Ian Griffiths, Policy Director, Seamless Bay Area

This presentation is sponsored by ITS-Davis’ partnership with the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center.

Title

Advancing a Seamless Transit System in the Bay Area and California

Time

1:40pm - 3:00pm

Location

1605 Tilia, Room 1103, West Village

Abstract

The mission of Seamless Bay Area, a non-profit advocacy group founded in 2018 by transit riders and professionals, is to establish a world-class, integrated, equitable, and high-ridership transit system that improves the quality of life for all in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area has 27 transit agencies, each with uncoordinated service, fare policies, identities, and long-term planning – this creates major barriers to access and contributes to service that is not competitive to driving for many types of trips. While transit ridership was stagnant prior the pandemic, making in up just 5% of all trips in the region, compared to over 70% in cars, the pandemic has thrust Bay Area transit into an urgent financial crisis – loss of ridership and fare revenue now threatens the future of public transit in the region. The key to transit’s survival – and ability to become a world-class system with much higher levels of ridership than before the pandemic – relies on advancing governance and funding reforms together, that can deliver a more connected, reliable system.

Biographical Sketch

Ian Griffiths is Seamless Bay Area’s Policy Director, and author of Governing Transit Seamlessly: Options for a Bay Area Transportation Network Manager. He has worked as an urban and transportation planner for the past 14 years in the private, public, and non-profit sectors, previously with AECOM, Perkins+Will, and Metrolinx. From 2015-2019, he worked at BART leading long-range station planning projects and oversaw the development of BART’s Station Experience Design Guidelines.