What we've learned about East Bay transit needs
Market Analysis
Our market analysis is geared to answer some key questions:
Where do people live, who do we serve, and how has their travel changed?
How can we help make sure that transit works for how people's travel patterns have changed and are likely to change in the future?
We've tried to answer these questions below as best as we can. Here's what we're seeing:
The East Bay has seen limited growth over the last decade.
From 2013 to 2021, the AC Transit service area grew modestly, from 1,522,000 to 1,589,000 people (4% growth), but from 2021 to 2023, estimates show declines.
The densest parts of our service area generally best support transit.
Places where people and jobs are grouped together typically best support transit.
Where are the denser places?
Our service area's densest places are in downtown Oakland, East Oakland, and near the UC Berkeley campus.
Where are the denser places?
Our service area's densest places are in downtown Oakland, East Oakland, and near the UC Berkeley campus.
Where are the denser places?
Our service area's densest places are in downtown Oakland, East Oakland, and near the UC Berkeley campus.
Our communities continue to be diverse, but we're seeing demographic changes.
The share of adults 65 and over has increased, while the share of youth under 18 has decreased.
The Asian population grew the most from 2013 to 2021, with the Black population declining. Displacement continues, with low-income and zero-vehicle household counts declining.
Through 2035, the East Bay is projected to grow three times as fast as it did in the last decade.
Projections from MTC and ABAG, the agencies that coordinate transportation and growth planning throughout the Bay Area, show that the East Bay will grow substantially -- about three times as fast as between 2013 and 2021.
Within AC Transit's service area, most growth is projected for West Contra Costa, Northern Alameda County, and Southern Alameda County.
This faster growth is geared towards transit corridors.
Plan Bay Area 2050, the long-range plan for the region, generally prioritizes new housing and jobs along higher-frequency transit corridors.
People are traveling less in most of the East Bay.
Location-based services data from app providers tell us that people in most East Bay communities are making fewer trips (on the bus and otherwise) than they did before the pandemic.
People are traveling more in a handful of places.
In some places, like Richmond, parts of East Oakland (right), and in South Hayward, travel volumes grew between Fall 2019 and Spring 2022.
Peoples' travel tends to be very local.
The vast majority of trips (on the bus and otherwise) starting in the AC Transit service area stay within the AC Transit service area.
Peoples' travel tends to be very local.
This logic holds true when we look at travel within smaller chunks of the AC Transit service area.
People are traveling to traditional job centers less.
Downtown San Francisco, Downtown Oakland, and Downtown Berkeley are all seeing fewer trips (on the bus and otherwise) as compared to pre-pandemic levels.
People are traveling closer to pre-pandemic numbers in the middle of the day on weekdays.
Service Evaluation
While the market analysis aims to answer how peoples' needs have changed, the service evaluation focuses on some key questions about how people are using the transit network and how well we're doing at serving peoples' needs:
Where are people riding transit today? How have those patterns changed since before the pandemic?
When are people riding transit today? How have those patterns changed since before the pandemic? How do those patterns track with how people in our communities our want to travel?
We've tried to answer these questions below as best as we can. Here's what we're seeing:
Ridership has dropped off more than the amount of service we provide.
We're providing approximately 85% of our pre-pandemic service, but ridership is only at 64%.
Service quality matters! Tempo does better, carrying more riders and people per hour than the pre-pandemic Line 1, on a similar amount of service.
Our service carries the most people per hour in Oakland and Berkeley, and fewer in more suburban areas.
As a metric, passengers per hour tells us how productive our service is.
Most lines we've yet to bring back are Transbay lines that carry fewer people per hour than local lines.
The Transbays we're running today are lines that did better than the Transbay average, but the number of people per hour carried fell by 36%, three times worse than local lines.
Ridership patterns, bus service provided, and general travel demand vary by time of day.
AC Transit ridership trends throughout the day are slightly different than general travel patterns. Travel to and from school accounts for bigger ridership peaks around school start and end times.
Public Engagement
The market analysis and service evaluation focus heavily on numbers and data analysis, which tell part of our story, but we can't get a full picture of what's going on with transit without talking to people and asking them about their lived experiences and documenting the information we receive.
Boots-on-the-ground, active public engagement, and survey work provide a qualitative human perspective on what quantitative data might not tell us.
Below shows how tremendously the project team worked to get the word out about this project, ask people about their transit needs, and encourage them to fill out our community survey.
Our project team has also forged formal partnerships with many different community-based organizations (CBOs) listed below to help us get in touch with and hear from individuals in harder-to-reach populations and ensure they can make their voices heard in our public conversation. These CBO partners have already been instrumental in helping us reach people who don't typically participate in public processes and will continue to do so throughout our process.
Some key themes emerged when we talked to people about Realign:
- Better service reliability
- Increased frequency on high-ridership routes
- More weekend service
- More weekday early morning and late evening service
- Restoration of pre-pandemic service levels
Community Survey Results
We received over 15,000 responses across our service area, which wildly exceeded our expectations and our targets and shows there is a lot of interest in transit service throughout the East Bay.
Our community survey, which was available online and in paper form in English, Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese, asked questions to help us understand how peoples' travel patterns changed since the pandemic, including why they use AC Transit, how often they use AC Transit, and when during the week and during the day they'd want more service.
We also asked about peoples' preferences when it comes to important transit network design trade-offs.
Use Patterns and Time of Day/Week Preferences
Respondents who rode AC Transit before the pandemic and still do reported riding for about the same reasons that they did before, but they're riding less often now.
55% reported riding AC Transit for work 50% for social functions 40% for shopping and dining 26% for medical/dental appointments 21% for school Before the pandemic, 39% of our riders report riding 5-7 days a week, but only 28% do today, which tracks with ridership trends.
Respondents preferred more service during midday and late evenings over early morning or late night service.
53% ranked 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. as their top option 46% ranked 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. as their second option
Respondents preferred more service during the daytime over early morning or late night service.
71% ranked more daytime Saturday service as their top option 48% ranked more daytime Sunday service as their second option
Transit Trade-Off Questions
Respondents preferred keeping more service on main streets over deviating buses to destinations to shorten walk time.
Most respondents preferred more frequent, direct service over shorter walk times. Those with disabilities tended to prefer shorter walk times.
Respondents were split between a network that favors transfers with more frequent service versus a network that serves more destinations directly without a transfer.
Those with lower incomes and those who answered the paper survey instrument (distributed with an emphasis on harder-to-reach communities) preferred more frequent service with transfers more than other populations.
Respondents generally preferred service on routes where more people tend to ride as compared to wider geographic coverage.
Concentrating service where more people ride makes the network more useful for more people, but puts fewer people within range of the network. There was less variation in responses for this trade-off question.
