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Originally Posted by cololi
Politics anyone? A non regional bus system is a complete failure because of the politics involved. We see it everyday with all of the police agencies in the valley. Every time a transit (bus, LRT, etc) makes a transfer from one vehicle to the next, you decrease ridership by a minimum of 10%. I will say this, SLC is probably a lot closer to operating a street car system than anyone on here can possibly realize.
I know you love the bay area system, but it is a complete failure from a management perspective. It is amazing to me that it operates as well as it does given the daily politics of the system.
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I would disagree. I think that Salt Lake County runing it's own bus system would not disrupt ridership the way I see it. If you are traveling farther than Salt Lake County, you would want to take a regional mode of transit. Why would you want to transfer from a Salt Lake County bus to a Utah County bus if you could just ride FrontRunner? In the bay area, the different bus systems are seperated by natural barriers (like the Wasatch Front). Transit corridors bottle-neck, thus making it practical to run one system on one side, then another on the other side with regional transit connecting the two. If you're talking about commuter buses, those could be part of a region-wide system so they don't have to be severed into multiple agencies.
I must admit that I do not understand what political problems you speak of. Agencies within the bay work very well together through a regional allience. Experiencing first hand the amazing efficiency of bay area transit, I am honestly baffled as to what "failures" you speak of. The only problem I have come across is that the Muni light rail trains crawl an average of 13 mph through the city once they surface just outside of down town. This problem, however, has nothing to do with politics - it's just that the second densest city in the U.S. has a lot of people moving about (pedestrians, bicyclists, cars, buses, street cars, trollies, etc) which causes any form of surface transit to run rather slow. As to connectivity between agencies, I have never heard of difficulties. There were many difficulties before the formation of this transportation allience, but now everything runs rather smoothly.
Allow me to introduce the Bay Area Partnership:
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You will rarely read or hear about it in the news, and you won't find it listed in the telephone directory. But The Bay Area Partnership is working quietly and effectively behind the scenes to improve mobility, air quality and travel safety for the nearly 7 million people of the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.
Who Sits on The Bay Area Partnership?
The Bay Area Partnership Board is a confederation of the top staff of various transportation agencies in the region (MTC, public transit operators, county congestion management agencies, city and county public works departments, ports, Caltrans, U.S. Department of Transportation) as well as environmental protection agencies. The Partnership works by consensus to improve the overall efficiency and operation of the Bay Area's transportation network, including developing strategies for financing transportation improvements.
Why Was The Bay Area Partnership Formed?
The Bay Area's numerous natural barriers and rich mix of urban, suburban and rural settings and subeconomies have given birth to a multiplicity of transportation system owners, operators and regulators. This institutional framework ensures that widely varying local needs are met, but also requires that the players work with each other to coordinate services where their systems intersect or overlap. In this complex environment, integration depends on connections that are as much financial, institutional and informational as they are physical - hence the need for a strategic alliance on the scale of The Bay Area Partnership that can focus on the larger picture of how the individual components fit together.
Why Now?
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the region's transportation planning, financing and coordinating agency, has long put system integration at the top of its agenda. Such efforts were given a new impetus with the 1991 passage of a major piece of federal legislation, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, or ISTEA. As the name implies, the act calls for more emphasis on integrating travel modes, also signaling a new appreciation for measures to improve operational efficiency and increase the capacity of existing facilities. With many of the most cost-effective strategies involving multiple jurisdictions or multiple modes, partnerships are the key to realizing the intent and full potential of ISTEA. The region naturally looked to MTC for leadership in meeting these mandates, and in January of 1992, just weeks after ISTEA was signed into law, MTC convened The Bay Area Partnership.
How Does The Bay Area Partnership Work?
The Bay Area Partnership is nothing more and nothing less than a forum for communication, much of it face-to-face. The dialogue occurs at many levels: at regular meetings of the committee of the whole and a smaller steering committee; and at numerous subcommittee and task force meetings that occur in between. In keeping with the panel's egalitarian nature, the chairmanship and location of the meetings of the full board are passed from agency to agency.
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http://www.mtc.ca.gov/about_mtc/partner.htm
I think that the Wasatch Front could form such a partnership in the near future (I wouldn't be surprised if it already has a smaller version of one that coordinates between UDOT, UTA, and city/county governments). This could help share the burden on multiple agencies and provide easy collaboration between these agencies.
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