3A Public Hearing 2010 0517 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

Livermore, Kathleen From: Roy Nakadegawa P.E., Former BART Director [rnakadegawa@myfastmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 2:47 AM To: Livermore, Kathleen Subject: POSSIBLE SPAM BRT, Yes! Importance: Low Planning Commissioner Please support the continued efforts of planning staff to find a viable, BUILT "Locally Preferred Alternative" (or "LPA") for BRT. as possible. I have lived and in East Bay for over 60 year, worked over 40 years in Public Works and retired as an Acting City Traffic Engineer, plus served 32 years as an Elected Transit Director to AC Transit and BART. During this time the population of inner cities have generally decreased, but traffic has increased about 3-fold within these years, resulted in increased oil consumption, pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and congestion, Furthermore, Caltrans is constructing a fourth bore for the Caldecott Tunnel and population in East Bay cities will increase because of ABAG?s requirement for inner-city development which will further increase traffic. Because of ABAG?s requirement, most Cities are planning more Transit Oriented Development (TOD) along transit centers and corridors to encourage more transit use to reduce traffic. These developments will provide more housing and jobs to be in walkable areas. However local transit has been having difficulties maintaining reliable service because of increased traffic. AC Transit is proposing to build an exclusive lane Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system that will operate along Telegraph and International Blvd in Oakland and San Leandro, which is estimated to provide 40,000 trips per day. This is roughly equivalent to what two four lane local arterials carry, yet the BRT buses will be using only two lanes, a ratio of 4 to 1, transporting these riders, Rapid Bus 1R Currently AC Transit operates a Rapid Bus 1R utilizing signal priority, but since the traffic on International Blvd is getting more congested, these buses have not consistently been able to take advantage of the few extra seconds the priority provides due to being queued with mixed flow traffic and unable to reach and clear the intersection within the few seconds allocated. As traffic increases further, the effectiveness of Rapid Bus with signal priority will decrease to point of signal priority being useless. Then some say we should increase the priority time to allow for bus passage, but it should not be increased for it will begin to cause the delay of cross arterial traffic as well as affect pedestrian safety in crossing streets. The Rapid Bus is also slowed down by the need to pull in and out of traffic to pick up and unload passengers at curbside stops. To get back into the mixed flow traffic lane causes a few seconds delay, which adds up to several minutes over the total route and again as traffic increases this delay will increase. Some say the Rapid Bus1R can be improved with prepaid fare at stops that equal the service of the BRT. However, the 1R will still become more unreliable operating midst of increasing traffic and will encounter increased described problems of not clearing the signalized intersections due to longer queue and delays due to the weaving in and out of greater