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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


SPUR Urges Congress to Include Transit Funding in Federal Rescue Packages

Advocacy Letter
SPUR sent letters to Senator Feinstein, Senator Harris, and Congresswoman Pelosi, urging Congress to account for the revenue impacts to transit in rescue packages as part of the novel coronavirus response. We further urge Congress to distribute funding using a formula-based approach that accounts for losses faced by all transit operators throughout the country.

Let’s Fulfill the Vision of High-Speed Rail

News /
California is long overdue for a world-class transportation system that can support a growing economy, help expand economic opportunity to long-underserved areas of the state and support our ambitious carbon reduction priorities. The high-speed rail network currently under construction in the Central Valley can deliver on those bold objectives, but we must remain committed to fully funding its completion.

When Transit, Biking, and Walking Win

Urbanist Article
When the headlines are all about cost overruns and delays, it can be easy to forget that we do have transportation wins to celebrate. In 2019 the region accomplished many important, long-needed and exciting transportation projects and plans.

There Are No Cars in Wakanda

News /
In an essay for the exhibition Cars: Accelerating the Modern World , SPUR’s Allison Arieff asks: What would happen if we didn’t let the car determine the design of our cities and the pattern of our daily lives? Cities, she argues, might end up looking a lot like the fictional world at the center of the film Black Panther .

Transit Fare Integration Wins Transformative Projects Competition

News /
The results of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission first-ever Transformative Transportation Projects competition are in: We are thrilled to share that integrated transit fares — a proposal from SPUR, Seamless Bay Area and others — rose to the top as not only the most transformative of the 11 finalists but one of the highest-performing projects overall.