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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


Six Principles for Pricing Driving to Reduce Congestion, Pollution and Crashes

News /
Cities and states are proposing policies that would discourage driving by charging for some the costs it imposes on others — namely congestion, pollution, heart and respiratory disease, greenhouse gases and deaths from collisions. It won’t be easy to start pricing something that’s been free for so long. To get the benefits without a backlash, SPUR offers six principles for fair and effective transportation pricing.

SPUR Comments on Highway 37 Planning, Alignment and Design Considerations

Advocacy Letter
SPUR letter providing comments on Highway 37 planning, alignment and design considerations. Now funded by a once-in-a-generation commitment of resources dedicated under RM3 (among other sources), Highway 37 presents us with a unique opportunity to remake an important regional corridor in a way that solves for both.

Falling in Love With the Trains of Japan

Urbanist Article
Japan’s extensive railway system carries nearly 30 percent of all rail passengers in the world, more than all of Europe. But unlike many European countries, Japanese rail companies are privatized. The largest of these companies carries 17 million passengers per day and its $26 billion in annual revenue includes no government subsidies. How is this possible and what can California learn from the Japanese system?

The Uncertainty Paradox

Urbanist Article
Transportation isn’t as predictable as one might think. The profession's standard forecasts and projections are convenient fictions that oversimplify a complex system and mislead us into thinking we know what the future will bring. Luckily, some transportation agencies are now publicly admitting uncertainty about where things might be headed in the future and are embracing new ways to tackle that uncertainty in their planning.

How Can We Create the Best User Experience at Diridon Station?

News /
Creating a great user experience at the redeveloped Diridon Station will be critical to whether people embrace the station and use transit. If Diridon’s transit services are going to compete with the automobile — or the next big transportation technology — the partners developing the station will need to focus on the user as the primary driver in their planning efforts .