The Bay Area’s transit agencies want more integration throughout the region, and we’re working to advance lots of initiatives to get there. We meet every week to move the work forward and hold ourselves accountable.

We’ve gotten a lot done over the last year, despite the ongoing challenges of the pandemic. Below is a look at some of the work we've done.

Fare Coordination

The Clipper® card is being improved, and we launched the BayPass Pilot in mid-August 2022. The pilot is providing 50,000 Bay Area residents—primarily college students—free access to all bus, rail, and ferry services in the nine-county region. It is testing the concept of offering a pre-paid “all you can ride” transit pass that works on all systems that accept Clipper. Our next step is to offer it to large employers. Read more about fare integration.

Schedule Alignment

We’re aligning our schedules so it’s easier for riders to make connections between agencies. For example, we are sharing schedule changes with each other earlier and developing data tools to enable better coordination of connections. This means fewer near misses and less waiting.

Transit Priority

We’ve made major strides giving buses priority on our roadways. The SFMTA added 15 miles of transit lanes during the pandemic, and those lanes have made it possible for Muni buses that drive on those roads to be 15 – 20% faster. Golden Gate Transit also has access to SFMTA’s Van Ness Ave, lanes. The SFMTA and Caltrans partnered to launch the first urban high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes in California.

Wayfinding

We are rolling out a uniformed approach to signs that are intuitive to help people find transit stops and connect from one to another. This includes implementing BART’s new Station Access Signage and Wayfinding Guidelines which are improved signs for pedestrian paths, bus bays, bicycle parking at transit stops, loading zones and more. Check out the draft guidelines and give feedback here. The new signs will also include QR codes linking to real-time bus information. The MTC recently approved a contract to develop a single mapping and wayfinding system for use by all Bay Area transit agencies. Track our efforts on improving wayfinding here.

Transit Integration

The agencies and the MTC have committed to implementing the improvements in our Transformational Action Plan. We will need funding to complete many of these actions. View our roadmap for integrated transit here.

Conclusion

We’re still struggling with not having enough funding to create the kind of seamless system we all want, because transit has historically been underfunded in the U.S., including in the progressive Bay Area. The pandemic made our financial situations far worse, and most of us are now facing a financial cliff when our one-time federal relief funds run out.