By Leroy W. Demery, Jr.

It is well known today that transit services in Oakland and neighboring East Bay cities carry much less ridership than those in San Francisco. Less well known is the fact that this is a long-established pattern. During the 1920s, traffic density carried by the busiest East Bay transit lines was much less than that carried by the busiest lines in San Francisco.

It is well known today that transit services in Oakland and neighboring East Bay cities carry much less ridership than those in San Francisco. What is less well known - and tends to surprise those who are not familiar with the Bay Area - is that this is a long-established historic pattern. Readers who compare our traffic-density tabulations for San Francisco and Oakland might well be intrigued by the contrast.

By the 1920s, transit ridership per capita in Oakland was about the lowest among U.S. cities of similar size. We will present details in a subsequent post; for the moment, we want to highlight certain sharp contrasts. At 1929, when ridership was “at or near” the pre-World War II peak, about 630,000 people lived in San Francisco. The city’s three transit operators (the Market Street Railway, the Municipal Railway and the California Street Cable Railroad Company) operated about 354 km (220 mi) of lines using electric and cable traction, and carried almost 360 million passengers (”revenue” and “transfer”). The networks carried a great deal of short-distance travel; the average travel distance (ATD) was about 3.5 km (2.2 mi). Passenger traffic density works out to about 3.5 million pass-km (mi) per route-km (mi) per year - a figure that would be very difficult to achieve today in “mixed traffic” (i.e. without extensive priority measures, and separations of the busiest lines).

The number of rides per capita was about 570 - an enormous figure by today’s standards. (Historic “riding habit” statistics did not account for transfer passengers, as we have done here for conformity with today’s statistics). We believe that this figure - which implies almost 1.6 boardings per resident per day - is inflated significantly by transbay commuters, who used streetcars to travel between the Ferry Building and business center destinations.

Things were different across the Bay. Transit ridership in Oakland and neighboring cities (including Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, El Cerrito, Emeryville, Hayward, Piedmont, Richmond, San Leandro and San Pablo) peaked about 1925, then began a gradual decline (that accelerated dramatically during the Depression). In 1925, the East Bay cities housed about 500,000 people. The local streetcar network had a route length of about 186 km (115 mi), and carried about 99 million passengers (again the sum of “revenue” and “transfer” passengers). The ATD was similar to that in San Francisco - about 3.5 km (2.2 mi). Passenger traffic density, about 1.7 million pass-km per route-km per year, was but half the aggregate figure for S.F.

The number of rides per capita was just shy of 200 - a figure we believe is somewhat low because it does not include “transbay” rail services, or passengers carried by bus services. Nonetheless, we think it reasonable to say that transit ridership per capita in Oakland was roughly one-third the level carried in San Francisco - even during the “peak” ridership years of the 1920s.

At 2004, San Francisco had more than 790,000 residents. Muni services carried 217 million boardings; the city’s “transit total,” including BART traffic among stations in San Francisco, was about 310 million. Remarkably, this is more than 85 percent of the 1929 total - and implies roughly 390 annual boardings per capita. We think that some adjustment should be made to account for transbay passengers carried by BART and Golden Gate Transit; absent today’s bridges, some transbay passengers would need to change to “local” transit to reach their final destination.

At 2004, The Alameda - Contra Costa County Transit District (AC Transit) served a population of 1.4 million. AC Transit reported about 65 million boardings. This is about 65 percent of the 1925 figure - but we note that AC Transit serves a significantly larger area than its private-sector predecessor, and that its ridership statistic includes transbay services. Subtracting transbay ridership and adding BART traffic among stations in the AC Transit service district gives about 70 million annual “East Bay” transit boardings. This implies about 50 annual boardings per capita. Although this statistic is significantly higher in parts of the service district (e.g. long-established neighborhoods in Oakland and Berkeley), we think that the following comparisons, in terms of rides per capita, are reasonable:

--Today’s East Bay ridership per capita is about 25 percent of the “peacetime peak.”

--Today’s transit ridership per capita in San Francisco is about 70 percent of the “peacetime peak.”

--The East Bay “peacetime peak” was about 35 percent of that in San Francisco.

--Today’s East Bay ridership per capita is about 13 percent of that in San Francisco.

The busiest East Bay streetcar lines served Grove Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Way) and College Avenue between Oakland and Berkeley. At 1925, these lines carried 10 million and 9 million passengers, respectively. This was much less than carried by the busiest lines in San Francisco, which were of similar length: 18 million on the McAllister Street line, 20 million on the Third Street lines, 26 million on the Geary Street lines, and 30 million on the Sutter Street lines.

The dramatic decline in East Bay transit ridership to the early 1930s is also worthy of note. The 1933 figure of 43 million was less than half the 1925 figure, carried over a network that had about 85 percent of the previous route length. Documents from that era make clear that the transit company management did not see much of a future for most of the streetcar network. The investment required for renewal of life-expired infrastructure (primarily track) could not be justified - and the needed capital could not be obtained.

The East Bay streetcar network included two long lines extending from Oakland, north to west Berkeley and Richmond, and south to San Leandro and Hayward. For a time, both were worked as a single very long service extending 49 km (30 mi). At 1924, the Richmond and Hayward lines carried 27 million passengers; the Richmond-Hayward line carried less than 10 million at 1933. Remarkably, the sum of today’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) traffic among stations between Richmond and Hayward, together with that carried by parallel bus services, is about 22 million - not much less than during the “peak” years of the 1920s.

The East Bay network also included a number of lines that, by today’s standards, carried remarkably light traffic. We included a “sample” of three such lines: Ashby Avenue, Dwight Way and Fruitvale Avenue. Of these, the Ashby and Dwight lines (in Berkeley) carry roughly half as much traffic today as at 1924. (Remarkably, the Fruitvale line (in Oakland) carries not much less traffic today as it did “back then,” although today’s bus line is somewhat longer.) The company continued operating streetcars on such lines, which carried 300,000 pass-km per km of route per year at 1924, because track and cars still had some useful life remaining.

Historic details of the Dwight Way line, from an article by Robert W. (”Bob”) Burrowes: construction started in autumn 1908, and the line was opened on February 25, 1909. At this time, four cars were required to provide service every ten minutes. Two-axle “Safety” cars (known colloquially as “Birneys,” after the designer) entered service on April 21, 1924. These were designed for operation by one-man; we note that the previous cars were worked by two-man crews (motorman and conductor). Berkeley municipal authorities had agreed previously to one-man operation, but demanded two-man crews following an accident on the Ashby line. Older cars returned to Dwight Way on May 19, 1924 - but this drew complaints about noise from residents. The Birney cars were then returned to Dwight on October 7, 1924, and were operated by two-man crews until February 1, 1928, when municipal authorities gave in to the company’s complaints and permitted one-man operation. In response to traffic declines caused by growing auto use and the onset of the Great Depression, the company reduced service effective July 19, 1931: two cars provided service every 20 minutes. The life-expired Birneys were replaced by other cars in 1936, leading to another round of complaints from residents, who said that the heavier cars jarred foundations of houses and caused plaster to fall. The tracks were life-expired by the end of 1937, leading to bus substitution early in 1938.

In the days before the Bay Bridge was built, “transbay” rail services operated from various East Bay points to ferry terminals, which were not served by “local” streetcar services. Transbay services operated relatively infrequently, and were scheduled to connect with ferryboats (which operated every 20 minutes throughout most of the day). Vehicles used for “transbay” services were significantly larger than streetcars and often operated in trains in order to accommodate commuters by the boatload (so to speak). At 1925, the two competing “transbay” networks carried about 40 million passengers; a considerable share of whom were “local” passengers who did not travel to or from the ferry terminals. After completion of the Bay Bridge, a double-track electric railway was installed on the lower deck to accommodate bridge trains- but traffic during the first full year of operation was less than half that carried at 1925. Only 7 million passengers were carried during the last full year of operation; of these, little more than 5 million traveled to or from San Francisco. By contrast, BART carried 45 million passengers through its Transbay Tube at 2004.

City	Population Served	Riding Habit
Columbus	300,000	131
Portland, OR	339,000	130
New Orleans	475,000	128
Omaha	260,000	111
Indianapolis	360,000	108
Louisville	374,000	108
Memphis	370,000	98
Denver	335,000	91
Oakland and environs	488,000	73
Toledo	290,000	56
Akron, OH	321,000	28
Dallas	274,000	21

 

The relatively low “riding habit” statistic for Oakland reflects large-scale motorization following World War I, extensive road construction and demographic changes that were not favorable to the existing transit network. In particular, much of the “transbay” rail network was built to serve new development planned by rail magnates rather than existing neighborhoods. As the regional population grew, certain “railway suburbs” that once housed many transbay commuters became populated by industrial workers employed elsewhere in the East Bay. By the mid-1920s, many people who lived and worked in the East Bay traveled to work in their autos.

Despite long-established trends that are not particularly favorable to transit, we believe that East Bay transit services could achieve significant ridership increases given adequate levels of investment.