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Transportation

Our goal: Make walking, biking, taking transit and carpooling the default options for getting around

SPUR’s Five-Year Priorities:


Improve the region’s transit network, and the institutions that run it, so that all people have fast, reliable access to their city and region.

Make it faster, easier, more dignified and less expensive to get around without a car.

Leverage transportation investments to build great neighborhoods and connect people to opportunity.

 

​​ Read our policy agenda

SPUR Report

A Regional Transit Coordinator for the Bay Area

The Bay Area’s two dozen different transit services would be easier for riders to use if they functioned like a single network. This type of coordination is complex, but that’s not why it hasn’t been done. The real reason is that it’s not anyone’s responsibility.

SPUR Report

More for Less

Around the world, building major transit projects is notoriously difficult. Yet the Bay Area has an especially poor track record: Major projects here take decades from start to finish, and our project costs rank among the highest in the world. SPUR offers policy proposals that will save time, save money and add up to a reliable, integrated and frequent network that works better for everyone.

SPUR Report

Value Driven

Roads and parking are expensive to build, but they’re mostly free for drivers to use as much as they’d like. This kind of free access imposes serious costs on others: traffic, climate change, air pollution, and heart and lung disease. SPUR’s new report Value Driven shines a light on the invisible costs of driving and offers five pioneering strategies to address them.

SPUR Report

The Future of Transportation

Will the rise of new mobility services like Uber and bike sharing help reduce car use, climate emissions and demand for parking? Or will they lead to greater inequality and yet more reliance on cars? SPUR proposes how private services can work together with public transportation to function as a seamless network and provide access for people of all incomes, races, ages and abilities.

SPUR Report

Seamless Transit

The Bay Area’s prosperity is threatened by fragmentation in the public transit system: Riders and decision-makers contend with more than two dozen transit operators. Despite significant spending on building and maintaining transit, overall ridership has not been growing in our region. How can we get more benefit from our transit investments?

SPUR Report

Caltrain Corridor Vision Plan

The Caltrain Corridor, home of the Silicon Valley innovation economy, holds much of the Bay Area’s promise and opportunity, but its transportation system is breaking down. Along this corridor — which includes Hwy 101 and Caltrain rail service from San Francisco to San Jose — the typical methods of getting around have become untenable.

Updates and Events


Temporary to Transformative

SPUR Report
During the COVID-19 pandemic, cities across the country piloted shared public spaces and slow streets. In a matter of weeks, these temporary changes transformed city streets in ways that would otherwise have taken years. The crisis injected the planning process with a sense of urgency and a willingness to experiment. How can San Francisco and other cities make these changes permanent? SPUR's new report captures lessons learned and offers 18 recommendations for how to build on what's been started.

The Bay Area Won’t Meet Its Goals Without a New Transit-Oriented Development Policy

News /
The crises that confronted the Bay Area before the COVID-19 pandemic have not gone away: inadequate and unaffordable housing, growing racial inequality and growing impacts from climate change. Building diverse communities with much more housing, services and jobs near transit is the best opportunity we have to tackle these challenges. The newly released Plan Bay Area 2050 charts a path to this future, but an outdated policy from 2005 is standing in the way.

Caltrain Has Become a Regional Railroad — Now Its Governance Must Follow

News /
Regional transit coordination and integration are urgent priorities for Caltrain. As board members prepare for Caltrain’s October 22 special meeting on regional governance options, SPUR urges the agency to commit itself to open-minded engagement in regional transit governance discussions. Caltrain needs to consider new institutional models that would grow its capacity and enable greater regionalism.

SPUR Supports Strategies to Reduce Miles Driven in State's Mobile Source Strategy

Advocacy Letter
SPUR joins with a ClimatePlan-led coalition in support of the strategies and recommendations to reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and the strategies that implement the Climate Action Plan for Transportation Infrastructure (CAPTI), in the California Air Resources Board's proposed Mobile Source Strategy (MSS).