Emery-Go-Round at a Crisis Point

Is Emeryville Finally Going to Grow Up?

Opinion
Emeryville's free bus service,  Emery-Go-Round has been in the news a lot recently.  It was featured on National Public Radio today after a crisis point was reached last week when Watergate neighbors erupted as the buses stopped servicing their area.  A nadir seems to have been reached at EGR and as the NPR piece illustrated, everyone seems to think change is inevitable for the popular bus service.  We agree, change is coming to Emery-Go-Round but we want to make sure the looming change is to the benefit of the residents.
To make sure there's this kind of beneficial change, first we need to dispense with a popular meme, uniformly forwarded by business elites and so pervasive in our culture that it seems to be simple common sense. We're talking about the idea that the private sector is more efficient than government and somehow better at delivering public services.  Without getting bogged down with a civics discourse at this point, suffice it to say some things are best taken care of by government, perhaps not widget manufactory but certainly public mass transit delivery.  The breakdown at Watergate last week should be seen as a persuasive buttress of this non-radical idea.  We think more of this kind of service disruption is coming even as the EGR Board of Directors has agreed to a temporary fix at Watergate.  As this bus service has grown over the years, EGR now can't seem to provide the service Emeryville residents need and are expecting.

A Little Emery-Go-Round History
Against a backdrop of ever increasing traffic jams brought on by Emeryville's incessant development, the free buses were started in 1995 by Emeryville businesses looking to speed transit and convenience for their workers, their clients and customers.  A transit authority with taxing authority was set up, run by the businesses and paid for primarily by them (City Hall and the School District also pays some).   But like a newly widened freeway drawing more cars by easing the commute to far-flung suburbs, EGR's popularity became an engine in itself for more growth in our town. The City Council members started seeing EGR as a green light for more intensively developed residential projects.  Traffic studies for proposed residential mega-projects could tap into the Emery-Go-Round to show a lighter impact on our streets, giving the Council all the cover they needed to approve more and more development.
And develop Emeryville has.  At this point, like it or not, we're totally dependent on the Emery-Go-Round; without it our streets would be hopelessly clogged and business here would take a big hit.  Where neighboring cities can ameliorate their traffic problems with reliance on traditional buses (and BART), Emeryville's massive growth makes AC Transit insufficient.

The problem is that the City Council bought into the line that Emeryville's business sector could take care of the traffic problem. Now that it's been shown that they can't, we're going to have to fund EGR the old fashioned way; by government.

Why Did EGR Falter?
For years this bus service has worked fine.  So why is it not working now?
As more and more people started using the service, costs started going up.  This has recently been a source of irritation among the business property owners that pay for the buses.  An EGR Board of Directors shakeup finally resulted in a revolt of a sort.  The Tattler recently reported how the new Board drew a line in the sand: the EGR buses are for payers, not the general public they said.  Watergate residences, being non-payers were cut out.  But the Board of Directors, wishing to stave off a public relations disaster, tried to blame City Hall for the disruption in service because of recent sidewalk improvements.  They tried to forward the canard that due to this City Hall "negligence", the buses could no longer turn around at Watergate. The Tattler revealed the sidewalk argument was nothing but a red herring, meant to draw attention away from the Board's own draconian decision to ace Watergate residents out of the bus service.

Emery-Go-Round at Wareham Development's
Emery Station East 
Wareham CEO Rich Robbins wants Emeryville
taxpayers to pay but he wants to continue to control the bus service.  
If City Hall takes over, he might have to pay more.

Businesses Aren't Charities
Some of the more forthright Emery-Go-Round Board members will publicly state the obvious: the businesses that fund EGR aren't operating a charity; they're trying to look after their bottom line all the City sidewalk work obfuscation notwithstanding.  The EGR service has been morphing into a bus service primarily for non-payers, they'll remind us.  We agree with this sentiment; it's foolish to assume the business community will volunteer their resources for the greater public good.  We should always assume they're looking out for their own bottom lines.  That's why it was a fools errand to allow the business community to run the Emery-Go-Round to begin with.  The City Council massively developed our town and they're responsible for any negative impacts, not the business community.  City Hall must now take over this vital service and fund it the old fashioned way: with taxes.

Who Should Pay?
Back before the advent of supply side economics and phony rational market mania took over Washington, glazing the eyes even of Democrats, there used to be an axiom when it came time for government to raise revenue; the notion of 'the ability to pay'.  The idea was that those with the greatest ability should pay the most, those with less ability should pay less.  This is a philosophy that got us out of the Great Depression and helped built our great American middle class.
With regard to the Emery-Go-Round, those with the greatest ability to pay are the business community.  We must remember, they're here at our pleasure (insofar as the Constitution allows us to craft our city to our liking), not because we like them but because we want them here to pay for stuff we want.
Businesses don't count in this equation.  They literally don't count:  they can't vote.  Only residents can vote.  It's the residents who drive what our town will become and it's the residents for whom the town is built. We need to remember this as we turn a page with the Emery-Go-Round.
The private business sector can't be trusted with this public service, but they're the ones that should pay for it.  It should be seen as the cost of doing business in our town. We need to start selling our town for what it's worth instead of constantly selling it short.  We've had it with the hand wringing "win-win" phony declarations from this Council when it comes time to make business pay their share.  Win-win usually comes to mean win for the business community and lose for the residents.
Regarding the Emery-Go-Round, we say it's time for Emeryville to put away this childish argument about businesses being responsible for the public infrastructure.  It's time for Emeryville to finally grow up.  We the public are the responsible party for public transit here.

National Public Radio Highlights Emery-Go-Round

From NPR:

How A Free Bus Shuttle Helped Make A Small Town Take Off

by RICHARD GONZALES

November 13, 2013 3:22 AM

Listen to the Story

Morning Edition

4 min 48 sec

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Cindy Carpien/NPR

This story is part of an ongoing project on commuting in America.

What's known as the "last mile" of a commute can be the Holy Grail for many city transportation planners. How do you get people from their major mode of transportation – like a train station – to their final destination?

Perhaps your last mile is a drive home from a subway or train station — but these days, many cities and towns are trying to eliminate cars as much as possible. Some are planning for streetcars to take commuters on that last leg. Others rely on buses. In Emeryville, Calif., 10 miles east of San Francisco, the local businesses helped reinvent the city by providing a free shuttle service as a solution to this last mile problem.

The Emery Go Round Story

Emeryville is now the headquarters of Pixar Animation Studios, Leap Frog, Jamba Juice, Peet's Coffee and numerous biotech companies. But in the 1960s, it was a small industrial town known for paint factories, scrap metal yards and tanneries. By the late 1980s, though, post-industrial Emeryville was in pitiful shape, and John Flores was hired as the new city manager.

"They tasked me with redeveloping the city," he says. "Forty percent of the land was vacant, and there was a lot of opportunity there."

Emeryville was ideally situated to attract new business, but looking down the road, Flores could anticipate all of the traffic that would come with it. So he offered to help consolidate the few private shuttles that were already operating in town. Some city and federal dollars would pay half, the businesses would pay the rest.

Rich Robbins was and still is a commercial property owner in town.

"It was a no brainer," Robbins says. "The only way we were going to solve the problems of the day was to get people out of cars."

But not everyone thought it was a no-brainer. Robbins had to convince some of the old guard business owners to go along with the plan. One was Pierce Lathrop, who was required by the city to run a shuttle for his office complex.

"He was this crusty critter, "Robbins says. "We persuaded old man Lathrop on a trial basis that if we brought reliability [and] kept complaints to a minimum, he would stay on long term. He gave us one year."

It didn't take nearly that long for the Emery Go Round shuttle — which began running in 1995 — to exceed expectations.

"Initially, the shuttle was carrying 300 people a day," Flores says. "Within approximately six months, that amount went up to 3,000 people a day."

But what made the Emery Go Round really succeed was the decision by the business property owners to form what's known as an improvement district. They essentially taxed themselves to support the shuttle.

"Emeryville was absolutely an early adopter of using business improvement districts to support transportation," says David Downey, president of the International Downtown Association, which provides support for these districts across the country. They're more common around the country for augmenting city services like sidewalk sweeping and park maintenance.

The business improvement districts, Downey predicts, are going to continue to become "increasingly important through these austere times."

Karen Hemphill, assistant to Emeryville's city manager, says the city couldn't have grown without the Emery Go Round. "We have major corporations here and without the shuttle, I don't think that development would have come," she says.

An Eye On Ridership

In the morning, Emery Go Round buses are full of rush hour commuters like Sarah Wildfang. Wildfang is graphic designer for Title Nine, a women's sporting apparel store, also headquartered in Emeryville. She begins her commute on a city bus in San Francisco, where she lives, and then a Bay Area Rapid Transit train to Oakland. Once there, an Emery Go Round takes her right by her office. If she didn't have this bus?

"Oh, gosh," she says. "I'd just have to do some research and figure it out. I'm really dependent on this, and I rely on it, and I'm very thankful for it."

Robbins says he's always seen the shuttle as a great investment.

"I do believe it's a template particularly in smaller towns where you have limited parking and your downtowns are dying, and [you] move people seamlessly around the area," Robbins says.

And it's not just commuters who benefit. The shuttle was expanded to run on weekends and to shopping areas. Last year, there were 1.5 million boardings on the Emery Go Round. But Hemphill is concerned.

"The buses are full, the buses are at capacity," Hemphill says. "If you don't keep growing, then you start having the same kind of downward spiraling circle that many mass transit operators have — demand goes up, costs go up, you can't cover those costs, you start cutting back service, you start losing ridership."

Hemphill says discussions are just starting on whether the city might have to eventually supplement the shuttle's funding.

At the end of the workday, passengers jump off the Emery Go Round and rush through the BART station turnstiles. Many face another last mile to get back home. Commuter Tim Means says he wishes there was a service like the Emery Go Round on the home leg of his trip to a suburb of San Francisco.

"My last mile going home is in a car. If there was an Emery Go Round-like service then I wouldn't have to call and get picked up at the BART station. I'd be able to hop on that and head straight home," Means says.

One city that's looking right now to Emeryville for inspiration is the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, home to Google and Intuit. It's announced plans for a free shuttle service similar to the Emery Go Round. But what works in Emeryville may not work everywhere. And questions like who rides and who pays are ultimately local decisions.