News, Views and Analysis from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments
The preferred design alternative for a Bay Bridge West Span Bicycle and Pedestrian Pathway was presented to the public Nov. 19 and can be watched here. Read More
Do you daydream of new ways to cross over or under the San Francisco Bay? Close your eyes and see a fleet of flying cars, carrying commuters to work each day? This could be your time to shine. MTC and ABAG are looking for your biggest, brightest, billion dollar (or more!) ideas for redefining the way we travel in and around the Bay Area.
This month, the agencies are jointly issuing an open Request for Transformative Projects – transportation project ideas that have the potential to revolutionize how we move around the region. Transformative Projects should provide new and creative solutions for transportation in the area and should be large in scale – costing $1 billion or more. Public agencies, individuals, private sector companies and nongovernmental organizations are all encouraged to participate. Proposals are due on September 6, 2018 and can be submitted by completing the online form.
The Request for Transformative Projects is part of the Horizon initiative to explore the challenges and opportunities likely to face the Bay Area between now and 2050. Finalists will be selected in October 2018. Keep reading to find out more! Read More
As we’ve shared in previous blog posts this spring, MTC and ABAG have launched Horizon, an ambitious regional initiative that will explore the challenges and opportunities likely to face the Bay Area between now and 2050.
The Horizon initiative will allow the public, planners and policymakers to wrestle with a range of challenging questions that traditionally have been outside the regional planning process, including how to respond to the emergence of driverless vehicles, rising sea levels, earthquakes, changing economic conditions and more. Read more about the questions we hope to explore and the principles that will guide us in this project. Read More
Horizon is an exciting new effort from MTC and ABAG to allow the public, planners and policymakers to wrestle with challenging questions about the external forces that could shape the Bay Area through 2050. Horizon will explore a range of pressing issues and attempt to put the region on sounder footing as it prepares for, and tries to shape, a trajectory that is both equitable and resilient to potential headwinds.
Horizon will identify a suite of potential external forces and allow residents, planners and decision-makers alike to think through policy and investment solutions that make sense in each distinct future. Ultimately, policies and projects that perform well regardless of what happens in the decades ahead will be identified as top priorities going forward. This planning initiative will inform the next regional transportation and land use plan, a separate but closely related effort that will kick off in mid-2019.
Currently, major Horizon work efforts have been directed towards establishing Guiding Principles that will help orient the process, as well as on identifying the futures themselves. Keep reading to find out more about the futures and watch the video above for additional background. Read More
When the Transbay Transit Center (now officially known as the Salesforce Transit Center) opens in downtown San Francisco, travelers will have a myriad of transit options at this “Grand Central Terminal” for the West. As a bonus, public art projects from four different artists will provide a visual feast for the eyes. The above video from MTC's Mark Jones features San Francisco-based Julie Chang, who designed the terrazzo floor for the Grand Hall.
As described on MTC's website:
The terrazzo floor of the Grand Hall will welcome visitors into a warm and inviting environment that evokes a lush sunlit Victorian garden. Mined from local ecology, design elements include California poppies and jewel-toned hummingbirds highlighted by mirrored glass. Integrated into the design is a subtle overlay of icons and patterns, which are drawn from the rich tapestry of people and cultures across the Bay Area: flower-like circular rings from an Indian sari, cloud-like curves inspired by Chinese embroidery, Japanese crests, diamonds and chevrons found in a variety of sources including African textiles and Grecian pottery, and star and cross motifs from Islamic tiles.
On June 5th, voters in all nine Bay Area counties will decide on a package of congestion relief projects known as Regional Measure 3 (RM 3). If approved by a combined majority of all voters, this suite of transit, highway and bike/pedestrian improvements would be financed by an increase in tolls on the Bay Area’s seven state-owned toll bridges.
Today’s video gives a brief history of the past two regional measures that were passed in the Bay Area – Regional Measure 1 in 1988 and Regional Measure 2 in 2004 – before discussing some of projects planned for the toll funds if RM 3 passes this year.
Watch the video and continue reading for more details on these projects. You can also review the complete expenditure plan and learn more on the RM 3 information page on MTC’s website. Read More
Though this week’s atmospheric river-fueled storm may delay its opening by a few days, the new alignment on southbound U.S. Highway 101 at the Marin-Sonoma Narrows will soon bring major traffic flow improvements and future flood relief to this bottleneck area. Check out a new video from MTC’s Mark Jones to see the project in action and hear experts from Caltrans and the Transportation Authority of Marin talk about the higher, dryer, wider highway. Read More
Some of the biggest challenges faced by regional planners over long time horizons are risk, and uncertainty. New technologies, unexpected natural or man-made disasters, economic booms and busts, and political volatility can all lay waste to the most diligent and careful planning efforts.
As the nine county San Francisco Bay Area’s transportation and land use planning agencies, respectively, MTC and ABAG are jointly responsible for developing the region’s long-range Regional Transportation Plan and Sustainable Communities Strategy (RTP/SCS). Our most recent RTP/SCS, Plan Bay Area 2040, discusses how the region will grow over the next two decades and identifies transportation and land use strategies to enable a more sustainable, equitable and economically vibrant future.
The RTP/SCS has its limitations though. While a long list of statutory requirements ensure the plan is doing what it is intended by law to do, these requirements can also constrain the types of issues that can be explored, modeled and ultimately acted upon. This makes it difficult to incorporate outside-the-box – yet essential – thinking about emerging issues into the RTP/SCS’s policy and project framework.
As the year winds to a close, it's a good time to take stock of all the things we are grateful for. Here at the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) and Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), there is an across-the-board commitment to hard work and excellence at both the staff and leadership level. We are thankful for all of the following honors and awards bestowed on us in 2017 by peers and professional organizations. Read More
The final two piers of the old Bay Bridge East Span were demolished last month, 81 years after the bridge’s grand opening. In the above video, MTC’s Mark Jones joins Caltrans bridge crews to document the stupendous early-morning implosion. Read More