On Tuesday, the Oakland City Council’s Finance and Management Committee will receive an informational report on Oakland’s long term pension and other post-employment liabilities. The report will also list a number of options for reducing future obligations. Although no action will be taken on these options right now, if you feel strongly about pensions (and I know a lot of you do), it would be a good idea to go share your thoughts on this one, or at the very least e-mail or call the Committee members beforehand. The meeting starts at 11 (PDF), although the pension stuff is towards the end of the agenda.

The rest of the post is mostly just a summary of the staff report (PDF), so you guys can get an overview, but again, if this is a subject that interests you, I strongly suggest you read the whole thing (PDF).

What kind of post-employment benefits do we offer?

Well, there are a couple. First, there’s CalPERS. This is how we provide retirement benefits to current employees. CalPERS, or the California Public Employees Retirement System, provides retirement benefits for most (but not all – not everyone uses it) public employees in the State besides teachers. Mostly this blog will talk about CalPERS, but I just want to quickly mention the other ones.

We also have PFRS, the Police and Fire Retirement System (PDF). Before we joined CalPERS, we managed our own system, and it serves sworn employees hired before July 1976. I believe there is only one current employee in PFRS, everyone else is retired already or transferred to CalPERS. I’m sure it will not surprise you that we haven’t managed these obligations well. In 1997, we decided that we didn’t like having to pay every year into PFRS and issued bonds to cover the costs through July of 2011.

At that point, we have to start paying. How much, you ask? The most recent estimate of the unfunded PFRS liability is $435.3 million (PDF). That means that in July of 2011, which, in case you hadn’t noticed, is not very far off at all at this point, we’re going to have to cough up something in the neighborhood of $40 million a year (PDF). Where’s that money going to come from? Well, we’re probably (PDF) going to issue more bonds (PDF).

OMERS, the Oakland Municipal Employees’ Retirement System (PDF), is like PFRS in that it’s from before we joined CalPERS. It covers non-sworn employees we hired before 1970. Employees hired before that date and who kept working for the City had the option of transferring to CalPERS and most of them did. As of July 2009, there were only 50 people in the plan.

OMERS is unlike PFRS in that it’s almost completely funded. The most recent estimate of the OMERS unfunded liability is $518,000 (PDF).

Finally, there are retirement medical benefits. I am not going to get too much into this one right now just due to space concerns and cause it really should have its own post, but basically, Oakland pays for health insurance (up to a certain cost) for retirees. This is a huge unfunded liability, estimated currently to be in the neighborhood of $600 million.

If we were going to put aside money ahead of time to cover the cost of these future benefits, we would have spent $85.7 million last year. Instead we paid $12.5 million to cover the cost for current retirees. You can see the problem here.

The report lists a few options for reducing future liabilities – some sort of prefunding of benefits, instituting medical benefit cost sharing for current employees, and adopting a two tiered system where new employees would not be promised the same level of benefit.

What kind of retirement benefits do people get?

Sworn employees (police and fire) are eligible to retire at age 50, and to receive 3% of their highest annual salary for every year of service. A minimum of five years of service is required to receive this benefit. So, for example, if you retire at age 50 after 20 years of service, you will get 60% of your highest annual salary (PDF) as your pension.

Non-sworn employees have a plan called 2.7 percent at 55. You can probably figure it out yourself, but just in case – that means that if you retire at age 55, you get 2.7% of your highest year’s salary for every year of service. Again, you need to work five years to be eligible. So if you retire at age 55 after 20 years of service, you will get 54% of your highest annual salary (PDF) as your pension.

What does it all cost?

As you can image, providing these benefits is expensive. How expensive, you ask? The City’s CalPERS contribution cost last year was $74.5 million.

That’s based on a contribution rate of 27.877% for public safety employees and 19.588% for other employees. That percentage is set based on a combination of what your pension obligations are going to be and what your unfunded liability is.

Okay, I’ve rewritten that last sentence about a dozen times, and still don’t think I’m doing a very good job explaining it. I’m just going to let the report (PDF) explain it to you:

The contribution rates are comprised of the normal cost (i.e., the future annual premiums) and the amortization base cost which is determine by CalPERS to bring the system to 100% funded over 30 years. The amortization base cost is dependent on the unfunded liability of the City. The higher the unfunded liability the higher this rate will be to make the plan whole. For example, since the City has an unfunded liability of $254.7 million for the safety plan as of June 30, 2008, the City pays a contribution rate of 28.092% for fiscal year 2010-11. If the City pays that unfunded liability ($254.7M), then the contribution rate would only be 17.689% for fiscal year 2010-11. Beause the City has an unfunded liability of $254.7M, CalPERS charges 10.403% (amortization cost) in addition to the normal cost to bring the plan funding status to 100% over time.

So, the way we’re going, we can expect those contribution rates to keep rising – up to 33.7% for safety employees in 2016 and 26.5% for non-safety employees in 2016. And of course, payroll costs will rise during that same period.

How do we pay for it?

Well, the City’s CalPERS contributions are just part of the salary costs. So they come from whatever source of money is also funding the payroll.

Oakland workers also contribute to their pensions. The rate varies depending on what they do. This is called the “employee share.” The idea behind the employee share is not, as some people seem to think, that the employee necessarily pays it. The employee can, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all, but I just wanted to make it clear that it isn’t done that way everywhere. All it means is that the money paid into the employee share belongs to that specific employee rather than the City’s whole pension fund in general. So if you quit the City, you can decide you don’t want whatever pension you may have been eligible for, and take the money that was paid as employee share out of your account and roll it into your IRA or whatever.

CalPERS sets the employee share for civilian employees at 8% of pay, and for public safety employees at 9% of pay. In Oakland, civilian employees pay the full 8% employee share into their pension out of their paychecks. Police Officers contribute nothing, although they will start giving 2% in 2013. Firemen contribute the full 9% employee share, and then on top of that, also give another 4% of their paycheck to help cover the City’s portion of the costs.

What can we do about it?

The report includes a couple of options for reducing the cost of pension obligations.

• Introduce a two-tiered retirement system: This would allow us to continue the current benefits for existing employees, but give a smaller benefit to new hires. That way, costs would decrease over time.

• Change calculation of final compensation: Retirement benefits through CalPERS are based on the employee’s “final compensation.” Although this sounds like an obvious thing, it’s not. There is more than one way we can calculate final compensation. In Oakland, we calculate it as the total of your highest paid consecutive 12 months of work. You could make that number based on the average of the employee’s three highest years pay, and it would end up being a little lower in many cases.

• Increase employer paid member contribution: Another option would be to just make employees pay more. The more workers give out of their paycheck, the less the City has to pay.

• Pay all or part of unfunded liability: If we paid our whole unfunded liability of $537.3 million, then our annual percentage that we have to pay to CalPERS would be way lower. I don’t even know why this one was mentioned at all, since where would that money come from?

Discussion on Tuesday

Okay, so like I said before, this is an informational report. Nothing is going to happen at Tuesday’s meeting. But if you are concerned about the City’s refusal to deal with ever increasing post-employment liabilities, this is an excellent opportunity to voice those concerns.

Like I said before, the meeting starts at 11 on Tuesday (PDF). You can also contact the members of the Committee beforehand. Their contact information is as follows:

• District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan:
  E-mail: pkernighan@oaklandnet.com, Phone: (510) 238-7002

• District 3 Councilmember Nancy Nadel:
  E-mail: nnadel@oaklandnet.com, Phone: (510) 238-7003

• District 4 Councilmember Jean Quan:
  E-mail: jquan@oaklandnet.com, Phone: (510) 238-7004

• District 5 Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente:
  E-mail: idelafuente@oaklandnet.com, Phone: (510) 238-7005

If you do elect to go speak, or send your comments in advance, here are a few words of advice. Try to be reasonable. Read the report, make sure you understand the issues and the options, and try to ask for something that might actually happen. For example, there is no point to calling and saying the City should no longer use a defined benefit plan. You might think that, and it might be a reasonable position, but there is just no way that it’s going to happen. So don’t bother. Don’t go and say that all employees should take a 50% pay cut. That’s not going to happen either. And if you demand things that are completely outside the realm of possibility, you will just be dismissed as crazy and your effort will have been a waste of time. So try to keep it reasonable.

And if you can’t make it in person, you can always catch the action streaming online on KTOP.

But you weren’t. Instead, three years later, every time I go to AAMLO, I am forced to stare at this tremendous ugliness:

You guys know where I’m talking about, right? It’s the half-finished condo project between the Federal Building and Preservation Park, and it’s a giant freaking eyesore.

City Walk: Abandoned since 2007

City Walk suddenly halted constructed in July of 2007 when the developer, Olson Co., ran into, like, all sorts of problems. Olson insisted they were going to be able to get it together and finish, and in December of 2007, the City Council gave them an extension on their completion deadline. They were supposed to restart construction by the end of January 2008 and finish by July 2009.

Obviously, that didn’t happen. Then, like nine months later, Olson was all “Oh yeah, we will restart construction – in November!.” Hahaha. Finally, in February of 2009, Olson admitted defeat and asked the City to amend the DDA so the project would no longer be in default and they could sell it to a rental housing developer, which they said at the time was like, totally about to happen any day now. Construction was going to restart in May, and be finished by December 2010.

Big surprise, that plan didn’t work out either. So then, last summer, someone else decided they wanted to buy the building and finish it up as rental units, so the City once again extended the DDA, this time promising completion by the end of 2011. If you’re wondering at this point why we even bother having these construction deadlines, well, it’s a good question. I don’t have an answer for you.

New City Walk owners need help

Anyway, this time, the sale actually did go through. So that’s something. Unfortunately, this new company that owns it now and wants to finish the building off as a 264 apartment project (instead of the originally planned 252 condos) can’t get the all financing to finish construction. Or, I guess more precisely, they can’t get enough financing that they think it’s worth their while to finish construction.

So in order to just get the damn thing finished already and give the poor pedestrians of downtown Oakland their sidewalks back, Redevelopment Agency staff is now proposing that we just loan them $5 million of redevelopment money (PDF), which will be enough, apparently, to fill in the financing gaps that are preventing the project from getting restarted. I’ll let the report explain it to you:

The loan is required to decrease the equity and investor profit requirements in order to make the project financially feasible. Without this reduction in equity the investor does not meet its minimum return and is therefore unwilling to finance the project. Providing the loan will help complete the project and transform the blighted site into beautiful new rental housing.

I don’t know how “beautiful” the finished building it going to be, but “blighted” is definitely an accurate way to describe the site as it sits now. Here are the loan deets, also from the agenda report (PDF):

The loan terms will be at least as favorable as the other debt financing Wood Partners obtains for the project. The interest rate will be set after negotiations are completed with the other construction lender. The negotiations were under way at the time this report was being written. The interest rate will be at least 8%, but no less than one percentage point higher than the interest rate on other debt; the higher rate on the Agency loan is appropriate given that the loan will be in second priority position. Wood Partners’ latest offer from a construction lender is a loan at 7.5% interest, with a term of up to 7 years, a 1% origination fee and a 1% early termination fee, which would set the Agency loan interest rate at 8.5% assuming similar fees. The Agency loan would be interest-only until stabilized occupancy and then converted to a 25 year amortization schedule with a balloon payment (i.e. loan due in full) in 2015, five years from execution of the loan documents. The Agency could be repaid sooner if conditions are favorable for refinancing with a long term permanent loan. There will not be a prepayment penalty. Given 1) that this is a market rate loan, and 2) the troubled status of the housing market, no additional project development conditions are being proposed in return for the loan.

As far as I’m concerned, this is excellent. It is just like, downright shameful that the City could let that freaking eyesore just sit there unfinished, sometimes shrink-wrapped, sometimes not, for years and years, right in the middle of downtown! It’s blight, and it makes the City look like crap. It just needs to be finished, I don’t care what it takes.

The City Walk loan will be considered by the City Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee on Tuesday. The meeting starts at 2, but this is last on the agenda (PDF) and the first item is going to take like a year.

Is it City Hall?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

View Corridors

This afternoon, the Planning Commission’s Zoning Update Committee will discuss a proposal to downzone large chunks of Oakland’s downtown core (PDF) in order to protect views of City Hall and the Tribune Tower from four points on the far side of Lake Merritt.

Downzone by how much, you ask? Well, we’re talking about 90 feet in areas that would be otherwise zoned for 400 feet and 110 to 120 feet in areas that would otherwise have no height limits.

Why are we even considering this?

Do you guys remember that whole downtown zoning process? A proposal for new downtown Oakland zoning first came to the Planning Commission’s Zoning Update Committee in March of 2008. Lots of people, both pro and anti-development, showed up to talk about how they hated it. The Committee asked questions. It came back. The same thing happened. It came back again. And again. And again.

This went on for an entire year. There were Zoning Update Committee meetings and Landmarks Board meetings and joint meetings between the two and special workshops where they brought in a professional facilitator to help everyone work through their issues about the zoning. And over time, the plan changed, compromises were made, and a little more than a year after the new zoning first showed up at the Zoning Update Committee, it went to the Planning Commission and passed onto City Council.

Getting to the City Council didn’t mean that all the work on the new downtown zoning was done, however. The staff report (PDF) from that meeting notes two areas where work would continue – findings required for demolishing historic buildings, and view corridors.

Now, some people advocating adoption of this view corridor proposal have been going around saying that we’re doing it at the direction of the City Council. The way they tell it, you would think that there was no plan to study view corridors until the downtown zoning update came to the City Council, and that it was a motion made at Council that directed staff to do the view corridor study. That isn’t true.

What happened was this. A number of people advocating for lower height limits downtown had been asking throughout the whole year-plus long downtown zoning update process to adopt zoning that would not allow any buildings to be built that block views of the Tribune Tower and City Hall from Lake Merritt. When introducing the zoning proposal to the City Council, Deputy CEDA Director Eric Angstadt explained the status of the view corridor plans like this:

Staff has a work program in order to define view corridors and bring those back for Council approval for June of 2010.

So, yes, the Council did say to go ahead and do the view corridor study that was being planned anyway. But their approval was hardly the ringing endorsement that certain people are making it out to be. In fact, during the lengthy Council discussion on the issue, view corridors hardly came up at all.

Take, as an example, the clip below from that meeting where District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan addresses the view corridor issue.

She basically says that she’s fine with doing the study, but that her main concern is not views of particular buildings, but views of the sky. Anyway.

So what views are we talking about?

Well, there are five. All the “views” proposed for protection are of either City Hall or the Tribune Tower from the far side of Lake Merritt. The photos below (all taken from the staff report (PDF)) are labelled with the location the picture was taken from, and also with what the view is supposedly of, which is helpful, since the buildings in question are actually kind of hard to see in a lot of them.

To me, these photographs are a better argument against adopting the view corridors than anything I could come up with myself. I mean, you have to squint to see the buildings in question in any of them! How is that a “corridor”?

What would protecting these views mean?

Well, basically, if we adopted these particular corridors as protected views, it would mean that nobody would be allowed to build anything that would block the view of the building at the end of the corridor. Here’s what all the corridors look like when you put them together.

The map below shows what kind of height limits we would adopt within the corridors in order to guarantee that nothing could get built that would block the view.

In case you were wondering, the dark brown and grey areas where all the corridors converge are the parts of downtown where we zoned to allow unlimited height. The idea was to concentrate intense development along the “Broadway spine,” particularly around the BART stations.

Why on earth would we do that?

Advocates of these view corridors bend over backwards to make it sound like this is a normal thing to do. “Lots of cities have protected views,” they insist. And that is true. There are many cities in the US that have adopted ordinances prohibiting new buildings that would interfere with certain views.

What the view corridor proponents don’t tell you is that none of those protected views are at all similar to what’s being proposed here. First off, most of them are of natural features, not buildings.

Take Denver, for example. Denver has elected to protect views of the Rocky Mountains from a number of places. In fact, they actually just adopted a new one last year, which limits heights immediately west of Coors Field in order to preserve the view of the mountains from the park.

Now, Coors Field is a wonderful ballpark, and sitting there and watching the sun set over the Rocky Mountains on a summer evening is a truly special experience. If you ever happen to be in Denver during the summer, go to a baseball game!

^{WyoLibrarian on Flickr}

The arresting beauty of that view is hard to capture in a photograph, but you get the idea. The mountains are big, they’re striking, and the are the most prominent feature of your view. If I lived in Colorado and my blog was called “A Better Denver,” I totally would have supported the Coors Field view plane ordinance.

Another example people like to give to justify view corridors is Austin, TX, where views of the Texas State Capitol are protected from a number of places (by both State and City law). Now, I’m from Texas, and I actually lived in Austin for a while. The Texas State Capitol is a magnificent building. No offense to the Trib Tower or City Hall, but seriously, there is just no comparison.

Here’s an image of one of the protected view corridors for the Texas State Capitol:

^{daleexpress on flickr}

Don’t have to squint to see that one, do you? No. Just like in the previous example, the protected view is actually protecting something that is the most prominent thing in the view.

The view corridors proposal came to the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board last Monday, and the Board recommended the adoption of all five view corridors by a 3 to 1 4 to 3 vote (Sorry, I have no idea how that happened.) This post is already ridiculously long, so I’m not going to talk about that discussion right now, but if you’re interested, I encourage you to view the video clips below. The first three clips show statements from the three dissenting Boardmembers, all of whom I thought had very good arguments, and the last one shows the argument of the Boardmember who made the motion to support the corridors.

If that wasn’t enough on view corridors for you, you can watch the entire LPAB conversation here.

Anyway, with this history in mind, it didn’t surprise me at all when I started hearing complaints a few months ago about a proposed new frozen yogurt shop wanting to open in an empty space on Lakeshore (between Arizmendi and the Lakeshore Cafe). There are already too many frozen dessert shops! Nobody in the Grand Lake survey from 2 years ago said they wanted to see a yogurt shop! The competition could put the gelato shop out of business! A new yogurt shop will destroy all the businesses on Lakeshore! They should open an adorable butcher shop that sells only the highest quality organic meat but has super cheap prices instead!

I just rolled my eyes, and figured it would go away. After all, as best as I could tell, there were only a handful of people on the anti-yogurt shop bandwagon, and it didn’t seem like the rest of the neighborhood was finding their arguments particularly persuasive. So then I stopped hearing about it and I kind of figured it was all over.

Not yet! At tomorrow’s meeting (PDF), the Oakland Planning Commission will hear an appeal of the yogurt shop’s approval (PDF). Why can anyone appeal a yogurt shop to the City in the first place, you ask? It’s because businesses of the type “limited service restaurant and cafe” require a minor conditional use permit to open in this type of retail district.

Anyway, the appeal, as it turns out, is not being filed by random angry neighbors because they’d rather have a fantasy butcher. It has been filed by the owner of another frozen yogurt shop in the neighborhood. But he’s not appealing because he wants to shut out the competition. No, he’s objecting to the new yogurt shop on public safety and public health grounds:

I disagree with your decision for the new yogurt shop. The space to open the self-service, do-it-yourself frozen yogurt store at 3261 Lakeshore Ave between Arizmendi Bakery and Lakeshore Cafe within that compact area would not generate a large enough span for pedestrians to safely cross that active space without accidental incidents that could incite. Especially in the weekend, the Pedestrians would feel crowded, uncomfortable, and possibly cause some sort of conflict to arise. An elderly, handicap or a mom with a stroller would have a difficult time passing and could have the likelihood of being knocked over, shoved into others, or a car.

The self-service, do-it-yourself frozen yogurt store design to open in this small space is not big enough for tables and chairs for the costumers to sit comfortable. As customers eat on and go, the street waste and trash rates would also increase because of the higher concentration of inhabitants which would lead to foul odors and possible health hazards. This will not serve Lakeshore community as it claims under Attachment A. Please review this appeal.

Unsurprisingly, staff does not find the objections persuasive, and recommends that the Planning Commission deny the appeal. I’m guessing the Commission will agree. So watch out, Lakeshore! Frozen yogurt and the accompanying foul odors are on the way! Hold onto your strollers! You don’t want to get knocked into a car.

The City of Oakland has been in pretty much continuous budget cutting mode since Spring of 2008. If that seems kind of ridiculous to you, it’s because it is.

Two year budgets

In Oakland, we theoretically adopt a budget every two years. This two year budget cycle should be a good thing for the City. It provides some measure of stability in service delivery and allows the Council to focus on other pressing issues in between budget discussions.

The adoption of a two year budget is, of course, no guarantee that nothing will get changed in the non-budget year. After all, nobody can predict exactly what revenues are going to look like a year in advance. If revenues turn out to be lower than anticipated, or expenditures turn out to be higher, then the budget will get re-opened after a year so the Council can make mid-cycle adjustments. That’s normal. If the adopted two-year budget was done properly, using realistic revenue and expenditure assumptions, then the mid-cycle adjustments should not be too dramatic.

Two week budgets

Of course, this whole two-year and mid-cycle budget process only works if you adopt, you know, realistic budgets. If you adopt a budget that happens to be “balanced” with imaginary money that you are crossing your fingers will somehow fall out of the sky, or if you, say, adopt a budget that, in addition to being predicated on fake money, is still not even balanced in the second year, then you’re going to have to go back and make changes a lot more often than that.

It also only works if you are willing to commit to, you know, balancing your budget when you find out just how little money you do have to work with. The Council received a set of dire revenue projections last fall that revealed multi-million dollar shortfalls in this fiscal year’s budget, and despite multiple meetings about how to deal with it over the course of five months, they have still not managed to adopt a budget that closes this year’s General Fund shortfall. Still! It’s outrageous.

District 4 Councilmember, Finance Committee Chair, and Mayoral hopeful Jean Quan got into this bizarre habit last fall of talking about how Oakland should start looking doing at five year budgets. Nothing against five year budgets or anything, but I’m sorry – what a freaking joke. How can you expect to do a five year budget if you can’t handle a two year budget? Hell, the Council for the past two years hasn’t even been able to manage a one year, or even six month budget.

The Council was, in fact, so obstinate in their refusal to adopt a realistic budget plan during the last cycle that by Spring of 2009, they were essentially operating with a two-week budget. To keep the checks from bouncing until the new fiscal year could begin, they ended up basically just shifting a bunch of costs into the next year’s budget, but only after toying with and rejecting a number of ham-handed budget hacks, like a last-minute proposal to close the City every Friday for the final six weeks of the year.

What’s on the table this time?

Councilmembers Jane Brunner and Ignacio De La Fuente have proposed that all elected offices be forced to take a 15% budget cut (PDF). At a meeting earlier this year, one of the budget balancing measures that had been proposed (PDF) was cutting 5.0 FTE from the City Attorney’s office. At the meeting, a number of speakers complained that it was unfair that the City Attorney’s office should be cut so much while the City Council was taking no cuts. So they decided to not do the City Attorney cuts at that meeting, and instead come back with this idea of cutting 15% from the budget of all the elected offices. Here’s what the savings from that would look like:

• Mayor’s Office: FY09-10: $45,120, FY10-11: $270,733
• City Council: FY09-10: $81,300, FY10-11: $487,774
• City Attorney: FY09-10: $91,080, FY10-11: $546,486
• City Auditor: FY09-10: $33,470, FY10-11: $200,826

Under the proposal (PDF), the City Council would eliminate 6.0 FTE, cutting the position of Legislative Analyst. The Mayor, City Attorney, and City Auditor would be tasked with figuring out on their own what to cut in order to realize those savings targets.

Is cutting 15% from everyone fair?

The City Administrator has responded to the proposal with a rather strongly worded memo (PDF) advising the Council that their plan is not quite so fair as they appear to think it is:

Across the board reductions for all elected offices would be disproportionate and inequitable, given that each office has taken varying levels of GPF budget reductions since July 2008. In particular, some offices have already eliminated staff while others have not. FY 2009-10 and FY2010-11 reduction targets should account for prior GPF budget and FTE reductions taken since FY2008-09.

The memo points out that the way the budgets for the elected offices have been treated during the past two years of budget slicing varies wildly:

Similarly, since July 2008 in budget terms, and netting out transfers to other officers or funds:

• the Mayor’s Office budget has been reduced by $.8 million or 30.7%
• the City Attorney’s Office budget has been reduced by $1.8 million or 34.7%
• the City Council office budget has been reduced by $.29 million or 7.7%
• the City Auditor budget has increased by $.08 million or 5.6%

The memo continues:

To now make a 15% reduction for all elected officers neglects the reality that both the Mayor’s Office and the City Attorney’s have already made major staffing cuts and the Council has made only minimal budget reductions.

For the Council make 15% cuts now would still leave them far below the cuts (less than half) already made by the City Attorney’s office and by the Mayor’s office.

As such, there are two equitable approaches: (i) have the 15% cuts proposed for all elected offices be limited to just the City Council and by some lesser amount for the City Auditor; or (ii) have the Council cuts match the level of cuts already made by the City Attorney and Mayor, which would necessitate doubling the 15% Council cuts to 30% and then make much lesser cuts to other elected offices

The Administrator’s point about how the proposal does not actually demonstrate equity in budget cuts among elected offices is well taken. However, it fails to address the larger problem with the proposal, which is that forcing everyone to take equal cuts is a stupid way to close a deficit. Taking the same amount of money from everywhere assumes that every function of the City has equal importance, which it doesn’t, and that our existing budget prioritizes resources in the best way possible, which it also probably doesn’t.

Can we expect it to get better anytime soon?

HAHAHAHAHA!

Do I really have to say any more than that? I suppose I should. Okay, here we go.

I don’t know if it’s that people have short memories or that more people are watching the budget meetings these days, but in the days following each of the last two discussions, I had a number of people talk to me glowingly about the Council’s acceptance that it’s time to “get serious” about the budget. Some people praise the general attitude in the room, and other praise speeches from one Councilmember or another.

They always seem shocked when I just roll my eyes in response. They ask questions like “Why aren’t you excited that the Council is really dealing with the budget finally? You’ve been complaining about how they won’t for months!” Which is true. But for those who have followed the Council’s efforts to deal with the budget crisis for the last two years, this is a nauseatingly familiar song. It’s easy to talk about how it’s time to “get real” or “get serious” or “make tough choices.” Evidence of just how easy this is can be found by reviewing the video of basically every budget meeting in 2009.

Clearly, following through on those promises is a lot harder. One can’t help but wonder how serious the Council is collectively about balancing the budget when only one member even bothers to press staff at these meetings for follow-up and progress/feasibility reports about previously suggested revenue generating measures. (I’ll give you one guess which.)

So tune into to KTOP tomorrow to see the budget action, or, you know, don’t. There will be plenty more budget meetings over the next few months, and probably again over the next year, and nothing ever happens at them anyway. I mean, at some point, I suppose, something is going to have to happen. But who knows when that will be. Given the Council’s track record, I would not advise holding one’s breath.

Every time I go to one of these meetings, all sorts of people are like “What about putting a streetcar on Broadway?” and “Maybe you wouldn’t need to build more square feet of parking garages than of retail space if you had a streetcar!” and “Why is there no streetcar in any of those drawings. I think it would be better with a streetcar!” And every time it comes up, the consultant responds immediately with the same robotic answer. A streetcar, he informs us, is outside the scope of this study. Fair enough. But telling people that a streetcar is outside the scope definitely doesn’t seem to be enough to get them to shut up about it, since, like I said, it keeps coming up over and over and over again.

These streetcar obsessed mobs will no doubt be delighted to learn that they may soon get an opportunity to go to lots of meetings where they can sit around and talk about how much they love streetcars without having anyone tell them to shut up.

How can this be, you ask? Well, the City of Oakland is applying for a grant (PDF) from Caltrans to study doing a Broadway streetcar.

What is this grant? What would it pay for?

The grant would come from Caltrans’s Community Based Transportation Planning program, which also funded that HarriOak Transportation Plan that’s been going on for the last year. What would be involved in the plan? Here’s the description from the agenda report (PDF):

The Broadway Streetcar and Transit Improvement Plan will be a planning effort that assesses the advantages and disadvantages, and the feasibility of a streetcar line on Broadway. The study will produce a conceptual-level plan for a streetcar and other transit and pedestrian upgrades along Broadway that will improve livability and spur economic development. The plan will include schematics that show how the project would affect the “look and feel” of the Broadway corridor.

Transportation and urban design consultants will analyze several aspects of the proposed streetcar service – including dedicated versus shared lanes, median platform stops versus sidewalk stops, proposed locations for the maintenance and storage yard(s), and different route alignments. Consultants will also help to facilitate stakeholder collaboration and consensus building through community meetings.

Neat, huh?

Why would we want a streetcar on Broadway anyway?

Again, from the report (PDF):

Transit service that connects Jack London Square with the neighborhoods north of Interstate 880 along the Broadway corridor would link up several important Oakland commercial districts. While various AC Transit lines serve Broadway, no single line travels from Jack London Square to Grand Avenue and northward. A Broadway streetcar that connects the waterfront to the MacArthur BART station would help support the new development at Jack London Square, further energize the Uptown restaurant and entertainment scenes, and spur future development on vacant and underutilized lots in the Upper Broadway district.

There are, of course, arguments against building a streetcar. For example, at the most recent Specific Plan public meeting, one speaker noted that fixed guideway transit systems are inherently inflexible, and therefore, inferior to a bus in the event that there is a hostage situation somewhere along the route. A bus could just turn off on a side street and avoid the hostage situation. But if we had a streetcar, there would be no way to avoid the hostage situation and riders would be screwed!

There are also sane reasons to not be over the moon about streetcars. For one thing, they’re usually ridiculously slow. Personally, I have this crazy belief that transportation investment should be about actually moving people from place to place, ideally, relatively quickly. So I tend to not get that excited about shiny showpiece transit that exists mostly for tourists to gawk at and goes slower than walking.

On the other hand, I’m smart enough to know when I’m outnumbered beyond hope and it’s just not worth fighting. People love streetcars, there really isn’t any point in arguing with them. And Jack London Square desperately needs some kind of real connection with the rest of downtown, so if planning a streetcar is the way to get the City to look seriously at that need, well, I’m not going to argue.

Hooray! We’re getting a streetcar!

Um, not quite yet. First we have to actually get the streetcar planning grant. Then we hold lots and lots of meetings and do the plan. Then, if we still want a streetcar, we have to figure out a way to pay for it. Rail is expensive! Funding to build the thing, as with everything, will be an obstacle, but perhaps not as big of one as people might imagine. Possible funding sources include the FTA’s Urban Circulator grant program, redevelopment funds, and a variety of regional funding sources distributed by the MTC. There have been cases in other cities where property owners along planned streetcar routes have kicked down some cash to help build it, but if I were Oakland, I would not be holding my breath waiting for that to happen here.

In any case, there’s money out there for capital investment in transportation. And it’s not like a streetcar is going to cost half a billion dollars or something. The more important question with respect to a streetcar is who would pay to run the thing once it’s finished, and where that money is going to come from.

Of course, those are issues that will be addressed during the planning process (assuming, of course, that we get the grant and there is one). For now, all we can do is wait and daydream.

You may have read about this proposal yesterday on FutureOakland or maybe earlier in Jean Quan’s hysterical newsletter.

Campaign contribution and expenditure limits in Oakland

In short, the City Attorney has proposed that the existing Oakland campaign contribution and expenditure limits be doubled (PDF). The way it works right now is that you can either spend as much money as you want, but only take $100 donations, or you can agree to voluntarily spending limits and accept donations of up to $700 from individuals. Basically everyone takes the spending limits. Currently, the spending limit for the Mayoral race is $379,000.

Campaign contribution limits are by no means unique to Oakland. They exist at in State and Federal races, and many other cities have decided to impose contribution limits in their local races as well. An attachment to the report on this issue to the Ethics Commission lists the existing limits in other California cities (PDF), as does Jean Quan in her blog and newsletter. (Quan’s “comparative” list, BTW, conveniently only lists the cities that have lower limits than Oakland and omits those that have higher ones, like Santa Ana ($1,000), Anaheim ($1,700), Fresno ($3,600), and Sacramento ($3,000), Glendale ($1,000), as well as those that have no limits, like Bakersfield, Riverside, Stockton, Modesto, and San Bernadino.)

Why would we raise the limit?

Under our old election system, these limits applied separately in both the primary and general elections. That is, if you gave someone the maximum donation for their primary campaign, and the race happened to go into a runoff (as was the case with the 2008 At-large City Council election), you could give them the maximum donation again for their runoff campaign. This was because there were two elections, even though it was only for one office.

Now that we’re doing Ranked Choice Voting, we will no longer have two (or the potential for two) elections for municipal offices, only a single election in November. The City Attorney reasons (PDF) that since there will now only be one election where there used to be two, that single election should have the same total limits as used to exist for both elections combined. Additionally, the City Attorney argues that the extra money will allow candidates to educate voters about Ranked Choice Voting, which will be new to them in November.

Why wouldn’t we raise the limit?

Ethics Commission staff does not agree with this rationale (PDF), and notes that most local elections do not go to a runoff. The report further notes that it is the County, not individual candidates, that bears the responsibility of educating residents about the new voting system.

Another attachment to the staff report features 22 letters received about the proposal (PDF). One is in favor and 21 are against. Here is a sampling of what the letter writers have to say:

Is American turning into a country where only the rich can run for office and get elected? Are we turning into Great Britain before the American Revolution or France before the French Revolution? American was founded on the premise that anyone could run for office and become a representative of the people. With the rise of campaign donation limits it is obvious that only special interest will have great influence in who gets elected. This is a travesty of the American political system and it should be halted.

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I strongly oppose this. Lower limits help us stay more honest and make it more likely that the election is actually based on issues and qualifications. And the availability of extra funds to make higher donations to a campaign suggests to me that unethically high prices have been charged for services or products somewhere. Wouldn’t we all rather make our own decision about who (and what) to contribute our hard-earned money to than to have it made for us by Microsoft, or Sun, or Mechanics Bank, or an insurance company?

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These should be REDUCED NOT INCREASED. What are they thinking

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Being that I had a long term interest in Oakland, in a large part for its key value in keeping the wheels of commerce in the Bay Area running as best as possible for the benefit of the entire Bay Area as the key shipping port for Central and Northern California. Preamble: I beg your indulgence to describe two Campaign Finance options. Preamble: Presidential Candidate Obama once supported construction of a transcontinental high speed Freight-Only railway for common use of all rail lines. Given the absolute need to avoid, or duplicate, same-level road crossings (they kill over 300 a year), very costly tunnels and bridges, to keep the rails level and the new ability to optimize paths using the latest airplane and satellite GPS data and computer technology. It is my opinion that this project will be done, as soon as possible, possibly to put people back to work, all across the nation.

…

Option A. Make a new Finance Office of the Ethics Commission the recipient of all donation above some limit, for example, a Private Business could give X00s Dollars to one, or more Council Members up to the new allowed limit that you will set. And, the same donor may contribute YOOs Dollars to the new Ethics Commission Finance Office, without any limits, to be evenly divided among current Council Members running for re-election….

I guess the last one should get some credit for thinking outside of the box?

Basically, all the objections are premised on the idea that we need to keep money out of elections in order to preserve a level playing field and that low contribution limits accomplish that.

Why it doesn’t matter

So here’s the thing about money. There are always going to be people who have a lot of money. And here’s the thing about money and politics. Some of those people are always going to want to spend their piles of money to influence elections. And they are going to find a way to do it, no matter what you try to do to stop it. You just can’t. I’m sorry. But you can’t. And if you think that you’re going to keep money out of elections by imposing strict contribution limits, well, you’re delusional.

We have watched this play out on the State level, where individual contributions to a candidate are limited but independent expenditures on behalf of a candidate are not (so long as these expenditures are not coordinated with the campaign). We will soon watch it play out across the Country.

The result of contribution limits is not to reduce the amount of money spent on elections. Far from it. All that happens is a shift in where money gets spent. The candidate’s campaign becomes less important and the independent expenditures become more so. If you tell people who have lot of money to spend and want to spend it that they can’t give it to a candidate’s campaign, they will find another way to spend it to further their purposes. Sometimes these efforts may be inept and counterproductive, like those ridiculous and terrifying SAFE neighborhoods NOW signs that Oakland Jobs PAC plastered all over town to promote Kerry Hamill’s City Council campaign in 2008, or the “homocide” mailer, also promoting Kerry Hamill and also courtesy of Oakland Jobs PAC in 2008, or that horrifying chalk body outline mailer OakPAC sent out bashing Nancy Nadel the same year. But whether or not these expenditures effectively communicate their message is besides the point. It’s still money.

What you can do about it

So how do you combat the influence of people who have lots of money? Well, you give your own.

I don’t make a lot of money by any stretch of the imagination. $700 is a huge amount to me, and I’m not the sort of person who can just whip out the checkbook and drop seven hundred, or hell, even a hundred dollars without feeling it. But I maxed out my contributions to one local campaign last election cycle and I can say without a moment of hesitation that I would have given more if I had been allowed to. And I intend to do so again in 2010. Knowing that elections were on the way, I have spent the last year and a half slowly putting some money from every single paycheck away into a little personal donation pool so that I will have the ability to help the candidates who I want to see win.

I completely realize I’m way more invested in these things than the average person, and I obviously don’t expect every struggling Oaklander to save up for eighteen months so they can make hefty contributions to local campaigns. My point is simply that if you really want to give, you can do it, even if your means are limited.

So that’s my advice. Whatever happens with the Ethics Commission tonight and perhaps ultimately the City Council with respect to contribution limits, there’s going to be a ton of money in the Mayoral race. You can’t stop that. I’m sorry, I wish that weren’t the case, but it just is. You don’t like it? Too bad, you can’t change it. You want to do something about it? Give.

I remember vividly a message I received from someone working on a local campaign a few years ago after I had made my second donation. I had previously given the candidate $50, and then like a month or so later, as the election was drawing closer, I starting feeling really bad about the long odds they were up against, so I coughed up (not without difficulty) another $50. Within minutes, I got the following e-mail:

on behalf of the [redacted] campaign, I wish you would stop contributing money. For gosh sakes, we have people in [super rich neighborhood] living in 3 million dollar homes who only contribute $25 or take a sign.

That was just so sad to me. People in Oakland complain and complain and complain all the time about how frustrated they are with their entrenched, dysfunctional government, yet they don’t seem to be willing to do what it takes to change it. You want new leadership? Newsflash: campaigns cost money. Mailers are expensive. Door hangers are expensive. Walk pieces are expensive. Office space is expensive. It takes money to run. It just does. You can hate it all you want. I hate it. But hating it doesn’t change anything and neither does whining.

I’m not saying everyone needs to run around giving everybody the max or even close to it. And I’m not going to tell you who you should give to. But if you care about these things (and I assume you do if you’re reading this blog), and you find a candidate you sincerely want to see be the Mayor or City Councilmember or on the School Board or BART Board or Peralta Board or whatever, write them a check. If you want to reduce the influence of other people’s money, the way to do it is to dilute the importance of their money.

And whatever your first inclination is for an amount to donate, pause for a second and think about whether or not you can afford to give more. How much does who is running your city matter to you? How much do you want this person to win? What can you sacrifice to allow yourself to give a little bit more? One dinner out? Two? Ten? Think about it. Figure out what you can afford. Yeah, writing that check, in whatever amount you settle on, is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts Daddy Warbucks or whoever. But that’s just life. Deal with it.

The Public Ethics Commission will meet to discuss the proposal (PDF) at 6:30 PM tonight in Oakland City Hall Hearing Room 1.

Whether it’s doable or not of course remains to be seen. However, the Chief’s record in Long Beach, both in terms of reducing crime and also restoring community trust of the Police Department, makes me optimistic.

New plan, Old concept

Of course, it isn’t like the concept of strategic planning is new to OPD. There have been frequent stabs at creating such plans even just in recent years. There’s this one from 2007 (PDF), for example. And of course there was the ongoing Crime Fighting Strategic Plan (PDF) efforts discussed repeatedly at Council (PDF) meetings during 2008. These discussions were probably most memorably summed up in a presentation to the Public Safety Committee, where Committee members were told that the bottom line is “We can’t arrest our way out of the problem.”

Consistent with that statement, the Crime Fighting Strategic Plan (PDF) documents and presentations generally characterized the Department as practically helpless with respect to crime reduction, taking the general position that the Police Department, no matter what they do, can have at most a limited impact on Oakland’s crime rate.

There are a number of factors that contribute to changes in crime: socioeconomic conditions, community involvement, and the school system are three significant factors. While the Police Department’s impact is important, it is limited.

and

While there are strategies that provide a toolbox approach to specific types of crimes, there are no “national best practices” for crime reduction. Oakland in comparison to cities of like size has both common and unique crime problems.

Another common thread in the discussions was essentially that crime in Oakland isn’t actually that bad, and that perception is worse than reality. Perhaps in some neighborhoods that’s the case, but of course many people would like to think that all of Oakland’s residents deserve safety.

A noticeably new approach

The new Strategic Plan framework (PDF) and presentation (PDF) unveiled by Chief Batts last week represent a sharp (and welcome!) departure from that attitude. Both the Chief’s letter introducing the framework (PDF) and the introductory charts in the presentation (PDF) (see pages 6-17) make no bones about the fact that the level of crime in Oakland is beyond unacceptable and the Department’s current response to reported crimes is deplorable. Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

As with any plan, it is important to define the current reality or starting point as well as the destination. Unfortunately, the current reality is not very positive. Oakland is not a safe community – in fact it is among the least safe and most violent in the US. Services provided to the Community by the Police Department are nowhere near the standards that should be expected. Many good people in the Community do not trust the Police Department and live in fear of the police as well as of criminals.

How refreshing! What’s that thing they say about problems? You can’t solve one until you acknowledge that it exists or something like that? Yeah. So just the recognition that the status quo is not acceptable represents a huge step forward.

Basics of the new strategic plan framework

The framework lists five strategic goals, along with a set of actions related to achieving each of them. I won’t copy it all out here, since the document (PDF) is basically just a set of short, bulleted lists and if people are interested in reading the whole thing they should just go ahead and download it. It is a very fast read, since, like I said, it’s basically just an outline. The goals that frame the plan are:

• Focus on the underlying causes of violent crime in Oakland – Gangs, Drugs, and Guns
• Improve police services provided based on the Community’s priorities
• Improve the relationship between the Oakland Police Department and the Community
• Develop and implement a “Total Community Policing” model in Oakland
• Expand the capability of the Oakland Police Department to meet its Mission

OPD seeks community input

Perhaps most refreshing of all is the Chief’s serious effort to work with Oakland residents in crafting the plan, which is supposed to be ready in a final version this summer. Over the next two weeks, there will be a series of community meetings to solicit feedback on the framework. People should go!

Here’s the schedule:

• Wednesday, March 3: Montera Middle School, 555 Ascot Drive. 6:30 to 8:00 PM
• Thursday, March 4: East Oakland Senior Center, 9255 Edes Avenue. 6:30 to 8:00 PM
• Wednesday, March 10: Willie Key Recreation Center, 3131 Union Street. 6:30 to 8:00 PM
• Thursday, March 11: Manzanita Recreation Center, 2701 22nd Avenue. 6:30 to 8:00 PM

If you can’t, or for some reason don’t want to, make it to any of the meetings, you can still share your thoughts. The Police Department has put up an online survey to collect feedback from residents. Questions are basically all open-ended, asking residents to share their own ideas for reducing violent crime, improving OPD services, and improving the level of trust between the Department and the community. Additionally, residents interested in participating in implementation working groups are invited to leave their contact information and areas of interest. It’s so refreshing to see the Police Department reaching out to citizens like this.

BTW, the Library wants your input too!

Oh, and one more thing. As long as we’re on the topic of City surveys, the Oakland Public Library is also currently soliciting patron input. As you guys may remember, all OPL branch libraries were reduced from six day per week to five day per week service in August as part of the City Council’s budget decision. The library is now evaluating the new branch schedule and is looking for patron thoughts on Monday vs. Saturday service, morning vs. evening hours, and for patrons with children, the most convenient periods for storytime. Also, there are open ended questions where you can offer general feedback. The survey ends after this weekend, so please, if you are a library user, take a few moments to fill it out. You can find the survey here: http://surveymonkey.com/oplpatronsurvey.

Anyway, as you likely recall, after two contentious meetings, the Council voted to reverse their June decision that extend the parking meter hours until 8 and to make up for the lost revenue through a combination of steps, including the addition of 250 parking meters Citywide (PDF).

So two weeks ago at the Council’s Finance & Management Committee meeting, staff offered a list of 400 possible locations for the new parking meters (PDF). The list included the following locations:

• Lakeshore to 22nd on International Boulevard: 160 metered spaces
• 38th to 54th on International Boulevard: 130 metered spaces
• 4th to 14th on East 12th Street: 70 metered spaces
• 15th to 20th on Telegraph Avenue: 40 metered spaces

Now, almost all of those meter locations are in Council districts 5 and 2. Normal people tend not to think about things in those terms, but elected officials certainly do. So, as you can imagine, District 5 Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente and District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan were, um, none too pleased with the list.

The Committee said that Council’s original direction had been for the new meters to be evenly distributed throughout all seven Council districts, and that staff should go back and do it that way. Staff then decided that the best way to handle that was to ask each Councilmember to make a list of where they think 60 parking meters should go in their district. I don’t think I need to bother explaining why this is an staggeringly misguided way to approach parking policy.

If it isn’t obvious to you why this is a bad idea and you happen to be free this evening, allow me to suggest an event that you will likely find enlightening. High Cost of Free Parking author Donald Shoup will be speaking tonight in Lafayette. I’m out of town so I can’t go, but reports from people who trekked down to San Jose last night for the show have been uniformly laudatory.

The event will be held at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center Community Hall from 6 to 9 PM at 7 PM (see Dan’s comments below) at 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd in Lafayette (map here). And no, you don’t have to drive there! It’s less than a half mile walk from the Lafayette BART station.

Here’s the event description:

Mark your calendars!! On Thursday evening, February 25th, the cities of Lafayette and Walnut Creek will co-host a presentation on “Parking Policies in the Downtown” at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center. The speaker, Donald Shoup, is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and has served as the Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. He has extensively studied parking as a key link between transportation and land use, with important consequences for cities, the economy, and the environment. His influential book, The High Cost of Free Parking, is leading a growing number of cities to charge fair market prices for curb parking, dedicate the resulting revenue to finance public services in the metered districts, and reduce or remove off-street parking requirements.

I really wish I could go to this, and I hope some of you will and report back to us. Shoup’s work gets referenced pretty frequently in policy discussions when parking comes up in Oakland, but the nuances of his research and suggestions are, frankly, very rarely stated accurately. I get that it’s a long book, and an expensive one, but I still wish more people would take the time to sit down and read it. Attending the presentation is certainly going to be a substantially faster way to learn.

Well, as a matter of fact, that’s exactly what they have been doing. And conveniently, AC Transit has recently issued a report (PDF) on exactly that subject and will be hosting a community forum to discuss it on Thursday.

Let’s start from the beginning.

What is the 1R?

AC Transit’s has been running a bus line called the 1R since June of 2007. The line runs from downtown Berkeley to downtown Oakland along Telegraph, then from downtown Oakland to the Bayfair BART Station in San Leandro along International Boulevard. Along the same route, AC Transit also operates a line called the 1, which is in general, slower than the 1R, because it has way more stops. Previous to the summer of 2007, this corridor was served by two different buses, the 40 and the 82.

It is a tremendously popular line, carrying over 12,000 passengers daily as of November 2008 (an 11.4% increase from 2007). This is on top of all the passengers that ride the 1. Although riding the 1R is substantially faster than riding the 1, many people choose to take the 1 anyway because the 1R stops are quite far apart, and often not particularly close to one’s destination.

Theoretically, the 1R arrives every 12 minutes between 6 AM and 7 PM at each of the 36 stops along its 17 mile line. The total trip from downtown Berkeley to Bayfair BART is supposed to take 73 minutes in the morning and 78 minutes during the afternoon rush hour.

The superior speed of the 1R versus the 1 is due to the two factors. First, the 1R stops a whole lot less than the 1. 1 stops are spaced between 800 and 1,300 feet apart. The minimum distance between 1R stops outside of downtown Oakland is about 1,200 feet, but they average a much longer 2,400 feet and some are spaced nearly 5,200 feet apart.

Besides the stop spacing, the 1R is also faster than the 1 because of something called Transit Signal Priority. This is a neat-o high-tech tool that you put both on the bus and the traffic light. When the bus is approaching the traffic light, the tool can tell, and it will keep the light green for a couple seconds so the bus can get across.

Sounds great. But do people ride it?

So this is an issue that comes up a lot when people are talking about transit. It is not uncommon whatsoever to hear people talk about the bus as if only buses are only ridden by the destitute and crazy transit freaks. Often, when talking about the bus – in public meetings, in comments on, say, this blog, or in general conversation, you will hear people say things like “Oh, I would never ride a bus” or “Nothing could make me ride a bus” or “Nobody who has a choice of doing something else would ever make me ride a bus.” Maybe. Maybe not.

Obviously there are always going to be some people who will just never ride the bus anywhere. You can’t do anything about that. But there are also lots of people – normal people – who ride the bus because it gets them to where they need to go, and it’s simply easier than driving a car. One of my favorite things I’ve read in the last year was this interview with Mad Men and Angel star Vincent Kartheiser, where he says he takes the bus to work. The interviewer acts all shocked. Like, where do you live that you can do that? And he’s so casual about it, all “Oh, I live here, but you can take the bus from lots of places. It’s not a big deal.” It is so rare in the media to see taking the bus portrayed as a normal thing to do, even though, in reality, it is incredibly normal. More Oaklanders take the bus to work than take BART.

Anyway, enough with the tangent. Do people ride the 1R? Um, yes. The 1R carries roughly 12,000 passengers a day. And they ride it in growing numbers. Between October 2007, a few months after the line debuted, and November 2008, ridership on the 1R increased by 11.4%.

And why do they ride it? Well, a lot of people take the 1R to work. The chart below illustrates the number of people on the bus during AM commute hours, along with how many people are boarding and exiting (alighting) at each stop.

Click to enlarge

Also, contrary to what some people seem to believe, people don’t only ride the bus during commute hours. If you ride the bus during the middle of the day, you know this already. If you don’t, well, the chart below illustrates the line usage during midday hours.

Click to enlarge

Overall, the 1R averages 89 passengers per trip.

Okay. So why don’t even more people ride it?

Well, big problem with the 1R is reliability. As I said above, the entire route is supposed to take 73 minutes. In reality, it can take as much as 115 minutes. That’s a big difference.

Of course, most runs don’t go so crazy far over schedule. The average running time for the 1R going south during peak afternoon periods is 89 minutes, 11 minutes longer than it’s supposed to. The deviation from scheduled running time varies throughout the day, but it’s almost always longer. See the chart below.

Click to enlarge

A more sobering way to look at it is to consider how many trips are completed within 5 minutes of the scheduled runtime. In AM peak periods, this figure can be as low as 21%. Yikes!

The full report includes lots of great charts that give a little more context to the problem, showing where exactly the bus gets so slowed down, but for the sake of space, we won’t get too much into it here.

When buses get behind schedule, the result is often something called “bunching.” This is when multiple buses arrive at or near the same time. The bunching is probably the most serious problem with the 1R, as it means riders end up having to wait much longer than they should for a bus to show up. It means the service is unreliable. And when people can’t count on the bus to take them where they want to go when it’s supposed to, then they are much less likely to ride it.

For purposes of the report, bunching was defined as buses arriving within 2 minutes of each other. During peak afternoon periods, 16.5% of buses were found to be bunched. The report defines “normal” headways as buses arriving 10 to 14 minutes apart. During peak afternoon periods, only 14.8% of buses were found to be normal. Terrible! The bunching percentage increases and normal percentage decreases as the bus gets further and further along the route.

What makes the bus so slow?

Well, obviously, there’s traffic. And along with it, stop lights. 19% of the 1R’s running time is spent waiting at traffic lights. But there are other factors as well.

24% of the 1R’s running time is spent at stops, waiting for passengers to get on and off. This is an issue with busy bus routes. It takes time for people to get on and off the bus, and when you have a lot of people getting on and off, it ends up taking a lot of time. At the worst stop, International and 34th Avenue, it takes an average of 78 seconds to get everybody onto the bus.

Part of the reason it takes so long is because it takes people a while to pay. People paying cash take the longest. Often people (irritatingly) have not gotten their money ready beforehand, and end up standing at the farebox fishing for change and making everyone wait behind them. 34% of 1R passengers pay cash.

The fastest way to pay is using something you can just flash and go, like a TransLink card or flash pass. Riders using TransLink take as little as 2 seconds to load. Sadly, TransLink payment accounted for only 3% of the 1R’s passengers as of the time of this study, although that figure is surely increasing now due to the more widespread adoption of TransLink and policy changes on the part of AC Transit.

Besides the general loading time, the 1R also has to deal with the additional time it takes to load strollers and wheelchairs. There are also a lot of strollers and wheelchairs on the 1R. Obviously, there are, in general, going to be more strollers and wheelchairs on high traffic lines simply because there are more people riding the bus total. But it does sometimes seem that the 1R, particularly on the East Oakland portion, gets a disproportionate number of strollers.

Strollers and wheelchairs slow down the bus because it takes a much longer time to get them on. The ramp has to come out, people have to get on it, then the ramp has to come back up, then once they’re on the bus, strollers have to find a place to go and wheelchairs have to be secured. The average loading time for a stroller was found to be 1 minute and 34 seconds, and the average loading time for a wheelchair was found to be 4 minutes and 10 seconds.

How do we fix it?

Do BRT.

No, just kidding! Seriously! I don’t want this discussion to turn into another debate about BRT, it’s about improving the 1R. Various features of a BRT system would eliminate or significantly reduce some of the dwell time problems delineated above, but even if AC Transit ended up deciding to go through with totally full fledged BRT as designed in the maximum alternative, that still wouldn’t be operating until like 2015. That’s a long time to wait for a better bus.

The report identifies a number of ways to improve speed and reliability on the current 1R. Read the full report (PDF) to see them all, I’m just going to do the highlights here.

First, the bus can be made safer for the large number of strollers if they have a place to go. Additionally, the time associated with loading the strollers and having people stuck in line behind them could be decreased it they don’t have to hunt for a place to park. The suggestion here is to replace some of the normal seats on the 1R with seats that flip up and down. That way, if there are lots of strollers on a run, more space can be available to accommodate them. If there aren’t, then people can use the space to sit down.

For wheelchairs, the report suggests marking clearly the space at the bus stop where everyone should be waiting – one space for people using the front door and another space for passengers who will need the ramp. This would be helpful, but of course, only works if the bus always stops in the exact same place. As frequent riders know, that doesn’t always happen. The report suggests that this problem could be ameliorated by separating 1R stops in certain high locations from the stops used by other buses, so the 1R wouldn’t be stopping all the way behind the other bus.

Additionally, the report suggests that 1R drivers get special training to familiarize them with the unique operating needs of the rapid line and that the line be managed more closely to lessen the impact of bunching. For example, when a bus reaches the end of the line, the driver would be instructed to not depart in the other direction until 12 minutes have passed since the last bus left. The ideal departure time would be indicated through the use of a countdown clock, and would hopefully put a stop to the snowball effect created by bunching, where each instance of bunching ends up making the problem even worse for the next bus.

Finally, the report suggests that the time spent loading passengers could be reduced by encouraging less time consuming payment methods. Specifically, it proposes exploring the use of some sort of ticket vending machine at the line’s busiest stops (Shattuck and Allston in downtown Berkeley, 20th and Telegraph, 14th and Broadway, 11th and Broadway, 12th and Broadway 11th and Harrison, and 12th and Harrison in downtown Oakland, International and 34th in the Fruitvale district, and Bayfair BART). If passengers could buy a flash pass before they get on the bus, then the time waiting for people to hunt for change could be significantly reduced. Passengers could be encouraged to use the vending machines instead of on-board cash payment if the vending machines offered some kind of fare discount. Clearly, there are a variety of issues that would have to be addressed before AC Transit could implement ticket vending machines, but it seems like a promising concept.

If you find all this as fascinating as I do and want to know more, you have two options. First, you can just sit down and read all 88 pages of the report (PDF). It’s not anywhere near as bad as it sounds – there are lots of big maps and charts, and the whole thing is written in admirably clear and non-jargony language. Second, you can go to the community forum AC Transit is hosting tomorrow. At the forum, AC Transit staff will present the findings of the study, answer questions, and take suggestions from the public about how to improve 1R service.

The meeting will be held tomorrow, Thursday, February 25th at AC Transit’s headquarters at 1600 Franklin Street in downtown Oakland from 6 to 8 PM.