Seamless Bay Area

It is with mixed emotions that, seven years since co-founding Seamless Bay Area, and after five years working here full time as the organization's Policy Director and co-Executive Director, I'm stepping down as staff. I'm incredibly grateful to Adina Levin, who is stepping into the role of sole Executive Director, and to Seamless' Board and thousands of supporters for their support. I'm going to stay on Seamless' board and I remain as committed as ever to our mission. My latest blog post reflects the exciting journey that has been the past seven years, and my optimism for the future. To everyone who has been part of this movement or offered me encouragement along the way, thank you. https://lnkd.in/gXYKn8FJ The past several years I have spent with Seamless have been among the most fulfilling and meaningful of my career - and now I’m excited about the opportunity to apply what I’ve learned about seamless transit integration, customer experience, governance, funding, and other topics to other parts of the US and the world, in my new role at CPCS, starting tomorrow. I'll be sharing more about that very soon - stay tuned!

Seamless Bay Area and Public Advocates led a ride-along to yesterday's 4th California Transit Transformation Task Force meeting in San Francisco with Task Force members. We used several types of transit to get to the meeting, and used the opportunity to showcase initiatives our region is undertaking to transform transit: integrating fares, services, schedules, and wayfinding. As reported in this article, now these topics are getting taken up at a statewide level as the state considers new statewide transit funding. Thanks to BART, Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Water Emergency Transportation Authority, and AC Transit for participating in the ride along - see you all at the next meeting in Los Angeles in August! https://lnkd.in/giM3musa

Since our founding in 2018, thousands of people and hundreds of organizations have joined the movement to transform Bay Area public transit into a world-class system. Thanks to our collective efforts, the speed of change in just the last 5 years has exceeded that of the last 5 decades – and we are fighting to keep this momentum going. This grassroots movement is only possible because of the generous donations from people like you. Can you make a contribution today to help us sustain and expand our work? For a limited time only, your donation can get you some of our iconic t-shirts, tote bags, and stickers! It’s going to take all of us demanding change to realize a seamless rider-first transit system that is fast, coordinated, equitable, accessible, and affordable. Thank you for your support. https://lnkd.in/gk84TT9f

Winnie is participating in the Clipper BayPass pilot. In this video, we followed her on her transit journey from Oakland to Los Altos. The trip took her on BART, Caltrain, and VTA - and with BayPass, she saved $13.90 one way! The BayPass pilot program is facilitated by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Participants like Winnie were randomly selected to receive the all-in-one pass, which lets them ride Bay Area transit systems for free. We’re using this pilot to measure how an all-system pass could impact Bay Area travel. As of now, the pass is being made available for purchase to the employers and organizations interested in offering their staff and students free local transit. Once the pilot concludes, we hope to offer a permanent program for interested orgs/employers! Tell your company you want BayPass and send them here to learn how to sign up: https://lnkd.in/g2D9BpMd Fun fact: Winnie is one of the UC Berkeley graduate students from TRANSOC who recently broke the world record for fastest trip across the entire BART system. The group visited 50 stations in under 6 hours! Impressive.

The pandemic has forced us to confront two important truths about why more people don’t use transit: We don’t run enough fast reliable service to attract riders from cars, and transit is too fragmented, run by 27 agencies with little coordination and creating an inconvenient and inefficient network. SB 1031 addresses both issues head on, and is our best hope for transformation. Check out my opinion piece in the The Mercury News! https://lnkd.in/gDJvZqj2