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San Jose Caltrain riders told to brace for fare hikes and service cuts
San Jose Mercury News
Caltrain's ticket prices are expected to rise and fewer trains are expected to run, Caltrain officials said, because ridership and state funding have gone downhill...Caltrain receives roughly 40 percent of its revenue from ticket sales, and the rest comes from transit agencies in Santa Clara, San Mateo and San Francisco counties. The state eliminated its transit assistance fund in its latest budget, so the three agencies have scaled back their contributions. Caltrain tightened its belt in summer 2009 by raising parking fees at stations, cutting eight midday trains and laying off staff.
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This bus is not in service: the shrinking routes of AC Transit
KALW - San Francisco
For the past week some AC Transit buses have been taking longer than usual to show up. Much longer. More than 200 drivers have called in sick every day for over a week. They’re protesting a new contract the bus agency imposed on their union. So this last week has been bad, but things have been getting worse for AC Transit passengers for months. In March, the agency cut about eight percent of its service – shortening hours, switching and combining some lines, and cutting some routes altogether. They’re doing it to save money, but the budget situation hasn’t gotten any better, so they’re making another round of cuts next month. So what happens when a bus line disappears? KALW’s Casey Miner followed a dead line to find out.
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Traffic delays ease on Bay Bridge with higher tolls,
and BART sees an increase in passengers
San Jose Mercury News
The time it takes to reach the toll plaza at the Bay Bridge has fallen almost in half during the peak of the morning commute, and ridership on BART has increased slightly since tolls were raised to $6 in the region's first experiment with congestion pricing. Bridge officials were hoping the higher tolls would persuade some motorists to cross the bay during nonpeak times and entice more East Bay-to-San Francisco travelers to try transit. On that basis, the early results are encouraging.
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Nearly $80 billion needed to shore up nation’s rail, bus system
The Hill
The nation’s rail and bus transit systems need almost $80 billion in improvements to get the system into a good state of repair. A new study by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) released Wednesday estimates it would cost $77.7 billion to shore up the nation’s rail and bus lines and another $14.4 billion a year to maintain the systems. While most of the $77.7 billion backlog can be attributed to rail, more than 40 percent of the nation’s buses are also in poor to marginal condition, according to the report.
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