous ILC Meeting (January 25, 2023) No comments
4. AC Transit Network Realignment Plan Update
David Berman: AC Transit is currently underway on an effort to realign our network as a whole. We’ll be reviewing our routes and schedules and evaluating where and when our buses operate to better match current travel patterns. We're doing Realign because of resource constraints, such as a workforce shortage concerns and a lot of financial uncertainty. Even with all this uncertainty, we still want to make sure we respond to community needs. The project is not going to solve all our problems.
There will be tradeoffs, and hard choices will have to be made. Currently we're in phase 1 of the project where we're learning rider needs (survey and market analysis). In phase 2 (July-August 2023) we'll have draft guiding principles that reflect rider needs. In September/October 2023, draft plan options will be developed, and in November/December 2023 we'll be going out to the community with those draft options to gather feedback. After that, one preferred option will be developed and taken through a public hearing process. The goal is to implement the new network in August 2024. We have been doing a lot of public engagement and will continue to reach out to riders via different outreach methods. We are currently doing a line-by-line analysis of our existing service and analyzing how the market for transit service has changed during the pandemic, and will be taking all of this information and feedback from outreach to craft the guiding principles.
Councilmember Daysog: Will the QR code work if I make copies of the postcard handout?
David Berman: Yes, and the survey closes at the end of the month Councilmember Jensen: When was the last time AC Transit did a realignment? David Berman: 2014-2016 with Measure BB funds
Councilmember Jensen: What counties does AC Transit provide service in? David Berman: We provide service in Alameda and West Contra Costa Counties Councilmember Jensen: Are you coordinating with BART on the Realign effort? David Berman: We have a technical advisory committee in the works, and BART representatives will be part of that committee.
Councilmember Jensen: In Alameda we have a number of seniors and students who will be interested in the results of this project. In Alameda Point we just opened a transitional housing site (Dignity Village) and the area also has other housing and residents who won't want to see their transit services cut.
Claudia Burgos: We have been actively reaching out to point people at the schools we serve to get feedback from parents and students. Regarding Dignity Village and Alameda Point, we are happy to pop-in and get their feedback. We also provided a stack of paper surveys to the Mastick Senior Center.
Andrew Thomas: Do you have a sense of how big the fiscal cliff is? How big of a reduction in service are you expecting?
Claudia Burgos: Over a 5-year period, $144M deficit. We expect to start seeing a steep drop in revenues starting FY25-26.
Andrew Thomas: As your revenues are going down, Alameda TMA revenues will be going up. AC Transit provided additional service pre-COVID that was made possible with funds from Alameda TMA. As new development projects come up over the next 4-5 years, the TMA budget is going to grow.
Councilmember Daysog: I encourage AC Transit to work with City staff to better leverage the funds that will be available.
Director Syed: We may need to consider changing the time of Alameda ILC meetings so that TMA representatives can participate.
Gail Payne: When providing data to the City for review, we would appreciate having a "dashboard" of what does this mean for Alameda, what are you learning about Alameda, etc.
Kat Kaldis: One of the common comments we hear from the senior population is that they'd prefer to have the bus show up on time as opposed to having more frequency.
5. Line 78 Pilot Service Update
Michael Eshleman: In April, our Board elected to allow the Line 78 pilot to expire in August 2023. The Line 78 service was started to test a theory that people would rather take the ferry to commute to San Francisco than take the bus or BART. We also wanted to try more crosstown routes. What we found is that there were some operational challenges (e.g., some confusion among operators about where to go in terms of routing, some difficulty with making the timed connections to the ferry) and ultimately people weren't choosing to ride because there were other options available or Line 78 wasn't time competitive. We'll feed the lessons learned into the Realign effort. What we also found systemwide is that the lines that are most successful are the multi-use lines that don't just serve a singular purpose.
Councilmember Daysog: We respect the fact that the AC Transit Board made the decision, but I would encourage continuing the dialogue on a staff-to-staff basis on incentivizing people to take transit. We do still plan to move forward on paid parking and would like to see a transit option to the ferry terminal.
Director Syed: I met with the Mayor, and we are committed to helping the City meet its TDM and climate goals. We found that this line hasn't been meeting our service standards. Also, there's only weekday service at this ferry terminal but ferry ridership has recovered more on weekends. Happy to lead the conversation on exploring other options for providing service. A big factor in the Board's decision to allow Line 78 to expire is that we're spread too thin (not enough operators, too many canceled trips), so we need to better focus resources. I will also be bringing an item to the AC Transit Board about setting policy for how we select and operate pilot services moving forward. Will share that policy with the City as we progress.
Andrew Thomas: City also learned that the parking lots aren't full, so us going faster on paid parking might not have made that big of a difference. What we also learned is that bike and walk mode share to Seaplane Lagoon were way higher than expected. It validates that putting housing and bike infrastructure near the ferry terminal has been a success. Residents do want to see more crosstown service to high opportunity areas like grocery stores and parks. Crosstown service is important, especially as more people move out to Alameda Point.
Councilmember Jensen: Most of our crosstown buses are along one street. What are the opportunities for considering alternative streets in addition to Santa Clara Ave?
Michael Eshleman: This is something we've looked at with previous realignments, which is why we now have service along Buena Vista. You need to environmentally clear things when considering bus operations on new streets, and a lot of outreach and engagement is involved as well. But there are also lots of opportunities, and we are open to exploring this as part of the Realign effort.
Director Syed: To Andrew's point, it's important to connect people from lowopportunity areas to high-opportunity areas. Curious if some of the data will show where people from Alameda Point are trying to go - will we get that granular level of origin-destination data? Does the City have that kind of data that we can access? David Berman: We have cellphone data that will provide information on how people travel.
Gail Payne: Through the Alameda Point Collaborative we also give away Clipper cards and may be able to get some data from that. Also, shoutout to Jonathan Bair at AC Transit for already starting on communication coordination efforts with the City.
6. Zero-Emission Bus Technology Analysis
Salvador Llamas: AC Transit has been developing a ZEB program for over 20 years now. We've been operating ZEBs across our service network, over 5 million miles, 13,000 tons of CO2 eliminated. At our Emeryville and East Oakland facilities we have hydrogen fueling capacity. We are also working on a project to add 130 more bus capacity at our Oakland facility, and we're looking to add hydrogen fueling capacity at our Hayward facility. When all the projects are completed we will have the capacity to operate 325 hydrogen fuel cell buses. The goal is for the fleet to be 70% hydrogen buses and 30% electric buses. About 10% of our fleet is zero emission today. In order to educate staff and guide decision making, we established a ZEB technology analysis, in partnership with Stanford University, to do a comparison study between diesel, diesel hybrid, fuel cell, battery electric buses, and legacy fuel cell electric buses to see performance statistics and the true cost of operation, to help us guide our ZEB decisions. Both hydrogen and BEB are still evolving and cost a lot to operate. The cost of the vehicles has gone up 30%, and the pandemic has caused delays with sourcing materials. We need $1.4B to transition our entire fleet to ZEB and get the infrastructure to support operations. We are also actively training staff and developing our workforce to be familiar with ZEB vehicles. We are also testing remote learning for our mechanics and looking into creating career pathways for the community.
Councilmember Jensen: Are there segments of routes where you might not use an electric bus?
Salvador Llamas: In 2017 we did route profiling to see what the demand would be on the electric drive motor, and what routes would be most efficient for operating an electric bus. We're applying the right technology to the right route that is most cost effective.
Director Syed: We also focus deployment on our equity focused communities, ensuring that the areas with the worst air quality are getting the ZEBs.
7. City of Alameda Annual Report on Transportation
Lisa Foster: For 2022 public transit trends - ridership is up 60% on Alameda routes.
For the City's free bus pass pilot, there were 5,900 trips per month as of December 2022. Ferry ridership is up 103%, with 3,250 Alameda boardings in December 2022.
Car share usage (Gig Car, Getaround) had a big jump in Alameda and there has been a decrease in vehicles registered, which is a good sign for the City's GHG goals. The City made a lot of signal improvements (leading pedestrian intervals and automatic walk phases) and other intersection improvements. Last year the City adopted the Active Transportation Plan and a new street classifications map, and also transitioned the Alameda Loop Shuttle to the Alameda Free Bus Pass pilot program for seniors and people with disabilities and a Uber/Lyft concierge. This year the City is working on new bus stop bench locations, tsunami evacuation planning, transportation metrics planning, and an ADA transition plan. The City is also working on parking management in the commercial areas to cut back on double parking.
Director Syed: Great to see motor vehicle registrations dropping in the City at the same time that growth is occurring.
8. Transit Capital Improvement Program
Gail Payne: The Transit Capital Improvement Program will make more transparent what we're already doing with the paratransit reserve funds from Measure BB. The funds will be used to make bus stops more accessible. Anytime we have leftover monies not used from the TNC concierge and Free Bus Pass programs, we put them into the reserve for the Transit Capital Improvement Program.
Director Syed: How much is there in the reserve currently? Gail Payne: $500,000 in reserve, and we've typically spent the monies on corridor projects, most recently on Otis (e.g., moving bus stops to far-side, making improvements so the bus stop is ADA-compliant, replacing bus shelters, adding benches at bus stops)
Robert Vance: There's an opportunity to look at bus stop improvements outside of major corridor projects
9. AC Transit Ridership and Complaints with Actual Missed Runs Crystal Wang: Ridership still isn't back to pre-pandemic levels, but overall ridership on lines operating in Alameda is up compared to 2022. In terms of customer complaints, for January through March, the top complaint we received was no shows followed by pass ups, and the biggest cause of missed trips was the workforce shortage. We are continuing to hire operators in an effort to address these issues, and we're actually hosting a bus operator hiring event this Saturday in Hayward.
10. Update on Alameda Ferry Terminal Paid Parking Pricing Strategy This item was pushed to the next ILC meeting.
11. Free Bus Pass Program for Seniors and People with Disabilities Update Kat Kaldis: Last month we had over 9,800 rides. Based on the current budget, we can go up to 15,000 rides per month. We're still having people sign up for the program. I've heard from other cities from all different counties about how to get this program implemented in their cities. The bus pass program has been especially successful because we've been able to reach out to a monolinguistic population that wasn't previously being served. By bringing this population into the program we've also been able to see who needs to get into East Bay Paratransit, other programs, etc.
Director Syed: I think it's really interesting to see how much people are using the bus outside of the hours the shuttle used to operate.
Councilmember Jensen: This is a great program for seniors who otherwise wouldn't have transit access.
12. New Developments/Transportation Management Association Update Andrew Thomas: City has several big projects under development, especially along the waterfront. Our TMA is growing with each project that comes online, and the TMA is very interested in looking at how to use their funds to improve and expand AC Transit service. What's the most effective way for the TMA to provide resources so that people in Alameda choose to take the bus more?
Nichele Laynes: We will be coordinating with the City to schedule a meeting about EasyPass.
13. Bench Installations at Bus Stops
Gail Payne: We have about 200 bus stops in town, but only a third of those stops have a place to sit. That's why we're prioritizing benches rather than shelters at this point. We will continue coordinating with AC Transit as we make final decisions on where to place the benches.
14. City Project Update: Encinal, Grand, Mecartney/Island, Lincoln/Marshall/Pacific, Central, Clement/Tilden and Otis/SR 61 and Commercial Street Program Gail Payne: Caltrans is doing construction on Encinal Ave between Sherman and Broadway. Be aware that there could be delays for transit.
15. Next Meetings and Discuss Potential for Hybrid Meetings a. Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 9 a.m.
b. Wednesday, October 11, 2023 at 9 a.m.
Director Syed: Should we look at having meetings on a different day/time when the Alameda TMA (Lucy Gigli) can participate?
Councilmembers Daysog and Jensen: We're flexible.
Andrew Thomas: Thursdays would be ideal for City staff.
16. Agenda Planning Requests
17. Announcements/Public Comments
18. Adjournment
Meeting adjourned at 10:29am