Traffic Takes a Holiday : Bay Area Provides Case Study in How Commuters React

Burch C. Bachtold, the district director of the California Department of Transportation’s Bay Area region, has a ready answer for those who wonder why the widely predicted traffic nightmare failed to materialize in the weeks after the Oct. 17 earthquake.

“We call it the Olympics Syndrome,” Bachtold said, referring to how commuters changed their habits--and kept traffic flowing smoothly--during the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. “When people realize that things will be bad--really bad--if they continue their normal commuting patterns, they adapt,” he said.

In the wake of the 7.1-magnitude temblor, which knocked out the Bay Bridge for a month and closed down several major freeways, commuters needed little persuasion to realize that things would be very bad indeed. So they flocked to a hastily beefed-up mass-transit system, car pooled, worked at home and got to work earlier or stayed later.

Under duress, in short, they did everything traffic planners had been imploring them to do for years. “The quake gave the Bay Area an extraordinary test in civic virtue, and people passed with flying colors,” said Alan Pisarski, a transportation consultant and the author of the book “Commuting in America.”

“Planners from all over the world are going to study this experience for years to come,” added Francis B. Francois, executive director of the American Assn. of State Highway and Transportation Officials in Washington. “The question is whether such a performance can be duplicated outside an emergency.”

The preliminary answer: probably not. Now, a month after the Bay Bridge was reopened, the flip side of the Olympics Syndrome is beginning to play itself out. “As soon as the word gets around that more traffic can be accommodated, everybody jumps in--and you get congestion,” said Gordon Newell, professor of transportation engineering at UC Berkeley.

Last week, for example, Caltrans official were forced to turn on the metering lights to control the flow of traffic onto the Bay Bridge during the morning commute for the first time since the bridge reopened. Bachtold, who is charged with keeping traffic flowing smoothly in the region, is not surprised. “Traffic, like water, automatically finds the route of least resistance,” he said.

While Bay Bridge traffic into San Francisco during the morning commute remains well below its prequake level--around 32,000 vehicles compared to 41,000--Bachtold suspects that the drop is due to the fact that major roads leading to and from the bridge on both sides of the bay remain out of commission and will remain so for months or years.

When the quake struck, Caltrans officials immediately recognized the parallels between the situation they were faced with and the Olympics. The agency even brought Los Angeles Olympics traffic mastermind David Roper to the Bay Area for three weeks to work with its local traffic management team headed by Ann Hansen.

Still, despite the parallels, there were major differences in the traffic management strategies employed during the Olympics and the post-quake period.

For one thing, the Olympics did not result in the complete shutdown of major roadways such as the Bay Bridge, the Cypress Street section of the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland and the Embarcadero Freeway and Interstate 280 in San Francisco.

For another, “the Bay Area lacked the luxury of months of advance planning that Los Angeles enjoyed,” Francois said. In the case of the earthquake, which struck on a Tuesday evening, Caltrans and other Bay Area transit agencies had five days to cobble together a transportation plan before most business reopened the following Monday.

By Monday, more “high-occupancy vehicle” lanes were in place on major bridges and highways, providing a strong incentive for car pooling. Local bus schedules were coordinated with Bay Area Rapid Transit trains and the hastily arranged ferry service, and round-the-clock BART service was begun.

On the other hand, Francois added, the Bay Area had several distinct advantages over Los Angeles: a shared sense of emergency and a much better public transit infrastructure to fall back on when the bridge connecting Oakland and San Francisco was put out of commission.

“BART saved the day,” said Rod Diridon, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Indeed, trains operated by the once-derided commuter rail service more than doubled the number of trans-bay passengers they carried during rush hour while the bridge was shut down.

Between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m., weekday trains from the East Bay to San Francisco carried an average of 67,507 passengers while the bridge was closed, compared to 31,468 before the quake. About 39,000 commuters are currently making the trip every morning, meaning that BART has retained nearly 8,000 of the trans-bay passengers it gained after the quake.

Annette Gregory, a paralegal from Oakland who works in San Francisco, is one of them. “I got used to taking the train,” said Gregory, who car pooled or took buses before the quake.

Officials said the commuters who have been the hardest to win over to BART are those who drove alone before the quake. Many of them need their cars for their work or have unpredictable schedules.

While BART took the brunt of the increased load during the bridge’s shutdown, the much-heralded ferry system had much less of an impact. Although services were added between San Francisco and Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond and Alameda, morning rush-hour ridership climbed to 7,354 while the bridge was closed, from 2,085 before the quake, but has fallen back to around 3,500 recently.

“Our passengers have been sort of dribbling away,” said Terry Koenig, marketing manager for Crowley Maritime’s Red and White Fleet. “Every day, we lose a few more.”

Crowley has already sent two boats from its Catalina Cruises unit, which sailed to San Francisco for the emergency, back to their home port of San Pedro. With a $47,000-a-day state subsidy slated to expire shortly and continued slow ridership, further cutbacks in service are expected, although officials hope to maintain crossings between San Francisco and Oakland and, perhaps, Alameda.

With Bay Area roads and bridges at capacity during rush hour, “there remains a tremendous potential to use the bay,” said Bachtold of Caltrans. “With faster boats and better terminal facilities, I am sure we would have a better showing,” he added. Most of the vessels used in the ferry service were slow boats designed for tourist excursions, and the makeshift ports lacked indoor waiting areas.

Ferries continue to intrigue planners because even a small reduction in vehicular traffic can lead to significant improvements in traffic flow. According to traffic engineers, for example, when a road reaches capacity, a 3% to 4% increase in the number of cars leads to a 30% to 40% increase in congestion.

Reductions of traffic volume of that magnitude, similarly, would result in similarly large cuts in congestion. The post-quake experience showed that such reductions are indeed possible.

“The great lesson of the quake is that people are more flexible than we think,” Pisarski said.

BAY AREA COMMUTING--BEFORE AND AFTER Here is a comparison of use of bridges and public transportation before the Bay Area earthquake on Oct. 17, during the period when the Bay Bridge was closed and a typical commuting day a month after the bridge reopened.

BRIDGES

Total vehicles, peak direction

BEFORE DURING OCT.17 CLOSURE %CHANGE DEC.13 %CHANGE Golden Gate (S) 24,822 29,223 17.7 24,915 0.4 Bay Bridge (W) 41,190 32,627 Richmond (W) 6,500 11,450 6,412 Hayward (W) 13,600 18,374 12,496 Dumbarton (W) 14,200 16,767 15,722 3-bridge total 34,300 46,592 35.8 34,630 1.0

BART

Total passengers

BEFORE DURING OCT.17 CLOSURE % CHANGE DEC.13 % CHANGE 5-10 a.m. peak 74,349 123,190 65.7 84,865 13.8

CALTRAIN (San Francisco exits)

San Francisco-San Jose commuter train

BEFORE DURING OCT.17 CLOSURE % CHANGE DEC.13 % CHANGE 6-9 a.m. passengers 3,580 4,503 26.5 3,967 11.4

FERRIES

(total passengers)

BEFORE DURING OCT. 17 CLOSURE % CHANGE DEC.13 % CHANGE Existing ferries 2,085 3,804 82.4 2,685 27.8 New ferries 3,549 84.0 886 -54.1 All ferries 2,085 7,354 252.7 3,551 70.3

Source: Caltrans