HomeMy WebLinkAbout1999-05-24 City Council (11)City of Palo Alto
City Manager’s Report
6
TO:HONORABLE CITY COUNCIL
FROM:CITY MANAGER DEPARTMENT: PLANNING
DATE:MAY 24, 1999 CMR:260:99
SUBJECT:REQUEST FOR COUNCIL DIRECTION ON PALO ALTO
SHUTTLE STUDY SHORT-TERM SERVICE ALTERNATIVES
AND LONG RANGE PLANNING STRATEGY
REPORT IN BRIEF
This report provides the City Council with a status report on the work completed to date on
the Local Shuttle Study project. The project is at a point where short-term service
alternatives and a long-range planning Strategy have been identified, as well as analysis of
service costs and funding options for a shuttle system.
These issues were presented to the public at a community workshop on April 10 and were
discussed by the Planning Commission at its April 28 meeting. See the attached Planning
Commission staff report (Attachment), which includes consultant Working Paper No. 2
(Funding Analysis) and Working Paper No. 3 (Service Alternatives). Subsequent to the
Planning Commission meeting, additional analysis of service costs and ridership have been
prepared and are included with this report. Staff is bringing this interim report forward at
this time to proode Council with the opportunity to review and comment on the fmdings,
and general direction of the study.
CMR:260:99 Page 1 of 4
RECOMMENDATION
Council is requested to provide feedback and direction on the following key planning issues:
Service Planning Goals and Objectives - Are the proposed service planning goals
appropriate and complete?
Scale of the Short Term Service Plan - Does the short-term service plan strike
the right balance between coverage-oriented vs. productvity-ofiented routes?
Are the right destinations and areas of the city covered? Are there deficiencies in
service coverage that need to be addressed?
Operating Parameters - Are the proposed hours of operation and service
frequencies appropriate? What trade offs between service frequency and hours
of operation would be acceptable to achieve a start-up service that comes within
the program start-up budget?
Priorities - Which routes or route segments should receive priority for
implementation?
Fares and Long Term Funding Options - Does Council wish staff to pursue the
proposed strategies for sustaining funding for the shuttle program, or any other
potential funding mechanisms?
With the input received from Council, staff will fully develop and refme the recommended
alternative in the Draft Shuttle Plan and craft a staff recommendation for implementation,
for review by the Planning Commission and Council in June and July, respectively.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
The 1998-2010 Comprehensive Plan includes as a primary transportation policy "to provide
local transit in Palo Alto," and further calls for a "jitney bus system similar to Stanford’s
Marguerite Shuttle." In October 1998, the City contracted with NelsonkNygaard Consulting
Associates to develop a plan for a community-based shuttle service which would have the
characteristics of a Marguerite-type service: smaller, user friendly vehicles, frequent service,
and a locally managed system that could be flexible in responding to community needs.
Through a study process that has included public workshops, meetings with community
.stakeholder groups, and input from staff and a Project Advisory Committee, a short-term
alternative for shuttle serviceg and a longer-range strategy for improved transit services in
the community have been developed. The short-range plan would allow Palo Alto to
implement shuttle services in the immediate future, without duplicating or requiring changes
to existing VTA and Samtrans routes.
The short-range plan identified five potential shuttle routes as described in Map 5 of
Working Paper No. 3: (1) Embarcadero/Bayshore Shuttle, (2) Citywide Circulator, (3)
Improved Deer Creek Shuttle, (4) Improved San Antonio/Fabian Shuttle, and (5) Extension
of the Downtown Marguerite Express.
CMR:260:99 Page 2 of 4
The long-term plan is to embark upon a partnership with VTA to evaluate and adjust as
appropriate VTA transit resources in Palo Alto--routes, frequencies and vehicles--to
determine if they could be better deployed to meet local transit needs and goals in
combination with local shuttle routes. In this regard, staff has met with Peter Cipolla,
General Manager of the VTA, who has agreed to commit VTA resources to a joint CityiVTA
planning project to address these issues. This joint Palo AltoiVTA interagency planning
process would begin this summer with the expectation of returning to the Council and the
VTA with recommendations in the Fall.
As an addendum to Working Paper No. 3, Nelson~4ygaard has prepared ridership and
performance projections for the five proposed short-range shuttle routes, which are provided
as Attachment B. This information will be discussed during the staff.presentation at the
meeting.
PLANNING COMMISSION REVIEW
At the April 28 Planning Commission meeting, the Commission accepted public testimony
and offered comments on the service alternatives and funding issues. Following is a
summary of the Commission’s comments. An excerpt of the draft minutes of the Planning
Commission meeting are attached to this report.
Service Planning Goals and Objectives - Commissioners’ questions related to the degree to
which the planning goal of attracting passengers who would otherwise drive would actually
decrease traffic congestion. Staff responded that the shuttle would be one of several
strategies and programs the City to reduce dependence on the automobile, but cautioned that
the implementation of the shuttle program would not result in perceptible decrease in
congestion at major intersections. The Commissioners felt it was important to make it clear
to the public that the shuttle would not solve congestion problems. Rather, the focus should
be on providing a service that enables people to choose to get out of their cars.
Commissioners Commented that the benefits of the shuttle extend beyond traffic congestion
and relate to intangibles such as quality of life, community cohesiveness, community
identity, etc. Staff was asked to explore whether other communities have been able to
develop models that quantify such benefits, such as avoiding the personal cost of driving,
savings in street maintenance, avoided costs for construction of parking, etc.
Scale of the Short Term Service Plan - The Commissioners expressed support for the balance
between coverage-oriented and productivity-oriented service. However, in order to build
community support and acceptance, the Commissioners commented that it may be more
important to focus early on routes that provide better coverage and serve a wider spectrum
of the community. The Commissioners indicated it was difficult to judge the service plan
without knowing projected ridership and cost per ride information.
CMR:260:99 Page 3 of 4
Frequency o~- It was the consensus of the Commissioners that frequent service was
critical to the success of the shuttle program. Ten to fifteen minute headways were
recommended; anything longer was judged to be counter-productive. The Commissioners
asked for more information about the relationship between ridership and frequency.
Fares and Long Term Funding Options - The Commissioners felt that charging a fare would
add complexity to implementation of the project and could pose psychological hurdles to
attracting fidership.
TIME LINE
The draft Shuttle Plan is scheduled to be reviewed by the Planning Commission on June 30
and the City Council on July 19.
ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW
The environmental review will be performed prior to Council action on the draft shuttle plan.
ATTACHMENTS
A. April 28, 1999 Planning Commission Staff Report, including Working Papers No. 2 and
No. 3
B. Service Alternatives Ridership Analysis
C. Planning Commission minutes
PREPARED BY: Gayle Likens, Senior Planner
DEPARTMENT HEAD:
G. EDWARD
Director of
Community Environment
EMILY~p~MLRI-~{3N-
Assistant City Manager
Project Advisory Committee
Project mailing list
Peter Cipolla, Valley Transportation Authority
Susan Frank, Chamber of Commerce
Chris Christofferson, Stanford University
Donald Phillips, PAUSD
CMR:260:99 Page 4 of 4
ATTACHMENT A
PLANNING COMMISSION
MEMORANDUM
TO:PLANNING COMMISSION
FROM:
AGENDA DATE:
SUBJECT:
Gayle Likens DEPARTMENT:Planning
April 28, 1999
Status Report on Palo Alto Shuttle Study Short-Term Service
Alternatives and Long-Range Planning Strategy
Recommendation
At the April 28 Planning Commission meeting, staff will present a mid-point review of the
major issues and findings of the study to date, and in particular, the short-term shuttle routing
alternatives and long range strategy, for a local shuttle system for Palo Alto. This repoit
requests that the Commission review and comment on the general direction of the study and,
in particular, the service planning goals, scale of proposed short-term service plan and
implementation priorities, and long range strategy to enhance transit services in Palo Alto,
as described in the draft Working Paper No. 3: Short Term Routing Alternatives (Attachment
D).
Staff will forward the Commission’s comments to the City Council for its consideration at
the May 17, 1999 meeting. After receiving Council input, the preferred service alternative
will be fully developed in the draft plan, which will be forwarded to the Planning
Commission and Council in June 1999 and July 1999, respectively.
Background
The 1998-2010 Comprehensive Plan includes, as a primary transportation policy, "to provide
local transit in Palo Alto," and further calls for a "jitney bus system similar to Stanford’s
Marguerite Shuttle." In 1998-99 the City Council authorized funding for a study to develop
a plan to implement a shuttle system in Palo Alto that would have the characteristics of a
Marguerite-type service: smaller, user-friendly vehicles, frequent service, and a locally
managed system that could be flexible in responding to community needs.
In October 1998, the City contracted with NelsonkNygaard Consulting Associates to develop
a plan for a community-based shuttle service. The consultant’s work tasks included a needs
assessment, priority setting, development of system alternatives, choice of a preferred
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alternative, analysis of altemative funding mechanisms, and recommendations and an action
plan for the first phase of service. A Project Advisory Committee (PAC) was formed to help
staff and the consultant gather input from the constituent groups represented on the
committee and to review and comment on the consultant’s work at various stages of the
study. The PAC consists of representatives from the Planning Conunission, neighborhood
groups, school groups, business groups and the senior community.
To date, Task 1 (community needs and service priorities) and Task 2 (funding opportunities)
have been completed. Building upon the input received from the public at a December 1998
public workshop, subsequent meetings with stakeholder groups, and feedback from the PAC
and staff, a short-term alternative for shuttle services and a longer-range strategy for
improved transit services in the community have been developed. These proposals were
presented at a public workshop on April 10, 1999. Approximately 30 members of the public
attended the workshop. Staffis bringing these alternatives, as described in the draft Working
Paper No. 3, to the Planning Commission and City Council to secure further input and
direction prior to developing the preferred alternative, which is to be developed in detail in
the final shuttle service plan.
Comprehensive Plan Policies
The impetus for this study derives from the success of the special events shuttles and the
numerous policies related to transit in the 1998-2010 Comprehensive Plan Transportation
Element. Comprehensive Plan Goal T-2 is "A Convenient, Efficient, Public Transit System
that Provides a Viable Alternative to Driving." Among the supporting policies and programs
identified in the plan are:
Policy T-4
Program T- 13
Policy T-6
Policy T-8
Policy T-9
Policy T- 11
Policy T-12
Provide local transit in Palo Alto.
Establish a jitney bus system similar to Stanford University’s
Marguerite Shuttle.
Improve public transit access to regional destinations, including those
within Palo Alto.
Encourage employers to develop shuttle services connecting
employment areas with the multi-modal transit stations and business
districts.
Work towards integrating public school commuting into the local
transit system.
Support efforts to integrate train, bus and shuttle schedules at multi-
modal transit stations to make public transit use more time-efficient.
Support efforts to decrease wait times for intercity transit to a
maximum of 20 minutes between 6:00 a.m. and 10 p.m. Design for a
maximum wait time of 12 minutes for intra-city transit, if feasible.
Existing Transit Services
Palo Alto is currently served by four transit operators: Santa Clara Valley Transportation
Authority, VTA, (Lines 22, 24, 35, 86 and 88), San Mateo County Transit, Samtrans, (Lines
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50V and 50C), Dumbarton Express (DB/DB 1) and Stanford Marguerite. Existing transit
services in Palo Alto range from very intense productive routes, to low ridership coverage
routes. A map of existing transit routes is included as Attachment B and a summary table
of service characteristics of existing bus routes is included as Attachment C.
VTA Line 22, which operates at 10-15 minute headways all day, is the epitome of a high
productivity route in a high density corridor. It has the highest ridership in the VTA system,
which averages loads of 15-26 passengers in Palo Alto. Samtrans runs service from East
Palo Alto to Stanford Shopping Center via University Avenue and Downtown. These routes
in combination operate every 15 minutes and generate over 30 riders per trip. VTA Line 35,
which operates along Middlefield Road from Downtown Palo Alto to Mountain View every
30 minutes, is VTA’s second most productive route in Palo Alto with up to 12 passengers
per trip. VTA Lines 86 and 88, which circulate largely in low density residential
neighborhoods, run every 30-60 minutes, and have limited service hours, are examples of
coverage routes. They attract low ridership (peak load of 7-8 passengers) and provide a life-
line type service.
VTA’s 1999/00 Service Plan proposes improvements to Line 35 later this year when the
Tasman Light Rail station opens in Mountain View. Instead of terminating at Foothill
College, the line would be rerouted to the new Light Rail station in downtown Mountain
View. VTA proposes to operate the line ever~ 15 minutes in Mountain View, but only every
30 minutes in Palo Alto. Staffhas already sent comments to VTA staffon the proposed 1999
Service Plan requesting that the 15 minute service be extended to Palo Alto, as a "rubber
tire" extension of the Light Rail.
Problem Statement
The Comprehensive Plan transportation policies, as well as the shortcomings of the existing
public transit services in Palo Alto, underscore fundamental problems with the current extent
of transportation alternatives to driving, which a viable and vibrant shuttle program, in
combination with improved public transit services would address, including:
A lack of transit service connecting neighborhoods to commercial and community
centers and schools
Limited temporal and geographic coverage of shuttle services to Caltrain stations
Traffic congestion on downtown streets and near schools
A high level of commuting by single occupant vehicles and causing peak hour
congestion on arterials
Coverage versus Productivity Oriented Service
A fundamental issue when designing shuttle or transit service is to define what the service
is for and whom are you trying to serve. While the Comprehensive Plan gives guidance and
direction, it is important for the community and policy makers to come to a consensus as to
how much of the shuttle resources should be allocated to routes that provide coverage to a
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large geographic area of the community, but with less frequent service, or to fewer routes
with more frequent headways along high density corridors where transit can compete directly
with the automobile. These two opposing views, the "Coverage" and "/ntensity"
philosophies are represented in Attachment A. Finding the appropriate balance between
these two transit planning strategies is a fundamental issue in this study.
Initial Findings from Needs Assessment
Through the input received from the COmmunity and analysis performed by NelsonkNygaard,
it is clear that there is a demand for improved transit services in the community to fill in gaps
in service and to serve important destinations and residential and employee target markets
in the community. Key findings to date include:
Improved intra-Palo Alto shuttle and transit could serve the 17,000 people who both live
and work in the Palo Alto/Stanford area, of whom less than 3 percent currently commute
on transit. Several key commercial districts, including the Stanford Research Park, San
Antonio/Fabian corridor, Embarcadero/East Bayshore business park, have the employee
bases and latent demand to support shuttle services.
More frequent bus service should be provided along Middlefield Road, which acts as the
primary intra-Palo Alto transit corridor, serving a variety of community destinations and
trip needs.
Coverage-oriented service should be provided to neighborhoods not currently served well
by existing VTA service.
A shuttle operating east/west along Embarcadero Road would serve a number of activity
centers, including Palo Alto High, Town and Cotmtry Village and would fill a significant
gap in transit service in north Palo Alto.
There is a need for cross town shuttle services to serve the east/west commute patterns
to both middle and high schools.
Service Planning Goals
Before beghming the task of identifying possible shuttle routes, the consultant worked with
staff and the PAC to develop service planning goals and objectives for a shuttle system that
would provide the foundation for determining where, when and for whom the shuttle routes
are designed. The six planning goals and objectives that have been identified to date are:
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1.Attract passengers who would
otherwise drive cars
Provide benefits to all parts of the
City
Provide mobility to seniors, the
disabled and others with special
needs.
4. Support economic development
Maximize overall ridership
Encourage transit use among students as an alternative
to chauffeuring by parents
Provide an alternative to driving for low-income persons
for whom the cost of driving may be an issue
Provide an attractive alternative to driving for commuters
who live along major transit corridors
°Provide services to the maximum number of residents
given available resources
Provide frequent all day service to the densest corridors
of all q(~adrants of the city
Provide lifeline mobility for basic needs and quality of life
Meet ADA requirements
Serve key activity centers
¯Improve access to jobs
¯Provide accessto shopping
°Provide services useful to visitors
°Contribute to community identity and attractiveness
°Allow business expansion without increased congestion
5. Foster regional cooperation TBD
6. Minimize City’s costs while ¯Minimize overall city contribution required
meeting other goals ¯Maximize ridership per unit of subsidy required
Long-Range Strategy
The consultant initially identified several long-range service concepts for better transit in
Palo Alto. These idealized concepts were developed without respect to which agency would
operate the service. These route concepts included route segments that overlap existing VTA
service on such streets as Louis Road, Arastradero Road, Channing Avenue, and Middlefield
Road. These findings confirmed that VTA services generally operate on the appropriate
corridors in Palo Alto, albeit not at the optimum frequencies.
However, the findings brough~ to the fore the constraints of designing a long-range plan for
shuttle services in the City, given the presence of VTA bus routes on several streets where
more firequent shuttle-type services could be supported. The City could pursue shuttle routes
which overlay VTA service, but these could further erode low transit ridership on the
existing VTA routes, could confuse riders, and would burden the City’s program with high
costs. Rather, Palo Alto shuttle services should enhance and complement public transit
services, in a way that will attract more riders to all transit services in Palo Alto. The City
recognizes and supports VTA’s role in providing intra- and inter-city transit for Palo Alto.
As a member agency, Palo Alto’s tax dollars support VTA services and the City should
receive an appropriate level of VTA services to meet the community’s needs.
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Consequently, staffhas concluded that the best way to provide improved transit services in
Palo Alto in the longer term is to develop a partnership with VTA, to evaluate and adjust, as
appropriate, VTA transit resources in Palo Alto, e.g., routes, frequencies and vehicles, to
determine if they could be better deployed to meet local transit needs and goals in
combination with local shuttle routes. There is a particular need to reevaluate Lines 86 and
88, which have been largely unchanged for almost 20 years, despite low ridership. Through
this approach, a plan would emerge that would clearly define and assign responsibilities for
bus and shuttle services provided by both agencies.
In this regard, staff and two Council Members met with Peter Cipolla, VTA General
Manager, earlier this month to explore opportunities for a joint City/VTA planning project
to address these issues. Mr. Cipolla agreed to VTA staff participating in a joint study with
the City to reevaluate Lines 86 and 88, and further offered that VTA staff could provide
guidance and assistance to the City on such matters as identifying sources of grant funding
for shuttles, contracting specifications, contract and service monitoring, etc. A Palo Alto-
VTA interagency working group would be set up to work toward this long-range plan.
Short-Range Service Plan
In the interim, a short-range plan has been developed that would allow Palo Alto to
implement shuttle services in the immediate future, without changes to existing VTA and
Samtrans routes. This short-term plan can be pursued in parallel with the long-range
planning effort discussed above. The focus of the short-range service plan has been
developed and was designed with the following criteria in mind:
Routes that do not duplicate or compete with existing VTA, Samtrans or Marguerite
service
Routes that fill in gaps in service coverage
Shuttles focused in corridors that have high probability of success and ridership
Routes that can be implemented independently, if and when funding becomes
available.
The Short-Range Plan includes five shuttle routes, as described in Working Paper No. 3.
These shuttle routes could be phased in based on the consensus community priorities and as
funding becomes available. In reviewing these proposals, the Commission may wish to
comment on the following issues:
-How do these routes address the Service Planning Goals?
-Is there an appropriate balance or ratio of coverage-oriented versus intensity-
oriented routes?
Are the proposed shuttle routes planned to operate at the right frequencies and
hours/days of operation?
What routes should receive priori(y for implementation (notwithstanding funding
opportunities/constraints discussed later in this report)?
Are there gaps in services or destinations/activity centers/neighborhoods overlooked?
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°
4
o
Embarcadero/Bayshore Shuttle
This route would be a rerouting of and replacement for the City’s new Baylands Caltrain
Shuttle from the California Avenue Caltrain station to the Embarcadero/East Bayshore
business park which began selwice in mid-April under the sponsorship of the Human
Resources Department, in cooperation with businesses in the area. The proposed
expanded Embarcadero/Bayshore shuttle would operate from the Palo Alto Caltrain
station via E1 Camino Real, to Embarcadero Road, and then out to the East Bayshore
business park and East Bayshore Frontage Road. In addition to commute-period Caltrain
connections, this route would provide all day service to a number of activity centers,
including the Art Center, Main Library, Gamble Garden Center, Palo Alto High, Town
and Country Village, and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. This route is proposed to
operate every 15 minutes.
New Citywide Circulator Shuttle
A new shuttle operating every 15 minutes would provide coverage to key destinations
between Downtown Palo Alto and south Palo Alto, including service to the Palo Alto
Senior Center, Lytton Gardens, Channing House, Art Center, Main Library, Midtown,
JLS, Mitchell Park, Stevenson House, Palo Alto Commons, Terman and Jewish
Community Center, and the Barron Park neighborhood.
Improved Deer Creek/Jordan Shuttle
A Caltrain shuttle sponsored by Hewlett Packard currently operates four trips during the
morning and evening commute periods. Analysis of demographics and input from
Stanford Research Park employers indicate a high demand for expanded midday and
lunchtime connections to the California Avenue business district. This proposed
improved Deer Creek shuttle would run every 15 minutes all day weekdays between the
California Avenue Caltrain station and Deer Creek. This route would be extended on
selected trips in the morning and mid-afternoon to provide direct service from the College
Terrace neighborhood to Jordan Middle School.
Improved san Antonio/Fabian Shuttle
Although local companies operate shuttles during the peak period, there is very limited
hourly bus service to the Fabian/East Meadow employment areas and high density
residential and commercial uses along San Antonio Road during the midday. Staff would
work with local employers to supplement existing limited-service Caltrain shuttles with
expanded hours of operation and connections to the San Antonio Caltrain station, and
possibly San Antonio Shopping Center.
Extension of the Marguerite Express
The Marguerite Express, which currently runs between the Stanford Quad, Stanford
Museum, and Lytton Plaza, would be extended fm’ther into the Downtown with extended
hours of operation to provide better access to the downtown business district. This
proposal would need to be developed further, in cooperation with Stanford University.
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Funding
The cost of the short-range route alternatives has been estimated by the consultant based on
an annual cost of 5 day a week service for 13 hours a day, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Any adjustment
in the hours or days of operation and frequency of service could affect the contract operating
costs.
Embarcadero/Bayshore Shuttle
(expansion of Baylands Shuttle)**
Citywide Circulator
Stanford Research Park Shuttle
San Antonio/Fabian
Shuttle
Marguerite Express
15
30
15
30
15
30
2
1
5
3
3
2
15
30
10 (midday)
$270,000
$135,000
$676,000
$406,000
$405,000
$270,000
not recommended
$135,000
$31,000
* Approximatety $135,000 per bus per year
** Baylands Shuttle funded for $67,000 in 1999
The cost of implementing and sustaining an ongoing shuttle program will require a
comprehensive and creative funding strategy. These issues are explored and evaluated in
Working Paper No.. 2 (Attachment E). In the short term, the most likely funding scenario for
a start-up phase with one shuttle route, would be to pursue Transportation Fund for Clean
Air (TFCA) grant funding, "jump-start" funding from the City, and private sector
contributions. NelsonkNygaard’s experience indicates that successful shuttle programs
achieve continu’.mg support from the private sector. The City’s ability to secure TFCA grant
funds from Caltrain or the Bay Area Air Quality Management District for shuttles that serve
the Caltrain stations may influence decisions regarding which shuttle services are phased in
first. Of the five proposed shuttle routes, staff believes that all but the Citywide Circulator
would be eligible for some level of TFCA funding.
In the longer term, the City will. need to identify a stable source of funding if the shuttle
program is adopted. In addition to private sector contributions and grant funds, other taxes
or fees may need to be considered, such as a parcel tax, special district tax, expansion of the
transportation impact fee to cover shuttle services, utility users tax, etc.
Another source of funding could come from passenger fares. This is one way to assign some
of the cost of the service to the users. Typically, however, Nelson[Nygaard cautions that
most shuttle services are free. They have recommended that a Palo Alto shuttle project not
charge fares for several reasons: (1) the administrative complexity of charging a fare and
cash handling controls, (2) some grant funding sources (such as TFCA) do not allow a fare
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to be charged, (3) fares typically account for only 15-30 percent of operation costs, (4)
establishing a fare structure normally includes discounted fares (e.g. for seniors or students),
which would further reduce revenues generated, and (5) with a shuttle fare, inter-operator
fare transfer agreements would need to be established with VTA and Samtrans, normally a -
lengthy and complicated procedure.
Given the anticipated funding constraints, it would be prudent to begin with a modest, low-
cost shuttle implementation program, which is relatively easy to implement and
straightforward for the public to understand and us~ It will be particularly important to
carefully evaluate and define the benefits of the shuttle start-up in terms of community
acceptance, total ridership, cost-effectiveness (cost per rider), reduction in roadway
congestion (as measured by both number of vehicles removed and any reduction in level
of service at key intersections along shuttle routes), and other performance measures; and
use the lessons learned should the program be expanded.
The draft Shuttle Plan, which will be forward to the Commission later this spring, will
include a complete set of recommendations for long- and short-term funding of the shuttle
system.
ATTACIIMENTS/EXHIBITS:
A. Coverage versus Intensity
B. Existing Transit Services Map
C. Existing Transit Service Hours and Frequencies
D. Working Paper No. 3 Short Term Routing Alternatives
E. Working Paper No. 2 Funding Analysis
_COURTESY COPIF~:
Project Advisory Committee
Peter Cipolla, Valley Transportation Authority
Susan Frank, Chamber of Commerce
Chris Christofferson, Stanford University
Prepared by: Gayle Likens, Senior Planner, Transportation
Division Head Approval:
~J~eph Kott, Chief Transportation Official
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ATTACHMENT A
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ATTACHMENT B
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Stanford
Park
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ShoppingCenter
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Hall
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Fi ure 1:
Existing transit in Palo Alto
ATTACHMENT C
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ATTACHMENT D
City of Palo Alto
Transportation Division
Local Shuttle Plan
Working Paper #3:
Short Term Routing Alternatives
April, 1999
Submitted by:
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRA NSPOR TA TION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................1-1
CHAPTER 2: ROUTING CONCEPT ANALYSIS ............................1-3
Goals from Working Paper 1 ..........................................1-3
Preliminary Conclusions .............................................1-3
Difficult Decisions ..................................................1-6
Planning Principles .................................................1-8
Conceptual Long-Term Routing Partnerships .............................1-9
CHAPTER 3. SHORT TERM ALTERNATIVES . : ..........................1-18
CHAPTER 4. EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVES ..........................1-25
Cost Analysis .....................................................1-25
Ridership Projections ...............................................1-26
Goals Analysis ....................................................1-26
TABLE OF FIGURES
Map 1
NORTH-SOUTH ROUTING CONCEPT 1 .....................................1-14
Map 2
EAST-WEST ROUTING SCENARIO 2 ......................................1-15
Map 3
SPECIAL EVENT SHUTTLE ROUTE .......................................1-16
Map 4
IMPROVED EXISTING TRANSIT 1-17
Map 5
PROPOSED SHORT TERM ROUTING OPTIONS
CHAPTER 1: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This working paper follows the process of developing short term shuttle routing alternatives
for possible implementation in Palo Alto over the next few years. The analysis begins wffh a
set of conclusions drawn from the December public workshop as well as stakeholder outreach
meetings held throughout the Shuttle Plan study. These conclusions led to the design of
idealized transit routing concepts for the city, based on the assumption that a partnership
could be formed between the City and other existing and potential transportation providers
in the area, including VTA, Stanford, SamTrans, Caltrain and the cities of Menlo Park and East
Palo Alto.
Keeping these conceptual diagrams in mind as a long-term "big picture" to work toward, we
then developed short-term shuttle route proposals that met all of the following planning
criteria:
Implementable by the City and local businesses on their own
Do not compete with existing VTA, SamTrans or Marguerite services
Focus on unserved or underserved areas
Will generate high ridership and will be deemed "successful"
Can be implemented quickly if funding is available
Looking carefully at the city, there were five possible new (or improved) shuttle routes that
became evident. We presented these at our April 10 public workshop and have refined them
as a result. These shuttle routes include:
1. An extension of the Stanford Marguerite Downtown Express
2. A new shuttle that would run along Embarcadero Road, serving the East-of-
Bayshore office parks, Main Library, Art Center, North Palo Alto neighborhoods,.
Paly High, Town & Country Village, Palo Alto Medical Foundation Clinic and the
downtown train station.
3. increased Caltrain shuttle service to the Research Park that would build upon the
success’ of the Deer Creek Shuttle and provide new lunchtime connections to
California Avenue. This service would also connect College Terrace residents to
Jordan Middle School.
o
o
Increased Caltrain shuttle service in the San Antonio Road corridor that would
build upon existing efforts there and provide lunchtime connections to shopping
areas.
A citywide circulator route that would provide transit service to several
neighborhoods for the first time and would connect a rich variety of important
community facilities including the Main Library, Art Center, Senior Center, Jordan,
Cubberley Center, Stevenson House, Terman Center, Gunn High School and
others.
NEtSONiNYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOClATES 1-1 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAF-I- WORKING PAPER 3
These routes are described in detail in Chapter 3 and shown on Map 5.
Each of these proposed routes is then analyzed by a variety of factors in Chapter 4. All of the
routes meet the City’s draft goals, perform important community functions and are projected
to generate sufficient ridership to deem them "successful." Deciding which, if any, of the
routes to implement in what order will depend on how policymakers weight the various
analysis factors.
Once these routes are refined, we will use the guidance of Working Paper 2: Shuttle Funding
Plan to develop a specific short term implementation plan. With these routes in mind we will
also begin the process of working with other transit agencies toward a fully integrated local
transportation system.
NELSON~NYGAARD C.ONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-2 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
CHAPTER 2: ROUTING CONCEPT
ANALYSIS
Unlike most suburban cities, Palo Alto is blessed in that almost all of its important community
services are sited along key transit corridors. Almost without exception, all of the city’s key
schools, senior facilities, shopping areas, community centers, medical centers, major
employers and multimodal centers are located on dense corridors such as El Camino,
Middlefield, University, Charleston, Arastradero, San Antonio, Sand Hill, California and Page
Mill. Moreover, these streets also have denser residential development along them. Each of
them logically provide part of the backbone for any transit services developed in Palo Alto.
GOALS FROM WORKING PAPER 1
Before moving into our analysis, it is worth repeating the project’s draft goals developed for
Working Paper 1:
1.Attract passengers who would otherwise drive cars.
2.Provide benefits to all parts of the city.
3.Provide mobility to seniors and the disabled.
4.Support economic development
5.Foster regional cooperation.
6.Minimize City’s costs while meeting other goals.
PRELIMINARY CoNcLuSIONS FROM THE OUTREACH PROCESS
The first stage of this planning process involved talking to a large variety of stakeholders
throughout the community, including representatives of most neighborhood groups, the
schools, senior facilities, community facilities, major employers, retail districts, Stanford, VTA
and the general public. As a result of this extensive outreach process, we arrived at some
preliminary conclusions for a large set of issues:
1. Continue to support improvements on VTA’s Line 22
The 22, along with its limited stop equivalent, the 300, is the workhorse of VTA’s entire bus
network. It is by far the most efficient and effective of any of their Palo Alto lines. Running
every ten minutes or better all day, with good service extended 24 hours, 7 days a week, the
22 offers more runs than just about any other line in the suburban Bay Area. Moreover, it
provides important regional connections to Menlo Park and all the way to the far side of San
Jose.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-3 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPer 3
In Palo Alto, ridership data show that it carries more riders per bus than the 35, 86 and 88
combined - with average bus loads through the city ranging from 15 to 26 passengers, even
on weekends. About 3,000 passengers ride the 22 through Palo Alto every day - the same as
Stanford’s entire Marguerite system. A large number of these riders use the 22 for intra-Palo
Alto trips, boarding mainly in South Palo Alto and getting off near the Research Park or at the
University Avenue station.
With such good service in the El Camino corridor, there is no need for the city to duplicate
it. There are ways, however, for the City and VTA to improve the existing service:
VTA has plans for significant capital and operating improvements to the 22 and the
City should work with VTA toward these changes.
Transit’s success and marketability along El Camino is limited by the unpleasant
pedestrian environment there. Some sidewalks through south Palo Alto are
substandard, including segments there are so narrow and so cluttered with utility
poles that a person in a wheelchair could not maneuver along them. Implementing
the South El Camino Real Design Workshop recommendations would strongly
support increased transit use.
2. Improve VTA’s line 35 on Middlefield
With so many important community services along it, it makes sense to provide frequent, all-
day, seven-days-a-week service along Middlefield Road, connecting to the University Avenue
train station and downtown on one end and the San Antohio Shopping Center and train station
on the other end.
As part of its restructuring plan to support the light rail extension into Mountain View, VTA
is currently, planning to reroute the 35 from the San Antonio Station to the downtown
Mountain View light rail/Caltrain station. This plan makes a great deal of sense. In essence,
the 35 would become a rubber-tired Palo Alto extensi,on of the Tasman Light Rail Line. This
service would connect key Palo Alto residential and employment areas with all of the
employers served by the Tasman line, as well as to the restaurants and services in downtown
Mountain View. It could be very successful if run with similar frequency as the light r&il line.
VTA currently plans to run 35 every 15 minutes, but only in the Mountain View segment.
Frequencies in Palo Alto would remain every 30 minutes. The City should work with VTA to
explore the options for improving service levels in Palo Alto, including discussing ridership
thresholds that would merit 15 minute service in Palo Alto.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES I-4 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION D/V/S/ON
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
3. Provide frequent, all-day service to the Research Park
The Stanford Research Park has approximately the same population (- 30,000) as well as the
same population density as Stanford University and Medical Center, and it should be able to
support all-day shuttle transit. Service could run on one or two lines, each running every
fifteen minutes, all day from around 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. or later. No weekend service is
likely necessary. Connections clearly need to be made to the California Avenue business
district and train station. Ideally, ’there would also be connections downtown.
Service to the Research Park is complicated by the fact that sidewalks are inadequate or
nonexistent throughout much of the Park. If sidewalks are provided at all, oftentimes they are
only on one side of the street. Transit service generally runs in both directions, leading to bus
stops with no pathway to get to them. Many of the existing l i nes 24, 88 and express bus stops
have muddy cowpaths leading to them. Beyond the bus stops, pedestrian connections to
employer front doors are often lacking as well, especially among the outermost employers.
Further study will be needed to determine which employment sites will best support transit
and pedestrian access. Routes could be determined in partnership with companies with more
robust employee transportation programs or those who are interested in contributing to the
service.
Improvements to transit service in the Research Park may also include adjusting the existing
lines 24 and 88 to improve their frequency, connections with Caltrain and lunchtime and
evening service. Caltrain, Hewlett Packard and the City may also want to increase the
number of trips of the Deer Creek Shuttle which is currently limited to four trips in the
morning and four trips in the evening.
4. Provide Caltrain-shuttle-like service tO office parks in the San Antonio
corridor and East-of-Bayshore area, including lunchtime service
These areas are less dense than the Research Park, but they still have enough employees to
support peak hour Caltrain shuttle service plus lunchtime connections to commercial areas.
The San Antonio Road corridor currently has some public transit service, but additional runs
can be provided to in-fill the limited schedule and provide better timed connections with
Caltrain.
5. Some coverage oriented service should be provided
Low density, single family residential areas will require higher subsidy per passenger and will
not generate as much ridership as denser corridors. It will be interesting to explore how
service in these corridors might be brought together to provide more service in, for example,
Midtown and/or the Charleston/Arastradero corridors.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSUL TING ASSOCIA TE$ 1-5 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PAtO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
6. Provide good service in the Charleston/Arastradero corridor
Residential density and key community services suggest that this corridor should be a focus
for service, perhaps similar to that offered on Middlefield.
7. Make key school connections
In order to overcome serious trip-to-school barriers, service scenarios should arrange to make
at least two morning and two afternoon trips, in the following corridors:
College Terrace and Escondido Village to Jordan
Barron Park’and Ventura to JLS
South Palo Alto neighborhoods to Gunn
Outer Embarcadero area neighborhoods to Paly
8. Partner with VTA to improve lines 86 and 88
During the outreach process it became clear that the public is not satisfied with VTA’s current
coverage-oriented routes, the 86 and 88. They have three primary concerns:
1)The existing full-size, diesel powered vehicles produce too much noise, vibration and
pollution for the narrow residential streets they serve.
2)They are too infrequent to be useful except to those who have no other travel option.
3)They believe the buses run with no passengers.
According to VTA’s ridecheck data, the public’s perception that some of their big buses run
around town empty is partly correct. The 88 and 86 do not perform very well, with
maximum average loads of five to eight passengers and many long stretches where few if any
passengers ever board. The City should partner with VTA to do a thorough study of its
coverage-oriented routes and explore how they might be restructured to increase ridership.
The study should explore operational models, routing, scheduling and funding partnerships.
DIFFICULT DECISIONS
Several difficult decisions remain to be grappled with. These issues will be made as routing
alternatives are developed. They include:
Should service in the downtown area use Lytton, Hamilton - or University itself?
Because of higher density on Lytton and the presence of the Senior Center, we
recommend concentrating service on Lytton. Specifically, we recommend running
all buses from the train station up Lytton, then across Webster to Channing, then
NELSON~NYGAARD CONSUL TING A$$OCIA TE$1-6 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRA NSPOR TA TION DIVISION
lOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DI~AFT WORKING PAPER 3
co.ntinuing on.Midd!efield or Channing. This corridor provides the best service to
the densest areas, and concentrating all service on it allows for good transfer
possibilities.
It may be possible for some routes to use Lytton and some to use Hamilton, but all
buses heading in a similar direction should use the same downtown street so that
passengers may have a choice of multiplebuses to reach destinations in adjacent
neighborhoods. Using existing services as an example, it is important for both the
35 and the 86 to use the same downtown bus stops, so that someone heading to
the Main Library could use whichever bus came first.
It is also very important that buses use the same street in both directions - that is,
they should not use Lytton in one direction and Hamilton in another. Keeping
both directions on the same street dramatically helps improve the clarity of the
system. Passengers know that the bus stop for their return trip is just across the
street from where they got off, rather than two blocks away.
Although using University Avenue would provide "front door" service to more
downtown destinations, existing congestion on the street makes travel there slower
than Lytt. on or Hamilton. Moreover, adding bus stops to University would require
major reconstruction of the street corners and may require the removal of parking
spaces.
Barron Park is a particular challenge, since its streets are narrow, lack sidewalks
and dead end. Although there is no obvious path through Barron Park, it is one
of the city’s denser residential neighborhoods and it could support fair ridership,
particularly to JLS Middle School. One of the most difficult issues facing Barron
Park is the fact that most of the neighborhood already enjoys excellent transit
accessibility along El Camino and, to a lesser extent, Arastraderc~. With high
density and important destinations along both of these streets, it may be difficult
to deviate main-line transit routes off of them and into Barron Park.
How should through service to Stanford Shopping Center, Medical Center and
University be provided? Should the existing Marguerite Downtown Express.simply
be expanded? Having the train station as a midpoint along a transit line makes
timed transfers very difficult if not impossible. Passengers could transfer to the
Marguerite at the station in order to get to the Shopping Center, but this might be
inconvenient, and it may cause capacity problems for the Marguerite.
There are facility complications at the University Avenue station. There is room
to develop bus stops at the Alma/Lytton side, and in the long run there is plenty
of room to expand the main bus bay area toward Quarry/El Camino. This issue
needs to be resolved.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-7 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRA NSPOR TA TION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPEr 3
o There is a desire to accommodate various cross-town, east-west trips, but there are
few dense destinations at the.east side of town to anchor frequent transit service
there.
PLANNING PRINCIPLES
With a solid foundation from our public outreach process, we began our next step, the
development of routing alternatives. The following assumptions guided our planning efforts:
o Focus service on areas of highest density while providing some coverage to all
neighborhoods.
¯Avoid streets without sidewalks except those on in quiet residential areas. Streets
where construction of sidewalks would be difficult or impossible - including
Alma, East Bayshore, West Bayshore and Oregon Expressway- should particularly
be avoided. Passengers cannot safely wait for shuttles on streets such as these.
-°Do not try to compete with VTA’s existing services. Some lines, such as the 22,
provide such good service that it is pointless to duplicate them. Coverage oriented
routes such as the 86 and the 88 might suffer a catastrophic drop in ridership if a
frequent shuttle competed against them. Instead, work with VTA and other
agencies over the long run to develop a transit partnership.
¯A quarter mile is assumed to be the maximum walking distance most people will
go to a bus stop. Therefore, parallel routes should be spaced roughly half a mile
apart.
°The City will pursue 15-minute service on Middlefield between the downtown and
San Antonio train stations as part of VTA’s future service improgement programs.
°While trying to meet all of the key origin-destination pairs that have some out of
the stakeholder outreach process, focus on providing connections between
-neighborhoods and train stations
-- business districts and train stations
-neighborhoods and retail districts
° Frequency of service will be an important issue. In order to fulfill the goal of
getting people out of their cars, shuttles will need to run at least every fifteen
minutes at peak. Atthis frequency, transit starts to become time competitive with
the automobile, and it is acceptable for many riders to give up carrying a schedule
with them everywhere. That is, if you show up at a bus stop without knowing the
schedule, a bus will be there in an average of seven minutes - a reasonable wait
for most people.
°Finally, it will be important that any initial services the City provides will be a
success. We do not want to propose marginal services that will result in few riders
and may be accused of being "failures." Instead, we recommend starting small and
building upon success.
IVEL$ONINYGAARD CONSULTING A$$OCIATES 1-8 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRA NSPORTA TiON DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
CONCEPTUAL [_ONG-TERM ROUTING PARTNERSHIPS
Before developing our short range implementation plan, we decided it was important to look
at the big picture of transit in Palo Alto. At our first public workshop, we asked participants
to design an ideal transit system for the city from a clean slate. We urged attendees to ignore
most existing routing patterns and design something that made most sense to theml Even so,
most of the attendees at the public workshop replicated many existing routes, adjusting them
only slightly and in some cases improving their frequency. Indeed, most of the existing transit
services in Palo Alto are well planned and achieve strong ridership.
As a result of this process, we were able to develop four preliminary routing concepts that
begin to work toward a subregional system that could be formed in partnership with local
transit agencies, Menlo Park, Stanford, East Palo Alto, local businesses and other groups.
These routing concepts are shown on the following maps. None of these concepts is a "plan."
Instead, they are intended to be a startin.g point for conversations with everyone interested in
transit in the Palo Alto area. Given geographic reality and fiscal constraints, none of the
scenarios accomplished all of the city’s goals, but they strived to strike the best possible
balance between productivity and coverage, attempting to provide some service within a
quarter mile of almost all residents, while concentrating frequent service where it will be most
used.
It is important to note that the~City ofPalo Alto cannot implement any of th~se scenarios on
its own - nor would it want to. Each concept proposes to restructure VTA’s existing lines 86
and 88 in order to improve their productivity and usefulness. These routes are entirely under
VTA’s control, however, and no changes can be made to them without VTA’s concurrence.
More importantl.y, transit planning is inherently about making connections and bridging
barriers. The City can accomplish far more working with other agencies than it can acting
alone. By sharing resources and doing joint planning with VTA, Stanford and others, the City.
can help build a Subregional transit system that enjoys higher ridership, lower cost per
passenger ride and excellent regional connectivity.
The five short-term shuttle routes in the subsequent section all build from the long-term
concepts presented below.
Concept 1: North-South Service
We began our analysis of long-term routing, concepts by looking at systems that focused on
running service north-south through the city along key corridors such as El Camino, Waverley,
Middlefield and Greer. Historically, service has generally been delivered in this manner, with
the 22 serving El Camino, the 35 on Middlefield, the 86 on Louis/Greer and the canceled 84
on Waverley/Bryant. In addition, the City’s Special Event Shuttle is a variation on the north-
south service theme.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES I-9 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
This concept assumes that the 22 stays the same and the 35 increases to 15 minute headways
all day with a connection to the new light rail and Caltrain station in downtown Mount~iin
View.
It then restructures the 86 and 88 to provide improved north-south services in various ways.
These options include:
Eastern-most
service
(Greer/Louis
corridor)
Western-
most service
(Waverley
corridor)
All line~ should serve
the downtown train
station. Optional to
extend to Stanford
Shopping Center,
Medical Center and
University.
All lines should serve
~he downtown train
station. Optional to
extend to Stanford
Shopping Center,
Medical Center and
University.
¯Can connect into Midtown like Special
Event shuttle
¯Should stay on Greer rather than Louis
to stay more than 1/4 mite from
Middlefield and serve dense housing
near Bayshore.
¯Must serve Cubberley/Mitchell Park
Should try to get as close as possible to
dense housing near Alma, but limited
due to creek and arterial crossings.
Explore using closed corridor on
school district property between East
Meadow and Charleston.
Should serve Cubberley/Mitchell Park
Choice between:
¯ San Antonio
train station and
Shopping
Center, or
¯VA Hospital
and Gunn.
Choice between:
° San Antonio
train station and
Shopping
Center, or
¯VA Hospital
and Gunn.
The coverage-oriented routes in the Greer and Waverley corridors serve predominantly low-
density residential areas. As a result, they are likely to generate only modest ridership.
Depending on funding levels, they could be operated at half hour frequencies or better.
Since Louis Road is almost exactly a quarter mile away from frequent transit along Middlefield
Road, manypeople .living on Louis may prefer to walk to Middlefield rather than wait for a bus
in front of their house. Therefore, Greer is generally a better choice than Louis since Greer
serves more residents who would otherwise be beyond walking distance of transit.
As in all alternatives, the Research Park would get significantly improved service with all-day
connections to the California Avenue station. Specific routing in the Research Park needs
more study since there is no obvious single path connecting most employers. New service
would be provided on Embarcadero Road, and improved service offered in the San Antonio
Road corridor.
Concept 2: East-West Service
This service also provides the El Camino and Middlefield "spines" of the previous alternative,
but focuses on east-west routes rather than north-south. Each of the each-west segments can
NELSON~NYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-10 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
be operated at separate lines, pulsing in and out of several nodes, or all the service can be
through-routed on one line.
This alternative is especially interesting because it connects all of the city’s densest pockets,
and allows very direct connections to a train station from all neighborhoods. Although it looks
rather awkward on the map, it is very efficient in meeting key origin-destination pairs while
providing decent coverage throughout the city. The lines are routed so as to be spaced
approximately a half mile from the nearest parallel route, allowing most residents to fall within
a quarter mile of the service.
Concept 3: Special Event Shuttle route
This alternative simply replicates the Special Event Shuttle, with the option of extending it to
the San Antonio Station at the southern end of.the loop. There would not necessarily be any
additional service on Middlefield, except the existing line 35.
Concept 4: Improved service o~ VTA’s existing routes
This alternative implements VTA routing changes as proposed in their Tasman West Light Rail
Integration Plan. Specifically:
¯Reroute the 35 to run from the San Antonio Station to the Mountain View Station, and
terminate it at the Stanford Shopping Center instead of the Main Quad.
o Extend the 86 to the Stanford Medical Center and Main Quad to cover cutbacks on the 35
In addition, implement these improvements:
°Increase the frequency of the 35 to run it every fifteen minutes all day.
°Increase frequency of service in the Research Park to every fifteen minutes all day through
a combination of new shuttles and/or short runs of the 24 or 88.
¯Pursue the use of smaller vehicles on the 86 and 88.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-11 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
Routing considerations for all scenarios
Routing in the downtown: Lytton or Hamilton? Middlefield or Webster?
Generally, we recommend all buses serving the downtown (including the existing 35 and 86)
use Lytton rather than Hamilton since the density there is slightly greater and it is closer to the
Senior Center and Lytton Gardens. It may be possible to run some service on both Lytton and
Hamilton, but routes going generally in the same direction should use the same street. For
example, both the 86 and 35 should use the same street so that a person heading from the
downtown to the Main Library would have the choice of two routes and could hop on
whichever came first-- effectively increasing the frequency of service. The SamTrans 50C and
50V, however, could use a different downtown street from the 35 and 86 since there is very
little service area overlap between these two pairs.
Heading south from downtown, instead of .using Middlefield we recommend using Webster
as far as Channing to best serve Channing House and other facilities at the east edge of
downtown. From Channing, the service should run south on Middlefield.
Louis or Greet?
Louis Road is almost exactly a quarter mile from Middlefield.-If frequent service is provided
on Middlefield, many people living on Louis will prefer to walk to Middlefieldrather than wait
longer for a bus in front of their house. Therefore, Greer is generally a better choice for
serving more residents.
Routing in the Research Park
Specific routing in the Research Park needs more study. There is no obvious single path
connectingmost employers. Routing will depend in part on willingness of employers to
contribute to the service, employer TDM programs, existence of sidewalks and other factors.
Likely, more than one route will be necessary.
San Antonio Shopping Center
Whether service terminates at the San Antonio Station or continues around the shopping
center will depend in part on extra time availability in the schedule, and perhaps on
contributions from Shopping Center merchants.
Stanford connections
Further conversations will be necessary with Stanford to determine whether any Marguerite
service will be through-routed into Palo Alto, or whether passengers will have to transfer at
the train stations. Similar to the San Antonio Shopping Center, depending on schedules it may
NELSONI/VYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-12 APRIL 1999
~ITY OF PALO AZTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
be possible to extend some Palo Alto service past the train station to the Stanford Shopping
Center.
DART and other demand-responsive systems
Each of the alternatives may be made more effective with a DART-type demand-responsive
service at midday. Unfortunately, demand-responsive services have very high start-up and
ongoing administrative costs. We do not recommend that the City implement any demand-
responsive services until after several fixed route shuttles are implemented, tested, evaluated
and refined. Fixed route services aregenerally the most cost-effective and user-friendly option
in an area of the density of Palo Alto, but the City may find that demand-responsive services
may be worth their high overhead cost to extend better coverage to lower-density areas,
particularly at off-peak times.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-13 APRIL 1999
Transit Routes
Existing or proposed SamTrans service
Existing or proposed Marguerite
Existing or proposed VTA
New services
Bayshore
Transit Intensity
Service be~ter than every 15 minutes all day
Service every 15 minutes all day
Service every half hour oll day
Hourly or irregular service
Lytton Gardens
Senior
Station
Hospital
~Medium Density Commercialor Residential Area~----~ Higher Densi.ty Commercialor ]~esidential Area
rnia Ave
~
Stanford
VA MedicalCer~ter
;House
Jewish
Center
San AntonioStation
San AntonioShopping Center
PALO ALTO
orth-South Routing COncept
Map I
Not to Scale
Transit Routes
FxJsting or proposed SomTrons service
Existing or proposed Marguerite
Existing or proposed VTA
New services
Freeway
Bayshore
Transit Intensity
Service better than every 15 minutes all day
Service every 15 minutes all day
Service every half hour all day
Hourly or irregular service
Lytton Gardens
Senior ~Center ,
Stati
Stanford
Hospital
~ral Jordan
School
rnia Ave
Stanford
YMCA
/
VA MedicalCegter Gum
Center
~tevensonHouse
Jewish~munity
San AntonioStation
San AntonioShopping Center
~Medium Density Commercialor Residential Area~Higher Densi.ty Commercialor Residential Area
ast-West
Not to Scale
Concept
els nln gam/
Transit Routes
Existing or proposed SamTrans service
Existing or proposed Marguerite
Existing or proposed VTA
New services
Transit Intensity
Service better than every 15 minutes all day
Service every 15 minutes all day
Service every half hour all day
Hourly or irregular service
Freeway
Potential
extension to
downtown traiq
station
, Stem
Lytton Gardens YMCA
(~Center Potentiale
Senior ~extension to¯San Antonio
Station
Station School
~ :-;.California Ave e House ~ San Antonio
s ~esearch ~~ San ~ntonlo
~ ~rk ~~:
. Shop~ngCe~er
Hospital Quad :
~Medium Densi~ Commercialor Reside~ial
~Hi~her Densi~ Commercialor Residential ~ea
PAJ.O
Special Event Shuttle
Concept
Map 3
Not to Scale
Transit Routes Transit Intensity
Existing or proposed SamTrans service ~Service better than every 15 minutes all day
Existing or proposed Marguerite ~Service every 15 minutes all day
Existing or proposed VTA ~Service every half hour all day
New services . ¯ ¯ = " ¯ m ~ ~Hourly or irregular service
Bayshore
Fr~way
Reroute
services indowntown onto
Webster andLytton
Lytton Gardens
SeniorCenter
Hospital
Medium Density Commercialor Residential Area
Higher Densi.ty CommercialorResidential Area
Main Quad
VA Medical
Cegter
Improvefrequency In
Research Park
San AntonioShopping Center
Improved existing
Map 4
Not to Scale
transit
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
CHAPTER 3.SHORT TERM ALTERNATIVES
With these long-term concepts in mind, we then focused on short term routing alternatives.
In this part of the process we wanted to identify shuttle routes that met all of the following
criteria:
Implementable by the City and local businesses on their own
Do not compete with existing VTA, SamTrans or Marguerite services
Focus on unserved or underserved areas
° Will generate high ridership and will be deemed "successful"
° Can be implemented quickly if funding is available
Looking carefully at. the city, there were five possible new (or improved) shuttle routes that
became evident. We presented these at our April 10 public workshop and have refined them
as a result. These shuttle routes include:
1. An extension of the Stanford Marguerite Downtown Express
Stanford currently operates a route called the Downtown Express that runs from the Hospital
and Main Quad to Lytton Plaza in downtown Palo Alto at lunchtime. It is ~ne of the most
successful Marguerite routes and it generates a high number of customers for downtown
businesses. Stanford is already planning to adjust the route slightly to provide front-door
service to the newly opened Stanford Museum, allowing downtown residents and employees
a free connection to the Museum:
One limitation of the existing service is that it only extends as far as Emerson Street in
downtown. -We propose to provide additional funding to Stanford to allow them to extend
the Express the length of the downtown - likely as far as Webster. The City already makes a
significant financial contribution toward the operations of this shuttle, so the partnership has
already been formed. In addition, it may be worth exploring expanding the service hours of
the Downtown Express beyond the 11:00 to 2:00 lunch period.
Market:Stanford students and employees wanting to shop and eat in Downtown.
Downtown residents and employees wishing to visit the Stanford Museum,
Medical Center or Main Campus. (If service ran all day, it would also serve
Stanford employees and students living in Downtown North and University
South neighborhoods.)
Operations:Likely, Stanford would continue to operate it as part of the Marguerite, with
increased financial participation by the City.
NELSONItVYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-18 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRA NSPOR TA TION DI VI$10N
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPEr 3
Rating:High chance .of success. Builds upon existing model and partnership, with
strong base ridership.
2. Embarcadero Road shuttle
Employers at the East-of-Bayshore office parks have been wanting transit service for nearly 20
years. It is the largest concentration of jobs anywhere in the vicinity that currently has no
transit alternative. While the closest train connection to this job cluster is at the California
Avenue station, attractions along Embarcadero Road make it a much better alternative. Key
destinations along the Embarcadero Road corridor include:
¯Several residential neighborhoods that currently have limited access to transit to
downtown or th.e train station.
¯The Main Library and Art Center
¯Palo Alto High School
¯Gamble Garden Center
o Town & CountryVillage
°The new Palo Alto Medical Foundation
o
o
Castilleja School
The downtown train station and the transit connections there to Stanford, Menlo
Park, downtown, East Palo Alto, etc., as well as pedestrian access to the downtown
business district.
Running frequent service that makes all these connections to and from East-of-Bayshore allows
for a service that will generate significantly more ridership, plus will have increased frequency
since there will be demand for travel in both directions at all times of day. Depending on the
service schedule, it may also be possible to extend the line beyond the downtown train station
to provide direct service to the Senior Center or Stanford Shopping Center.
Limited Caltrain shuttle service to East Bayshore will begin this spring, and it will provide
excellent baseline data for expanded service. The route will serve the California Avenue
station and run express to the office park. We recommend that the future service t~se
Embarcadero Road in order to capture additional markets.
Market:Commuters to East-of-Bayshore offices, including lunchtime connections to
downtown.
North Palo Alto neighborhoods to the downtown train station, Stanford, Town
& Country Village, PAMF, etc.
North Palo Alto high school students to Paly
Downtown and citywide residents to the Main Library and Art Center
NELSON~NYGAARD CONSULTING AsSOClATES 1-19 APrlt 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKINC PAPER .3
Operations:New Caltrain shuttle overseen by the City, with financial support from
businesses and the Transportation Fund for Clean Air (Air District/Caltrain)
Rating:High chance of success. Start-up funding already in place. High level of
interest among businesses. Overcomes key school commute barriers.
3. New Research Park shuttles
As we have noted before, the Stanford Research Park has approximately the same population
and population density as all of Stanford University and Medical Center. Therefore, it is
reasonable to assume that it could support a similar level of shuttle service as is offered by the
Marguerite. Currently, service in the Research Park is limited to VTA’s lines 24 (every half
hour, peak only) and 88 (irregular schedule, every 30 - 60 minutes), plus the Deer Creek
Shuttle (four runs at peak only) which is sponsored by Hewlett Packard and Caltrain. Research
Park employees have expressed a desire for better connections with the train, plus lunchtime
service to the California Avenue district.
Developing actual routing details within the Research Park is complicated. The concept map
shows a single, arbitrary line connecting the densest areas. Instead, the service may break
apart to serve more front doors, or it may be concentrated to provide very high levels of
service to those employers willing to help fund and promote the shuttle, as well as those who
have the best employee transportation programs and therefore can generate the highest
ridership. Further conversations will be needed with Research Park employers to develop
routing and scheduling plans.
An interesting component of this proposed route is that it could be extended at peak school
times to provide a direct connection between the College Terrace neighborhood and Jordan
Middle School. when a similar connection was provided by the Stanford Marguerite, it was
extremely popular among College Terrace residents.
Market:Research Park employees commuting from the train station, express bus or
other transit, and those living near California Avenue.
Research Park employees running errands or going to lunch
College terrace middle school students to Jordan
Operations:Restructured and improved Caltrain shuttle overseen by the City, with financial
support from businesses and the Transportation Fund for Clean Air (Air
District/Caltrain)
Rating:High chance of success. Funding and partnership for Deer Creek Shuttle
already in place. High level of interest among businesses.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-20 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPEr 3
4. San Antonio Corridor Shuttle
Similar to the Research Park but on a smaller scale, employers in the San Antonio Road
corridor--, including those on adjacen.t streets such as Sun Microsystems, Loral and many
other businesses- lack frequent connections to the train, other transit and lunchtime shopping
and eating places. VTA is already considering some improvements in this corridor, including
increasing the frequency of the line 86, and adding a new line 47 that will run every 20
minutes at peak up San Antonio to Mountain View’s office parks in the Shoreline area. The
City should work with VTA to balance service improvements for Palo Alto as well as Mountain
View employers. Depending on the outcome of these proposed service changes, it may make
sense for the City to provide some infill service to fill gaps in VTA’s schedules or serve
destinations that VTA misses.
In addition to major employers, the San Antonio Road corridor contains some of the densest
housing in the city, p.roviding a strong base of potential riders who may want to go to the new
train station, connect to other transit, o’r go shopping at the San Antonio Shopping Center.
Routing details in and around the San Antonio Shopping Center still need to be resolved. It
would be desirable to provide direct connections to the bus transfer center on Showers Drive,
as well at the line 22 stops on El Camino Real. At lunchtime, closer connections to the
Shopping Center stores would also be desirable. Whether or not these connections are made
will depend largely on the train schedule and whatever time is leftover in the schedule after
the shuttle makes its rounds through the office parks.
Market:
Operations:
San Antonio Road corridor employees commuting from the train station arid
other transit.
Residents of dense apartment clusters along San Antonio Road going to work
or shop
Could be modifications of existing or proposed VTA lines, or a new Caltrain
shuttle overseen by the City, with financial support from businesses and the
Transportation Fund for Clean Air (Air District/Caltrain)
Rating:Moderate chance of success, depending on outcome of VTA’s new service
plans. High level of interest among businesses.
5. New citywide circulator
While the previous four shuttle routes all serve a variety of purposes and meet the demands
of both businesses and residents, some stakeholders felt they did not provide for
"neighborhood" circulation. Many people wanted to see something like the Special Event
NELSONiNYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-21 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO At TO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
Shuttle that t~as been so popular during major events downtown. Unfortunately, the Special
Event Shuttle has some major disadvantages if the City were to try to run it year-round:
¯It is very expensive. Running just the Special Event Shuttle year-round would cost
over $1 million a year.
°Much of its route duplicates existing VTA services including the 86 and the 35. It
would not make sense for the City to spend its own limited resources to try to do
what VTA is already doing, nor would that be good transit planning. Instead, the
City should work with VTA over the long term to help improve the existing routes.
° The onlyportion of the Special Event Shuttle route that does not duplicate VTA
service - the segment that roughly follows Waverley - does not include enough key
destinations or dense housing areas to generate sufficient ridership to justify it.
°The Special Event Shuttle misses key neighborhoods west of the train tracks,
including Barron Park which currently has no transit service within the
neighborhood.
In search of something better than th~ Special Event Shuttle route, we went back to the
drawing board to develop a line that met these goals:
°Avoid duplicating existing servicie
°Serve key destination that are currently not well served.
°Serve key neighborhoods that are currently not well served.
¯Overcome key school commute barriers
¯Provide connections for commuters, shoppers, recreational users and other groups.
Our final route proposal accomplishes all of these goals with a new line that snakes across
most of the city. It begins at the downtown.trai n station (and possibly at theStanford Shopping
Center if the schedule permits), runs through downtown past the Senior Center and Lytton
Gardens, across Webster and up Channing to Newell where it serves the front doors of the
Main Library and Art Center, across Newell to Jordan Middle School and down to Midtown.
From Midtown, it cuts down to Waverley in order to get as close as possible to the dense
cluster of apartments alo.ng Alma - while avoiding Alma itself (no sidewalks or pedestrian
crossings) and taking into account available creek bridges. From Waverley, it wraps around
the rich block that includes Mitchell Park, JLS Middle School, the Mitchell Community Center
and Library, and Stevenson House. It then continues across East Meadow to get as close as
possible to the dense housing in the Ventura neighborhood and crosses El Camino to provide
direct service within the Barron Park neighborhood. Finally, it goes up to Gunn High School
and runs past the Terman Center/Jewish Community Center before repeating the route.
This community circulator achieve many important origin-destination pairs, especially if it is
thought of within the context of other VTA routes - especially line 22. Its service area does
overlap with a portion of the service area of line 35, it provides duplication only in key
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOClATES 1-22 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
transfer areas: Downtown, Midtown and the Mitchell Community Center. Most importantly,
it opens several entirely new markets in all areas of Palo Alto. It overcomes a variety of school
commute barriers, complementing the line 86 to meet the needs of most students at Jordan,
JLS and Gunn, and it provides front-door service to the Art Center and Main Library for the first
All in all, we find this a very interesting route worth pursui,ng further.
Market:A rich market serving many neighborhoods and important community
destinations.
Operations:New city-operated shuttle. Would likely need to be funded entirely by the City,
perhaps with some support from the School District or private sector. Unlikely
to be eligible for Caltrain shuttle funding.
Rating:Difficult to estimate ridership given limited baseline data, but likely to be very
popular. Will generate High enthusiasm by those who use it. Most expensive
of all options, and no existing service to build from, so may not be best first step
for implementation.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-23 APRIL 1999
Transit Routes
Existing or proposed SamTrans service
Existing or proposed Marguerite
Existing or proposed V’I’A
New services
Bayshore-
Embarcadero-
PAMF-Paly shuttle
Bayshore
Transit Intensity
Service better than every 1S minutes all day
Service every 15 minutes all day
Service every half hour all day
Hourly or irregular service
Lytton Gardens
SeniorCenter
Station
School
~~gCountry
Center
Stanford
-- -Main Quad
Expanded
Downtown Express ~
~--] Medium Density Commercialor Residential Area
~-~ Higher Densi.ty CommercialorResidential Area
f~." New citywide
circulator
~ornia Ave
Station
Improved Deer
Creek Shuttle
Stanford
Improved San
Antonio connector
Center
House
Extend line
to Mtn View
pursue 15
minute
frequency
San Antonio
Station
San AntonioShopping Center
VA Medical ~ JewishCommunity
Gun~ Center
Proposed Routing
Alternatives
Map 5
Not to Scale
elsen\n. gaa d
on|ultlo| mlmociatel
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL ,SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
CHAPTER4: EVALUATION OF
ALTERNATIVES
COST ANALYSIS
Cost is the only significant impediment toward implementing any of these shuttle routes. In
order to decide which routes to pursue, poli,cymakers will need to know how much they will
cost, and what benefit they are getting for their investment. Below we outline service costs
by route, and in the next section we calculate projected ridership. A more detailed financial
plan is include in Working Paper 2.
We include th6 following assumptions.in making these calculations:
Contract service cost
Hours of service per day
$40 an hour
13 hours (roughly 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.)
Cutting back service levels during the midday period does not result in significant cost savings.
The $40 contract rate assumes all-day service, and reductions in service during the midday
W.ill result the contract cost for peak period increasing to around $65 an hour. In fact, several
shuttle managers in the Bay Area who originally provided only peak-period service have since
expanded to all day service once they discovered that adding midday service was essentially
free.
1.Downtown
Express*
2.Bayshore
shuttle
3.Research
Park shuttle
$3,1,000
for IO-minute
service at
lunchtime only
$270,000
$405,000
$44,000
including
limited Sat/Sun
service
$380,000
Not
recommended
Not
recommended
$135,000
$270,000
Not
recommended
$190,000
Not
recommended
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-25 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
4. San Antonio Not Not $]35,000 Not
Shuttle.recommended recommended recommended
$676,000 $949,000 $406,000 ~$569,0005.Citywide
circulator
*Cost for the Downtown Express does not include City’s current $14,000 annual contribution.
Note that we make various recommendations regarding appropriate service levels on each
route. Routes that are primarily employer shuttles, such as the Research Park or San Antonio
Road service, should only operate five days a week. While it is worthwhile calculating costs
and ridership for half hour headways on these routes for comparison purposes, at this time we
do not recommend implementing half hourly service except where it is providing infill to
existing services.
P~IDERSHIP PROJECTIONS
Ridership will be projected for each of these routes using the City’s Geographic Information
System (GIS), which can tell us how many residents and employees are within a quarter mile
of each route. Then, we can apply various formulas for what percentage of the potential
market will likely use transit. For resident usage, we can look at transit’s mode share for other
suburban areas with comparable levels of transit service. Depending on the frequency of
service and other factors, between 5% and 10% of Palo Altans living in a given service area
can reasonably be expected to ride the shuttle. For employees, we can look at the
effectiveness of the wide variety of employee shuttles already operating throughout the Bay
Area. For’employee usage, timed connections with Caltrain are about as important as overall
frequency.
Once we calculate conservative ridership estimates using the same formulas for each route,
we can accurately rank the cost effectiveness of each proposed route. The cost per passenger
ride will be a critical tool for policymakers to use in deciding which services get funded first.
GOALS ANALYSIS
In Working Paper 1, we identified the following draft service goals:
Goal 1: Attract passengers who would otherwise drive cars
-- Maximize overall ridership
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATE$ 1-26 APRIL 1999
~ITY OF PALO ALTO
TRA NSPOR TA TION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
Encourage transit use among students who are currently being chauffeured by
their parents
Provide an alternative to driving for low-income persons
Provide an attractive commute alternative in major corridors
Goal 2:Provide benefits to all parts of the city
Goal 3:Provide mobility options to, seniors, the disabled and others with special needs
Goal 4:Support economic development
-Provide access to employment
-Provide access to shopping
-Provide useful services to visitors
-Contribute to community identity
-Allow for business expansion without increased congestion
Goal 5: Improve regional cooperati6n
Goal 6: Minimize costs while meeting other goals
In this section we analyze how each alternative meets these goals. Th’e charts below focus on
Goals 1-4. Goal 5, regional cooperation, is a larger issue that these shuttle routes only begin
to work toward. As mentioned earlier, these shuttles should be the starting point for a
conversation among the City, its neighbors and the several transit operators that currently serve
the area. In the short run, these shuttles would all be designed to make timed transfers with
Caltrain, the Dumbarton Express bus and other transit. Their routes are planned so that they
will increase total ridership for all transit operators rather than attempt to draw riders away
from any routes.
Goal 6, cos~ effectiveness, is analyzed in detail in the previous section.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-27 APRIL 1999
0
~. £.o ~ ~E
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPOR TA TION DIVISION
LOCAL SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT WORKING PAPER 3
Summary
The following chart summarizes the performance of each route according to the city’s goals.
They are ranked by the following key:
Excellent
Very Good
Good
Fair
Summary
1. Downtown
Express
2. Bayshore
shuttle
3. Research
Park shuttle
4.San Antonio
Shuttle
5. Citywide
circulator
It is interesting to note that no route gets excellent marks across the board, although two tend
to score more highly than the others: the Bayshore shuttle and the Citywide Circulator.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-30 APRIL 1999
ATTACHMENT E
City of Palo Alto
Transportation Division
April 1999
Submitted by:
C~ITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL BUS SYSTEM PLAN
WORKING PAPER 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................1-1
Organization of This Working Paper ..............................1-1
CHAPTER 2. IDENTIFICATION OF POTENTIAL FUNDING SOURCES ......1-2
Federal Funding Opportunities ..................................1-2
State Funds ......... .........................................1-4
Regional Funds ..............................................1-4
Local Revenues ..............................................1-6
Vehicle Considerations .......................................1-14
CHAPTER 3. FUNDING STRATEGY ...............................1-21
Short-Terrh Funding Strategy’. ..................................1-21
Longer-Term Funding Strategy ..................................1-22
Summary ..................................................1423
Figure 1
Figure 2
TABLE OF FIGURES
Summary of Federal, State and Regional Funding Sources ...............16
Summary of Local Funding Opportunities ..........................18
NELSON\NYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES I APRIG 1999
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
Securing funding for a proposed local shuttle service is a major challenge facing Palo Alto.
This paper presents a series of potential revenue sources that could be available to Palo Alto
(o pay for a shuttle service.
Working Paper #1 outlined five major goals for a Palo Alto transit system. The goal that
addresses costs and funding is Goal #5: Minimize costs while meeting other goals. This
reflects the desire for the most effective possible use of public and private funds. A
corresponding objective is to minimize the overall city contribution by securing non-city
sources such as private funds or government grants.
Since the funding arena is both complex and requires a long-lead time for many revenue
sources, two additional objectives have been proposed to help develop a strategy for Palo
Alto to maximize its funding potential. They are:
1. Identify/secure funds to initiate ("jump-start") a new shuttle service by FY 2000.
2.Develop a longer-term funding strategy to provide a stable ongoing operating
subsidy and secure revenues to support capital purchases.
When analyzing the funding potential for a Palo Alto bus system, the obvious question arises:
"How much money is needed"? The answer is a complex one and depends upon the type
and level of service that is ultimately provided. At this stage in the Palo Alto bus study, it has
been estimated that at a minimum, $500,000 per year would be needed to support a modest
bus service, with up to $2 million per year for a more robust service.
ORGANIZATION OFTHIS WORKING PAPER
Following this introductory chapter, the next chapter identifies and reviews all conceivable
revenue sources, including federal, state, regional and local funds. For each identified revenue
source, there is a discussion about the approval or application process, the funding flexibility,
estimated annual yield, lead time and other relevant information. There is also a section
discussing the pros and cons of charging a passenger fare. Although the primary focus of this
financial analysis is to identify operating funds, and to a lesser extent, capital revenues, this
paper includes a discussion on the consideration of vehicle type - electric versus alternative
fuel as it relates to funding potential. The final chapter in this report outlines a recommended
financial strategy for a Palo Alto shuttle bus service. Based on the funding objectives outlined
above, the long list of possible funding sources reviewed in Chapter 2 are then narrowed
down to those that have the most promising potential for short-term success. Funding
mechanisms that could provide Palo Alto with stable ongoing support for a local shuttle
service are recommended as a longer-term strategy.
NELSONINYGAArD CONSULTING AS$OCIATES 1 APriL 1999
CHAPTER 2.IDENTIFICATION OF
POTENTIAL FUNDING
SOURCES
The purpose of this chapter is to identify all existing and potential funding sources that could
be available for a Palo Alto local bus service. Existing Federal, state, and regional funding
programs are presented first followed by a review of potential revenues at the local level
including private sector contributions. A summary of each source is presented in Figures 1
and 2 highlighting the funding flexibility, application or approval process, estimated annual
yield (if available), timeline for securing revenue and other relevant information. (The figures
are found on pages 16 through 20 at the conclusion of this chapter). Figure 1 summarizes this
information for federal, state and regional revenues and Figure 2 summarizes opportunities
at the local level.
FEDERAL FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, or "TEA-21" was signed into law in June
1998. This massive federal transportation spending bill provides over $3 billion in annual
Federal funding over a six year period. Although TEA-21 provides more transportation d611ars
in California than ever before and allows more flexibility in how funds can be spent, there is
a "backlog"Of proj.ects in the San Francisco Bay region waiting to be funded. TEA-21 does
include discretionary and competitive grant funding opportunities that could bring new
Federal capital dollars to Santa Clara County and Palo Alto.
Transportation and Community and System Preservation Pilot Program ..
A new innovative program of TEA-21 is called the Transportation and Community and System
Preservation Pilot (TCSP) program. Its purpose is to fund projects that address the link
between land use, community quality of life and transportation. This is an annual
competitive grant process with about $20 million available in FY 1999 and $25 million per
year for FYs 2000 through 2003. The program will favor projects that partner with private
sector interests to make transportation and land-use connections. Cities are eligible recipients
of these grant funds. There is no cap on the size of grants under TCSP. Priority will be given
to projects that demonstrate a commitment of non-federal resources. Projects that make use
of in-kind contributions, including funding from local, and private sources, will receive
priority. Partnerships are encouraged and could include a broad range of transitional partnerg
and non-traditional partners such as the general public, environmental community, businesses
and other groups. The five major objectives of the TCSP program are: -
1. Improve the efficiency of the transportation system;
2. Reduce the impacts of transportation on the environment;
NEL$ONINYGAARD CONSUL TING AS$OC/A TE$2 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL BUS SYSTEM PLAN
WORKING PAPER 2
3. Reduce the need for costly future investments in public infrastructure;
4. Ensure efficient access to jobs, services, and centers of trade; and
5.Examine development patterns and identify strategies to encourage private sector
development, patterns which the achieve the goals of the TCSP.
For the FY 2000 cycle, TCSP letters of intent were due March 15, 1999 with grant requests
due in June, 1999. Selected projects would receive Federal grant funding at the start of the
Federal fiscal year, in October 1999. Another solicitation is scheduled for May 1999
with decisions expected in June 1999. Funds will be obligated in October 1999 for
Federal fiscal year 2000.
Transportation for Livable Communities (TLC)
This program of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission provides funding for planning
studies and for capital expenditures for projects that strengthen the link between
transportation investments and commur~ity needs. This program is targeting projects that have
utilized a collaborative public planning process and are transit or bicycle/pedestrian oriented,
have significant local community benefits, and have been driven largely from a "bottom up"
initiative. Generally, small amounts are available on a discretionary basis. About $9 million
per year will be available in the region for the next five years. These funds require an 11.5%
match and could be combined with other sources. The first round of capital and planning
grants were due in February and March 1999 respectively. It is assumed that’the ,next round
of grant opportunities will occur in a similar time flame. Funding requests are submitted to
MTC, who has developed a funding appli.cation and established criteria for evaluating project
merit.
Transportation Enhancement Activities (TEA)
TEA is a grant program established under ISTEA and reauthorized under TEA-21. It is designed
to fund environmental and alternative transportation projects which would not necessarily
have other available funding sources. A wide variety of public agencies including cities,
counties and transit operators are eligible for TEA funds. These funds are mainly used for
capital projects, and can not be used for transit operations. TEA funds at the state level are
largely committed to acquiring open space. Regional TEA funds are now applied for through
the Santa Clara County Congestion Management Agency (CMA) who expects to program
about $6 million per year over the next six years. The first round of programming is expected
to begin late Spring of 1999 with approximately $1.5 million available for FY 99/00. A
second round of programming~vill occur for the remaining $4.4 million the following year.
The evaluation criteria emphasize the same qualities as the TLC program for the initial
programming year. The CMA may elect to revise its criteria for subsequent funding cycles.
As with other Federal funding programs, all successful project sponsors are required to follow
the Federal process for securing Federal funds.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 3 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRA NSPOR TA TION DI VISION
LOCAL BUS SYSTEM PLAN
WORKING PAPER 2
STATE FUNDS
Petroleum Violation Escrow Account (PVEA) Funds
PVEA monies represent fines/forfeitures collected against major gas and oil companies. These
monies are intended for transportation-related purposes and are applied for through a local
legislator to the California Energy Commission. The amount available from year-to-year
fluctuates tremendously. This is a highly discretionary revenue source, which has the
potential to yield significant amounts, particularly if the project can be related to clean air
transportation. It is our understanding that in 1999 there is $14 million in PVEA funds,
however Governor Davis has allocated $10 million for "specific purposes" and that the
remainder is earmarked for reserves. This means there may be no PVEA funding this year.
Funds would be likely be available in future years.
The City of Palo Alto previously received a $200,000 PVEA grant to pay for station
improvements at th~’Palo Alto CaITrain station. The grant was obtained through the assistance
and sponsorship of State Senator Byron’Sher.
rEGIONAL FUNDS
Transportation Fund for Clean Air (TFCA)
In October 1991, Governor Wilson signed into law AB 434 (now commonly referred to as
TFCA funds) which imposed a $4.00 surcharge on all vehicle registrations. Forty percent of
the funds generated in each county are returned to that county, while the remaining sixty
percent of the revenues are distributed throughout the region on a competitive basis. Funds
returned to the county are distributed at the discretion of the congestion management agency
(for Palo Alto-the Santa Clara County CMA). The 40% funding pot totaled $2.6 million in
FY 99/00. The 40% fund is open and competitive, meaning that the CMA may f-und any type
of project without regard to mode or jurisdiction. Funding requests for the 40% pot were due
to the CMA in January 1999. (The City of Palo Alto submitted two bicycle projects; however
there is no decision yet on this funding request). Applications for regional funds are
distributed by the BAAQMD on a competitive basis. The BAAQMD rank competitive
applications using the following criteria:
Cost-effectiveness (maximum 40 points)
TFCA funding effectiveness (maximum 35 points)
Other project attributes (maximum 20 points)
Disadvantaged community (maximum 5 points)
The CMA criteria incorporates the BAAQMD criteria, however the point assignments differ,
with the effectiveness indicator worth 10 points out of a possible 100.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 4 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ,ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL BUS SYSTEM PLAN
WORKING PAPER 2
Only public agencies are eligible to apply for TFCA funding. To be eligible for TFCA funds
for shuttle/feeder bus service projects, the service must meet two requirements. One, it must
be coordinated with and receive the support of the transit agency within its service area. This
means that a shuttle service operating within Santa Clara County must receive a "letter of
support" from VTA and possibly SamTrans. Secondly, theservice can not duplicate existing
transit service.
Since it is possible to receive funds from both the 40% and 60% pot, the City of Palo Alto is
encouraged to apply for TFCA funds at the local andregional level. It should be noted that
a number of VTA shuttle services are funded with TFCA funds and the Stanford Marguerite
also receives funds from this source. In FY 1997/98, there were 13 shuttle programs funded
with TFCA dollars. A few examples of these shuttle services include the Dumbarton Express
shuttle ($51,300), SamTrans BART Shuttle ($136,000), VTA CaITrain Shuttle ($264,000) and
Foster City Bridge Shuttle ($33,219). As with other funding programs, these funds are
available only to public agencies. The regional TFCA cycle starts in April and grants are
awarded in June.
Gasoline Tax
With the passage of SB 595 in 1996, MTC has the authority to go to the voters for a tax
increase on gasoline of up to 10-cents per gallon. The legislation permits the regional
transportation agency (MTC) to determine when and in which counties in the region the gas
tax would be placed on the ballot. Because it is a special tax, the regional gas tax would need
to pass by a two-thirds majority of the total regional vote. MTC does not "plan to place a
regional gas tax before the voters prior to the year 2000. Poll results indicate that voters
would not likely pass an increase in the gas tax above a 2-cent to 4-cent range.
The major appeal of a gas tax is that it would generate a significant amount of new revenue.
If a 10-cent gas tax were approved, MTC has forecasted a $4 billion revenue .stream over a
20-year period. Santa Clara County’s share of the regional tax is forecasted to be
approximately $ 767 million for a ten-cent tax for a period of ten years. However, polls
indicate that most counties would not have the required super majority for this level of gas
tax. Instead, it appears that a 2-cent tax over a short time period (two to five years) may have
a better chance of passing. In this case, the revenue stream would be substantially reduced.
Alternatively, MTC may elect to place the measure on the ballot only in those Bay Area
counties that appear willing to approve the gas tax with a super majority. The counties that
approve the measure by two-thirds vote would be allowed to impose the tax even if their
neighboring counties did not. A gas tax at the county level could encourage motorists to buy
gas in neighboring counties. A gas tax has the potential to encourage people to use
alternative forms of transportation because motorists directly pay for this tax.
In either case, MTC is mandated to collect the tax and to be responsible for developing an
Expenditure Plan that identifies the projects to be funded. The legislation requires that 95%
of a county’s revenues generated from this tax must be returned to projects located in that
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county or to projects the-county has identified inside or outside of the county. No
mechanism or formula has been developed that identifies a city’s share of the MTC allocation.
LOCAL REVENUES
This section identifies a series of existing and future local revenues that could be used to pay
for a shuttle service. Existing sources are discussed first, followed by a review of new
revenues, primarily local taxing measures. A summary of these potential local revenues is
found in Figure 2, on page 18. Since some of the local revenues will influence decisions on
vehicle type, there is a brief discussion at the end of this section on electric vehicles versus
compressed natural.gas (CNG) as they relate to funding potential.
Existing Local Revenue Sources
Electric Utility Public Benefit Program
In 1997, California State AB 1890 passed requiring municipal utilities to collect an electric
charge to fund public benefit prograrhs. The funding level established for Palo Alto is
approximately $1.77 million annually. This Public Benefit Program is a committed program
providing enhanced revenues for up to four years. To continue this program, it must be
reauthorized in four years, and is anticipated that it will be, even if at lower levels. This
means that it should be a fairly stable source of revenues. The additional revenues are
derived from fees imposed on businesses and residences based on electric usage. AB1890
established that funds can be expended in any one or more of four program, categories:
Demand-side management programs
New investment in renewable energy resources
Research, development, and demonstration programs
Low-income services
The City Council approved an initial public benefits package with funding allocation as part
of the budget process for FY 1998/99 with a not-to-exceed amount of $1.77 million. In
February 1999, staff recommended to City Council a proposal to add new programs to the
public benefits program to fully expend the $1.77 million targeted amount. One of the new
programs is an electric vehicle demonstration with a proposed $35,000 proposed-target
budget.
If the City decides to pursue electric vehicles for its shuttle program then this would be an
excellent source of funds to pay for the vehicle acquisition and replacement program.
However, $35,000 would cover only a small portion of the total cost of an electric vehicle
purchase. As an example, a 26’ passenger low-floor electric vehicle is estimated to cost
$230,00. (19995). This estimate does must include ancillary equipment costs for recharging
battery operated vehicles estimated at $40,000. To purchase vehicles using revenues from
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this program would require the City Council to increase its target allocation or Palo Alto
would have to secure additional funds from another source.
Palo Alto Utilities (CPAU)
The Utilities Department is comprised of multiple utilities including gas, electric, water and
sewer. Funds in each utility can not be moved from one to another. There is a small amount
of revenues from the natural gas.u~ility that could potential ly be available for ash uttle service.
These revenues are derived from a 1% customer surcharge that the City uses to fund a variety
of demand-side management projects. This annual amount is approximately $300,000. The
use of these funds are decided by the City Council at the recommendation of the Utilities
Department staff. A project for the proposed shuttle service would compete with other
"efficiency type" projects that are annually considered by the Utilities Department and City
Council.
If funds from the Utilities Department were made available to a shuttle service program, they
would most likely be for capital investments, such as rolling stock. Funds for ongoing
operating support are not as likely ~nd would require policy level review with City
management.
Palo Alto has an operational CNG fueling facility located at its Municipal Services
Corporation. In addition to fueling some City owned vehicles, the facility provides CNG fuel
to the Ravenswood School District and the Palo Alto unified School District for school bus
transportation. The City is in the process of investigating the viability of establishing a public
CNG facility station. A public CNG facility could be set up as a City enterprise or as a
contract with a local gas station who would then make this facility available to the public.
The FY 1999/00 budget has funding dedicated for a second CNG fueling station.
Given the City’s existing infrastructure for CNG vehicles, it may be logical t0 consider CNG
vehicles for a shuttle service. However, the Electric Utility Public Benefit Program provides
an opportunity to pursue an electric vehicle program. For a review of vehicle considerations,
please refer to the discussion of vehicle type at the end of this chapter.
City General Funds
Local funds could be direct financial contributions or could be provided through in-kind
services. None of the cities surveyed by the consultant have used General Fund monies to
pay for shuttle services, however the cities which fund shuttle services with local revenues,
rely exclusively on Redevelopment Agency funds, of which Palo Alto has none. In the cities
that have Redevelopment funds, using those funds for shuttle services does not take away
money from general city services. Because Palo Alto has no Redevelopment Area and no
Redevelopment Fund, using city revenues would necessarily result in having to shift dollars
away from other important General Funds services such as police, fire, parks and libraries.
For this reason, it is assumed General Funds monies would not be available for ongoing
support for shuttle services.
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The City of Palo Alto is providing in-kind services for managing this local bus study. The
City could expand its role by providing in-kind services for a Palo Alto shuttle service. These
services could take the form of providing staff time to administer an operating contract,
developing informational materials to market the service, renting space at reduced market
rates, and other miscellaneous responsibilities. If the city provides staff time to oversee the
service, it cauld be with existing staff ar it may require an expansion of staff along with
increased responsibilities. There could be costs associated with in-kind contributions that may
eventually fall into the General Fund category.
Should the City were to assume this role, it does not necessarily mean that it would do so for
an extended period of time. There could be a plan for Palo Alto to assume a lead role in
administering a shuttle service for a short time period with the intention of transitioning this
role to an outside agency after a "jump start" of the service.
New Local Revenue Opportunities
There are a variety of tax measures that.could generate new revenues to pay for a Palo Alto
shuttle bus service. However, theCity has a backlog of infrastructure needs that would
benefit from enhanced revenues. Palo Alto has an adopted Infrastructure Plan that outlines
a series of improvement projects to be implemented over a ten year period. The Plan has a
$21 million shortfall over the next ten years. The City Council adopted an infrastructure
policy that states that the City ought to fund the rehabilitation of existing infrastructure that
support current services before funding new priorities. According to this policy, any new tax
funding would logically go first to general city infrastructure before funding a flew project like
a shuttle service.
City staff have considered several revenue enhancing techniques to fund the Infrastructure
Plan, however there is no definitive strategy. Tax measures being considered include a hotel
tax, increasing the existing utility tax, expanding the utility tax, as well as others. They are
being explored with local businesses and the Chamber of Commerce to understand their level
of support and their potential to achieve voter approval.
In 1996 voters approved Proposition 218 which requires voter approval to raise taxes or
impose property-related fees. Proposition 218 applies to any taxes raised after January 1,
1995. Approval of a new tax must achieve a 2/3 majority vote by the electorate. A series of
tax measures Palo Alto could consider in consultation with the business community follows.
City Utility Users Tax
The City has an existing 5.0% Utility Users Tax that is levied on electric, gas, and telephone
services. This tax was approved by City of Palo Alto voters in 1986 with a 51% voter
majority. The tax generates about $5 million annually. The Utility Users Tax helps fund a
variety of programs and services. City staff is contemplating a revision to the utility user tax
by adding inter-state and international telephone usage to the tax. This would i.ncrease the
utility tax revenues by about $2 million annually.
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Hotel Tax
Many cities in the San Francisco Bay Area have a hotel/motel tax of 5 - 15%, with the typical
charge falling in the 8 - 12% range. Palo Alto’s tax, at 10%, is in the mid-range of these cities.
Revenues derived from hotel taxes are usually for general fund purposes and to pay for tourist
related improvements. These could be widely interpreted to include a variety of infrastructure
improvements, including a local shuttle service. This analysis has not estimated how much
revenue could be generated with a hotel tax. It would be dependent upon the hotel tax rate
and the number of visitor accommodations in the City.
Parking Assessment Districts
There are currently two parking assessment districts in the City. One is the University Avenue
(Downtown) Parking Assessment District and the second is the California Avenue Parking
Assessment District. The revenues collected from the property owners are used to pay off
bonds for construction of existing parking facilities. There is discussion underway to initiate
a second downtowfl parking assessment district which would essentially serve as an overlay
to the existing district for the purpose of constructing a new parking structure. The fees to be
collected would be used to pay for the construction of a new parking facility(ies). It is
important to note that the parking assessment can only be used to pay for benefits the
businesses are directly receiving such as a parking structure. This means that revenues
generated from the assessment can not be used to fund a shuttle service. While an assessment
district requires a majority vote of property owners, there is a requirement that only special
benefits be assessed. It would be hard to assess special benefits to Palo Alto property owners
for a service that could be used by anyone, including non-property owners, non-business
owners, and non-Palo Altans. Therefore, a shuttle assessment would fail the Proposition 218
special benefits requirement.
These "free" lots are primarily intended for short-term parking to provide shoppers with
convenient parking facilities. City and other employees in Palo Alto have the opportunity to
buy permits to use .the City parking structures for an extended time period. These permits cost
approximately $280 per year. The revenues collected from the sale of permits is about
$500,00 per year (FY 1997/98) for the Downtown Parking District and $118,000 for the
California Avenue Parking Assessment District. Revenues are used to pay for ongoing
maintenance of the parking structures. There is no surplus revenue that is used for other
purposes. Since the City decides on the price of the permit, the City could elect to increase
the price of the annual permit and use the additional revenues to help support a shuttle
service.
Mello-Roos
Community facilities districts (CFDs) are authorized under the Mello-Roos Act of 1982.
"Special taxes" are levied on pr.operty within a designated CFD to pay for public facilities and
services. Local jurisdictions may form the district and levy the special tax after a 2/3 vote of
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the property owners. A Mello-Roos special tax provides more flexibility than an impact fee
because it does not require that the levy be linked to benefits received. The taxes may be
used to fund a wide variety of infrastructure needs including transit. The revenues can be
used for maintenance and operations.
Parcel Tax ~
A parcel tax is a tax on property owners for specific purposes, such as road maintenance or
enhancing local school district budgets. As with all specific purpose taxes, a parcel tax for
shuttle service would require a 2/3 vote. The City of Palo Alto never has had a parcel tax.
Two neighboring cities, Atherton and East Palo Alto have collected parcel taxes and their
experiences are discussed below.
For Atherton, which has 2,439 parcels, an annual parcel tax of $650 is currently being levied
for parcels one-half acre to two acres in size. A higher tax is levied on parcels larger than two
acres, and a lesser tax is charged to property owners with parcels less than one-half acre. The
average amount collected on a citywide basis is $650, with $800 representing the maximum
amount. The parcel tax was implemented in 1979/80 and has been renewed by the voters
every four years. It is currently generating $7.6 million annually and is used for a variety of
general fund purposes.
East Palo Alto has also levied a parcel tax. The measure, which was approved by voters in
1989, was ultimately overturned in court because of the Gann Initiative two-thirds majority
requirement. While it was being collected, the parcel tax generated approximately $1.0
million annually. East Palo Alto employed differing rate structures according to four land use
categories: 1) single-family residential parcels o $1 75; 2) multiple-unit residential parcels-$60
per unit; 3) commercial property- $1000; and 4) vacant land- $100.
If a parcel tax was approved in Palo Alto, it would be levied on an annual basis and include
all parcels within the City limits. The amount of revenue generated by a parcel tax would
depend on the size of the fee per parcel and any variance in fee per land use or parcel size.
The City Planning ’Division estimates that there are 19,000 parcels in the Palo Alto.
Depending on the size and structure of a parcel tax, it has the potential of generating
significant new revenues. As an example, under a simple structure, a tax of $105 per parcel
would generate nearly $2. million on an annual basis.
Sales Tax
Beginning in 1970, the State legislature has passed several bills that authorize County
governments to levy permanent and temporary sales taxes for transportation purposes within
their jurisdiction. Counties with a ½ cent sales tax dedicated to transportation purposes are
known as self-help counties. Santa Clara County has a permanent ½ sales tax for transit
capital and operations. Santa Clara County’s Measure B, an extension of its sales tax measure,
was approved by the voters in 1996 and recently upheld by the courts. While having a
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TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL BUS SYSTEM PLAN
WORKING PAPER 2
minimal impact on the consumer citystaff have cautioned that raising the local sales tax even
0.1% could have a significant impact on large, business to business sales in Palo Alto.
Cities may ask their voters to raise the sales tax locally if they can get their local State
legislator to introduce legislation allowing them to go to the voters on sales tax. This could
potentially be accomplished by State Senator Byron Sher who tends to be supportive of transit
initiatives. If a local sales tax was increased by 1/10 of a percent it could raise $1.8 million
annually. 1
The current approval threshold for a countywide sales tax is two-thirds. New legislation
introduced in February, 1999 by Senator Burton (SCA 3) calls for a constitutional amendment
to lower the threshold to a simple (51%) majority. If approved, it will be much easier to
authorize a sales tax measure. However, this legislation is not expected to be approved by
the Legislature in the foreseeable future.
Payroll and Business License Taxes
New payroll and business license taxes ~re subject to voter approval and, in accordance with
the Gann Initiative, require a two-thirds majority. San Francisco initially enacted Payroll and
Business License Taxes in 1970 and changed the procedures for administering the tax in
1989. Currently, on an annual basis, San Francisco businesses must fill out a form that
declares the number of employees and the firm’s gross annual receipts. The information is
processed by the Tax Collector, who levies a 1.5 percent Payroll Tax and a Business License
Tax that varies depending on the type of business. For service businesses, the Tax Collector
levies a $3 charge per $1000 in gross receipts. For retail businesses, the tax rate is half that
amount. There is .a small business tax exemption that is based on the information provided
by the business. Each business, regardless of size, pays a business registration fee that ranges
from $25 to $150 per year. These taxes generate a significant amount of revenue for the City
of San Francisco. The Payroll Tax and Business License generate $184 million and $31
million respectively, on an annual basis. The Registration Fee collects an additional $10
million per year.
This Working Paper does not provide an estimate of how much Palo Alto could collect from
a Payroll and Business License Tax. There are several variables that would need to be
considered and it is beyond the scope.of this funding analysis.
Private Sector Initiatives
Other successful shuttle services have established public/private partnerships and have
received generous financial support from the private sector. The private sector can be
broadly interpreted to i ncl ude employers, merchants and retail establish ments. Private sector
contributions could also consist of development impact fees described below. Contributions
1Jim Steele, Manager of Investments, Administrative Services Dept., City of Palo Alto
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LOCAL BUS SYSTEM PLAN
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could take the form of ongoing operating support or could also be used for one-time capital
purchases such as passenger shelters and benches. Employers or merchants that benefit from
the shuttle service may be interested in supporting it particularly if a bus stop were located
at their front door to maximize convenience for their employees or customers.
Retail and Merchant Contributions
The proposed local shuttle service will benefit retailers and merchants in Palo Alto along
University Avenue, California Avenue, the San Antonio Road area, the Stanford Shopping
Center, Midtown, Town and Country Village, among others. In other communities it is
common for retailers and merchants to financially contribute to a local shuttle service. A
contribution may be favorably viewed if the annual contri’bution was not extraordinarily high.
A floor of $500 for individual merchants up to $5,000 or more for larger enterprises might be
a reasonable amount to contribute. An annual survey of riders could reveal actual usage and
the initial amount could be adjusted upward or downward after one years experience with
the service. Merchant contributions could also be used for one-time capital purchases such
as passenger shelters and benches.
Employer Contributions
As the proposed shuttle service route and bus stop locations are further deft ned and finalized,
employers should be given the opportunity for a bus stop to be located at their front door to
maximize convenience for their employees. Employers or groups of employers that would
likely benefit from a local shuttle service include Stanford Research Pa.rk, downtown
employers, medical facilities such as the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Clinic, Stanford Clinic
and Welch Road clinics, and employers located east of Bayshore Office Park and along San
Antonio Road. For those employers interested in a "front door" stop, a funding contribution
could be higher than emplOyers without this attractive element. The amount would be
negotiated, although a minimum spo.nsorship of $I0,000 could be used as a guideline. Other
employers that are served by the route, but do not benefit from a "front door"- stop, could
contribute a base cost plus an additional amount based on the number of employees andlor
an amount based on the number of square feet of office space. These financial contributions
could be used for capital procurements, such as passenger benches or shelters, or preferably,
the funds would be used for operating purposes.
There are several existing shuttle services operating in Palo Alto that enjoy employer
contributions. All of the CalTrain employer shuttles follow a funding formula which include
employer contributions of about 25% of the total operating costs. For example, the Deer
Creek shuttle which has been operating since 1995, receives funding contributions from
Hewlett Packard (HP) along with funds from the Bay Area Quality Management District and
CalTrain. Sun Microsystems and Loral also contribute funds for CalTrain sponsored shuttle
services and follow the HP funding model. The new East Bayshore shuttle has a commitment
of funds from Intuit, and the City and CalTrain are working with other employers to garner
additional financial support.
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Palo Alto is encouraged to build on these successful models which are based on a
public/private partnership. Experience in Palo Alto and other cities throughout the Bay Area
demonstrates that employers are willing to financially participate in shuttle services if there
financial contributions from the public sector. Effective strategies for securing financial
commitments form employers include the City or other public agency taking a lead role in
worMng cooperatively on the public/private partnership, and developing a shuttle service that
directly benefits employees.
Development Impact Fees
A traffic or transportation impact fee is a charge imposed on new development to compensate
for their impacts on the local transportation infrastructure. A fee is typically assessed on
square footage of planned development. Impact fees can be implemented by local ordinance
with specific criteria for establishing an impact fee. Impact fees can be imposed in downtown
urban areas or in outlying growth areas. Like all developer fees, transportation fees must
show a nexus between the development and specified improvement or service provided. The
revenues generated from an impact fee can vary tremendously dependent upon the fee
structure and the level of development’growth.
There are two existing impact fees in Palo Alto:1 ) one fee is set at $2.79 per square foot and
is imposed on development in the Stanford Research Park area, and 2) a second fee is
collected in the San Antonio area and is set at $I .49 per square foot. Combined, these impact
fees generate very little revenue, only $2 million over the last ten years. The revenue
collected from these impact fees is earmarked for specific intersection improvements which
have a total budget of $7 million. This means that at the current rate of collection, it will take
an extremely long time to fully fund the intersection improvements.
The City is considering the elimination of the two existing impact fees and introducing one
citywide fee. A study examining the implications of such a fee, the "appropriate" fee
structure, how much revenue could be generated, and identifying other transportation
improvement projects that would be eligible for funding is scheduled for next fis.cal year (FY
1999/00). In addition to the already identified intersection improvement projects, City staff
have identified other transportation-related projects that could benefit from an impact fee
including a shuttle project, bicycle/pedestrian projects, traffic calming measures, as well as
contributing funds to the County Deficiency Plan.
Passenger Fares
Passenger fares would provide an ongoing revenue stream to help support the cost of
operating a Palo Alto shuttle bus service. While passenger fares would provide valuable
operating revenues, the fares would be expected to recover only a small share of the
operating costs. Bus services in the Bay Area typically collect between 15% and 30% of their
costs from passenger fares with fares set at a minimum of $I.00 for local service. Shuttle
services are generally free-of-charge. Four of the five shuttle services examined in Working
Paper #I do not charge a passenger fare. Surveys indicate that the "free fare" is a major
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WORKING PAPER 2
incentive for passengers who use these services. Passenger surveys on the Stanford
Marguerite also reveal that the "free fare" strongly encourages ridership because the majority
of passengers stated that they would not use the service if a fare was charged.
If a fare structure were established, it would be extremely important to set the structure
"appropriately." Setting a fare too high would discourage riders and create a disincentive to
using transit. One-way cash fare on SamTrans and VTA local service is $1.10. If a $1.00 fare
were charged on a Palo Alto bus service, then riders transferring between services would
have to pay $2.10 to make a trip. Even a $1 o00 fare for travel within Palo Alto may seem
excessively high and could discourage people from riding the service. A nominal fare of
$0.50 could be considered as an alternative fare structure. Although the actual routing
structure and ridership projections have not yet been finalized, it is reasonable to assume that
passenger fares would recover no more than 15% of operating costs under a $0.50 fare
structure.
While passenger revenues could help to PaY for the ongoing cost of service, it would
represent only a small portion of the total funds required. There could be initial capital costs
required if a fare was imposed, and ongoing administrative costs that would reduce this
revenue source even further. Buses would have to be equipped with fareboxes which have
a unit cost of approximately $2,500 and would be added to the cost of a vehicle, or the
contractor would have to provide vehicles with fareboxes. The routine administrative
responsibilities would include daily emptying of fareboxes, counting and sorting coins,
reconciling passenger fare revenues with ridership, depositing cash into a tran~sit account and
maintaining records. Some of these responsibilities could be handled by a contract operator,
however some would require involvement by the City or other lead agency. The ongoing
administrative tasks are estimated to cost between $20,000 and $25,000 per year.
Questions would also arise about discounted fares - should students pay the same as adults?
What about senior citizens? For all of the above reasons, we are not recommending that a
fare structure be introduced for the citywide shuttle, at least during the initial demonstration..
.VEHICLE CONSIDERATIONS
The following discussion is not intended to be a detailed analysis of alternative fueled
vehicles. It does, however, provide some parameters as it relates to funding potential.
The City of Palo Alto is uniquely positioned to consider either electric or compressed natural
gas (CNG) vehicles for its proposed shuttle service. Through the Electric Utility Public Benefit
Program, Palo Alto has access to funds to help purchase electric vehicles. Although the
program has only recommended $35,000 for FY 1998/99, roughly 15% of the cost of an
electric vehicle ($230,000 in 1999 dollars), there is the potential to secure additional funds
through this program. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District is another excellent
source to secure funding for electric vehicles.
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WORKING PAPER 2
One of the major advantages of electric vehicles is that they are much quieter than standard
gasoline or diesel engines, so they produce very little noise pollution. They make excellent
shuttle vehicles and can travel along streets that may not be able to accommodate diesel
vehicles. There are several successful operations using electric vehicles, including shuttle
services in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and West Berkeley. From a cost perspective, they
are less expensive to maintain.than bonventional vehicles.
Although electric buses are now used by several transit services and shuttle services, there are
some logistical considerations that Palo Alto would want to consider before investing in an
electric vehicle shuttle program. The range of most of today’s battery-powered electric-
vehicles is 50 to 75 miles, meaning most electric vehicles performing small-scale shuttle
operations can run for only four to five hours between battery replacement. This means that
a battery change-out would likely occur during service hours possibly requiring a larger fleet.
There may be other logistical constraints in terms of the operation of electric vehicles. With
only about 80 battery electric vehicles operating in the US, finding an experienced contractor
can be difficult.
A logical alternative for Palo Alto is CNG vehicles. With an existing CNG fueling facility, the
City would not have the difficulty many other transit services face in finding a place to fuel
vehicles. Palo Alto may also be able to buy fuel at reduced rates. Contract operators have
more experience with CNG vehicles and may be less reticent to operate them than electric
vehicles. The City could also offer vehicle maintenance which would lower operating costs.
An important consideration of vehicle type is vehicle ownership. Who ~hould own the
vehicles? Should Palo Alto, acting as the "lead agency," purchase vehicles directly or should
the contract operator provide the required fleet? The advantages of the City owning the
vehicles and providing them to the contractor include:
The field of potential contractors may be wider and a lower unit cost may be
secured.
Contractors that purchase vehicles amortize the cost as part of their operating
costs which is more costly than if vehicles were purchased and provided to
them directly.
The City qualifies for government grants for capital equipment, but private
companies do not.
The major disadvantage to this approach is that it would commit Palo Alto to a sizable capital
investment without the benefit of a demonstration or trial period for a new service. Also,
contractual relationships are more complex if one party owns equipment that is operated and
maintained by the other party.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 15 APRIL 1999
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CHAPTER 3. FUNDING STRATEGY
This chapter outlines a recommended financial strategy for a Palo Alto shuttle bus service.
This recommendation is designed to meet the following two funding objectives:
1. Identify/secure funds to initiate ("jump-start") a new shuttle service by FY 2000.
2.Develop a longer-term funding strategy to provide a stable ongoing operating
subsidy and secure revenues to support capital purchases.
SHORT-TERM FUNDING STRATEGY
To be successful in the financial arena, the proposed service should be developed as a
partners,hip between public and private entities with funding sources reflecting this
partnership. The business community can participate in a local shuttle service in a variety of
ways. The most effective strategy is to work collaboratively with the public sector. This
includes supporting transportation legislation, lobbying for transportation-related tax
initiatives, and providing monetary contributions as well as in-kind contributions to help
leverage state and federal grants. Private sector contributions should equal at least 20°1o to
25% of the total operating costs during the first year of operation. These contributions could
gradually increase as employers and merchants realize the full potential of the service.
Public revenues would support the remaining balance and would range between 75% - 80%
of the costs. Public funds that offer the most promising potential in the next one to two years
include Transportation Fund for Clean Air (TFCA) and revenues from the City’s General
Funds.
Because Operating funds are far more difficult to secure than capital dollars, General Funds
would be a good source to "jump-start" the service. It is unrealistic to expect that General
Fund monies would be available for ongoing support; however, an initial investment would
be essential to help get the service up and running. General funds could be gradually scaled
back over a period of two-three years. This would allow the service to be introduced, gain
community support and develop a ridership base while other revenues are being secured to
¯ support the service on an ongoing basis. An initial City investment would demonstrate a
commitment to the business community and would serve as an incentive to gain their
financial support. This type of public/private partnership is successful in funding other Bay
Area shuttle services and favorably positions the City for competing for discretionary
government grants.
Given that this is a new service, it is recommended that Palo Alto not acquire vehicles at this
time. This arrangement may mean slightly higher unit costs in operating the service, but it
will allow for flexibility.
NEtSONINYGAARD CONSULTING AS$OClATE$ 21 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTo
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL BUS SYSTEM PLAN
WORKING PAPER 2
In summary, a first year shuttle service could be funded with contributions from the following
sources:
FUNDING SOURCE PERCENTAGE SHARE
¯City Contributions 65%
Transportation Fund for Clean Air (TFCA)15%
¯Private Sector Contributions (employers and merchants)20%
Total Funding 100%
This hypothetical funding scenario assumes that 80% of the operating funds would come from
the public sector with the remaining 20% balance from the private sector. This first year
funding scenariois based on successful funding models from other Bay Area shuttle services.
Experience suggests that a significant commitment from the city or lead agency is necessary
to "jump start" a new shuttle service. Funding contributions from the private sector is also
needed to complete the public/private partnership. This scenario does not recommend a
passenger fai’e because it could discourage ridership and would not generate enough revenue
to offset potential ridership loss.
Since local employers such as Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems and Loral already make
financial contributions to existing shuttle services, this would be an excellent starting point
to secure employer contributions. It is possible that these employers may be willing to
contribute the same level of funds (they currently contribute to the CalTrain shuttles) to a
citywide shuttle service, especially if there was a financial commitment from the City and
other public sector, sources. This is not to suggest that securing financial commitments is
easily accomplished. For example, in Emeryville where a successful publ ic/private sponsored
shuttle service has been operating for over four years, the City worked cooperative!y with
developers, employers and residential organizations in developing an initial shuttle program.
After consensus was reached on a preferred shuttle plan, city staff continued a year-long
process of negotiating with a developer/employer group on how to equitably share operating
costs. The city made an initial commitment of Redevelopment Agency funds equaling.abobt
50% of first year operating costs. The balance of funds were from employersand developers,
some of whom had previously contributed funds to individual shuttles and others were first
time contributors. They all realized the benefits of cooperatively working together on a
citywide shuttle service.
LONGER-TERM FUNDING STRATEGY
During the first one to two years of operation, Palo Alto should begin pursuing longer-term
funding opportunities. This would include government discretionary grants and a tax measure
that could ultimately provide an ongoing stable source for operating revenues and provide
NELSONtNYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 22 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL BUS SYSTEM PLAN
WORKING PAPER 2
capital revenues to acquire vehicles and other amenities. Assuming the service is successful,
the City may want to acquire its own fleet and avail itself of several unique funding
opportunities.
There are two new unique new grant programs under TEA-21 that could provide Palo Alto
with capital funds for projects such as passenger shelters, benches and transfer amenities to
enhance the service and improve its visibility. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s
¯ Transportation for Livable Communities (TLC) program and the Transportation Enhancement
Activities (TEA) could provide small amounts of capital funding. With private sector
involvement, extensive community input and a process that benefits the local community,
Palo Alto could be well positioned to secure these discretionary Federal grants.
After a decision is reached regarding electric or CNG vehicles, Palo Alto should explore
funding for vehicle purchases through the Electric Utility Public Benefit Program or the Gas
Utility Budget. Another local source for capital revenues is a citywide impact fee. The City
is embarking.on a study to evaluate a citywide impact fee. Key considerations include the
level of funding to be annually generated, and the possible uses of this new revenue including
a citywide shuttle service. These revenues could be used to help pay for one-time capital
improvements such as a bus turn-out or passenger shelter or could be used for ongoing
operations.
To secure a stable operating revenue source is challenging. Unless the private sector is willing
to fund a major portion of the service, Palo Alto will need to pass a tax initiatiVe. Under
Proposition 218, approval of a new tax must achieve a 2/3 majority vote by the electorate.
This funding analysis explored a series of tax measures that could generate large sums of
revenue to support a shuttle service. The decision will ultimately rest with the City leaders,
residents and business community on which.type of tax has the greatest potential to achieve
the require 2/3 voter majority, and is considered the most "fair and "equitable." Regardless
of whether the City pursues a sales tax, parcel tax or other type of tax, it is recommended that
the measure identify a variety of transportation projects including infrastructure
improvements, a shuttle service and streets/roads maintenance. If a broad selection of
transportation projects are tied to the measure it may have a greater opportunity of achieving
the 2/3 majority.
Summary
In summary, a short-term funding strategy for a Palo Alto, citywide shuttle service would
consist of the following elements:
Secure City funding contributions to demonstrate its commitment to a shuttle
service.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOClATES 23 APRIL 1999
CITY OF PALO AL TO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
LOCAL BUS SYSTEM PLAN
WORKING PAPER 2
Meet with employers and merchants to determine their interest and support for a
citywide shuttle service. This would include existing shuttle sponsors as well as
new employers and merchants who may benefit from a shuttle service.
Develop agreements between the City and employers and merchants which outline
financial contributions, and designate other administrative responsibilities for a
citywide shuttle. This would likely involve negotiations to determine an equitable
funding split between all funding partners.
¯Apply for Transportation Fund for Clean Air (TFCA) funds. Applications for
regional grants are due June 30, 1999.
Finalize first year funding plan and Secure funding agr.eements.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 24 APRIL 1999
Service Alternatives
Ridership Analysis
ATTACHMENT B
DRAFT Performance Proiections
METHODOLOGY
Ridership was projected for each of these routes using the City’s Geographic Information
System (GIS), which can tell us about the number of residential parcels and intensity of
commercial development within the service area of each route. To calculate our ridership
projections, we used the following assumptions:
¯The service area of each route is assumed tO be within a quarter mile of bus stops along
the route. Adjustments were made to account for areas were pedestrian connections
are poor or impossible.
°For base ridership, we assume 5% of all residents in the service area and 4% of all
employees will ride the shuttle if it is provided every 15 minutes all day. (The 5%
resident figu’re is very conservative. For ~ransit use rates in comparable communities,
see chart at end.) We do not factor out riders who may take parallel VTA routes, such
as in the Research Park.
¯We assume 2% of residents and 1.5% of employees will ride if the service is provided
every 30 minutes. (The 30-minute San Antonio service is assumed to be infill, so there
we use the 15 minute frequency figures, divided by two.)
¯We adjust the base ridership to take into account key community attractors and origins,
i ncl uding schools, senior facilities and other corn mun ity facilities. Adjustment factors
for senior facilities along the Citywide Circulator are based primarily on the
performance of the Menlo Park Midday Shuttle, which has a comparable trip length
and key attractors. Additional factors are added to account for better frequency on the
Citywide Ci rcu lator and the presence of four schools. For the Citywide Circdlator and
the Embarcadero Road and Research Park shuttles, we assume that all seats will be full
on three to four runs per day that serve school start and finish times.
o We assume that 1,000 people living along the Citywide Shuttle route work in
Downtown or at Stanford and could use it for commuting.
o Ridership projections for improvements to the Marguerite Downtown Express
conservatively assume the existing riders will increase by 66%.
¯Contract cost to the City for operating the service is assumed to be $40 an hour for all-
day service, and $65 an hour for peak-only service. Some peak-hour service costs are
calculated at a $50 rate under the assumption that at least one peak vehicle will be
used on the Downtown Express at lunchtime.
¯The service day is generally assumed to run from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., for 13 hours
of service a day, except for the Downtown Express which would run only at lunchtime.
Other service hour and frequency assumptions are listed below.
NELSON[NYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-1 MAY 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
CITYWIDE SHUTTLE PLAN
DRA F-I" PERFORMANCE PROJECTIONS
For comparative purposes, we have tried to use the same assumptions throughout, but
actual ridership is adjusted to account for the peculiarities of each route.
We have calculated ridership and cost effectiveness on ly for service scenarios that are
recommended. For example, we do not believe it is worthwhile running Research Park
service on weekends, so we have not calculated the effectiveness of 7-day-a-week
service.
The~following chart describes the total residents and employees living along each route,
alongside the annual contract service cost for various frequencies.
Who will the routes serve?
2.
3.
4. San Antonio
5. Citywide shuttle
Downtown express
Station to Embarcadero Way
Research Park
see assumptions
1,700
950
1,500
7,000
see assumptions
2,700
25,000
4,500
1,000
-see assumptions
4,400
25,950
6,000
8,000
RIDERSHIP AND COST EFFECTIVENESS BY ROUTE
Because each route has peculiar characteristics, we analyze each separately, using slightly
different methodology to calculate ridership and. cost effectiveness.
1. Downtown Express improvements
The Stanford Marguerite’s Downtown Express I.ine runs every 20 minutes from the Stanford
Medical Center, Science and Engineering Quad and Main Quad to Downtown Palo Alto at
lunchtime. Currently, it runs only as far as Lytton Plaza at the corner of Emerson and
1University, nearly half a mile from the end of the retail district at Webster. Although the
service is operated by Stanford, the City pays Stanford $14,000 a year toward the contract cost
of the service -- about half of the total cost.
The route performs very well, carrying about 70 passengers a day to shop and eat downtown
at lunch. Stanford’s average cost per passenger ride is only $1.57, excellent by most
standards. Assuming a 10% profit margin, each passenger would have to spend only $15 on
lunch and services to fully recoup the value of the shuttle to local merchants.
NELSOMNYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-2 MAY 1999
~ITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
ClTYWIDE SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT PERFORMANCE PROJECTIONS
In this plan, we propose to add a second vehicle to the Downtown Express in order to improve
its frequency and extend the service closer to Webster, spreading out the benefits among~all
downtown merchants. In the chart below, we examine how these improvements affect both
the total cost and performance of the route, as well as the incremental cost of the
improvements. The ridership projection for the improved service is based on the conservative
assumption that a 100% increase in service hours (including frequency improvements and
addition of new destinations) would result in a 66% increase in ridership. That is, riders per
day would increase from 70 to 116 -just 1% of the approximately 10,000 Stanford employees
whose offices lie along the route.
This route is especially interesting if it is implemented in conjunction with another City-
sponsored shuttle route that needs less service in the midday than at peak. As both Stanford
and Menlo Park have found, if you have peak-only service,, adding midday service is nearly
free since contractors will significantly reduce their hourly rate for all-day service. For
improved system-wide cost effectiveness, we recommend that this route be implemented in
conjunction with the Embarcadero Road service or the Citywide Circulator, and that those
routes have reduced midday service,’with the extra bus being shifted to the Downtown
Express at lunch.
Service details:Every 10-15 minutes
Monday through Friday only
11:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Downtown Express Performance Projections
$14,000 $15,000 $31,200 $60~200 11,550 29,050 $2.70 $2.07
Evaluation
Cost effective. Very cost effective if it uses a vehicle that is used only at peak on another line.
2. Station to Embarcadero Way
For this service, we have evaluated three alternatives:
1)Service every 15 minutes at peak only
2)Service every 15 minutes at peak and every 30 minutes during the midday.
3)Service every 15 minutes all day
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES I-3 MAY 1999
OTY OF PALO ALTO
TeA NSPOR TA TION DIVISION
CITYWIDE SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT PERFORMANCE PROJECTIONS
All alternatives would run 5 days a Week since ridership on this route is driven primarily by
Palo Alto High School and commuters to East Bayshore. The morning peak is assumed to be
6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., with the afternoon peak covering 2:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. to account
for both the school and employer peaks.
Ridership for this route is projected using our base assumptions for the catchment area,
adjusted to account for the following:
¯We assume that students traveling to Palo Alto High School will fill two buses in
both the morning and afternoon school peaks if the service is running every 15
minutes. We assume 30-seat vehicles and subtract regular commuter loads to
predict student riders.
¯Midday ridership from East Bayshore employers is projected to be weak given the
relatively low density there and the 15 minute travel time. No strong service peers
have yet been found to provide a better baseline for such midday service to an
office park or this type. If a better example can be found, proiections can be
recalibrated. ¯
We assume that this service will be run in conjunction witl’~ the Citywide
Circulator, and that the Citywide Circulator will capture the bulk of midday trips
to the Main Library and Art Center. If the Embarcadero Road service runs alone,
midday ridership will climb slightly, although it will not serve as many Library and
Art Center trips as the Citywide Circulator given its smaller catchment area.
It is important to note that these projections are also based upon the assumption that 15-
minute frequencies can be maintained with only two vehicles on this route. In actual
operations, this may prove to be impossible. Three or more vehicles will be required in order
to provide service to the Municipal Service Center on East Bayshore, or if congestion increases
even slightly along the route.
Embarcadero Road
1) 15peakonly 41,300 12,200
2) Peak 15,41,300 12,200
midday 30
3) 15 all day 45,800 12,200
5,760
6,900
53,500
59,240
64,900
Assuming it takes only two vehicles to run 15-minute service, we can estimate total cost and
cost per passenger ride for each of these alternatives. If a third bus is required, ridership will
NEtSON~NYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATE$1-4 MAY 1999
C’ITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
CITYWIDE SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT PERFORMANCE PROJECTIONS
increase due to an increase in the number of employers served, but cost’per rider will also
increase, perhaps significantly.
Embarcadero Road cost effectiveness
~i~i~i~!~!~:.~!!~!~!~::.~.~!:‘.‘.~:~:~::‘.::~:~:~:~:~::::~::: :~::,:::’..:::: :’::: .............
1)15 peak only
2)Peak 15, midday 30
3)15 all day
$169,000
$226,200
$270,400
$3.16
$3.82
$4.16
Evaluation
At peak only, the Embarcadero Road shuttle should perform like a better-than-average Caltrain
shuttle, since some reverse-commute trips will be filled with Palo Alto High School students.
If a third vehicle is required, it will perform about average. Due to limited midday markets
cost per rider increases with increased midday service, even though more peak-period
commuters will be attracted to it.
3 and 4. Research Park and San Antonio Shuttles
We analyze the Research Park and San Antonio shuttles together since they are similar in
character. Both of these potential shuttles require additional development before firm
ridership and cost effectiveness estimates can be made because two key variables are not
known at this time:
¯Both shuttles require the active participation of the employers they serve in order
to be successful. How well they are promoted by employers will have a dramatic
effect on ridership. Moreover, the quality of employer-sponsored TDM programs
will also tend to strongly affect ridership.
Both shuttles will be most effective if implemented in partnership with VTA. These
routes overlap significantly with existing VTA services and the Deer Creek shuttle
sponsored in part by Hewlett Packard. Further discussions need to be had with
VTA in order to implement a program that best meets every, organization’s
objectives.
Nevertheless, if we assume enthusiastic support from area employers, as well as integration
with VTA routes, we can make ridership projections calibrated to other Caltrain shuttles, with
baseline service using the same catchment assumptions as the other routes. For the Research
Park shuttle, we also assume three runs serving Jordan Middle School and the College Terrace
neighborhood will be full of students.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1o5 MAY 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIWSlON
CITYWIDE SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAF[" PERFORMANCE PROJECTIONS
For the Research Park, we assume that only 15,000 of the Park’s total 25,000 employees will
be within walking distance of the shuttle due to accessibility difficulties there.
Research Park and San Antonio Shuttle ridership
3. Research Park 163,410
4. San Antonio -
63,440
33,150
Research Park and San Antonio Shuttle cost effectiveness
:::4:’
3. Research Park $240,400 $4.26
4. San Antonio $135,200 $4.08
Evaluation
The City should continue to work with V-I-A and local employers to pursue shuttle
improvements between the train stations and San Antonio Road/Research Park employers.
These rough productivity estimates suggest there is considerable untapped market potential.
5. Citywide Circulator
Projecting .ridership on the Citywide Circulator is especially complicated given the total trip
length and the rich variety of attractors along the way. Because they do not take into account
the extra attractiveness of a free-fare, locally operated service, transit ridership models will
tend to grossly un~lerestimate potential riders, as was the case with the City’s Special Event
Shuttle as well as Menlo Park’s Midday Shuttle, a service very similar in character to this route.
For this reason, we use the performance of similar systems as a baseline for projecting
ridership here, particularly the Menlo Park service and the successful Emery-Go-Round shuttle
in Emeryville. As with the Embarcadero Road service, we calculate school ridership based on
the availability of seats in the school peaks.
For the purposes of our evaluation, we assume the service operates:
o every 15 minutes from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., and 2:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday
through Friday
NEI.SONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-6 MAY 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
CiTYWIDE SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT PERFORMANCE PROJECTIONS
every 30 minutes the rest of the service day from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Monday
through Friday
every 30 minutes from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Saturdays
no service on Sundays
Different frequencies and service spans will have to be adjusted accordingly, but cost per rider
figures should not change significantly.
Citywide Circulator Ridership
15 minute weekday peak
30 minute midday
30 minute Saturday
Total for complete
service
65,000
59,800
36,660
161,460 39,950
104,950
18,200 78,000
18,200 54,860
36,400
[ 237,810
Assuming a slightly higher contract rate for peak-only service, we can then calculate contract
costs for each service period, along with the total for the whole service.
Citywide shuttle cost effectiveness
15 minute weekday peak $390,000 $3.72
30 minute midday $218,400 $2.80
30 minute Saturday $249,600 $4.55
Total for complete service $858,000 $3.61
Evaluation
Despite its considerable length and all-day service, the Citywide Circulator performs very well
since it serves such a large number of potential markets.
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES I-7 MAY 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
CITYWIDE SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT PERFORMANCE PROJECTIONS
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
All of the proposed routes perform well within the cost effectiveness ranges of other typical
transit and shuttle services, and all could be deemed "successful" under general cost
effectiveness criteria. Since there are no striking differences in route productivity, decision
makers will be free to examine how each route meets the City’s other goals when deciding
which routes have highest priority.
1. Downtown Express
2a.Embarcadero Road
15 min peak o.nly
2b. Embarcadero Road
15 min peak plus 30 min
midday
2c. Embarcadero Road
15 min all day
3. Research Park
15 all day
$45,200~
$169,000
$226,200
29,050
53,500
59,240
$2.072
$3.16
4. San Antonio infill $135,200 33,150
5. Citywide Circulator $858,000 237,800
. Total cost to City; does not include Stanford contribution
2. Total cost effectiveness does include Stanford contribution
3. Does not factor ridership competitiofi with VTA. Will require cooperation with agency.
$3.82
$270,400 64,900 $4.16
$405,400 163,410 $2".483
$4.08
$3.61
NELSONINYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-8 MAY 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRA NSPOR TA TION DIVISION
CITYWIDE SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFT PERFORMANCE PROJECTIONS
BASELINE DATA
In general, these cost effectiveness figures are in keeping with similar shuttles and transit
routes in the Bay Area.
Marguerite average $1.20
Marguerite - SLAC $3.00
Marguerite - Line A $1.00
Existing Downtown Express $1.90
Menlo Park Marsh Rd. Shuttle $3409
Menlo Park Willow Rd. Shuttle $4.07
Menlo Park Midday $1.71
Other shuttle service systemwide performance
VTA systemwide bus average $3.43
VTA light rail average $7.64
VTA line 22
VTA line 86
VTA line 88
VTA line 35
AC Transit $2.27
MUNI bus $2.13
Golden Gate Transit $4.84
BART $6.13
Caltrain runs only,
192,000 $132,340 $0.64
3,000 750,000 $1,000,000 $1.33
Deer Creek Shuttle 100 24,100 $92,800 $3.55
Marsh Road 89 19,000 $86,000 $3.09
Willow Road 79 21,130 $86,000 $4.07
Sun/Willow Express 105 27,300 $87,000 $3.19
Menlo Midday 70 18,000 $90,528 $1.71 *
¯ This calculation works out to be $5 per ride. Check with Menlo Park for formula.
NELSON~NYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES 1-9 MAY 1999
CITY OF PALO ALTO
TRANSPORTATION DIVISION
CITYWIDE SHUTTLE PLAN
DRAFi" PERFORMANCE PROJECTIONS
Transit usage in other communities
Although transit use in Santa Clara County is very low, comparable communities are able to
achieve much higher rates. The charts below examine transit usage in comparable
communities based on the 1990 Census Journey-to-Work data.
Transit usage in:
Comparable residential areas Comparable employment areas
Palo Alto 1990 2.5%
Santa Clara County 3.0%
average
El Cerrito 17.7%
Kensington 13.2%
Moraga I 0. 1%
Mill Valley 11.9%
Fairfax 11.3%
Piedmont 8.4%
Burlingame .7.6%
Palo Alto 1990
Santa Clara County
average
Berkeley
Emeryville
San Leandro
El Cerrito
San Bruno
Menlo Park
Alameda
3.4%
2.6%
11.2%
6.1%
4.4%
9.8%
6.2%
3.2%
4.9%
NELSOMNYGAARD CONSULTING ASSOCIATES I-I0 MAY 1999
Excerpt of Draft Planning
Commission Minutes from ATTACHMENT C
,April 28, 19.9~9 M.eet.ing .................,.
"54 SECOND: CommissionerBurt~ _ _ . . _ i .
78 ~~~~i~~? That carries on a 7-0 vote. Joe, thank you very much.
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Chairman Byrd: Why don’t we take a five minute break here before we launch into the shuttle.
Palo Alto Shuttle Plan - Review of Draft Service Alternatives.
The final item on our Agenda tonight under Reports From Officials is a review of the Draft Service
Alternatives for the proposed Palo Alto Shuttle which is something that this Commission has spent
a great deal of time cheerleading on and is delighted to finally see in detailed form. So I invite Staff
to introduce the issue.
Mr. Kott: Thank you Chairman Byrd. As Chairman Byrd indicated the topic is the Palo Alto Shuttle
Bus Study and update on progress in the study and a request for input from the Planning
Commission on in particular what are called "service alternatives," conceptual routing and
generalized ideas about frequency. We also have some information about the costs. The Comp Plan,
as you all know, has as its first two broad transportation goals less reliance on the single occupant
automobile and the development of a convenient efficient public transit system that provides a viable
alternative to driving. There are a couple of policies specifically treating local transit. One, to
provide local transit which we have several local transit providers already, VTA, SamTrans, Stanford
Margurite, and so forth. The second one is key to this study. Establish a jitney bus service similar
to Stanford University’s Margurite Shuttle. Emphasis on this is not to compete with VTA or
SamTrans and it is not to overlap with them. It is not to create a redundancy but to compliment and
supplement unmet needs particularly with vehicles that are less intrusive, you might say, less
polluting. The Shuttle Bus Study therefore is a response to the Comprehensive Plan mandateg and
been underway since Fall. There have been two public workshops, very successful workshops, half
day events in which members of the public assisted in a conceptual design group and provided quite
a bit of input at the second session on the refinement of those designs. There is an advisory
committee grouped around the study that has been very active. There have been some meetings with
stakeholders.
Tonight we’ll talk about the service altematives. We’ve also got some work, I think it was provide
as an information item in your packet, on funding options or funding alternatives. We have
information on cost estimates. Our consultant is not yet finished with demand estimates which of
course are key. Mr. Burt talked about the importance of cost/benefit view of investments like this.
Of course boardings are a rough and ready measure of benefit.
City of Palo Alto Page 29
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The Planning Commission is being asked to review and comment on work to date, tonight. You’ll
have a subsequent opportunity at one of your June meetings to review the entire plan. The entire
plan will have final recommendations on routing and on phasing of the routes, on frequency of
service, on fare/no fare policy that still remains an issue, on number of vehicles and vehicle types
particularly where the altemative is CNG or electric that would be provided; and really to prioritize
and time phase this based on your views of the importance of individual routes, their cost/benefit or
at least their benefit, and of course their cost as well. I would like to pass the baton over after this
brief introduction to Gail [Likens] who has been on the Transportation Staff for a long time. She
is our Staff specialist both in transit and in bicycle planning. In fact, Gail is our Staff lead on-
development of our bike master plan which will be coming before you, we hope, in your role as
Transportation Commission, over the next nine months or so. Gail will describe the study further
and later we’ll have presentation by our consultant. Thank you.
Ms. Gail Likens, Transportation Staff: Thank you Joe. I just wanted to briefly update you in terms
of where we are in the study process. We’ve completed basically two tasks in the study process since
we began the consultant study in October. We are working now on the service alternatives. We are
in the middle of that .phase of the study. We are planning on going back to the Council next month
with the input we receive from you and with all the input we’ve received to date from the public
through our Study Advisory Committee and the workshop we held. Then we will be coming back
to you at the end of June with the draft plan, then we will go on to the Council in July.
I wanted to just discuss where we are with the short term plan that we are presenting to you tonight
and asking for your comment on and the longer term process. As we worked through this process
it became very clear to us that we have existing transit services in the community and while they are
participating in our study process they are not changing their routes as a result’of this study process
right now. So in looking at the short term we’ve identified routes for your consideration that can be
implemented without any changes in existing transit services provided by VTA or SamTrans. They
have their own processes for updating and reconfiguring their routes. The routes that we are
proposing are in-fill routes that can be implemented independently, that do not duplicate service, and
that we think are doable and stand alone routes that provide a need thatisn’t met currently. Because
those routes that are provided by the transit agencies are structured right now, they operate on certain
streets that might also be candidates for good shuttle services. But it would not be appropriate right
now to present routes that would duplicate or compete with any existing transit services. So we
identified a process that would involve a second phase which is a longer term look at what we can
do to look at the whole s3~stem in Palo Alto and develop a partnership particularly with VTA because
two of the routes that they operate in this community, Route 88 which is a loop in South Palo Alto
and Route 86 which runs from Downtown Palo Alto to Mountain View along Channing and Lewis,
do not perform that well. They operate at frequencies that are not that great and their ridership is
relatively low. We would like to partner with VTA in the longer term to look at how those routes
and their resources could be restructured to work better for. Palo Alto. In concert then, develop a
plan of shuttles and transit that works better for the community. We call that, in the Staffreport, the
Long Range Plan. Since the Staff report was prepared and our first meeting with the General
Manager of VTA, Pete [Sopola] we have had a second meeting with his staffto talk about how we
could get that process started. We are ready to begin that process very shortly. VTA has a planning
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process that involves reevaluating their route structures and recommending improvements on an
annual basis. They’ve already begun that process for the 1999-2000 year. As mentioned in the
report, they will be recommending some service changes be implemented in the North County with
the start-up of the light rail in December of 1999, modifying Route 35 as was discussed in the report.
For the year 2000 changes, the July 2000 changes, starting now is when they would begin to look
at the changes and develop a plan that they would begin presenting next Fall. So the long range plan
is a little bit shorter term than was indicated in the report. It seems that our short range plan, in terms
of looking at what could be implemented in the short term beginning this fiscal year, 1999-2000 for
Palo Alto, can proceed and then move on to work with VTA over the next few months to see what
can be done with their routes in concert with our routes beginning in the year 2000.
So with that I would like to, if at that Chair’s pleasure, ask our consultant Jefferey [Tumlin] and
Nelson [-Nygard] to give you a mini workshop on what we’ve done to date in terms of the
presentation materials we presented at the public workshop and to bring you up to speed on how we
arrived at the five short term alternative routes that we are proposing. The four routes that we call
extensions or improvements of existing shuttles and the City-wide circulator route which he has
wonderful graphics for. So if that’s your pleasure we would like to take some time to have that
presentation now..
Mr. Jefferey Tumlin, Senior Planner, Nelson Nygard: Thank you Gail. Chairman Byrd, members
of the Commission, my name is Jefferey Tumlin, I’m a Senior Planner with the firm of Nelson
Nygard in San Francisco. Our firm specializes solely in integrated multi-modal transportation
systems planning. Before joining Nelson Nygard I worked for Julia Freeman who is also here this
evening. Together she and I managed and developed all of the transportation systems for the
Stanford University campus. I know Palo Alto very well and I am very, very happy to be here
tonight.
By the way all of these materials are included in your packet, your packet contains the entire text and
graphics of working papers two and three which I’ll just be summarizing briefly here tonight.
The first .step in our process was to sit down with our project advisory committee and decide what
are we trying to accomplish here. What should a shuttle system or transit system in Palo Alto do?
The first goal that came up was originally phrased, reduce congestion. We rephrased it to say, attract
people who would otherwise drive their cars. We wanted to specify that this means focusing a lot
of frequent service in important corridors, providing an intensity of service that will proyide a real
choice for people who would otherwise drive. We also wanted to specify that we wanted to try and
target school students particularly at the middle schools and the high schools. We wanted to focus
on low income people who would be concerned about the costs of owning a car. And finally to
target Palo Alto commuters in all the business districts and people especially who live along existing
primary transit routes.
Our second goal, which is in direct conflict with the first goal, is to provide benefits to all parts of
the City. I’ll discuss this tension a little bit later.
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The third goal was to provide mobility to seniors and the disabled.
Fo-arth is to support economic development by providing access to jobs and shopping, by
contributing to ’a sense of community identity through a local sht~ttle that had a specific Pato Alto
image. That shows that Palo Alto is really trying to do something to solve local and regional
transportation problems. And finally, to explore allowing business activity to expand without
increasing congestion.
Our fifth goal was to foster regional cooperation and this is something we are working on right now.
The final goal is to minimize the City’s costs while meeting all of the other five goals.
All very noble and good. As I said, the first two goals are in tension with one another and this
doesn’t read all that clearly. If you have a limited budget, if you’ve got a limited number of buses,
you can do one or two things. You can spread the buses out all over the City making sure that you
provide service to every neighborhood, to every senior center, to every school, to every person who
needs it. The result of this strategy is that you have infrequent service that is disbursed everywhere
but it is extremely important to the people who need it. It tends to produce low ridership but it is
also very popular. A second strategy i~ to take all of those ten buses and concentrate them only on
your densest, most productive corridors, providing high-frequency service, that provides a true
alternative to driving, but only to those people who are in the densest corridors. The result tends to
be higher ridership and lower cost per passenger ride but you are forced to leave out entire
neighborhoods. We’ve been assuming that the Palo Alto strategy will fall somewhere in between
the two. This has been a source of a great deal of debate within our project advisory committee and
throughout our outreach process, and I’m sure it will be a debate here among you tonight. These two
goals really get at the root of the transit problem.
The next step in our process was to collect a lot of data and information. I won’t go over all of this
but I want _to point out a couple of really interesting data points. One is we looked at existing
commute characteristics and we found out that about 19% of people who live in the Palo
Alto/Stanford area also work in the Palo Alto/Stanford area. Or 17,000 people have a commute trip
that is intra-Palo Alto/Stanford which is a lot of people and a great market for a local shuttle system.
Of those people 64% of them are currently driving alone to their jobs. Finally, we looked at all trips
within Palo Alto and one thing that is very important to realize is that work trips make up generally
less than 30% of total trips. So we wanted to make sure that the study focused on .shopping,
recreatifn, school, other trips as well. In fact, among those intra-Palo Alto commuters a huge
number of their trips are for purposes other than work.
Our next step was to look at the existing transit service in Palo Alto and see what it was
accomplishing. This is basically a re-doing of the regular system map that all the transit agencies
produce but instead of showing each line of equal weight, we like to actually have the line weights
portray what the frequency of the route gre. So you can see an enormous difference in service from
one route to another. Not just looking at random lines scattering all over the map. The line 22 which
runs up and down E1 Camino Real from Menlo Park to Downtown San Jose and way over to the east
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side of the valley is the workhorse of the entire VTA bus system. It runs about every nine minutes
during the day in Palo Alto, and there is some service extended 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
There are more people who take the line 22 in Palo Alto than fide the entire Margurite system every
day. There are a huge number of intra-Palo Alto trips on the 22 and there is a lot of people
commuting in and out of the City on the 22. It is a great service. There is nothing we want to do
to touch it.
The second most important service in Palo Alto is the line 35 which currently runs from Stanford
Hospital, Downtown Train Station, through the Downtown and then out Middlefield to the San
Antonio Shopping Center. Right now it is running up to Foothill College but VTA proposes to
instead run it through Mountain View to the Downtown Mountain View Cal Train and Light Rail
Station. We think that this is a terrific idea. We think that it is a really neat idea to have VTA
consider the line 35 as a rubber-tired extension of their Light Rail extension. The line 35 has a
moderate level of ridership but it connects some of the most important community functions in the
entire City. We’ll look at those a little bit later.
The other three important routes in Palo Alto are the 86 which runs very infrequently in the
Lewis/Channing ~zorridor connecting the San Antonio Station to the Downtown Train Station, and
the 88 which makes this big loop throfigh South Palo Alto up to Gunn High School, the VA and the
Research Park. There is also line 24 that comes in from San Jose, up Foothill and through the
Research Park to the California Avenue Train Station.
At our public workshop we asked the attendees to design their ideal transit system within a fixed
budget of service hours. It was an extremely interesting process which resulted in very strong
consensus on a number of key issues. Those include, definitely keeping great service on E1 Camino.
Everyone recognized Middiefield Road as a really key spine. People also pointed out other
important dense corridors including Arastradero and Charleston. They identified the train stations
and the business districts as really important, destinations and that there need to be connections
between them. The challenges that people straggled with were, one, the need to provide some cross-
town connections particularly east-west direction. People really seemed to sort of want that but there
was no consensus about exactly how to do that. Then finally, of course, this whole issue of how do
you trade off frequent service on your productive oriented routes versus coverage to all
neighborhoods. That was something that every single group struggled with and each one came up
with interesting different takes on the issues.
Next we started talking to a wholevariety of stakeholder groups throughout the City. One of the
greatest advantages that Palo Alto has when it comes to planning transit is that almost all of your
important stuff is on key corridors. You have not buried your City Hall or your senior centers or
your schools deep into cul-de-sacs or on dead-end or one-way streets. In fact, a lot of them line up
basically on this long line that includes Stanford, the shopping center, the Downtown Train Station,
City Hall, the senior center, Lytton Gardens, Channing House, the Lucy Stem Center, the main
library, cultural center, Jordan Middle School, Mid-Town, the YMCA. All this ton of stuffthat is
in the block that is around Mitchell Park. Then the San Antonio Shopping Center and the new train
station there and then up Arastradero Road to include the VA, Gunn, the [Truman] Center, the
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Jewish Community Center, and then there is this little split over here that hits Palo Alto High
School, Town & Country shopping center and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. An amazing set
up.
The schools were a really important stakeholder group that we talked to. One of the things that they
identified was that there were a lot of pieces of the districts, of particularly the middle schools and
the high schools, where students have to cross major barriers in order to get to school. So these are
some of the barriers that we wanted to try to address. Where we think we can get a lot of ridership
¯ from middle school and high school students going from the Barron Park neighborhood, to JLS,
from most of South Palo Alto to Gunn you’ve to the train tracks and E1 Camino, getting across
Oregon Expressway to get to Jordan, getting from College Terrace across El Camino and the train
tracks toget to Jordan, and then areas of North Palo Alto where you’ve got to cross Embarcadero,
Middlefield, the train tracks and so on. We think that we will be able to accommodate a lot of these
school commutes in ways that are effective for other people as well.
Another important stakeholder group we went to was the business leaders. Another thing that is
fortunate in Palo Alto is that your business districts are fairly dense and fairly well laid out. There
are some challenges. There are clusters that are a long distance away from the train station. The
East of Bayshore Office Park is certainly that way and much of the outer reaches of the Research
Park is that way, but pretty much everything else falls on really strong corridors. That includes the
whole San Antonio corridor which has about 4,500 employees just in this area. The Research Park
which has about 25,000 employees basically the same daytime population of all of Stanford
University and the Stanford Medical Center, and same density. The East of Bayshore Office Park
has about 2,700 employees. Then finally the Downtown, the E1 Camino corridor, the Stanford
Shopping Center. This map also shows areas of high density which were really critical in planning
for this study. Transit planning is basically about serving the densest areas. As your density
increases so does the effectiveness of transit. So it was very nice for us to find that your areas of
density fell in nice discreet corridors as well.
With all of this information in hand and keeping in mind that a number of key considerations. One,
that we wanted to propose some short term immediate implementation shuttle routes that could be
done now by the City acting alone, assuming funding were available. We wanted to look at routes
that would not directly compete with VTA which might cause VTA ridership to plummet and for
them to simply leave town taking all of their service hours with them. We wanted to look at routes
that would focus on unserved or underserved areas. With all of that in mind we came up with five
short term shuttle routing alternatives that I’d like to describe to you now.
One is the City currently contributes to Stanford to run lunchtime shuttle from the main quad and
the Medical Center to Lytton Plaza in Downtown Palo Alto. It is one of the Margurites most cost
effective routes, very high ridership, people spending a lot of money in Downtown Palo Alto who
otherwise would not be coming there. Currently that service does not extend beyond Emerson
Street. It is running kind of like every 15-20 minutes now which is not very good for a lunchtime
service where people have to get there and get back pretty quickly. So the first proposal that we
came up with was to add another vehicle to that route, to be able to extend it the length of Downtown
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and to be able to increase its frequency. It will certainly be successful. It is merely a question of
whether it is worth the money or not.
The next shuttle route and one of the more interesting ones is a new service that would begin-at the
Downtown Train Station, serve the new Palo Alto Medical Foundation building, Palo Alto High
School, the main library and art center area, and provide service for commuters in the East Baysho.re
Office Park and then also an extension to the municipal service center on East Bayshore. This route
is interesting to me because it serves people in both directions. It provides a connection for people
coming from the train going to the East Bayshore Office Park, and it also provides service for Palo
Alto residents living throughout North Palo Alto to get to the Downtown, the train station, the train,
all the services that connect in here, and also for students living in all of this area to get to Palo Alto
High School. We expect that service would definitely attract some riders. What level of ridership
it would gain will depend largely on its frequency.
A third ronte that we looked at was improvements to some of the existing services that are offered
in the Stanford Research Park. There is an existing shuttle that is funded largely by Hewlett Packard
called the Deer Creek Shuttle that makes four trips in the morning, four trips in the evening, plus
some combination of the 88 and the 24 providing service in there. Our concept in the Research Park
is that we find that there is clearly de~nand for more service there, for more frequent service, for
service that is timed better with the trains, and also for some service during the mid-day of which
there is pretty much nothing right now. The Research Park Shuttle would most likely be a
partnership effort particularly with all the employers in the Research Park but ideally also with the
VTA. It would involve looking at all the stuff that is going on in there and making sure we do
something that works best for everyone. Similarly, in.the San Antonio corridor is a place where we
identified a need for more transit service. VTA is already looking at improving service in that
corridor and we need to work with them and with the existing shuttle services offered by Sun and
[LaLau] to come up with an integrated concept for that area and market it as such.
Finally, and the most interesting of all the proposals that we came up with was this sort of reddish
route which we call a "City-wide circulator," which looks a little awkward on the map but
accomplishes some really, really interesting origin/destination pairs. It starts in the Downtown,
serves the senior center, Lytton Garden, Channing House, provides some service for the first time
to the front doors of the main library and the art center which are very difficult to get to via transit
for most people right now. It provides service to the front door of Jordan Middle School, goes to
Mid-Town, then hits a portion of South Palo Alto that currently has no transit service. There are a
bunch of fairly high density apartment complexes along Alma Street that have no access totransit
right now. There is no way to get really close to them because you can’t stop a bus on Alma. Then
there are creeks that prevent you from crossing on any of the streets in between Waverley and Alma.
Getting running service on Waverley will provide some service well within a quarter mile walking
distance from those residents throughout that part of South Palo Alto that is currently unserved. It
wraps around this incredible walk that includes Mitchell Park, JLS, the Mitchell Library, the
Mitchell Community Center, Stevenson House, and a bunch of other stuff. It provides some service
closer to the Ventura neighborhood which is currently fairly underserved and is also relatively high
density. Then it works its way into Barton Park for the first time. Barron Park has no transit
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whatsoever and it would also make connections to the [Truman] Center, the Jewish Community
Center and at the school peak could go up to Gunn High School as well.
I’ve already talked a little bit about who these routes serve but I’d like to go over this really quick!y.
Using the City’s geographic information system we actually counted up the number of households
and the number of employees within a quarter mile walking distance of bus stops along each shuttle
line. As you can see, the Downtown express improvements, depending on the hours, will not serve
very many of the Palo Alto residents except for people in the Downtown wanting to go to the
Stanford Museum or Stanford University during lunchtime which may be very appealing for the
people at Channing House, Lytton Gardens and the senior center especially who’s front doors it will
serve. But it will serve up to 7.000 Stanford employees. The Embarcadero Road service runs within
a quarter mile of 1,700 Palo Alto residents and serves 2,700 jobs. The Research Park shuttle serves
about 950 people primarily in the College Terrace neighborhood and 25,000 jobs throughout the
Research Park. The San Antonio Road shuttle serves 1,500 residents primarily in the big apartment
buildings along San Antonio and 4,500 jobs. The City-wide circulator serves at least 7,000 people
throughout the City and about 1,000 jobs depending upon how you calculate things.
We then analyzed how each shuttle route meets the-City’s goals. None of them get excellent marks
in every category. They are all pretty Nixed which is interesting. Depending upon the weight that
you choose to place on each goal will help us to determine which routes should move forward first.
Finally, and the big question is, how much will all of this cost? The short answer is a lot of money.
Transit is not cheap. Stanford University spends over a million dollars a year running the
Margurite. These shuttle routes could quickly get you up to that much and more. The Downtown
express is one of the cheapest since it only runs for a couple of hours at lunch starting at $31,000,
with the most expensive being running the City-wide circulator every ’15 minutes, seven days a
week, all day, would cost you pretty much a million dollars for just that route. These numbers will
vary depending upon your service day. You can have 15 minute service at peak and 30 minutes
during the mid-day.. You can run some of the commuter runs only at peak and choose to omit all of
the mid-day service. We’ll be working on how to interpret what these costs mean onc~ we start
finalizing what kind of routes we really want to see. We also have begun to calculate ridership for
each of these routes. Ridership calculation is more of an art than a science. We’ve applied the
science and now we are sort of adjusting for the art. In general what we are finding is that the
Research Park shuttle depending upon how it is shaped will probably be the most cost effective
simply because it serves a ton of employees who are working pretty dam close to a train station. The
Downtown express, the Embarcadero Road shuttle and the San Antonio Road shuttle will perform
essentially the same as other Cal Train-like shuttles which is fine and about what typical transit
services perform at. The City-wide circulator is the big challenge because when we estimated
ridership for the Menlo Park mid-day shuttle it turned out to be less than one-third of what the actual
ridership turned out to be. The Menlo Park mid-day shuttle which runs every 45 minutes in this
incredibly circuitous route is aimed primarily at serving senior citizens and the buses are packed
which we did not expect. So trying to find a way to get a better handle on what a service that
connects so many important community services and a lot of fairly dense and fairly underserved
neighborhoods will achieve is going to be hard to do.
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I think that is the end of our presentation and I’m sure you have a lot of questions. I’d be happy to
entertain them.
Chairman Byrd: Thank you Jeff. Questions for Staff at this point or should we go ahead and take
some public comment and do the public the favor of allowing them to comment given the hour of
the evening. I have four cards and if there is anyone else who wants to speak please fill out a card.
The first card is from Scott Carlson to be followed by Jefferey Salsman. You have five minutes.
Mr. Scott Carlson, 1295 Wilson Street, Palo Alto: Good evening Commissioners, Planning and
Transportation. My name is Scott Carlson. I live at 1295 Wilson Street in the Community Center
neighborhood. I’m also a member of the Community Center Neighbor’s Association Board. I’m not
a member of the project advisory committee but I’ve read all of the papers that have been available
to them including the draft working paper three that you have in the packet. I’m just here to speak
briefly in favor of short term alternative number five which is the so-called City-wide circulator that
was pointed out in the presentation. As you could tell from the written material, and I think from
the presentation of the consultants, write enthusiastically about this route and I share that enthusiasm
principally because of its neighborhood circulation. Specifically from for my neighborhood I think
it would provide a needed north-south’access to some key facilities in the neighborhood which were
mentioned in the presentation,~ the main library, the art center, but also a facility or community
resource that really hasn’t been mentioned, or it may have been mentioned in the public workshop
but it is not mentioned in the written material, and that is Rincinada Park itself. Things such as the
brand new pool that we have in the park is a big traffic draw. As you may know, there is flo parking
lot for that pool and a lot of the parking for the users of that pool use my neighborhood, not
specifically my street, but my neighborhood as the parking lot for the pool." There are also nine
tennis courts in Rincinada Park that sometimes draw sizable tennis tournaments. There are special
events such as the City sponsored event that was held in the park on the Saturday before Easter. My
point is that the park itself is a big traffic magnet and that if a service could draw off some of that
traffic I and my neighbors would be delighted, I think. So in short, I am mainly echoing the report
card that was briefly flashed to you that the consultants shared. On that report card this alternative
number five received the second highest marks in terms of the prospect of meetings at least goals
1-4 that have been identified. I hope that you will give it, as the consultant said in the report, you’ll
pursue that alternative and give it the thought that I think it deserves. Thank you.
Chairman Byrd: Thank’ you Mr. Carlson. Jefferey Salsman to be followed by Rick Fe.rguson.
Mr. Jefferey Salsman,: Yes, Chairman Byrd and members of the Commission, I’d first like to
commend the Staff, the consultants and the advisory committee for I think a remarkably intelligent
package that is going to be put before you and ultimately before the Council. I think this really
addresses a lot of transportation needs in our community I’m really hopeful, I support the entire
package. I think that the creation of a solid transportation network in the City offers the best
opportunity for us to mitigate some of the problems caused by single occupant vehicles. I would like
to speak particularly on behalf of the circulator one which impacts my neighborhood which is Barron
Park.
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There are a couple of things that this amazingly creative group can do. I grew up in New York and
lived in Washington, D.C. for a long time and I’m a life-long user of public transit both for
commuting and for other things. I think that this really does a lot to really thicken up the network
and make transit a viable option for lots of people. It does several things in particular I think will
behefit our neighborhood. One, it provides a really good viable alternative for moving kids to and
from JLS and Gunn High School. Both of which create unacceptable traffic congestion right near
those schools. I think it further adds to, by providing an additional option for getting kids to school,
by reducing traffic will actually get a lot more parents to allow their children to bicycle to school.
A lot of parents simply say, well there is too much traffic on the road, I’m not going to let my child
bicycle in it. Then it becomes an endless loop of traffic and no bicycles. I, myself, am a bicycle
rider. I actually commute by bicycle along the JLS corridor and it is a lousy commute in the
morning. Anything that can be done to mitigate that will make a great contribution to the
community. I also fully support the idea of providing a real transit alternative for people who don’t
have cars. I look forward to the creation of this solid network that will really make, for more people
who have the choice will find that transit is really a good option overall for the community. Thank
you.
Chairman Byrd: Thank you very much. Rick Ferguson to be followed by Ken Pullman.
Mr. Rick Ferguson, 1037 Harker, Palo Alto: I could do Ken’s presentation to but...I’m Rick
Ferguson, 1037 Harker, President of the Community Center Neighbor’s Association and I’m a
member of the project advisory committee. I’m delighted to be here and thank you for attending tO
this topic tonight.
I want to talk about three things. First of all the process, second the maps, and third the iopic of.
adaptability. I’m not a big fan of City consultants. I was delighted at this process. We’ve had terrific
staff work, a terrific selection process for a consultant and terrific performance by the consultant.
As a member of the advisory committee my hat is off to the gang here. Nice job. You should put
great value on the staff work for this one. It is a great job.
Secondly on the maps. In the packet that you have tonight there is a numbering system for the maps
and the options. I think it is one through five. As a genera! proposition on behalf of the Community
Center Neighbor’s Association we like one, two and five. One and two are easy options to choose.
Five, the so-called City-wide circulator is again wonderfully inventive, creative, we like it. It is the
big dollar item. It is the tough one for any public decision-maker to bite down on and say yes to.
But it is exactly the right thing to do. It has all wonderful joys of deciding whether to commit
ground troops, I guess. It is what I think most people’s concept of the shuttle is all about. It looks
like the special events shuttle route. But it is the big dollar item. So I hope in your discussion~
tonight you’ll focus in on that tough issue and come out in favor of the City-wide circulator.
As a way of mitigating perhaps some of the problems in voting yes and supporting the City-wide
circulator I’d like to discuss a topic we talked about in the committee but it didn’t seem to bubble up
into the papers tonight. That is the notion of adaptability or flexibility. A lot of times when ¯
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governments make decisions it’s as if we are carving statues for all time, for permanent sake. An
investment in the shuttle routes is really an investment in staff and vehicles. But we really do have
the option of changing the routes a little bit from time to time based on new information. So as we
consider these routes, .keep in mind that it is not a terrifically difficult thing to change the routes
based on actual experience over time. So making a commitment to the City-wide circulator does not
mean that we’ve cast in concrete the City-wide circulator map for all time. It is not at all the case.
In your final motion and final deliberations and the Council’s deliberations please build in this
notion of adaptability. We don’t have to cast this in concrete. It is easy to adapt these routes. It is
easy to reallocate the dollars from place to place, and bus to bus, and 15 minute slot to 30 minute
slot. So build this concept of adaptability in. I think it makes all of the options go down a little bit
easier when it comes time to talk about cost.
I’m delighted with the process, delighted with the map options, and I hope you will be too, tonight.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Byrd: Thank you. The final card is submitted by Ken Pullman. If there are other
members of the public who wish to address the Commission on this subject please fill out a card
now.
Mr. Ken Pullman, 884 Los Robles Avenue, Palo Alto: Good evening. I’m Ken Pullman. I live at
884 Los Robles Avenue in Barron Park. I wanted to speak in particular in favor of the City-wide
circulator route. The current problem that we are facing in South Palo Alto is in the Charleston, East
Meadow and Arastradero corridor. It really focuses on the bottlenecks at Charleston and Alma, and
East Meadow and Alma. It is fairly common at commute hours to have to wait multiple lights to get
across those intersections. In addition the intersections have been marked by’their fatalities in the
past, two middle schoolers in the last ten years. All of that traffic was noted in making parents more
nervous, there is more driving. And every one of those kids being driven to school is not just one
car trip, it’s not just one student going. It is a parent going and coming back, and going and coming
back again in the afternoon. In fact, it has gotten so bad that some parents I know have found that
it is faster to go from that corridor up to Oregon Expressway, take that underpass, and come back
down on Middlefield in order to make that drive. So a one mile commute becomes a three mile drive
and it impacts the rest of the City. We’ve been hoping for many years that some kind of transit
solution would address this and the Ci,ty-wide circulator hits this dead on.
There are about 150 students that go from the Bah’on Park and South of Arastradero areas a~ross
those three major traffic corridors, E1 Camino, the railroad and Alma to get to JLS. There are about
another 100 that go across two of those major corridors to get to JLS. Those would all be served by
this route. Coming from the other side, going to Gunn, there is about 600 students. So there is a
huge market there. Obviously we are not going to get everyone to ride the bus but that is a large
market to serve.
Basically without doing this route, the residential areas of Palo Alto are hardly being served at all.
One of the questions that comes up is, how should this be funded. In particular, should there be fares
on the bus? A key thing to look at is who is benefiting here? One of the benefits is people being
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able to get places that can’t drive or have problems driving. Obviously this is a direct benefit to them
to have a shuttle but it is a benefit indirectly to the whole City to have people who otherwise can’t
get around easily be able to be mobile again. But clearly the main beneficiary is everyone because
by getting people out of cars you reduce the congestion, you reduce the pollution, we reduce the
stress in everyone’s lives by making everything more predictable for everyone whether they are in
a car or in a bus. Making the shuttle a free shuttle is just a beautiful idea. It really has very little to
do with the amount of money that is involved which might be significant to some of the poorest
people in Town, and there are some, or some of the seniors. But really it is about making it an
attractive thing. A free shuttle has an attractiveness which is completely out of proportion to the
monetary difference that we see her~.
Another thing that has been suggested is that if there is going to be a lot of kids here that there
should be monetary participation by the schools. It is really not a workable idea, I think. The
schools have tight budgets and we have a bad history actually of school and City joint projects. The
library being the most recent one. Really, this is a problem on City streets. There is a key thing that
schools should do and that is that they should actively and creatively promote participation of their
students on this shuttle. I should end here. Thank you.
Chairman Byrd: Thank you very much. At this point we will close the public hearing and bring it
back to the Commission to ask questions of Staff. Another option for us is to lay out a couple of
subject matters that we want to discuss and ask our questions and wrap our discussion around each
one. As we heard from Staff and the public I started making a list that included this issue of
coverage versus productivity. The issue of where the routes should run. The issue of frequency or
headways. Whether or not there should be a charge to riders. The issue of the overall project costs.
I would invite others on that list. Maybe we could work our way through both’asking questions and
discussing each one in turn. /
Commissioner Beecham: Let me propose another way of going about it. I’ve got a question that I
need to have answered before I can go to any of your issues. This would be actually following up
on essentially every speaker tonight who have come to support this and they talk about why they
support it. It is to mitigate the impact of the single occupancy automobiles, parking, traffic
congestion, you Can’t go through intersections for three lights and so on. Nothing in the report tells
me how those things are affected by what is proposed here. Without knowing that I’m not sure how
you go forward and say which is the best option for us.
M._£r. Co____~t: The key or variable in determining whether or not traffic volumes get/’educed, whether
local service at intersections gets improved and how cost effective the service is of course is the
extent to which people use it, the demand size. The consultant has not yet completed that work in
a way that is satisfactory to us. We have preliminary numbers but the assumptions used we’re not
particularly comfortable with at this time. We had hoped to have that for the Commission but it is
much better in my opinion to present something we have faith in than to present something that is
a first cut that we don’t have faith in. You are absolutely right, Mr. Beecham, that without a good
and reliable measure of demand, of use, it is very difficult to make some judgments about benefits.
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Mr. Tumlin: If I may speak also to the congestion issue. We specifically did not want to make any
promises about a transit system actually relieving congestion. A transit system alone cannot solve
your congestion problems. In order to solve your congestion problems you need to provide
alternatives to driving which the transit system does, but you also need to provide some limits to
driving. So that as people move out of their cars you don’t just generate more trips from latent
demand from people who wanted to drive but couldn’t for example find a parking space. So in order
to actually reduce congestion in the City I would suggest that you need a more comprehensive
program that looks at availability and cost of parking, at TDM programs among employers, a whole
variety of other factors.
Commissioner Beecham: I’m wondering out of all this and whatever Staffmay be soon developing
whether or not there will be anything in the information that does come forward that will give any
kind of a realistic measure of the impacts we can expect to see on reduced congestion, reduced
parking requirements, etc. Is that going to be at all possible that we should expect that in the future.
Mr. Kott: We can expect estimates of demand by route, varied by frequency, cost per rider, we know
we have pretty good numbers on the cost for rtmning each one of the routes. We don’t have demand
estimates. We can’t calculate cost per rider yet. I could tell you that in my view, it is unlikely that
any of these routes would have a qhalitative, difference by themselves in levels of service at
congested intersections. I think what Jefferey said about the problem of congestion being, because
it is knotty problem, being one that is not susceptible to a single solution is correct. So the approach
in the Comprehensive Plan is probably the best one. It is a multiple measure approach, improve
biking and walking, making land use decisions that are so-called "smart growth," improved transit,
improve travel demand incentives. The City will be engaged, we hope, in that in our commute
coordinator position. Then over time make progress. But to expect any single measure to have a
qualitative impact particularly when the inducements to drive so strong. In fact, a couple of the
public speakers talked about the vicious cycle really, it is a downward spiral. The more unsafe the
streets and roads are, the less clam traffic is, the less likely it is people will do anything but drive.
It is a tremendous paradox but there it is. So that is a difficult one. But if we’re talking about
numbers of people we should be able to show that in a reliable way and cost prr.rider. It becomes
a policy, decision about whether this particular measure which in itself doesn’t solve one of the
critical issues -- intersection congestion, whether that is worth it as a building block you might say,
expecting other measures will be implemented and in total they will have that effect.
Mr. Gawf: Joe, when we come back in late June or July we will have that information. At that time,
I think, we will be asking you to make a recommendation on this subject which could include a
recommendation on one, two or several routes. I think the purpose of tonight’s meeting is to really
provide you with the information we’ve accumulated so far, give you the thought process, to get any
reactions that you have about additional work that we need to do, so that when we do come back to
again in late June/early July we have the information necessary to make that decision.
Commissioner Burt: Just kind of a follow on to Bern’s comments. We’ve certainly heard that the
number of passengers or passenger miles are a multiplier that we would use to try and determine the
benefit and the cost effectiveness of the program. But what do we multiply it against? I would like
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to see if there are some models that have been used by other cities so that we don’t have to reinvent
the wheel but that are doing some sort of a total cost assessment or total benefit assessment. Some
of the benefits of taking transit or the shuttle might be able to be quantified and others are inherently
very difficult to quantify. Some that had come to mind are the IRS gives a-thirty cent a mile.figure
for the cost of driving. I don’t know what is an appropriate figure but those who take the shuttle are
avoiding a personal expense of driving. We also have a major cost associated with Downtown
parking, the new garages I think are $32,000 per space. So if we amortize that cost, how much per
day would be avoided in cost for merchants if instead of building a new garage base they got a
customer to liberate a space by taking the shuttle. We also have cars that have a moderately higher
wear and tear on the street system and. higher demand for expansion of those key intersections.
These may be small impacts and barely measurable but cumulatively it may matter. Then finally,
environmentally we have the impact on water, air, noise, even solid waste that are all strongly
impacted by individual cars. Our water system, our most sensitive pollutant is copper and the
primary source is break pads. It’s a greater source of it than all our industry combined. Then we
certainly have other benefits that are difficult to quantify, the quality of life amenity, the access for
non-drivers, the congestion and sorts like that. I don’t know what models exist to be able to try to
pull some of this together but to whatever extent that information is available I think it would be very
beneficial.
Chairman Byrd: Anyone else on the cost benefit issues they would like Staffto bring back answers
to?
If not, let me then move us on on that list I generated earlier. If I’ve missed something let me know.
Commissioner Schrnidt: I was just going to comment that in the Staff report they’ve said some
broader things to comment on the service planning goals, the scale of proposed short term service
plan and implementation priorities, and the long range strategy to enhance transit services. The
things that you were talking about were more detailed and maybe you want to talk about some of
those bigger picture ones too.
Chairman Byrd: I think some of them overlap. If we don’t cover it all let’s circle back. I heard Jeff
suggest up front that one of the most dynamic tensions facing us is this choice between coverage and
productivity. I think it would be of value, I hear Staff saying it would be of value, to them to get
some feedback from us. What do we see the purpose of the system to be? Is it to provide universal
coverage to residents and businesses throughout the City even on a low ridership basis? Or is it to
serve the most productive corridors most efficiently? Or do we have some better balance to give to
Staff?. Jon.
Commissioner Schink: I would just say that the proposed routing alternatives that they are
suggesting now seem to strike the right balance..
Commissioner Beecham: I think probably the popular way of looking at is a productive route is
truly beneficial. The speakers hear hope to get something out of it. If it’s true then I think what Jon
says is right in terms of the first two being productivity routes. As we get more information from
Staff to say, okay what’s the impact on our City of that productivity. If it’s not measurable then I
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could be convinced fairly easily that we should focus on more flniform service because that’s got a
clear benefit to our citizens if we can’t find a clear benefit to productivity basically.
Commissioner Cassel: I think none of the alternatives presented to us on Map 5 really have low
productivity routes. Low productivity routes are much of the 88 and a good portion of the 86. That’s
what is going to bedevil us as to how we cover those kinds of areas. The lovely purple line here, the
connector route that we are working with may have some low periods during the day but I sense that
although we can’t have a school bus we are going to be pressed if we run these only every 15 minutes
when schools start and stop. Their biggest disadvantage is going to be that there won’t enough of
them if they only run every 15 minutes at that period of time. So I expect to see fairly heavy use of
those at those times. Some of the transit times come earlier than that and later than that so what will
happen with other people, I don’t know. The really low productivity ones are when you look at these
little dotted lines that Come in the distance for that particular issue and we’ll be facing that more in
the future as we work with the VTA on how to handle those lines.
Commissioner Schmidt: I think indeed there is a great tension between the productivity and the
coverage but I believe that the recommendation to try to balance them is a reasonable and the right
way to go with the short term. I know any additional information that we get on cost benefit is likely
to look like any of these. It is fairly crstly. Probably not an extension of the Margurite but I think
we knew that to start out with. Part of this is to show that indeed we are doing something about
transit alternatives and it is partially promoting the use of transit alternatives and think, okay, now
we actually have something and getting people to think about getting out of their cars. Joe was
saying we’ve just got this ever downward tending spiral and we’ve got to do whatever we can to start
getting it going the other way. And it Will a system of many pieces and this can be a clear first step.
I think that the balance will, if we can do all or most of those initial routes, will be a win for getting
people to think about getting out of their cars.
Commissioner Bialson: I think some of the cost/benefit analysis is hard to apply here because I see
some of the benefits being so intangible. Ridership is one measure of productivity. I see something
like the City-wide circulator adding to the things that pull the community together. I think that
riding on the bus to school is great. I see the interplay of sort of commuting together, taking bus
trips to various parts of the City, having individuals feel as if the City is not divided between a North
Palo Alto and a South Palo Alto are very. intangible positives. As we speak of what values we want
to see in this I think we have to keep our eye on the intangible values. While it is very easy to look
at the most productive routes as those we would take on initially, I think we have to look at the City-
wide circulator as something that really addresses what make Palo Alto special. And what may not
seem all that productive initially but as people get used to seeing that bus circulating throughout the
City ridership will build up. I assume it will build up over time. That will not be as dramatic as the
initial impact of the other routes. I see that we need that to recognize the value of the circulator.
Chairman Byrd: I want to build on both Annette and Kathy’s comments and sort of speak to the
coverage issue. I understand the bottom line sensibility of productivity but I think at this stage of
the development coverage may actually be more important but for a more subtle reason. Which is
that part of the purpose of launching the shuttle is to build a constituency in favor of increased
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investment in transportation and in the sort of land use decisions that support transit. From that
perspective, which is more intangible, the appropriate early investment will in the long mn pay
greater returns. I think a really sound analogy is to recycling. As someone who spent years and
years trying to promote recycling I can tell you that it wasn’t just to reduce the waste stream.- It was
to get people to walk to the bin and throw in the bottle in order to change their value system. We’re
talking about changing people’s value systems as a precursor to changing their pattern of
transportation behavior. We won’t do that if we only run up and down the most efficient corridors.
So specifically, I would encourage us to look, and I’m sure perhaps you’ve done this, but the route
that you propose for the City-wide circular here leaves out the outer reaches, the 86 and the 88 issue,
but it also leaves out what in my mind is sort of the heart of the City, the Waverley/Bryant axis. Just
as Middlefield is sort of the middle between Alma and 101 I sort of think of Waverley or perhaps
Bryant as the middle between Middlefield and Alma. I would love to ~ee some sort of service up
and down that heart of the community party to reduce trips but also for this values based reason. I
want residents of that area to see the shuttle going by. It might even encourage them take it. Can
you give us a little bit of background if it exists on the thinking around serving that.
Mr. Tumlin: There used to be service the entire length of Waverley. That was the 84 line which
VTA discontinued because of very low ridership. It is understandable why it ran from Downtown
out Waverley. There is not much just ~n Waverley itself. It goes through some of the lowest density
housing in the City. So we tried to think about where are people really trying to go and how can we
structure a route so that they will serve multiple purposes. People may have to walk up to a quarter
mile but lets try to get them exactly where they want to go. So in order to serve this Professorville,
University South area that is what the Embarcadero Road service is for. Where do those people want
to go in that neighborhood? They will want to get to Downtown and all the stuff that is in
Downtown. Then just kind of a scattering of other places. In order to get to some of the important
community facilities, this takes them right up here to the main library, and then it also allows for
transfers. We are assuming that in our ideal future there is going to be really frequent service on
Middlefield. So getting to your core frequent lines which are El Camino, Middlefield and all the
stuff that is at the Downtown Train Station were our most important goals..
Chairman Byrd: I’m not suggesting that a modification be made that would leave out the City Center
neighborhood, Lucy Stem and all that. I also don’t think it is our role to sit up here and micro-
manage the development of the map. All I’m suggesting is there may be a way for example to run
the City circulator A and B and one curves out and one goes. straight.
Mr. Tumlin: I think the real answer is, as G~il said earlier, this is the first step. The first very small,
teeny-weeny step in what should be a much larger process that involves VTA. The 86 and the 88,
Gail was a little too kind to them saying they only performed fairly well, they perform very poorly.
The perception that they are running around empty is not entirely untrue. I think that both VTA and
the City would benefit in looking at the entire system and figuring out how we can reallocate service
hours and how we can split service hours between stuff the VTA does and stuff that the City does.
Or something that a partnership between (he two would do. We’ve come up with some long term
routing concepts that try to get out that directly and provide frequent service to every neighborhood
while still striking the coverage versus intensity balance, kind of in the middle but a little on the
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intensity side.
Chairman Byrd: We have sort of seguead here from the tension between coverage and productivity
into the routes themselves. Do other Commissioner’s have specific feedback for Staff at this point
on any of these five routes?
Commissioner Burt: Just one question on the circulator roate, it misses the YMCA. Is that
unavoidable or you’re trying to cover JLS, or is there some other reason?
Mr. Tumlin: We were trying to keep it as tight as possible. We really struggled with that one
because we didn’t want it to take three hours to get from one neighborhood to another destination.
That block around Mitchell Park is such an incredible attractor that it was hard to hit the stuff that
is on Meadow and also get up to the YMCA. The YMCA is on Ross, isn’t it?
Commissioner Cassel: Right, it is not where you have it dotted here, it is farther over. It is over
where the ’C’ so it is farther away from Middlefield Road.
Mr.-Tumlin: Yes, that’s right. It’s up on Ross. So getting up there and then getting back down
towards Barron Park. "
Ms. Likens: Jefferey, maybe I can add also in looking at the existing services that in this scenario
were maintaining existing VTA services for the short term plan, there is service relatively within two
blocks going east and west on Middlefield and Lewis. This route was to fill in areas that are
undetserved. Jefferey made a point of saying a quarter mile is within walking distance of the Y from
Middle field where we now have half hour service we’d like to see VTA increase that to 15 minute
frequency. So really, this circulator doesn’t address the needs of the community that is east of
Middlefield as well as could be done. We looked at this route starting out with the shuttle route
which really does serve Lewis and kind of comes back along Waverley and makes the big loop and
we took the best parts of that shuttle route that were really areas that were underserved currently.
So in our next phase, working with VTA, hopefully we can address that issue.
Chairman Byrd: ,Any other comments on these routes?
Commissioner Schmidt: A question. You brought up the idea of not wanting it to take too long.
Can you say approximately how long it would take on the circulator route to go from Truman to
Downtown, almost the full length of it.
Mr. Tumlin: I knew somebody was going to ask me that question. I think in my brief case I’ve got
actual schedules for each one of these.
Commissioner Schmidt: Just a rough estimate.
Mr. Tumlin: I haven’t the slightest idea. I can get that to you after the meeting.
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Commissioner Schmidt: Okay, we’ll see those numbers at a later date.
Mr. Tumlin: Yes.
Commissioner Cassel: One of the concerns that I’ve had been the difference between serving
employers on the circulator route. On particular employer routes the one that goes San Antonio to
San Antonio Station, I think in the long term plans in terms of general congestion that’s important
but I doubt that it serves an awful lot of people who live in Palo Alto. There isn’t a stop on San
Antonio Road or there is only one going one direction and not the other. So although we have some
fairly dense housing in there it isn’t set up to be able to make stops at this time at least. It is
extremely important of course, as you mentioned, to work with VTA on how to do this route that’s
called "improved Deer Creek shuttle." Most of the people who use the 88 in that section do not pay.
They get a pass because they are making transfer.
Mr. Tumlin: They are Cal Train passes.
Commissioner Cassel: They’ve got their Cal Train pass so that may help a lot of that issue. You
may not shift people whether they use that free shuttle or theirs it probably wouldn’t make a
difference. But those buses that run in the rush hour at the end of the day that are now running
maybe at least every 15 minutes, because you can pick up either the 24 or the 88 or the Deer Creek
one, they are fairly full at that time of day. They may not be as full in the morning for the very
reason that I don’t take it in the morning, and that it is that the time between crawling out of bed and
getting to work tends to be .tighter than your time for getting off from work home, in terms of your
desire to get there. So the time to take the bus to work seems to hurt more. To get a ride from
someone seems to be easier in the morning than it does in the afternoon. I think the same is tree for
the kids. Parents drop their kids off at school on their way to work but then in the afternoon then
they can get a bus home because it’s an odd time and their parents aren’t out of work. So working
with the VTA on that is important. The route that you now have doesn’t take anyone from the
Stanford Shopping Center and have any way to connect through into where the 88 goes to along
Lewis and Greet. So without it there is a big gap that you can’t transfer across. There may be no
need for that. You go from the VA Medical Center and you need to get around to Greer. Without
the 88 you can’t do it on this system
Mr. Tumlin: Oh, right. All of this presumes that the existing systems would stay. That is important
to make it work.
Commissioner Cassel: But trying to work some other system out which is really, really important
I think with the 88. I think one thing to sure you’ve done it here, and we have to keep working it is,
these crossing mechanisms for getting, I keep wanting to call them bridges but if I do that someone
will think we have a bridge, crossing the E1 Camino, train, Alma lines. We have only five ways to
get across those as everyone in this room is aware of. There is a tendency to want to worry about
the north-south routes but crossing those are so difficult when you need transit. I really needed
transit this year, as far as travel was concerned, being temporarily disabled. Getting across town was
very difficult. I’ve been on most of these runs except the 86 and know what it is like to take a bus.
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And how easy it is to get back to taking a car. I promised myself I would continue to take that bus
once a week and I haven’t done it. That’s not good.
Chairman Byrd: Anything else on this route map?
Commissioner Butt: Yes. Jefferey, are there other opportunities to expand the Margurite system
and utilize that? Specifically the route that is proposed for California Avenue up into the Stanford
Industrial Park which serves Stanford property?
Mr. Tumlin: We started looking at riding options. We did it divorced from the notion of who would
be running them. The City could contract with the Margurite, with Stanford, to have it simply be
an extension of the Margurite. Any or all of them. You do it yourselves, you could have employers
do them, you could have VTA do them. It depends upon what your goals are and what your funding
mechanisms are. There is some complexity in extending the Margurite in that one of the greatest
successes of the Margurite is that it is very carefully timed to meet all the trains.. It is really hard to
do timed transfers along the mid-point of your line. It is easier to do it at an end point. So running
through service, through a train station, for example, extending the line A which is Stanford’s most
productive route, ~eyond the train station and into Palo Alto will be complex for Stanford because
of that time transfer. I can be done and there may be good reasons to do that but there also may be
good reasons to simply pulse services in and out of the train station, all of them timed to meet the
trains. But all the buses arrive at the same time, people can go to their trains, people can scramble
from bus to bus and then head off in their various directions. That sort of an operation takes away
a lot of the pain that is caused by transfers. Does that answer your question? Okay.
Chairman Byrd: Let me move us on to this issue of frequency. Jeffput up two, in his budgetslide
he showed 30 minute headways and 15 minute headways. Do Commissioner’s have any feedback
on this subject of frequency of service?
Commissioner Cassel: Well, the more the merrier. The more you use it the more apt you are going
to be to use it. It really means a lot. If it is going to take you an extra half hour to. get to work in th+
morning you are going to fmd another way to get there. If that 35 ran every 15 minutes I think you’d
have more people on the 35 or every bus than you do know because you would be depending on it
more easily. You miss it, you’re half an hour late for work. Sometimes it comes early.
Commissioner Beecham: I agree with Phyllis. If we are going to do this we need to do what we can
to make it successful. One of the big detriments ofridership is lack of dependable speed. So they
need to know they are going to get to where they are going on time, not risk missing something you
are meeting, a train or whatever else. So more rapid service is I think warranted.
Commissioner Schink: I was just going to add the only thing I know about this is what I would
myself. I wouldn’t wait 30 minutes but I would 15, for whatever it is worth.
Chairman Byrd: Jon, I actually don’t think you’d wait 15. I’m not sure 15 works. I was just in
Boulder, Colorado earlier this month which has one of the best local jitney services in the county
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and the headways are 6 minutes. It means you can walk out of your hotel or your home knowing
that you will almost assured to see the bus coming down the street. I think 15 minutes is too long.
I would rather see, in a world of budget constraints, fewer routes. I would rather only do three or
four routes and have more frequent, 6, 8 10 minute headways on the routes that we do serve as
opposed to spreading ourselves too thin with 15 minute headways. Especially in Silicon Valley
where everybody is in a hurry. I don’t think people are going to stand there very long to take the
shuttle.
Commissioner Bialson: I just want to express my absolute support for what Owen just said. Having
been a rider of the public transit system in New York City, got used to very frequent headways. Also
recently having been in Aspen, Colorado their City-wide shuttle system works perfectly and I think
it also had a 6 minute wait. I don’t recall standing at a bus stop and not seeing a bus come towards..
me.
Commissioner Beecham: I certainly agree that the quicker it is the more ridership you get. I’d be
curious to find out if you can also provide us any kind of data to tell us how much it improves with
those increased in frequency.
Mr. Tumlin: The demand increases on" a curve with frequency. 15 minutes is basically the outside
limit at whi.c.h,, you can attract significant numbers of people who can get there in some other way.
It is the ~c~d~i’ule where it is a frequency where you can give up actually having a schedule in your
hand and show up at the bus stop. The bus will be there in an average of every 7.5 minutes and you
.will often times literally be able to see the bus coming. Every 15 minutes is about what Stanford
runs’right now and it is right there at the cusp. Every 15 minute service is not useful for short trips,
for errand running, for trips of a short distance, or to pick up something really quick. It is useful for
commuting, it is certainly useful for meeting trains given the infrequent train service that we are
dealing with. One thing that we can do is in really dense areas like the Downtown we can bring a
number of different lines together on to the same street so that when they come together and overlap,
if you bring two routes running every 15 minutes together on to the same street, you can run service
every 7.5 minutes during the stretch that they overlap. That’s something we’ve kind of looked at in
some of the longer term routing proposals. It depends upon how you schedule.
Commissioner Bialson: It seems from what you’ve said and just observation from being a rider that
having a route that we call upon a 30 minute headway is rather counter productive. So I agree with
Owen that I’d rather see us put our resources into those routes that we can have at least a 10-15
minute headway than going to too spread out a plan that necessitates longer headways.
Mr. Tumlin: One argument in favor or less frequent headways, our experience in Menlo Park really
was a big surprise to me. We did this incredibly convoluted senior shuttle route that nms during the
mid-day for several hours. It takes a long time to get from one end of the route to the other. It is like
45 minutes. We decided to run it every 45 minutes which is the most awkward kind of schedule to
have because you can never remember, it’s not like it runs and 11:03 and 12:03, but because it serves
so many important community functions and because we distributed schedules, multiple copies of
schedules to everyone along the route it is actually getting terrific ridership. Buses are packed.
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There are types of routes where it will make sense to have less frequent service. If you’ve got a
really dense corridor and you are really trying to get people out of their cars and you have a lot of
money to spend, yes, every 6 minutes is really great. People will love it, and you’ll have packed
buses.
Chairman Byrd: Let’s move on to the final subject of cost and see if we can give any useful feedback
on the funding analysis, the issue that was raised by the public around whether or not there should
be a fare charged to the riders or anything else on financial issues.
Commissioner Bialson: I agree that there should be no fare charged. I think the complexity of
having cash handling mechanisms just outweighs any amount you can derive from ridership that has
to pay. I think that there is a large psychological hurdle. So I’d rather see us go with a free shuttle
initially. Especially since we don’t know what the reception of the community will be to certain
usage of the shuttle. I really would see it as being free.
Commissioner Beecham: I certainly agree with that. Also, being free is removing one impediment
to more ridership.
Mr. Tumlin: Anybody want to argue ~n favor of 75 cents?
Commissioner Cassel: What’s weird is that while you are absolutely correct, the psychologically you
start out at free and people are going to take it. The subsidized systems we have are so cheap it is
amazing that more people don’t take it and use it. I think it was $35.00 for a month pass for the bus
and it goes anywhere in Santa Clara County. I don’t know what the fee is now for the transit system
but the train and bus passes, when I took it it was $45.00, I don’t know what it is now. But it was
still every train and bus iia Santa Clara County and any train you wanted to take to San Francisco on
the weekend. Yet we won’t pay it but we’ll pay the gas prices at the gas station. It is weird.
Chairman Byrd: Anything else on financial issues at this point? Any other comments back to Staff?.
Commissioner Burt: I’m sorry, still just on the funding I found the matrix in the staff report on
funding alternatives to be very informative and encouraging. It presents a lot of opportunities that
I didn’t realize were there and hopefully enough of them are viable that we’ll get some adequate
funding. Any thought in general, Ed, in the funding opportunities and whether these five routes or
design, is this something that we think we have a good chance of having ongoing funding that could
come about?
Mr. Gawf: Joe, add to this if I miss something. I think that is going to be the focus of our effort over
the next six weeks or so. To try to craft together some proposal that is "doable." Doable in
achieving the kinds of things that you talked about tonight but also financially we have the
wherewithal to do it.
Mr. Kott: Yes, I certainly agree. There is one bit ray of hope that Jefferey has pointed out earlier
in the study. The shuttle system in Emeryville near Oakland is very successful and I believe there
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is either very low or zero public subsidy now. It is funded mainly by developers and employers.
For those of you who are familiar with Emeryville, that’s a place where there is just a lot of
commercial activity and not many residents.
Ms. Likens: I can also add that one opportunity that is coming up is through the air district for
transportation funds for clear air funds, the TFCA funding which is the source of funding for the Cal
Train shuttles. We certainly are an eligible applicant either for the regional funds which the
applications are due in June or the local funds which are administered by the CMA-DTA Congestion
Management Program and the applications will come due next January. Those funds are for Cal
Train related shuttles which serve the Cal Train routes and meet the trains with time transfers. A
condition of those funds if that you cannot charge a fa~e. So that is one of the issue with that funding
source but that is a very likely funding source for our initial shuttle.
Mr. Gawf: IfI could just add one more comment on the funding issue. That is anticipating that we
would want to do something or at least try and preserve that opportunity, the Staffdid propose in the
departmental budget a certain amount of money for assisting the shuttle system starting fiscal year
July lsto So the Council will review that in May and I think it is $250,000. So it is a significant
amount of money that we are proposing and I think it supported by the City Manager.
Commissioner Bialson: Just a general comment and hopefully in closing, I make two observations.
I think it is very important that the Staffmake City Council and the public of Palo Alto aware that
this is not meant to relieve congestion problems and impact at intersections. A lot of people love
the idea of public transit because they want everybody else on the road to start using public transit
and allow them to have an easier commute. I think we will not serve the community or the Council
well unless we really hit hard on the fact that this is not intended for that. We" can’t give them any
predictions or figures about that. I think if we do that we have to have a little bit of faith in the
community. I truly do believe that if we build it, they will come.
Commissioner Schmidt: A couple of general comments too. I think in addition to what Annette is
saying, if we build it we also ha;ce to tell people about it a lot. I know we talked about educating
people in-several areas of the Comprehensive Plan and I think this is one that will need some
publicity to get people started using it.
I was happy to hear a member of the advisory committee be very happy with the process and the
consultant, and the public outreach. We just talked about making transportation a more public
process and you are already doing that. It appears that that is r~ally working and indeed I think the
whole presentation, the thoroughness of what was done, admittedly there is some more work to do
in the cost/benefit areas, and there will always be more questions that will be asked, but I think what
has come before us is a real thorough look at a difficult subject here. Thank you.
Commissioner Schink: I just wanted to close by complimenting the consultants, Staff and the public
for their comments. The presentation tonight was one of the best organized thorough presentations
that I’ve seen here at the Planning Commission in a long time. It made our job easier and it made
it easier to sort of understand an obviously tough issue. It is encouraging to hear that you have
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brought a number of the public along in the process too and that they are very complimentary. So
thank you.
Chairman Byrd: I want to add a brief concluding comment. Annette was so right on when she said
that if we sell as a congestion reduction program we are going to have a lot of angry people and the
system will ultimately fail. The flip side of that is if that’s not how we are going to sell it, how will
we sell it? She is right that some people want people to get out of the way so they can drive faster.
I think the message here is that this will enable you, the resident or employee, to get out of your car
and drive less and that will give you a better life. If we speak to that I think we will create
expectations that the system can meet. So let’s avoid the pitfall that Annette identified and try to sell
this thing in terms that people can hear.
I too, just want to echo what was said. This was a terrific presentation. This Commission and the
Council and the community have talked itself blue about starting a shuttle and it is just so exciting
to finally see the details emerge. We’ll look forward to it coming back. That will be sometime in
June or July?
Ms. Furth: I believe your meeting is June 30th.
Chairman Byrd: Thank you very much.
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Mr. Gawf: Yes, we had one item scheduled for
was the continuation of the Lucky’s store expansion. They have
meeting. That
that
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