The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) Blue Ribbon Task Force this week approved 27 near-term actions to be taken by MTC and other transportation agencies in the coming months to make the Bay Area’s public transportation network more connected and efficient.
Approval of this set of actions marks the culmination of a 14-month effort that began in May 2020 when the Task Force accepted a three-stage mission to help the Bay Area transit network adjust to new conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the MTC said in a press release. These stages included assisting in the distribution of federal coronavirus relief funds and guiding transit agencies’ recovery planning as well as developing a ‘Transit Transformation’ action plan.
The 32-member Task Force was chaired by MTC Commissioner and Solano County Supervisor Jim Spering and included several other local elected officials as well as advocates for people with disabilities; representatives from the state Senate, state Assembly, and the California State Transportation Agency; transit agencies; business and labor groups; and transit and social justice advocates.
“We spent over a year deep in collaborative dialogue and a respectful search for consensus,” Spering said in a statement. “All of the Task Force members deserve huge thanks for their time and commitment, with special appreciation for the nine transit-agency general managers who actively contributed while also tackling historically severe impacts on their organizations.”
The specific actions unanimously approved by the Task Force are organized around the themes of fare-payment coordination and integration; customer information; transit priority on roadways to increase bus speeds and reliability; bus and rail network management reform; connected network planning; data collection and coordination; accessibility; and funding.
MTC is the transportation planning, financing and coordinating agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. More information on the plan can be found on MTC's website.
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SOURCE: Metropolitan Transportation Commission (Bay Area)
