2.0 SAN FRANCISCO URBAN PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT

This chapter describes the San Francisco UPA. An overview of the transportation system in the San Francisco region is provided first. The San Francisco UPA partners and the local organizational structure are highlighted next. Finally, the San Francisco UPA projects, funding, and deployment schedule are described.

2.1 The Transportation System and Congestion in San Francisco

Bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and the San Francisco Bay to the north and east, the City and County of San Francisco occupies almost 50 square miles on the northern San Francisco Peninsula. The city is a leading financial, cultural, and transportation center both in California and internationally. The city and region boast a number of top-tier research centers and universities. It is also home to several Fortune 500 firms and more than 60,000 small businesses.

As with other metropolitan areas in the country, the San Francisco region continues to experience growth in population and employment. This growth has resulted in significant roadway congestion. According to the Texas Transportation Institute's Urban Mobility report, ³ currently about 82 percent of auto travel and 60 percent of lane miles are congested during peak periods.

The estimated population for the city and county of San Francisco is currently about 809,000. According to San Francisco County Transportation Agency (SFCTA), the city expects to add 19,000 more households and 110,000 new jobs by 2025. This future growth will further increase traffic and travel times. Overall trip making in the city is expected to increase by 12 percent from 4.5 to 5.0 million trips per day and 65 percent of those trips are expected to be internal trips as opposed to trips to and from areas outside the city.

An effective and efficient transportation system is critical to the economic health, vitality and quality of life in San Francisco. The city's dense and diverse land uses and its mature grid street system make it a very pedestrian-friendly city. The city also offers a variety of public transit travel options including light rail (streetcars), heavy rail (subways), commuter rail, trolleybuses, diesel buses, cable cars, and ferries. San Francisco's roadways include bicycle routes and facilities, two major freeways, and two major regional toll bridges (Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge) with priority for high occupancy vehicles. According to SFCTA, the current mode share for all travel is 62.1 percent for autos, 17.2 percent for transit, 19.3 for walking, and 0.9 percent for bike. In the future, mode shares are expected to shift increasingly from auto to transit.

2.2 The San Francisco UPA Local Partners

For the purposes of the national evaluation, the San Francisco local UPA partners consist of three public agencies. Two of the partners represent the City of San Francisco--the San Francisco County Transportation Authority and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). The third partner is the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the metropolitan planning organization for the Bay Area. Figure 2-1 depicts the San Francisco UPA partners. (Other Bay Area partners identified in the agreement with U.S. DOT include Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District, Bay Area Toll Authority, Caltrans, and Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation Authority. As described in Section 2.3, they are not partners in the projects included in the national evaluation, and, therefore are not shown in Figure 2-1.)

Figure 2-1. San Francisco UPA Team

SFMTA's role in the UPA is the deployment of SFpark, a variable parking pricing system to improve management of the City's parking assets and reduce congestion on City streets. SFMTA is composed of the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) transit system, the Division of Parking and Traffic (DPT) and the Division of Taxis and Accessible Services (DTAS). The Muni is the largest transit agency in the Bay Area carrying more than 200 million riders annually in a diverse fleet of vehicles. The DPT manages 40 City-owned garages, metered parking lots, and on-street parking. It also manages all traffic engineering functions within San Francisco, including the placement of signs, signals, traffic striping, curb markings, and parking meters.

SFCTA's Urban Partnership role is to plan and manage the telecommuting/TDM portion of the San Francisco UPA program. The SFCTA was created in 1989 to administer the city's transportation sales tax. It also has an oversight role in many of the city's transportation improvements as well as coordinating transportation enhancements with other agencies and is responsible for leading studies for future projects identified in the San Francisco Countywide Transportation Plan. As the Congestion Management Agency (CMA) for San Francisco, SFCTA is responsible for developing and administering the Congestion Management Program (CMP). The Authority also serves as the San Francisco program manager for the Transportation Fund for Clean Air program, which supports some TDM efforts. In the area of TDM, the SFCTA works with the City of San Francisco's Department of Environment (DOE). The City's TDM program was originally developed for municipal employees, but has expanded to include downtown businesses and commuters. The City's program, called “Driving Alternatives” includes the promotion of ridematching, commuter tax benefits and offers a guaranteed ride home benefit. The City's program also provides assistance to employers needing to comply with the City's recent Commute Benefits Ordinance that requires employers with 20 or more employees to offer their employees certain commute benefits, such as subsidized transit passes or vanpool assistance.

The MTC's role will be to enhance its existing 511 traveler information system and TransLink® payment system to support the SFpark system. The MTC was established in 1970 as the transportation planning, coordinating and financing agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. MTC functions as both the regional transportation planning agency — a state designation — and, for federal purposes, as the region's metropolitan planning organization. MTC updates the Regional Transportation Plan and ensures that local agencies' requests for transportation funds are compatible with the plan.

2.3 San Francisco UPA Projects and Deployment Schedules

The San Francisco UPA originally included congestion pricing on traffic entering San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge. The partners abandoned that strategy when the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District, the tolling authority for the Golden Gate Bridge, decided not to support the variable tolling approach. U.S. DOT and the partners restated the UPA in October 2008 so that the pricing strategy would focus on implementing another element of the original application—variable parking pricing—to manage the availability of parking in parts of San Francisco where the search for parking was viewed as a major contributor to traffic congestion.

Table 2-1 shows the project components and federal funding in the restated agreement. The focus of the national evaluation is on a subset of these projects consisting of the parking pricing project in San Francisco and the other projects that support the parking program: the 511 upgrades, parking payment and the telecommuting/TDM projects. Each of these projects that will be considered in the national evaluation is discussed below.

SFpark Variable Pricing. SFpark is the name given to the parking pricing system to be implemented by SFMTA. The primary goal of SFpark is to use intelligent parking management technology and techniques, in particular demand-responsive pricing, to manage the on-street and off-street parking supply and demand. SFMTA expects this approach to reduce the number and duration of vehicle trips and reduce double parking and, thereby, reduce congestion. SFMTA views the UPA-funded project as a pilot to test a system that will be more widely deployed throughout San Francisco in the future. The parking technologies to be tested include networked parking meters, parking occupancy sensors, and parking information systems. SFpark is expected to improve SFMTA's effectiveness in meter maintenance, enforcement, and parking management and provide travelers with better information about parking location, availability, and price to help them make more informed travel choices.

The pilot areas for SFpark are highlighted in red (or dark lines) in Figure 2-2. The new system will consist of approximately 6,000 metered on-street parking spaces (about one-quarter of the city's total supply) and 12,250 parking spaces in fifteen city-operated garages and one lot. Control areas, highlighted in yellow (or light lines) in Figure 2-2, will be equipped with traffic sensors for monitoring use of the parking supply where variable pricing is not implemented.

SFMTA's approach to variable pricing is to adjust parking prices gradually and periodically to achieve targets for parking availability rather than dynamically adjusting pricing based on moment-to-moment changes in parking demand. SFMTA expects that drivers will be able to gradually adjust travel behaviors and choices to respond to new price information over time, whereas dynamic pricing could be potentially confusing for drivers, difficult for SFMTA to administer, and technically too complex. Instead, SFMTA seeks a pricing regime that will balance supply and demand over time and provide drivers with a predictable pricing environment in which to adjust their travel choices.

Figure 2-2. SFpark Pilot and Control Zones

Figure 2-3. Dynamic Message Signs Will Guide Drivers to Available Parking in San Francisco

To assist travelers in making choices about parking pre-trip and en-route, SFMTA will disseminate parking information in various ways. Strategically placed dynamic message signs will show parking availability in city-operated garages, as shown in Figure 2-3. Parking availability and pricing information will also be displayed on SFMTA's website and by text messaging to mobile devices.

511 Upgrades. The 511 phone and website in the San Francisco Bay Area, operated by MTC, is one of the most advanced in the country, including a variety of multi-modal information. Figure 2-4 illustrates some of the real-time traffic congestion information available on www.511.org. However, at the present time, the parking information on 511 is limited to static information about park and ride lots and rail stations (on the web) and airport parking (on the phone). The planned upgrades will provide parking space availability and pricing information for selected parking facilities in downtown San Francisco by 511 phone and web, by a user-customizable feature called MY511, and by information service providers (ISP s) in the region who receive a feed of 511 data from MTC. The system will be designed to allow expansion to include information about parking facilities throughout the region. The expected impact of having parking information on 511 is a reduction in surface street congestion as drivers' parking search time is reduced and the ability for drivers to make more informed decisions about the best place to park or possibly even choose an alternative to driving.

MTC will receive a real-time data feed of parking availability and pricing data for parking garages managed by SFMTA. The user interfaces on 511 phone, website, and MY511 will be enhanced to disseminate the parking information to 511 customers.

TransLink® Parking Payment. MTC is in the process of deploying its TransLink® smartcard electronic payment system on transit systems in the Bay Area. SFMTA, the operator of the Muni transit system in San Francisco, is a charter member of the TransLink® program and is interested in expansion of TransLink® to SFMTA parking garages. This will allow SFMTA customers to use a single smart card to pay for both transit and parking. This pilot could provide the foundation for expanding TransLink® as a parking payment option throughout the region.

The TransLink® card will be piloted at five SFMTA garages in downtown San Francisco. MTC will work with its TransLink® vendor to decide how best to design the electronic purses, or e-purses. One issue is how to separate the value for employer-furnished pre-tax transit benefits, per Internal Revenue Service Code, from other value loaded on the card for transit rides or parking charges.

Figure 2-4. Real-Time Traffic Congestion Information on www.511.org

Expansion of San Francisco Telecommuting and Alternate Commute Programs. Under the direction of the SFCTA, the telecommuting and alternate commute programs will be undertaken by the City of San Francisco's Department of the Environment (DOE). In support of the SFpark and 511 enhancements, DOE and SFCTA plans include three activities: promotion of SFpark at DOE outreach events; promotion of 511 enhancements at outreach events; and co-location of a bike-sharing station at a SFpark facility (e.g., parking structure). Through the outreach efforts, downtown workers will be better informed about the UPA initiatives and can better use the parking, bike-sharing and information resources available to them. The bike-sharing component is contingent on pending grant activities and the timing of implementation of the city's bike-share system.

Schedule for the UPA Projects. Table 2-2 presents the dates at which each of the San Francisco UPA projects that are part of the national evaluation are expected to be in operation. It should be noted that the SFMTA will be implementing variable pricing in SFpark zones as equipment installation is completed in each zone, and thus the operational period stretches over several months.