Historical Perspective
MUNI was the first major transit operator in San Francisco to venture into bus service. This mode of transportation provided a way to quickly expand transit service without needing to make massive investments in new rail infrastructure.
After World War II, decreasing ridership and rising costs forced Muni to replace all but five of its streetcar lines with bus routes.
While buses cost more to maintain and have a shorter lifespan than streetcars, they’re cheaper to buy and operate. They were considered a solution to the old rail system. The left map above shows all Muni streetcar, coach and cable car services shortly after World War II ended, in 1952 while the right depicts all MUNI services offered in 2019. Looking at the two maps, it can be seen that there are less MUNI routes today compared to the amount in service in 1952. Geographically gaps in the routes can be seen in the right map, leaving many neighborhoods without access to high quality service routes and contributing to the transit desert.
The right image depicts what the Bay Area Rapid Transit system was intended to be while the left image reflects the BART routes in present-day. The right image was created by Jake Coolidge who used the BART Original Plan from 1956 to base his design.
Various complications prevented the BART from expanding into parts of the Bay Area such as Marin County and parts of the South Bay region.
- Opposition rose when high taxes were set to fund the BART system. The existing Southern Pacific train was considered sufficient to handle the commuters so officials withdrew from the plan.
- Officials worried over sprawl development due to the lack of land protections policies in place.
- Report revealed that the Golden Gate Bridge could not handle BART trains. However, a report in 1990 asserted that the bridge could handle the trains.
- Worried that Marin voters might vote against the plan believing they might never see service, Marin County officials were pressured to withdraw.
Despite the fact that the BART systems started being built in 1964, it is still expanding. However, as the expansion process occurs ever so slowly, the people in the areas without the BART are left to rely on their own forms of transportation such as a personal car or other forms of public transportation.
In both of these maps, the main focus is on the Bay Area Rapid Transit. While the BART’s failure to extend into all 5 major areas, there are other forms of transportation that could be used in order to fill the holes that the BART left behind such as the buses, CalTrain, highways. However, with 27 different transit agencies working in the 9 counties of the Bay Area, it is difficult to coordinate transfers and efficient routes. By integrating the region’s transit agencies, more coherent transportation plan for the Bay Area can be established.